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For tonight’s monthly Zoom meeting, one of Matt Courtman’s regulars, Rachel Adele Webster (of Texas), will be describing her plan for doctoral study of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker at the University of North Texas (I assume starting in the fall?):
https://www.facebook.com/events/1447928302759055?ref=newsfeed
(I don’t know, but doubt, that anyone since Tanner has done doctoral work focused exclusively on the IBWO?)
Elsewhere, “American Grail”, the short indy film on Mark Michaels’ quest for the IBWO, will be showing this coming Thursday, June 20 at the Palm Springs International filmfest:
....With world news being pretty depressing these days, will close out with some more re-run levity (first posted here about 16 years ago, as a reminder of how careful one must be with birds & assumptions) ;)
Three guys died in an accident and went to heaven. When they got there, St. Peter said, "We only have one rule in heaven. Don't step on the ducks!"
So they enter heaven and sure enough, there are millions of ducks all over the place. It was almost impossible not to step on a duck and though they tried their best to avoid them, the first guy accidentally stepped on one.
Along came St. Peter with the ugliest woman the man had ever seen. St. Peter chained them together and said, "Your punishment for stepping on a duck is to spend eternity chained to this ugly woman".
The next day, the second guy stepped accidentally on a duck and along came St. Peter, with another extremely ugly woman. He chained them together with the same admonishment as the first.
The third guy observing all this and not wanting to be chained for all eternity to an ugly woman, was very careful where he stepped. He managed to go for months without stepping on any ducks. Then one day, St. Peter came up to him with the most gorgeous woman he'd ever laid eyes on and chained them together without saying a word.
Grinning, the guy remarked, "I wonder what I did to deserve being chained to you for all eternity?"
She replied, "I don't know about you, but I stepped on a duck!"
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ADDENDUM:
Not directly related to the IBWO, but David Martin (known in the past to some in IBWO circles as “Fangsheath”) has a long, new essay/warning at his blog on our not-too-distant future with artificial intelligence (AI), worth a read — even though most of us probably feel helpless about doing anything to affect the future of AI… and scarier still, those who may think they are in a position to influence or control the nature/form of AI… may… ultimately... be… wrong:
https://fangsheath.wordpress.com/2024/06/17/all-bets-are-off/
On side note: applying AI to the Ivorybill story, I’ve thought that if we can just establish the existence of one small, persistent IBWO population SOMEwhere, we may be able to catalogue enough information about that one locale into a program that could then predict precisely several more locations where we might expect them to exist.
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