The Shadowy Depths

Conditions: Close, clouding

Atlantis Lost Again

Remember how underwater sonar maps put together by Google seemed to show the outline of a city under the ocean? And everyone started saying that Atlantis had been found? Well, turns out no.

Overlapping data sets, which created the pattern many thought to be Atlantis, commonly occur in the sonar method oceanographers use to map the ocean floor. Scientists bounce sonar (sound) waves off the bottom of the ocean to measure its topography.

The pattern supposedly resembling Atlantis was located off the coast of north Africa and covered more than 160 kilometres — much larger than the scope of any ancient city.
[...]

“The original version of Google Ocean was a newly developed prototype map that had high resolution but also contained thousands of blunders related to the original archived ship data,”

- smh.com.au/

Science can be such a tease, sometimes. Which is why it's always dangerous to let it near our legends. Let science focus on day to day stuff, and leave the legends to the dreamers.



Film Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Welcome back to the heady days of the cold war. John le Carre has written a series of novels concentrating on the British Intelligence services and how they battled the Russians. This story concerns a double agent at the very top of British Intelligence, who has been leaking information to the Russians for quite some time. Our hero is George Smiley, a veteran in the intelligence services. He's been forced into retirement due to an operation in Hungary that went horribly wrong, but has been brought back in order to figure out who is the spy.

Gary Oldman plays Smiley, heading a very strong cast in this very, very deliberate and careful cold war thriller. Set absolutely in the mid seventies, the film is very British in how it delivers. There are no car chases or gunfights, it's all about conversations and thoughtful pauses, and traveling about. If your idea of a spy film involves jerky cameras and constant gunfights you may be disappointed. As we proceed through the tale we understand more about George, his marriage, and how he relates to his Russian counterpart, a man he met once and tried to convert over. This is a particularly complicated film in that you have to keep track of the names and faces of the participants.

While the dreariness of London during the seventies is quite prevalent, the pieces to the puzzle keep you interested. There's like a boatload of nuance in this film, and pretty much everything ends up being important. And while the characters are all very British and reigned in, there's a feeling of barely-contained passion and action that seethes under this film - a particular scene where a drunk Smiley reenacts a conversation he had once with his great Russian rival, that is just brilliantly done. Proper cerebral spy films are hard to come by, and this one is top notch. Four chess pieces out of five.

- Peace