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Which airlines still fly in Venezuela? + Seabirds blinded by cruise ships: Dim lights

#1
C C Offline
Venezuela is Plunging into Chaos: Which Airlines Still Fly?
https://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com...still-fly/

INTRO: American Airlines is the sole remaining US carrier serving Venezuela. Panama’s Copa has the most flights, and Air France has Paris service six times weekly. Caribbean Airlines flies an ATR72 three times a way. Aruba Airlines has daily service to Maracaibo. Cubana flies twice weekly to Caracas. As the country has fallen apart, with mass shortages, rampant crime, and inflation over 5000%, American Airlines had found their Venezuela routes extremely profitable — because there was so little air service left.

Thanks to price controls on domestic flights, passengers waited at airports for days hoping to get on a flight. The National Guard pulls suitcases off of flights to loot them. Airlines complain they’re getting contaminated fuel. With flight crews getting robbed by bandits airlines fly crews out of the country to overnight, and try to refuel elsewhere as well.

Events in Venezuela are coming to a head, and so far American, Copa, and Air France continue to show their flights operating — although US diplomats have been given 72 hours to leave Venezuela as Nicolas Maduro struggles to hang onto power, severing relations with the United States. Maduro’s re-election has been declared illegitimate by the National Assembly, so he’s taken his swearing in at the nation’s Supreme Court instead. Following the law though the country’s opposition leader (and head of the Congress) is officially – and has declared himself – interim President pending new elections.

[...] Ultimately the fate of Venezuela – which has been largely in decline for 20 years since socialist Hugo Chavez was first elected President there – will depend on whether Maduro can continue to control the nation’s military to crush popular uprising as they did in 2017. So far the head of the military is still backing Maduro....

MORE: https://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com...still-fly/



Department of Conservation and New Zealand Cruise Ship Association work to prevent birds being blinded by ship light
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news...d=12195554

EXCERPT: Cruise ships in the Hauraki Gulf are being told to dim the lights to help prevent seabirds being temporarily blinded. [...] The department's principal science adviser, Graeme Taylor, said the bright lights on ships can attract seabirds. "They can be momentarily blinded, causing them to fly into a cruise ship and end up lying stunned on the deck."

Taylor said seabirds at risk were foraging for food and young birds departing from their breeding colonies on their first trip to sea. "These seabirds have better night vision than humans. But this means they're more likely to be dazzled by a cruise ship's lights, especially on foggy overcast nights with no moonlight. Young seabirds are most at risk of crash landing on a ship at night."

If birds land DoC advises that if they are ''feisty with no obvious injuries'', they should be released over the side of the ship. If they are stunned or injured birds should be put in boxes and if they recover released...

MORE: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news...d=12195554
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#2
Zinjanthropos Offline
Won't the birds that don't crash into ships be in some way naturally selected for breeding? Would it improve the species chances as with the non-tusked elephants in Africa?
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#3
C C Offline
(Jan 24, 2019 03:57 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Won't the birds that don't crash into ships be in some way naturally selected for breeding? Would it improve the species chances as with the non-tusked elephants in Africa?


Furthermore, we might forlornly(?) hope that all those countless birds braining themselves on skyscraper and lower building windows for all these decades would be decreasing in number eventually. Due to superior visual cognitive powers arising in the general populations via selection, rather than loss of species quantity via such deaths.

_
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#4
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Jan 24, 2019 04:48 PM)C C Wrote:
(Jan 24, 2019 03:57 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Won't the birds that don't crash into ships be in some way naturally selected for breeding? Would it improve the species chances as with the non-tusked elephants in Africa?


Furthermore, we might forlornly(?) hope that all those countless birds braining themselves on skyscraper and lower building windows for all these decades would be decreasing in number eventually. Due to superior visual cognitive powers arising in the general populations via selection, rather than loss of species quantity via such deaths.

In Canada we have FLAP . Fatal Light Awareness Program. Not sure if international so I stand to be corrected.

Tried to find numbers that might indicate a decline or rise in migratory bird deaths due to building crashes. No luck. Have you seen any numbers?
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#5
C C Offline
(Jan 24, 2019 05:11 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Tried to find numbers that might indicate a decline or rise in migratory bird deaths due to building crashes. No luck. Have you seen any numbers?


Nah, not sure how a measurement would carry a credible semblance of authority. Extrapolating from bird counts deliberately recorded for particular buildings over the years and then projecting those conclusions abroad (plus culling out correlations to other possible factors as causes).

The very prospect of birds adapting this "soon" seems quasi-facetious, though after thousands of years some kind of development might emerge. As far as familiar, quick examples go... After they arrived in Hawaii, there was a claim that wallabies mutated (enzyme-wise?) within a few generations for digesting the "native" vegetation. Since their introduction in 1935, Australian animals are contended to have evolved in response to invasive cane toads.

