Here you can find a one-hour video containing some of those remarkable Cornell Ivory-bill presentations from last August's AOU meeting.
The first 13 minutes (Rosenberg on the Luneau video) are especially classic.
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I have been wondering what the heck LSU is waiting for. This IBWO foolishness is embarrassing. So this is what I found on LSU’s website.
“LSU's ornithology departmental faculty is second only to the group at Cornell University and graduate students of the ornithology program are employed at every major museum in the county.”
Whaaaaaa????? Who at LSU would write such nonsense. Do they think Cornel’s nanotechnology department ever ever says they are second rate? Does Rice University say they are second to Harvard? Heck no!!!
So we in the South can rail against Norheastern snobbery and Ivy League envy all we want. But it’s not the Ivy’s fault.
It might just be our own.
No, no PLEEEEEEASEEE! Not a whole hour of Rosencrow and Fitzcrow. Methinks maybe Amy can watch it for us, and report back on the...
Wait, wait, idea: lets deinterlace it and re-interpolate it. We'll get some dadaesque footage that will resemble, most closely, the press conferences for Cold Fusion, or maybe the Colin Powell talk before the UN where he went on about yellowcake, and mobile weapons labs.
In honor of this video, I present the 1st Annual, "It's not a Pileated" Goofy Award.
1. First Category - What was on that tree in the Luneau video.
Nominees.
a. Tree Stub
b. The other Wood Duck's mate
c. IBWO
d. PIWO
Winner - unknown, the video is too damn fuzzy.
2. The fastest disappearing act after appearing in the Conservation Story of the Century.
a. Doctor Fitzcrow.
Winner: see 2.a. above
3. The best media hype and department on the planet.
a. CLO
b. TNC
c. Audubon
d. Bird Forum
e. Alien Blogger
f. Mike Collins
g. Julie Zickenfoose
h. Gallagher
The winner - tie a - h.
4. The Bird Forum, I don't care about Science, I believe the IBWO exists award:
a. Bird Forum, et al
b. CLO
c Minnie ME
d. Cyber Thrush
e Barkscale, dale, I forgot his name
I, too, shall remain anony mouse becaude I work for an agency restoring the Wood Duck habitat. First anony mouse to name themselve also wins the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Methinks we will soon see changes at LSU. Like new slogans for their web site. Stuff like...
LSU: Home of The Tiger-Like Athletics
Baton Rouge: At Least As Rainy As Ithaca
LSU: The Best Ornithology School In A Red State
LSU: Our Graduate Faculty Doesn't Suck Too Badly
LSU: Not Nearly As Bad As You Thought
LSU: Home of Mediocre Sciences
LSU: The Original Safety School
Thanks, Tom, but that was kind of agonizing to watch. What struck me was the low energy. Even last summer they seemed a little embarrassed to be presenting this type of evidence to the AOU.
But then was it Rosencranzt---or Gildernstern?---who when introducing the Luneau video seems to almost say "well we couldn't ever get a real photo so we went back to the video and made it into an IBWO sighting"
I realize that's not a quote, but that's what it sounds like he's saying through the filter of all that's gone on in the year since.
Videos like this are going to haunt these fellows for years.
Lest we forget the role of our lazy media in the IBWO debacle, check this "science news" on CNNOnline right now
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The first detailed look at the ancestor of modern birds -- a grebe-like waterbird that would look normal even today -- was shown off Thursday by scientists who discovered fossil remains in a remote lake bed in China.
"A world lost for more than 100 million years was being revealed to us," as layers of mud were peeled back like the pages of a book, said Hai-lu You of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences.
What they found is being called the missing link on the evolution of birds, a creature that lived in northwest China and is the earliest example of modern birds that populate the planet today.
It's an awesome fossil. But it isn't "the missing link" because ...well, there is no such thing as "the missing link" except in the imaginations of scientifically ignorant journalists and a hundred million American rubes.
And who says this thing is extinct? It might simply be elusive and clever.
After watching that video, I am so glad y'all are here or I might begin to stereotype ornithologists.
Too bad they don't show the question and answer sessions. Surely someone must have stood up after the video presentation and asked, "This is a joke, right"?
If I can play the armchair forensic behaviorist for a moment, it is interesting to note that Rosenberg seems to gulp and pause before he makes his boldest (i.e., most bogus) claims, as if he is struggling within himself to deviate from the words on the slides and say something a bit more ... skeptical.
Amy,
I didn't watch it...but if it includes Fitzcrow's plennary he went 45 mins overtime, and took one question - from Jim Gorman at The NYT.
Rosencrow went into this a far better man than he looks now.
James Gorman could have been great, instead he is and was a patsy.
His trip uptown to the museum of natural history to bang study skins against his head after the sibley paper was the worst bit of journalism that could have ever been.
He alone has been responsible to the tone of "Fitz said", "Sibley said".
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