After watching "Titanic" on the big screen the other night, in 3D, I realized that (despite whetever shortcomings the script had), the movie was a true work of filmic craftsmanship. It also reminded me that some of the biggest tragedies in history, sometimes are created from simple mistakes.  The lookouts on the Titanic that night (100 years ago this month, as a matter of fact) spotted the iceberg that would eventually sink a little too late to avoid a collision.  Or did they? 

Second Officer William Murdock was in command on the bridge when the berg was spotted.  The captain was already in his quarters.  Murdock ordered a "Full Reverse" on the engines and told the helmsman to turn the ship "hard over," meaning turning the rudder all the way.  That seemed on the surface like the right move - stop and turn to avoid the iceberg straight ahead.  But the Titanic was a behemoth of a ship; big and heavy.  Stopping on a dime and turning was not a maneuver she was going to execute adroitly.  A more exprienced seaman may have called for a different strategy:  "Full Ahead" and "hard over."  By speeding up, the momentum would have helped the ship turn faster, and therefore actually veer off before hitting.  Studies conducted after the disaster pointed to this maneuver as something that might have saved the ship. 

That remined me of  a tragedy I saw very much close up.  When I was growing up in Miami, Florida, an airliner plunged into the Everglades at night, not far way from my house while on final approach to the airport.  Everybody on the plane was killed.  The plane was flying in a circle around the airport because a light indicator on the landing gear instrumentation had gone off.  The pilots were certain the landing gear was down, for they knew what the sound of "down and locked" was, but the light was saying different.  So the co-pilot decided to go down underneath the cabin and look at the gear shafts with his eyes.  When he didn't come back, right away, the capatin put the plane on auto pilot to maintain its course and went down to check.  The touble is - when the captain got out of his seat, he accidentally bumped the auto-pilot control button.  The auto pilot turned off.  He did not notice.  While he and the co-pilot were trying to figure out what was going on with the landing gear, the plane nose-dived into the ground.  It was determined by the NTBS later that the light malfunctioning was a result of it not being screwed on tightly enough by the maintenance crew.  A tragedy, cause by two simple mistakes. 

I guess the moral of both those stories is that there is no such thing as a simple mistake, eh? 

In more lighter, trivial news --

The Texas Rangers started the season by winning 2 out of 3 games from the Chicago White Sox on Opening Weekened.  YAY!  The Rangers are the baseball team I follow, and I'm hoping they can beat nearly-impossible odds by making it to their third World Series in a row.  It has been a great ride the last two years, considering all the sub-.500 years I lived through when the Rangers basically, well... sucked. 

HBO's Game of Thrones has become a weekly viewing event at my home.  Great series.  And there are scenes of a sexual nature that could give porn a run for its money...

I'm still trying to try out the new "Lord of the Rings" card game I just bought, on the recommendation of co-workers.  The art on the cards is magnificent.  But will the game play as magnificently?   I've been playing a lot of "Star Trek Expeditions" with friends lately, and I'm looking for a new diversion.

Tomorrow, a short story...