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#6
Zinjanthropos Offline
More interested if crashing into buildings or ships is a part of the natural selection process. Sudden habitat change/loss, can species adapt fast enough to survive? I think birds of flight have a distinct advantage over land animals, perhaps an evolutionary benefit, just by being able to fly unhindered to new destinations.
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#7
C C Offline
(Jan 24, 2019 08:46 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: More interested if crashing into buildings or ships is a part of the natural selection process. Sudden habitat change/loss, can species adapt fast enough to survive? I think birds of flight have a distinct advantage over land animals, perhaps an evolutionary benefit, just by being able to fly unhindered to new destinations.


Some birds can make physical adaptations to a changing environment within a century, including by way of epigenetics. But little sign of ocular and cognitive adjustment within that span when it comes to the confusion of unexpected lights and detecting glass. Despite the claimed great number of bird deaths, those artificially introduced killers and cripplers are apparently insufficient for spurring speedy developments in that area.

Study: Bird wings morph quickly to adapt to human-created environmental changes
http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2010/03/...ge-forests

How Do Darwin's Finches Change Their Beak Sizes So Quickly?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscienti...l-changes/

Birds outpace climate change to avoid extinction
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...062444.htm

Birds in general (if not always particular species) are definitely champs at the survival game. But their greatest feat -- of enduring the extinction event of 66-million years ago -- may have been from the luck of already being in a downsizing process.

~
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#8
confused2 Offline
Every species is going to have a few members that aren't quite as bright as the rest. Windows are just one of many things that tend to remove the 'not so smart' members of any species of bird. Recently I helped a bird trapped by a glass window - even the other birds thought she was a bit dim.
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#9
RainbowUnicorn Offline
(Jan 24, 2019 06:59 AM)C C Wrote: Venezuela is Plunging into Chaos: Which Airlines Still Fly?
https://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com...still-fly/

INTRO: American Airlines is the sole remaining US carrier serving Venezuela. Panama’s Copa has the most flights, and Air France has Paris service six times weekly. Caribbean Airlines flies an ATR72 three times a way. Aruba Airlines has daily service to Maracaibo. Cubana flies twice weekly to Caracas. As the country has fallen apart, with mass shortages, rampant crime, and inflation over 5000%, American Airlines had found their Venezuela routes extremely profitable — because there was so little air service left.

Thanks to price controls on domestic flights, passengers waited at airports for days hoping to get on a flight. The National Guard pulls suitcases off of flights to loot them. Airlines complain they’re getting contaminated fuel. With flight crews getting robbed by bandits airlines fly crews out of the country to overnight, and try to refuel elsewhere as well.

Events in Venezuela are coming to a head, and so far American, Copa, and Air France continue to show their flights operating — although US diplomats have been given 72 hours to leave Venezuela as Nicolas Maduro struggles to hang onto power, severing relations with the United States. Maduro’s re-election has been declared illegitimate by the National Assembly, so he’s taken his swearing in at the nation’s Supreme Court instead. Following the law though the country’s opposition leader (and head of the Congress) is officially – and has declared himself – interim President pending new elections.

[...] Ultimately the fate of Venezuela – which has been largely in decline for 20 years since socialist Hugo Chavez was first elected President there – will depend on whether Maduro can continue to control the nation’s military to crush popular uprising as they did in 2017. So far the head of the military is still backing Maduro....

MORE: https://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com...still-fly/



Quote:inflation over 5000%

the big complication about ideologies is that they rarely study economics
boom n bust
communist authoritarianism
etc etc...

the only real solution is a mixed market economy
greed & corruption undermine that ... ALWAYS it is a aspect of the human condition of survival so to always must be managed.


throwing off the yoke is all well & good, be it communism or capitalism... but if your still on full power & your pointing toward the edge of a cliff, the moment the yoke is gone, & you dont know how to turn then your off the cliff.
2008 global sub prime mortgage scam
etc etc.. no shortage of examples from capitalism to fascism


ideologies, be they capitalism or communism hold the dream goal up as the only road. like  massive banner that hides the real road ahead.
"ignore the means, just run head long at the ends"
etc etc...
that has never worked.
there is always a human catastrophe. be it WW1 & 2 dead
or civil wars
etc etc...
there is always massive civilian casualties at the lowest possible standard of poverty


yet look at other types where the massive genocide of leadership has carried on to murder millions of the highly skilled science and art from the culture.


if everyone shares labour by coming together to work equally to make food and provide shelter...
it works.
when greed, envy & cults take control the people always are used as cannon fodder for the pyramid of power to serve the minority elite
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#10
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Jan 25, 2019 12:28 AM)confused2 Wrote: Every species is going to have a few members that aren't quite as bright as the rest. Windows are just one of many things that tend to remove the 'not so smart' members of any species of bird. Recently I helped a bird trapped by a glass window - even the other birds thought she was a bit dim.

I'm thinking there's also some members of the flock that fly higher than the rest. I like the idea of gardens on skyscraper rooftops. Maybe augment them with some feeders.  Might encourage the birds to fly higher, where there are less windows.
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