Hilary Booth... of course!

So I've spent most of my Christmas afternoon watching the Mythbusters marathon on Discovery. I hadn't really watched the show, but their approach was hysterical.

I had given my father Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of World's First Computer by Jo Marchant for his Christmas gift. It's a fascinating jigsaw puzzle, part history and part engineering. Nature published several articles on Antikythera Mechanism, including a lengthy one by Marchant. Some of articles are archived on the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project

Wired has even gotten into the act, posting about Michael Wright's attempt to recreate the Mechanism. Apparently there's a fair bit of controversy over the x-rays and whether it's being put together or analyzed correctly. Oh, archaeologists and their "You're doing it wrong!" attitudes always amuse me. (This after watching half a special on Schliemann and his charming approaches to the field...)

And appropriately enough for me, the remains were found in a shipwreck.

So I've gone back to one of my initial goals at New Year's, revising that pesky first chapter of "Going Under". My father's library proved useful when I discovered a book called Lost Warships, a large coffee table sized book on warships and maritime archaeology. He found me a copy after Christmas, along with books on the Swedish ship the Vasa. I'm hoping I will have the chapter finished by tomorrow. The opening is still eluding me though.

neadods posted a nice long post on her take on reviewing cozy mysteries with examples of the good and the bad points. She also recommended jimbutcher's occasional posts on writing F&SF.

Tokyopop is apparently doing their own free magazine Takuhai. You can sign up for the first issue here.

GIP! I decided to turn this into my underwater archaeology icon. Very apt choice, after watching a program on National Geographic's "Mysteries of the Deep", which featured two wrecks. The first one was a classical Greek ship off the coast of Turkey at Tektaş Burnu. That one fascinated me because the team was led by George Bass from Texas A&M's Institute of Nautical Archaeology. The other ship was the 17th century Swedish warship called the Kronan lost in the Baltic. Because of the Baltic's lack of shipworms, the divers brought up some glorious pieces of ornate woodwork.

Good wishes to my parents and other Floridians who are facing Charley who turned into a Category 4 Hurricane. I looked at the radar on the Weather.com just now and there isn't much of the state showing right now.

I thought of my PotC fans and the Slayers campaigners while reading Crossgen's "El Cazador", their gorgeous pirate comic. A pity the company is filing bankruptcy, so they won't at least release a trade.

The Olympics start tonight, so I'll probably be curled up in front of the tv, watching the opening ceremonies. After that, who knows what events I'll catch. I tend to watch less of the Summer Games than the winter ones.

The latest "Deep Sea Detectives" focused on the "Empress of Ireland" who sank in the St Lawrence River after ramming into a Norwegian coal ship. Two years after the Titanic, the Empress lost over 1000 lives, sinking in under 14 minutes, compared to the slow descent of the Titanic. Not unlike the Titanic and Estonia, public inquiries went back and forth trying to shift the blame for the accident. Who blinked in the fog? Who forgot to leave the doors opened? The show mainly focused on what happened to sink her with only a brief excursion at the wreck herself. The dive appears to be one of the more dangerous ones they've covered on the show, claiming seven divers in its history. So I'm a little shocked to see pieces of the Empress, including china, being sold off on ebay. Not surprised, but still a little shocked.

I also watched a charming program on the Science Channel called "Ancient Arsenal" which reminded me of Junkyard Wars for the Ancient World. In this program, they were recreating the Byzantine fire ship, with one group devising the catapult, one the flamethrower and an explosives expert on the "greek fire". The Byzantine emperors decreed the technology a state secret, so extremely little is known on how they were made. The Byzantine military historian kept arguing for the historical accuracy, claiming the texts said they heated the fuel before spraying it through the nozzle. The engineering experts, including a very very good looking metal working expert with a nice accent (like no one knows I'm a sucker for a good British accent, right?), pleaded with him to consider safety. At one point, the metalworker said he would make it but he wouldn't want to be actually pointing the thing, especially when it was dripping fuel all over all the place in its early stages. They were actually slightly more successful than the catapult. The latter worked, but it didn't seem particularly effective. I was amused by using mayonnaise and egg yolks as the main ingredient in the ancient Molotov cocktail. Inventive at least.

