There's a new book out about the Titanic, called The Other Side of the Night, and while you'd think that every minute of the ship's voyage had been covered in great detail already, this one does, at least, attempt to focus on something a bit different, namely the other two ships that were intimately involved in the disaster. Those would be the Cunarder Carpathia, which steamed at a top speed no one ever thought her capable of to attempt a rescue, and the Leyland liner Californian, which was stopped up against an ice floe no more than 10 or so miles north of the sinking ship, but never moved despite the officers' witnessing signal rockets fired by the Titanic after she struck the iceberg. Most people familiar with the details of the disaster will already know the stories of these two ships as well, and the book doesn't really tread much new ground. (Although I don't remember ever knowing before that Second Officer Lightoller's feisty Australian wife Sylvia chewed out the Californian's junior officers during a break in the Board of Trade hearings about the disaster.)

There has long been a bit of a cottage industry of defenders of Californian's captain Stanley Lord, who claim that the ship was much farther away than 10 miles and that the rockets sighted were not those fired by Titanic. The book's author does an excellent job of both showing that this argument doesn't hold much water (so to speak) and pointing out that, even if the rockets seen by the Californian weren't those of Titanic, they were clearly distress signals as specified by the regulations of the British Board of Trade, and therefore the Californian's captain was negligent for failing to do anything. But equally significantly, he points out the falsity of the notion that if the Californian had just come to the rescue, everyone from Titanic would have been saved. While it's true that the loss of life would likely have been smaller, the reality is that by the time Californian actually got to the Titanic, even from only 10 miles or so away, there would not have been enough time to conduct a rescue of the sort performed, say, by the Ile de France at the wreck of the Andrea Doria four decades later. Titanic sank far too quickly for that. Still, there's no question that they would have been able to rescue victims from the water, and it's conceivable that the numbers of dead and rescued would have been reversed if the Californian had acted rather than not.

Good book, if a bit redundant.

Kara Thrace was/is Aurora, the goddess of the dawn.

The Lords of Kobol were/are "angels" made physical beings by God-who-doesn't-like-to-be-called-that, and they lived with humans, and, later, Cylons, on Kobol.

Something happened on Kobol -- canon is rather unclear on that -- but the Cylons went off to Earth 1 and the humans went off to the Colonies. Aurora apparently had some special connection with the Cylons, given the presence of the Temple of Aurora on Earth 1.

Sam Anders met Aurora in her temple. He may or may not have known she was the goddess, but he wrote the song "All Along the Watchtower" for her and sang it to her. She acquainted him with angels -- maybe Head!Six and Head!Baltar, although they may have taken other forms at the time -- and forewarned him and thereby the rest of the Five of the coming destruction of Earth 1.

Two thousand years or so later, God-who-doesn't-like-to-be-called-that sends Aurora to Caprica as Kara Thrace, daughter of Socrata and Dreilide Thrace; Daddy Thrace was probably another of the LoK and conveyed to Socrata how important her daughter would be. However, Kara didn't know who/what she really was. There's a story here I've not quite teased out -- that Aurora had to somehow become human and go through death in order to save both the Cylons and the humans, which is, of course, what she ends up doing, by reconnecting with Sam Anders, this time on ruined Caprica.

Iz mai story n Iz stickin to it.

Ugh. Many ages since posting.

News: Just escaped from two weeks in hospital. I ... had my colon removed. (Short version: I've had ulcerative colitis for the last 35 years. Now, I don't. Yay?) I'm recovering. Two weeks in the hospital is enough, however. ;-)

It's a two-part surgery, though, so the joy is that I get to go back in 6 weeks. The second surgery is quicker and easier, though.

(For those who are terminally curious and/or interested in way Too Much Information, Google "ileoanal reservoir".)

Downsides: I can't go see Katee at Starland in Denver in April; having part of your insides on your outside, even temporarily, is ... weird.

Current Location: home
Current Mood: groggy
Current Music: peristalsis

Tonight, I went to see Carrie Fisher's one-woman play, "Wishful Drinking," with a friend of mine, who had somehow obtained front row, center seats. Which were about 3 feet from the stage.

Carrie is hilarious. She was smoking throughout the play and asked me to come up to confirm that they were clove cigarettes, not regular ones, and gave me one to keep.

