Here is a (partial?) transcript of last night's "60 Minutes" story on the Ivory-bill. As I expected, it was mostly a "feel-good" piece, and the skeptic's side was barely mentioned.
Here are just a few snippets, with my comments in red:
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Sparling considered that it might be the smaller woodpecker that’s common around the region called “the pilleated,” but ruled it out. “I realized that if it was not a pilleated, the only other alternative was for it to be an ivory bill,” he says.
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If you see a large woodpecker with more white on the wings than a normal Pileated, it's a mistake to say that ivory-bill is the only other alternative. The bird is vastly more likely to be an abnormal Pileated.
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It’s one of the most exotic and the most inhospitable environments in America, a vast primordial ooze, a place so wild, that the Big Woods have been called this country’s Amazon.
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I think they're seriously overselling this point. Some of the reported sightings took place not far from the road. The area is not wild enough to deter hundreds if not thousands of duck hunters.
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Russ Charif, a researcher at the lab, played a tape recorded Jan. 29, 2005 in Arkansas, which he says “bears a striking resemblance” to two ivory-billed woodpeckers talking to each other.
Or two Blue Jays talking to each other. Later this week, I'll post some more detail on this issue.
That sound has been music to the ears in Clarendon, Ark., the town closest to the sighting, which isn't waiting for the outcome of the scientific debate to cash in on the woodpecker’s return.
This is one of the few sentences mentioning the controversy.
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