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Kaş

 

Kaş is a small town near or on the site of the ancient city of  Antiphellos. It has a particularly pretty harbour. It's beloved by yachties, 'grey nomads', who cruise the Mediterranean in floating versions of the vans that traverse inland and coastal Australia.  Apparently it's possible to spend weeks moored in Kaş on a shoestring.  At dinner we met a couple who were doing just that - leading an idyllic life - living on their yacht and eating-out at the same harbour-side restaurant we'd chosen.  It was easy to understand our yachty friends' preference.  Kaş has fewer tourists and is, on the whole, a much nicer and less expensive place to spend an evening by the harbour than at Antalya.

 

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Kaş a pretty town with a popular harbour for yachties and the ruins of Antiphellos, a Greco-Roman city up the hill.

 

Like many ancient towns Antiphellos had a Greco-Roman theatre and the ruins remain a short distance from the Kaş town centre.  Indeed until 1923 Kaş was a small island of Greek culture.  Then, as I mentioned above, there was exchange of Muslim and Christian populations between Greece and Turkey.  So the town's Orthodox Christian population was expelled to Greece leaving a majority of the dwellings abandoned. The town has since recovered but it's still struggling economically - except for the yachties. As a result our hotel was good value too.

The coastal road, heading west out of Kaş, is quite spectacular winding along the cliff-side with the sea to the left.  From time to time the two lane road becomes almost impassable due to beachgoers parking in both directions on the roadsides, before making their way down, out-of-sight, to the beaches below.

 

 

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Travel

Egypt, Syria and Jordan

 

 

 

In October 2010 we travelled to three countries in the Middle East: Egypt; Syria and Jordan. While in Egypt we took a Nile cruise, effectively an organised tour package complete with guide, but otherwise we travelled independently: by cab; rental car (in Jordan); bus; train and plane.

On the way there we had stopovers in London and Budapest to visit friends.

The impact on me was to reassert the depth, complexity and colour of this seminal part of our history and civilisation. In particular this is the cauldron in which Judaism, Christianity and Islam were created, together with much of our science, language and mathematics.

Read more: Egypt, Syria and Jordan

Fiction, Recollections & News

The Atomic Bomb according to ChatGPT

 

Introduction:

The other day, my regular interlocutors at our local shopping centre regaled me with a new question: "What is AI?" And that turned into a discussion about ChatGPT.

I had to confess that I'd never used it. So, I thought I would 'kill two birds with one stone' and ask ChatGPT, for material for an article for my website.

Since watching the movie Oppenheimer, reviewed elsewhere on this website, I've found myself, from time-to-time, musing about the development of the atomic bomb and it's profound impact on the modern world. 

Nuclear energy has provided a backdrop to my entire life. The first "atomic bombs" were dropped on Japan the month before I was born. Thus, the potential of nuclear energy was first revealed in an horrendous demonstration of mankind's greatest power since the harnessing of fire.

Very soon the atomic reactors, that had been necessary to accumulate sufficient plutonium for the first bombs, were adapted to peaceful use.  Yet, they forever carried the stigma of over a hundred thousand of innocent lives lost, many of them young children, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The fear of world devastation followed, as the US and USSR faced-off with ever more powerful weapons of mass destruction.

The stigma and fear has been unfortunate, because, had we more enthusiastically embraced our new scientific knowledge and capabilities to harness this alternative to fire, the threat to the atmosphere now posed by an orgy of burning might have been mitigated.

Method:

So, for this article on the 'atomic bomb', I asked ChatGPT six questions about:

  1. The Manhattan Project; 
  2. Leo Szilard (the father of the nuclear chain reaction);
  3. Tube Alloys (the British bomb project);
  4. the Hanford site (plutonium production);
  5. uranium enrichment (diffusion and centrifugal); and
  6. the Soviet bomb project.

As ChatGPT takes around 20 seconds to write 1000 words and gives a remarkably different result each time, I asked it each question several times and chose selectively from the results.

This is what ChatGPT told me about 'the bomb':

Read more: The Atomic Bomb according to ChatGPT

Opinions and Philosophy

The Chemistry of Life

 

 

What everyone should know

Most of us already know that an atom is the smallest division of matter that can take part in a chemical reaction; that a molecule is a structure of two or more atoms; and that life on Earth is based on organic molecules: defined as those molecules that contain carbon, often in combination with hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen as well as other elements like sodium, calcium, phosphorous and iron.  

Organic molecules can be very large indeed and come in all shapes and sizes. Like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle molecular shape is often important to an organic molecule's ability to bond to another to form elaborate and sometimes unique molecular structures.

All living things on Earth are comprised of cells and all cells are comprised of numerous molecular structures.

Read more: The Chemistry of Life

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