I have touched the Titanic...

...and the Titanic has touched me

Sunday evening, we went to Denver Museum of Nature and Science to see Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition. This is a fascinating show. We wandered around the display cases for almost two hours and it seemed like thirty minutes.

There are hundreds of items on display that were recovered from the sea bed; many are simple shipboard items like plates, glasses and decorated window frames, but there are also a lot of personal items such as hand mirrors, combs, razors, spectacles, purses, suitcases and clothes. Quite a few of the personal items were identified as belonging to specific passengers.

There are also pieces of the ship itself, including a small section of the hull inside a case with hole and a sign inviting you to touch. I did. It felt a bit strange, touching a piece of metal that had been associated with 1500 lives and sat under a couple of miles of water for something like eighty years.

The conditions down there do odd things. The pressure is around three tons per square inch, and the seafloor silt has a pH of about 5, which I think makes it about as acidic as vinegar. Cast iron items that have been under that pressure for so long explode when they're brought up to the surface and a lot of materials simply crumble. It's incredible that anything survived to be recovered, and yet even paper items such as banknotes, letters and envelopes have been found. All the same, things are eroding and won't be around forever. Glass and ceramics break down, metals corrode; the ship itself is being slowly eaten by iron-consuming microbes. In the end everything will turn to dust and be carried away by the current.

Here's a tricky question: Bob Ballard, who discovered the wreck in 1985, considered it a grave site and said nothing should be touched - something I agreed with at the time. I was saddened when others went down with the intention of recovering things. But Kate asked me if a few of my belongings in a display case in museum was how I'd choose to be remembered, and that got me thinking. My first reaction was that at least it's better than vanishing without a trace; at least there's something left. No, it wouldn't be my choice - but if the only choice is between being remembered that way and being wiped off the planet as if I'd never existed, I'll take the first option.

So who's right? Should the site be considered sacred and untouchable, or is it better to recover personal belongings? There's no easy answer. My own opinion has changed; I don't think Bob Ballard is 100% right on this any more.

I agree that it should be considered a grave site and treated with the appropriate respect. I'd hate to see somebody trying to make a fast buck by yanking things out of there, packaging them and selling them as product.

On the other hand leaving everything untouched is, in my opinion, also not the right thing to do. Grave sites serve as memorials, too - and what's the point of a memorial that nobody can visit, and that's slowly being eroded to nothing? Better, I think, to recover the things that can be recovered, restore them and identify the owners as far as possible, and put them somewhere up here on land where everyone can see them and give thought to what happened that night in 1912.

I know not everyone will agree with me. As I said, it's a complex and emotional question and not one that can be answered by logic alone; probably the only people who have a right to make the decision are the relatives of those that died. But having seen the exhibition I've given this quite a bit of thought and I think it's a question that needs an answer.

Who Killed Diana?

Some People Still Just Don't Get It

All day yesterday We TV showed programmes about the British Royal Family. I think we watched every one; there was a rather interesting one about Princes William and Harry, another about the seventy-nine dresses auctioned off by Di just two months before her tragic accident, and a really interesting one where Royal Chef Graham Newbould told us all about the Royals' favourite eats. For example, no fish'n'chips in Buck House; instead it's Haddock St. Germaine - small haddock fillets in breadcrumbs, fan-fried to a yummy light gold and served with tiny french fries and bearnaise (or was it hollandaise? Not sure now). It looked so good I want to try it.

However the jewel in the crown was a show called Who Killed Diana?. Now at first I thought this was going to be yet another mash of idiot theories and irrelevant questions pandering to the conspiracy crowd that want to believe Diana was murdered. I was pleasantly surprised, because instead they addressed most if not all of the 'facts' that the conspiracy theorists put forward to make their case, and pretty well shredded them. They also let the conspiracy theorists state their case without ridiculing them, so they can't say they didn't get a fair crack. In fact, the theorists pretty well hanged themselves, as I saw it, because when seen in the harsh light of day their arguments come across as forced at best, and often downright fabrication.

As an example, let's mention Henri Paul and the level of alcohol in his blood. One theorist said that he didn't look drunk on the Ritz's security videos, therefore he wasn't drunk; the blood samples must have been switched. However, it turns out that the morgue has rigorous controls that made any such switch impossible, and further, there were two sets of tests run. So our theorist now changes tack and mentions experiments that showed that the internal organs of people involved in severe accidents undergo physical stresses that result in the production of alcohol. Now, this struck me as a case of "new information that I just thought of" syndrome, since (1) I've never heard of this one before and (2) if it were true, the cops would be writing off every bad car wreck as drink-related since everyone involved would look like they'd just shifted a pint of gin.

Some people who put forward whacky theories do it for book sales and TV spots; they don't really believe what they're saying. That guy (unfortunately I didn't catch his name) struck me as one of these.

I really don't think this applies to the other expert conspiracy theorist - none other than David Icke, ex-footballer, ex-TV sports presenter and author of something like twenty books telling us all about how the world is governed by Reptoids - reptilian aliens from a planet in the constellation Draco, and their reptile/human hybrids. The Queen Mother was a Reptoid, Icke says, and so is 'president' George Bush. According to Icke, Diana was murdered on orders from "higher powers with their own agenda", by which I think we can take to mean the Reptoid Illuminati. Now, to be fair, Icke didn't state this explicitly and the program makers didn't go out of their way to mention his books or ideas, which I think was the right thing to do. But if you don't believe me take a look at the Wikipedia entry I linked on Icke's name, or read/listen to Skeptoid.com podcast episode 46, "Support Your Local Reptoid", or perhaps better still take a look at Icke's own web site for some idea of where his head is. I get the impression that Icke honestly believes this stuff, in which case I think he needs a good long rest in one of those special hotels where the walls are soft and you eat with your fingers.

At the end of the day you have to ask the question: could such a conspiracy involving the Royal Family and their staff, MI6, the French authorities in Paris, the French news media, the British new media, and who knows who else... could such a conspiracy be kept secret by every single person involved for TEN YEARS without someone saying something, when just one person giving an interview with the papers would make millions?