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In June 2021 Wendy and I, with our friends Craig and Sonia (see: India; Taiwan; JapanChina; and several countries in South America)  flew to Ayer's Rock where we hired a car for a short tour of Central Australia: Uluru - Alice Springs - Kings Canyon - back to Uluru. Around fifteen hundred kilometres - with side trips to the West MacDonnell Ranges; and so on.

Uluru map

 

As expected, the car turned out to be essential. The alternative would have been a more expensive package bus trip with all the constraints that that imposes.

 

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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

Australia Day according to ChatGPT

 

I've long been interested in the advent of artificial intelligence (AI). It's a central theme in my fictional writing (The Cloud and The Craft) and is discussed in my essay to my children 'The Meaning of Life' (1997-2017). So, I've recently been exploring the capabilities of ChatGPT.

As today, 26 January 2024, is Australia Day, I asked ChatGPT to: 'write 1000 words about Australia Day date'.  In a few minutes (I read each as it arrived) I had four, quite different, versions. Each took around 18 seconds to generate. This is the result:

Read more: Australia Day according to ChatGPT

Opinions and Philosophy

The Chimera of Clean Coal

The Chimera - also known as carbon capture and storage (CCS) or Carbon Sequestration

 

 


Carbon Sequestration Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

Whenever the prospect of increased carbon consumption is debated someone is sure to hold out the imminent availability of Clean Coal Technology; always just a few years away. 

I have discussed this at length in the article Carbon Sequestration (Carbon Capture and Storage) on this website. 

In that detailed analysis I dismissed CCS as a realistic solution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions for the following reasons:

Read more: The Chimera of Clean Coal

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