At the end of the play, when she came out for her curtain call, we were all standing up, so I stepped forward to shake her hand, and she reached down and grabbed me and kissed me full on the lips!

...

Why, yes, I was just kissed by Princess Leia!

So, I've been thinking about the ending of "Revelations" and I have some comments about ... what they found at the end.

( in case you haven't seen it yet )

Wow, I haven't done one of these in ages...

I came to Philadelphia for WizardWorld, because Katee was going to be here. There was some last minute reshuffling of things — Katee was supposed to be here Saturday but got moved to Sunday due to scheduling conflicts — but it went pretty well all things considered.

There wasn't any stage appearance. The whole thing was a signing, scheduled to run from noon to four. Ouch. I got there a bit after 11 and staked out a place near the front of the line, which eventually snaked about a third of the way around the (quite sizable) convention center hall we were in. I had a ton of things for Katee to sign, since this is one of my last opportunities to see her. She confirmed that she will be attending Dragon*Con this year and that yes, it will be her last convention. She said (I didn't record this so it's a slight paraphrase) that she did cons for the fans of the show and since the show is ending, she will no longer be doing cons.

I gave her a bunch of stuff, and she signed a bunch of things for me: a model of Scar from Diamond Select, a poster of Grant Gould's, a poster from a guy at the show that he made just for the show, the motorcycle shot from Interview magazine ("That's the only time you'll ever see me in a bikini with Grace Park and Tricia Helfer!" — and yes, that is her Harley), one of the brand-new cards from the Season 3 set that just came out, the TV Guide picture, the famous picture of her choking me, and a couple of other pictures. And I got a hug, which freaked out the security guard, who, however, apparently decided from that that I was okay and therefore didn't give me shit for standing around for the rest of the afternoon taking pictures.

Towards the end she went away to do some "con stuff" (after all the line had been cleared) and then came back to sign for some stragglers who thought "noon to four" really meant noon to four. :-) Then the handlers all shuffled her off to the Ladies' Room while I stood there and chatted with another photographer, who then noticed a bag sitting on the table: The bag I had given Katee with all of her goodies in it. And, as it turned out, all the other various goodies that other people had given her as well! Ack! Fortunately, they were still in the restroom — probably fixing makeup :-) — so we were able to get it over to the security people before she came out. (Yes, they stationed security people outside the restroom while she was in there. Good move, seriously.) Then she got whisked off to the airport. As far as I could tell, she flew in last night, got up this morning, did the show, and then hopped on an airplane to go right back to work. I hope she gets some sleep on the plane!

Regarding the "no more cons" thing, since I know that this has caused some controversy in fandom. What she said to me was that she did the cons for the fans of the show, and now that the show is ending, she wants to move on from the show. I get the impression that if, for example, they had had conventions for fans of The Education of Max Bickford, she would have done cons for that. If she does another show that there are cons for, she'd likely do more cons. She is not in any way distancing herself from science fiction nor is she dissing sci-fi fans; she has repeatedly said that sci-fi fans are the most loyal fans and that she's enjoyed having the opportunity to meet them. Sadly, for whatever reasons, they don't do cons for non-sci-fi shows. (I've always found this odd, by the way — wouldn't soap opera cons be a big business??)

I have a metric ton of pictures and will be uploading them soon. I'm still here for one more day — as a guitar player for more than 35 years, with more than a dozen Martin guitars in my collection, I can't pass up the opportunity to go visit the Martin Guitar factory in Nazareth, just up the road a ways, so I am renting a car tomorrow morning and driving out there for that.

Current Location: Philadelphia

Since the inestimable greycoupon did this, I figured I'd try.

( Who comments on my seldom-updated journal? )

Hmmmm... I think the script that generates this should probably exclude the journal-owner. Although it does give some insight into who replies to comments.

But I was chatting with the lovely greycoupon just now and...

( Spoilery for Friday's BSG episode )

My copy of The Last Sentinel just arrived (just in time to have Katee autograph it this weekend), and of course I popped it in to answer that most important question — shower scene: Y/N?

Yes!

The DVD is, indeed, the full original cut. Yay DVD!

O HAI. trinnifer had a cool meme:

Tags: meme-sheep
Current Location: at work!