Open Thread - 08-11-23 - Flight of the Albatross
They fly 50 miles per hour. Go years without touching land. Predict the weather. And they’re among the world’s most endangered birds.
This is a story of a series of long distance flights, not of the feathered variety, but of the wasteful human kind.
We recently ordered, on-line, some new stainless steel grates for our gas grill. They were shipped via FedEx from Missouri City, Texas. Missouri City is 18 miles from Houston, Texas, give or take. Since we live within one hundred miles of Houston and all FedEx packages in our area are delivered from Houston it would stand to reason that it would be a very short trip from Missouri City to Houston and then to our doorstep, right?
Well, think again.
Notice in the screenshot below it appears that the package left Missouri City and was shipped to Houston and then out to us. Easy peasy right? Looks can be deceiving.
When you look at the dates you'll notice the shipping label was created on 7/29/23 in Missouri City and was delivered to our doorstep on 8/7/23. That's 10 days! What the heck, from Missouri City, 18 miles to Houston, and then to our house? 10 days! For the answer to this riddle, let's take a gander at the package's Travel History (see the next image below).
Did I mention that looks can be deceiving? Let us count the hops this package took to reach us.
It took six hops to reach Houston, Texas. Keep in mind that Houston is only 18 miles away from the original source of the package, Missouri City, Texas.
- Hop 1: Missouri City, Texas to Belleville, Michigan.
- Hop 2: Belleville, Michigan to Perrysburg, Ohio.
- Hop 3: Perrysburg, Ohio to Crestview, Florida.
- Hop 4: Crestview, Florida to Port St. Lucie, Florida.
- Hop 5: Port St. Lucie, Florida to Cypress, Texas.
- Hop 6: Cypress, Texas to Houston, Texas.
I created this visual to help understand the total distance our package traveled.
I calculated the straight line distance our package traveled, from this site. The total distance is 3,328 miles as the albatross flies, to get a package from one city to another that are only 18 miles apart.
With all the talk of the need to move away from fossil fuels, how is this sustainable? Granted, the weight of the package was only 14 pounds, but calculate that over 3,328 miles of air travel, how is that efficient?
Now, I'm sure there's a logical explanation for all of this, maybe the traffic was too congested to drive a truck 18 miles to Houston and there was a need to route around it?
It's a sign of the times, folks. What was that again about the albatross being one of the world's most endangered birds?
Comments
Good morning Free Rangers...
I'll be on the road most of the day, headed for cooler weather in the mountains of North Carolina. I should be back on line this evening.
Have fun and be cool!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Nice 'High on a Mountain' by Hot Rize
although for me, Ola Belle Reed's is pretty much the definitive version...
Well she wrote it...
And I agree.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Which, needless to say,
requires that someone post this:
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I apologize for the derailment.
Meanwhile, speaking of the albatross around our necks- my wife and I are going to go see Oppenheimer tonight. Might as well have some fresh reasons for having nightmares.
Actually, I want to see who plays Harold Edgerton, George Kistiakowski, and a couple of other minor players from the era that I actually got to meet in my college days, back when they were still on this side of the grass...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Good morning Johnny, et. y'all. I'm tempted to think
standard routes and collection points. I recall long ago postal "efficiency". Letters from Berkeley to, say San Diego went from Berk to San Fran, sorted, put on plane to San Diego, sorted and delivered. OK, Letters from Berkeley to Berkeley went to San Fran, sorted, trucked to East Bay central in West Oakland, resorted and sent to Berkeley, sorted and delivered.
That's not a good example, but it shows the general idea. I know one carrier that routes stuff for NorCal thru Fresno, then up the valley with several stops, stuff local to each area peeled off and the rest sent on, all the way up to Sacto iirc, and then, if for the East Bay, down to Fremont where it is then handed off for local distribution, which may involve further local stops. Companies like UPS and FedEx have those massive facilities dotting the land, and, from them smaller ones in some crazy spider web and standard links between some of them which their traffic must follow, ever if it is massively indirect and out of the way for a lot of shipments. They save(d) big on the real estate and building costs and/or labor.
Your situation seems far crazier, though, but I suspect it is still somewhat the same process.
Anyway, enjoy your drive to NC and subsequent stay there.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Happy Friday!
Hi all,
Hope the tC's are having good travels! Enjoy that cool air!
edidted to add...
Thanks JtC, we now know that is how much carbon they can spew over 18 lbs., but it is your straw man... How can it be profitable? Are they overcharging that much? Or are we subsidizing it?
Surely you all expected this next item from me again, and so without apologies.
I can't remember if it was Joseph Grinnell or Robert Cushman Murphy that said "life will never be the same, for I have watched the albatross fly". Or something to that effect. They were right. Watching that dynamic soaring is amazing. You can spot one a mile behind the boat and without flapping it is passing you in a couple minutes! Once we had to do 45 knots in a high speed jet cat to catch one the boatload of birders needed to see. Most seabirds you can catch at 35 knots. You can bring one in from a mile by throwing some squid overboard. I was the guy with the squid, and the wasabi.
Thousands of albatross are killed annually by the longline fisheries of the world.