Oldest pet cat discovered in Cyprus

I watched "Lost Ships of the Mediterranean" on the National Geographic channel last night about two shipwrecks found by the US Navy off the coast from Ashkelon in Israel. The wrecks included hundreds of amphoras strewn in a huge pile across the Mediterranean. The Navy contacted Robert Ballard, the Titanic & Bismarck discoverer, who in turn, brought in archaeologist Lawrence Stager from Harvard. He could pinpoint the amphora shape to the Iron Age, maybe 8th or 9th century BC, but the footage was fuzzy. Then they actually relocated the wrecks and pulled up some of amphoras. Both appear to have been Phoenician wine merchants possibly on the way to Egypt or Carthage. official paper explains some of the background details left off the program, including why an American submarine would be off the coast of Israel. (They were helping Israeli officials search for the lost sub Dakar which they eventually found in 1999.)

The air conditioning finally kicked on in the apartment. Ah, bliss! At least I don't feel like I'm in a deep fryer.

Deep Sea Detectives continues to feed my interest in underwater archaeology. This week's program focused on the wreck of a Dutch cargo ship called the Vrouw Maria. The ship wrecked off the Finnish coast in the Baltic Sea in 1771. Besides the obvious cold waters, the Baltic sea has very little salinity and none of the worms that eat away most shipwrecks, so the wreck is in beautiful condition. However the sediment creates poor lighting conditions. They showed them having to rig up the equivalent of the lighting rigging needed for a Rolling Stones concert to see the wreck below.

Vrouw Maria's cargo included a bunch of paintings by Dutch masters purchased at auction by Catherine the Great. Gerret Braamcamps, a Dutch timber merchant died, leaving behind a large collection of paintings. They're not even entirely sure what was on board the ship. Through the process of elimination, they've wittled it down to a possible eleven paintings from Braamcamps collection. The one that fetched the highest price was a triptych by Gerard Dou. Some of the remainders which were not bought by Catherine, including a Vermeer, wound up at the Rijkmuseum in Amsterdam.

The situation has legal issues as well. The ship was discovered off the Finnish coast, but was a Dutch ship on the way to Russia. So who owns the wreck? The Finns think the answer is quite straight forward. Their legislation basically states any wrecks found in their waters belong to the government. The person who spent years trying to find the wreck obviously thinks otherwise. I haven't quite found out what is the status of the lawsuit. I almost wish I was still working at LC. Researching foreign law stuff is so much easier there.

Mother Nature attempted to interfere with my Saturday errands by giving me snow flurries, but it had cleared out by the time I hit the groceries. DC is the land of the famous panicked milk, bread and toilet paper run to the grocery whenever snow is predicted. For me, it was simply my normal visit. Whatever.

The Arlington library visit was a mixed bag. Having become fascinated with the Persian fleet, I decided to do some further research. Finding info on the ships themselves was frustrating, even with help from the reference staff. I'll need to nag my father about the subject. Or maybe just hit a large Borders and simply wallow in their classical/mediaeval section. Visiting the library is probably cheaper.

On a more interesting front, I'm delving into old classical histories. (Certain friends would be amused to learn the sources include Herodotus. At least he isn't writing about goblin rebellions.) So I lugged home a recent translation of Herodotus and part of the older translation by Rawlinson. I read a version of the fleet's destruction on the Perseus Project, but I wanted a comparison. It's interesting how the difference in translation affects my muse. In the recent version, they describe the storm and how the sailors were killed by sharks or dashed on the rocks of Athos, but Rawlinson describes how the waters have all these unknown monsters that lurk below. My muse clearly prefers the older and flowery one.