Thursday, June 01, 2006

Harvard exhibit

Here.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I still don't understand museum collection pride in stuffed animals.

In the future they must state the Bird is extinct due to Forest Cutting and Museum Collectors.

Anonymous said...

Skeptics. I have been thinking about how disgusting you are. Oh, you are correct when you say Fitzcrow distorted and misused science. And you are right to declare the IBWO extinct until proven otherwise. But still, you make me sick.

Oh yes, we are all so polite and repeatedly say “I hope the Ivory-billed exists but I want proof”. Oh yes, we say just the right things to show our compassion and to out doe eye the doe-eyed Birdchick.

So there we have it. Two groups of people. The crazies who know the IBWO is extanct. And the Skeptics who wish and hope that it is.

Well, I HOPE THE IBWO IS EXTINCT. There I said it!!

The truth is this….It doesn’t matter what I or you or the crazies hope. Get it? The Universe doesn’t care.
.
Why don’t we Skeptics just go back into the caves and finger paint IBWOs on the walls in the hope of a good search? Aren’t we no better than the crazies?

Signed,

Give Me A Break!!

Anonymous said...

Easy there Anonymous,

There are museum collectors in your ranks (who are at least as skeptical of Cornell's case as you, if not more so). For the record, there is no convincing evidence that museum collecting has *caused* the extinction of any bird species. Species such as the IBWO were already suffering badly and would have gone extinct, collecting or no. Besides, search collections and you'll see that the bulk of IBWO specimens were collected before the end of the 19th century. There was no burst of collecting when only a few individuals were left that "finished them off." Find another scapegoat, please.

Might I remind you, furthermore, that specimens have played a very important role in the IBWO/PIWO argument. Look at the various papers that have been written (Sibley et al, as well as the Cornell papers), and you'll see evidence of this.

You may not like that birds have had to die for science, but there'd be no field guides, and probably no viable ornithology at all, if it didn't (and still does) happen. Birds die because of human activity all the time. You yourself have, directly or indirectly, caused many bird deaths simply by living in a consumer society... it's easy to ignore since you probably haven't seen them in their death throes, but to deny it would be extremely naiive. At least museum specimens are preserved for multiple uses that will forward science and conservation (and, sadly, occasionally misused to "forward conservation" as Cornell is doing).

Anonymous said...

IBWO DNA!!

Too bad Harvard. Cornell already has the marketing plan in place.

"Every good clone starts with CLO!!"

"We didn't just see Elvis. We rebuilt him."

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