I used to run pelagic birding trips to see them in socal. They are in Monterey Bay regularly, much rarer and far offshore in socal as a rule. Black-footed and Laysan are the two regular CA species. Others occur rarely. On the east coast they are accidental, maybe one or two a year, most seen are Yellow-nosed Albatross. One Black-browed returns for a decade to a Gannet colony in the U.K. somewhere. You can get lucky and see one from shore but it is exceedingly rare. I spent thousands of hours seawatching and never did so. But once a Captain called me from sea to report he was watching one a mile off the Palos Verdes Peninsula, which would have been easily scopable. I just couldn't run out to the point then. I have released a few at sea, rehabs that usually came in to LA Harbor riding a ship. But once one from a biz park a mile from my house in Torrance.
This is that very Laysan running down Torrance Beach when we released it. The only onshore release I ever did. When it got airborne every gull in a mile instantly took flight and started calling, they had never seen anything like it either.
Monterey Bay Whale Watch has trips regularly and just ask when is the best time for them. I think right now in summer is good for Black-footed, winter better for Laysan, which is much rarer in CA.
These next two are Black-footed Albatross off socal. Shooting on a moving platform in seas, with the micro-vibrations of the diesels presents the greatest bird photo challenges of them all.
All three of these images are degraded digicopies of slides, sorry.
Edited to fix misloaded image...
Have great days all!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Hey, Mayan day 1, August 11, 3114 BCE!! Not, however,
anything like New Year's Day because the calendrical cycle relating to this day is enormous. It is known as "The Long Count".
EDIT: Decided to throw in today's date:
Long Count Date 13.0.10.14.5
13 baktun
13 X 144,000 days = 1,872,000 days
0 katun
0 X 7,200 days = 0 days
10 tun
10 X 360 days = 3,600 days
14 uinal
14 X 20 days = 280 days
5 k'in
5 X 1 day = 5 days
Total days = 1,875,885 since beginning
Esoteric dates
Tzolk'in Date: 2 Chikchan
Haab Date: 13 Yaxk'in
Lord of the Night: G6
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Something seems a bit fishy here!
In a recent development the same individual who offered Hunter Biden a sweetheart plea deal is now given new powers.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-special-counsel-david-weiss-me...
The Weiss investigation will just turn into another Fitzmas
followed by Comey-running cover for the Hellabitch’s private email server and then followed by the Mueller-time coverup and followed by Durham-waste of time coverup since he didn’t interview anyone in the FBI that were hip deep in creating the Russia gate saga that turned shitlibs minds to mush. And manufactured consent for censorship and supporting Ukraine against Russia. BTW in 2005 Comey investigated the Clinton’s foundation and found that they had done nothing wrong. And for some reason republicans had no problem with her pay to play scam which funneled millions into her foundation. There were plenty of breadcrumbs for them to follow just like they only investigated half of the reasons for why Benghazi happened.
Turley has been writing about Weiss and he isn’t impressed with his investigation into Hunter and thinks that he’s being half asses serious about holding him accountable. How many regular Americans would have gotten a deal like Hunter did with felonies knocked down to misdemeanors unlike the J-6 defendants who saw their misdemeanors turned into felonies and then received long prison sentences. He has been calling for a special investigator for well over a year. But shitlibs either think that Garland shouldn’t have done this because Hunter is a private citizen and has no ties to the government. Or that he has been set up by Putin who got Hunter drunk and then planted fake stuff on his laptop and he is paying republicans to go after Hunter. I’m dead serious about this. Just saw it today.
Has Joe Biden of the draconian crime bill fame that has seen tons of people going to prison for using the same drugs that his son used ever been questioned why his son has never been brought up on drug charges? "He has an addiction problem." Well no shit! So do a lot of people sitting in jail and instead of being sent for treatment they get to take part in the prison criminal industrial complex. How much money does that cost us taxpayers every year?
And finally WHO brought the cocaine into the White House and why couldn’t the secret service find out?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
People gather to wish the French troops a "bon voyage".
Sometimes,
people using Gps to find their destination get led down cow paths in Texas, and through the dregs of cities like Miami. Just today, the female gps voice almost led us to another state to avoid a slowdown.
Cray cray world, no true system to save time, labor, energy, or money. It just "seems" like technology is the fix, that alternatives to the USPS is the fix. People are no better off, unless they are in the 1%.
Well, the fix is in.
And I am on a wild vacation, and I am gonna just let that shit go!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
For Dysto
Of all things, a flock of Canada geese are walking and sqwacking around this hotel in Vance, Alabama today. wtf?
Discuss.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
residents?
Hi Otc, on southerly Canada Goose...
In the last less than 50 years there has been a wholesale revision of the species range. Thousands are now non-migratory. To the southern most reaches of the U.S. there can now be found summering and breeding non-migratory Canada Goose. It is believed the proliferation of artificial reservoirs, parks, and golf courses, is what triggered them to stop migrating and become resident species. They nest in L.A. CA now, where formerly only a winter visitor. Repeat for much of the U.S.
Many are still migratory and do their thing as we used to know, breed in the north, winter in the south. A new type of lazy Canada Goose is emerging that just wants to eat grass and not migrate is being created, in America. We should soon see changes in their DNA. Speciation in action.
Y'all have a great trip!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
They're common in AL...
Heard some this AM.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
They are really common
in the Denver area. Especially so around the Centennial Airport area, which is where I work- we have hundreds there, who mostly walk around- but occasionally take off en messe and screw up the air traffic. Look for an airport, and you'll find walking-around honks in large numbers...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.