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Thira

 

According to Wikipedia:

Santorini (Thira) is the result of repeated sequences of shield volcano construction followed by caldera collapse.  The inner coast around the caldera is a sheer precipice of more than 300 m (980 ft) drop at its highest, and exhibits the various layers of solidified lava on top of each other, and the main towns perched on the crest...
During the Bronze Age, Santorini was the site of the Minoan eruption (circa 1600 BCE), one of the largest volcanic eruptions in human history. This violent eruption was centred on a small island just north of the existing island of Nea Kameni in the centre of the caldera; the caldera itself was formed several hundred thousand years ago by the collapse of the centre of a circular island, caused by the emptying of the magma chamber during an eruption.

 

When large ships visit they typically anchor in the caldera and use their tenders or the local ferry services to take passengers ashore as did the ship I came here on in 1988. Modern cruise ships like Oosterdam don't anchor, they simply hold station, using their electric drives (side thrusters and azipods)

In the Caldera. No lines out -modern cruise ships like Oosterdam don't anchor

 

Our bus tour's first stop, once ashore, was Akrotiri, sometimes called the Greek Pompeii as the town was preserved by being buried in volcanic ash. 

The difference being that this burial event was 1,600 years earlier, during the early bronze age.

Unlike Pompeii, no entombed bodies were found, neither were their tools or weapons so archaeologists conclude that the city was evacuated in and orderly manner before it was buried, Indeed, there is evidence of a previous event, after which they returned and cleared up.

So all we know is from their paintings and artefacts.  Many jars and other ceramic objects have been unearthed and several pieces of abandoned furniture were buried and their form recreated by pouring plaster into the voids left in the ash.  One of these was a three legged votive(?) table of remarkable sophistication.

The whole town is quite remarkable. It contained four storey town houses with running water and sewerage using clay pipes, plumbed to a central facility outside the town. The walls were decorated with frescoes and bathroom floors tiled. 

Our guide, who was impressed by the sophistication of the women's fashions, but wanted to make things mysterious, particularly their imagined religion, asserted that Minoans couldn't read and write.  I protested: "then how many casks of wine did they need to trade for a dress?" but was slapped down.

Yet, given the sophistication of their technology, her assertion is clearly ridiculous.  Bronze making, alone, is an elaborate multi-stage process, requiring different ores, techniques and furnace temperatures and some recorded system of weights and measures.  And trading in copper and tin; or wine; or olive oil; or gold; or almost anything; requires a system of equivalent values, even before currency when these equivalences were determined by bartering or market trading.  A large quantity of elaborately marked clay seals has also been found, which may be indicating: ownership; contents; quantity; or value.   The museum on Crete suggests that metal ingots may have provided a standard of exchange (think the 'gold standard' of not so long ago).

In fact, Akrotiri (as we call it), was a wealthy maritime trading town with records made and kept in Linear A script.

Wikipedia tells us:

Linear A is a writing system that was used by the Minoans of Crete {and Thira} from 1800 BC to 1450 BC. Linear A was the primary script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civilization.

It consists of over 300 signs...
As a logosyllabic writing system, Linear A includes signs which stand for syllables as well as others standing for words or concepts. Linear A's signs could be combined via ligature to form complex signs. Complex signs usually behave as ideograms. Thus, Linear A signs are divided into four categories:

1  syllabic signs
2  ligatures and composite signs
3  ideograms
4  numerals and metrical signs

Linear A was usually written left-to-right, but a handful of documents were written right-to-left or boustrophedon.

 

Linear A is so ancient that, in the absence of a 'Rosetta Stone', remains undecipherable. One difficulty in translation is that we don't know their language or fully understand their religion.  

  

 

 One observation is that the town had no defensive structures. But it was an outpost of Minoan Crete the dominant naval power for a thousand years, so enemies were probably restricted to pirates and met at sea. 

The lesson I took away, back in 1988, was how close humanity got to the modern world - but for some bad ideas about how the universe works (intervening gods and so on).

  

My 1988 photos. When I was here in 1988 there was a different roof.
That one fell down in an earthquake; then, in 2005, a new roof collapsed during construction, killing a tourist.
The roof seen today is a second replacement and seems pretty solid to me. 

 

Comparing my old photos with the new its clear that one or both roof collapses damaged the taller structures - hopefully those amazing frescos, still on site in 1988, were successfully conserved.  

 

From Akrotiri, in the south, our bus travelled the whole length of the picturesque island to Oia in the north. 

 

 

Oia is probably the most photographed location in Greece.  Unfortunately, due to the presence of three cruise ships, one larger than ours, it was packed with people in places shoulder-to-shoulder.  I very quickly tired of this scrum and made a retreat to a pleasant cafe where I ordered a coffee and a cake and just admired the view. 

 

It's a tough life 

Our bus was soon to leave for Fira/Ipapantis where we would have some lunch then catch the cable-car down to the ferry stop and back to our ship.

 

Fira

The tough life continued - a nice meal and great view 

Unfortunately, the cable-car turned out to be an issue that soured the experience for many, as several thousand people attempted to catch the same cable car.  This consisted of a string of six six-person gondolas going down every four of five minutes the balancing string coming back empty. You can see them in the photo above. I estimated it has a capacity less than 500 passengers per hour. The two hour queue was half a kilometre long. The ferries were equally inadequate. Another (shorter) queue at the bottom.  Some decided to walk down the road used by the donkeys, the white zig-zag in the photograph above.  Unfortunately, it was slippery with donkey-doo and one of our companions at the dinner table that night had slipped and injured herself.

Our next stop would be Mykonos

 

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Travel

Spain and Portugal

 

 

Spain is in the news.

Spain has now become the fourth Eurozone country, after Greece, Ireland and Portugal, to get bailout funds in the growing crisis gripping the Euro.

Unemployment is high and services are being cut to reduce debt and bring budgets into balance.  Some economists doubt this is possible within the context of a single currency shared with Germany and France. There have been violent but futile street demonstrations.

Read more: Spain and Portugal

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

Medical fun and games

 

 

 

 

We all die of something.

After 70 it's less likely to be as a result of risky behaviour or suicide and more likely to be heart disease followed by a stroke or cancer. Unfortunately as we age, like a horse in a race coming up from behind, dementia begins to take a larger toll and pulmonary disease sees off many of the remainder. Heart failure is probably the least troublesome choice, if you had one, or suicide.

In 2020 COVID-19 has become a significant killer overseas but in Australia less than a thousand died and the risk from influenza, pneumonia and lower respiratory conditions had also fallen as there was less respiratory infection due to pandemic precautions and increased influenza immunisation. So overall, in Australia in 2020, deaths were below the annual norm.  Yet 2021 will bring a new story and we've already had a new COVID-19 hotspot closing borders again right before Christmas*.

So what will kill me?

Some years back, in October 2016, at the age of 71, my aorta began to show it's age and I dropped into the repair shop where a new heart valve - a pericardial bio-prosthesis - was fitted. See The Meaning of Death elsewhere on this website. This has reduced my chances of heart failure so now I need to fear cancer; and later, dementia.  

More fun and games.

Read more: Medical fun and games

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