You don’t think the educational aspect is overrated? You think most of the 3rd graders are really getting anything out of the field trip?
Maybe it’s just because it’s sanitized, and not as emotionally charged as a private viewing that makes us think it’s less exploitive.
Call me a philistine, but I don’ have much sympathy for attaching some kind of halo to a thing that people died in a century ago, or last year for that matter. Corpses are corpses and old wrecks are old wrecks, and that’s pretty much it. Anything that can be done with retrieved trash from the bottom of the sea is ok with me.
Also used to make pigments, and medicines.
Very useful, those mummies.
By the way, I’m not hot on the display of mummies, either.
I doubt the many people who gawk at natural mummies in an Italian tunnel, or at piles of bones in Paris and such things do so to educate themselves. It’s rather morbid curiosity.
I have a certain level of respect for the dead, for graves, etc… I know it’s not particularly logical, but I’m satisfied with feeling that way.
And the teriyaki style is delish!
I don’t have a problem with looting a grave, but I don’t like that the materials are melted down and blended into regular industrial vats. That dilutes it to the point where it has almost nothing but theoretical artifactual value anymore.
I dunno, I just remember being very impressed when I saw the King Tut exhibit. I was probably 10 or 11 years old at the time. There’s not a hell of a lot of things I remember from that time period. Something there made an impression on a 10-year-old brain. I still remember looking at the mummy and thinking that it just looked like a long piece of dried mud. But I also remember being slightly awed by the fact that I was actually looking at a dead Pharaoh.
Personally, I’m not sure why the Titanic sitting thousands of feet down is necessarily better than it being salvaged. But the fact that the metal and coal have been “blended” makes this product of no interest/value to me. I would value far more highly a salvaged lump of coal.
I’m curious - the site makes no hint at the blending ratios. Makes me suspect that the proportion of salvaged material is quite minimal.
Uh, woah, cool! Could you explain this a bit further?
And a quick aside, is the coal down there doing anything? Like is the temp and pressure or the salt harming it as well? Or will there be a bunch of rust, dish fragments, and coal at the end of all this?
The most important thing to me is that I think the watch itself is ugly.
I’ve got very mixed feelings on this, myself.
On the one hand, I share a lot of the issues people have with the idea of this material having been looted from a grave.
On the other hand, when we’re talking about blended steel I find it hard to get very excited about it. As Diogenes rightly points out, the fraction could be 1000:1, or higher, and still meet the requirements of the ad copy.
I’d be far, far more squicked to be told I’m eating off dinnerware from [. At least with the Titanic artifacts, there’s a lot more public scrutiny for what’s going on with the wreck. Of course, I’m also somewhat bemused by the whole idea behind recycling some WTC steel into this [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_New_York_(LPD-21)]ship](]The Empress of Ireland[/url).
If we’re talking about nautical memorabilia, I’d rather have memorabilia from either the Brittanic’s off-loaded luxury fittings, or from Normandie. Both of which have collector value independent of any catastrophe. (For all that both ships were lost.) I know it’s purely a matter of personal taste, but that’s where I’d draw the line.
I’d also be tempted to argue with the claim that steel from Titanic is the rarest metals on earth - there are current industrial uses for battleship armor from the unsalvaged wrecks in Scapa Flow. Which is literally priceless and irreplaceable for deep space probes, where trace radioactive contamination from nuclear testing fallout makes modern steels unsuitable.
Actually, this is only partially correct. (There’s a GQ thread about this.) Its cheaper to use that steel than to process modern steels to avoid contamination, and the big worry is background radiation from above ground nuclear testing which is gradually fading.
A couple of years ago, I went to see the traveling Titanic exhibit. Near the end, they had a section of her hull that you could touch.
I’m thinking that if I’d rubbed my hands all over it, there’d be at least enough atoms of steel transferred to my skin that I could later rub my hands on “new” steel, transferring some atoms of Titanic’s steel, and there’s your blend ratio.
I don’t think this is still true - with the Pakistani, Indian, and other above-ground tests fallout contamination is back up. Yes, it will die back off with time, but we haven’t had that time, yet.
(nitpick mode on)You don’t get background radiation from above ground nuclear testing, except through the intermediary of fallout contamination. The best non-technical way I’ve heard to describe the difference between contamination and radiation is that contamination is shit and radiation is the smell that the shit gives off.
(/nitpick)
I believe this is the GQ thread you’d mentioned. Oddly enough one of yours. 
It’s not right. It’s a grave-site and a historical artifact.
India and Pakistan (as well as North Korea) all did underground tests, IIRC.
Ironically, the article doesn’t mention whether the watch is waterproof.
“DAMN IT! I spent over $100,000 on this watch, and it died instantly when I spilled Iceberg Vodka on it!”
Hey, I just touched mine with iceberg lettuce and it fell apart.
Are the hands made with real hands?