dorks support dorks
It's not every day you see humour injected into normally stodgy structures.
This amused me, anyway:
'Smithy Code' puzzles lawyers
Da Vinci ruling has hidden secret
U.K. judge admits getting in on `fun'
Apr. 27, 2006. 01:00 AM
JENNIFER QUINN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON-The judge who presided at the Da Vinci Code copyright infringement trial has put a code of his own into his ruling, and he said yesterday he would "probably" confirm it to the person who breaks it.
Since Judge Peter Smith delivered his ruling April 7 in favour of Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, lawyers in London and New York began noticing odd italicizations in the 71-page document.
In the weeks afterward, would-be code-breakers got to work on deciphering Smith's code.
"I can't discuss the judgment," Smith said in a brief conversation with The Associated Press, "but I don't see why a judgment should not be a matter of fun."
Italics are placed in strange spots: The first is found in the first paragraph of the 360-paragraph document. The letter "s" in the word "claimants" is italicized.
In the next paragraph, "claimant" is spelled with an italicized "m," and so on.
The italicized letters in the first seven paragraphs spell out "Smithy Code," playing on the judge's name.
Lawyer Dan Tench, with the London firm Olswang, said he noticed the code when he spotted the striking italicized script in an online copy of the judgment.
"To encrypt a message in this manner, in a High Court judgment no less? It's out there," Tench said.
"I think he was getting into the spirit of the thing. It doesn't take away from the validity of the judgment. He was just having a bit of fun."
Smith was arguably the highlight of the trial, with his acerbic questions and witty observations making the sometimes dry testimony more lively. Though Smith yesterday refused to discuss the judgment or acknowledge outright that he'd inserted a secret code in its pages, he said: "They don't look like typos, do they?"
When asked if someone would break the code, Smith said: "I don't know. It's not a difficult thing to do."
And when asked if he would confirm a correct guess to an aspiring code-breaker, he said, "Probably."
Tench said the judge teasingly remarked that the code is a mixture of the italicized font code found in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail - whose authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh unsuccessfully sued Brown's publisher, Random House Inc., for copyright infringement - and the code found in Brown's The Da Vinci Code.
Baigent and Leigh had argued Brown's best-selling novel "appropriated the architecture" of their 1982 non-fiction book. Smith rejected the argument, saying the lawsuit was based on a contrived and "selective number of facts and ideas."
Both books explore theories that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, the couple had a child and the bloodline survives, ideas dismissed by most historians and theologians.
The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 40 million copies - including 12 million hardcovers in the United States - since its release in March 2003.
It came out in paperback earlier this year, with 600,000 copies earmarked for Canada.
This amused me, anyway:
'Smithy Code' puzzles lawyers
Da Vinci ruling has hidden secret
U.K. judge admits getting in on `fun'
Apr. 27, 2006. 01:00 AM
JENNIFER QUINN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON-The judge who presided at the Da Vinci Code copyright infringement trial has put a code of his own into his ruling, and he said yesterday he would "probably" confirm it to the person who breaks it.
Since Judge Peter Smith delivered his ruling April 7 in favour of Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, lawyers in London and New York began noticing odd italicizations in the 71-page document.
In the weeks afterward, would-be code-breakers got to work on deciphering Smith's code.
"I can't discuss the judgment," Smith said in a brief conversation with The Associated Press, "but I don't see why a judgment should not be a matter of fun."
Italics are placed in strange spots: The first is found in the first paragraph of the 360-paragraph document. The letter "s" in the word "claimants" is italicized.
In the next paragraph, "claimant" is spelled with an italicized "m," and so on.
The italicized letters in the first seven paragraphs spell out "Smithy Code," playing on the judge's name.
Lawyer Dan Tench, with the London firm Olswang, said he noticed the code when he spotted the striking italicized script in an online copy of the judgment.
"To encrypt a message in this manner, in a High Court judgment no less? It's out there," Tench said.
"I think he was getting into the spirit of the thing. It doesn't take away from the validity of the judgment. He was just having a bit of fun."
Smith was arguably the highlight of the trial, with his acerbic questions and witty observations making the sometimes dry testimony more lively. Though Smith yesterday refused to discuss the judgment or acknowledge outright that he'd inserted a secret code in its pages, he said: "They don't look like typos, do they?"
When asked if someone would break the code, Smith said: "I don't know. It's not a difficult thing to do."
And when asked if he would confirm a correct guess to an aspiring code-breaker, he said, "Probably."
Tench said the judge teasingly remarked that the code is a mixture of the italicized font code found in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail - whose authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh unsuccessfully sued Brown's publisher, Random House Inc., for copyright infringement - and the code found in Brown's The Da Vinci Code.
Baigent and Leigh had argued Brown's best-selling novel "appropriated the architecture" of their 1982 non-fiction book. Smith rejected the argument, saying the lawsuit was based on a contrived and "selective number of facts and ideas."
Both books explore theories that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, the couple had a child and the bloodline survives, ideas dismissed by most historians and theologians.
The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 40 million copies - including 12 million hardcovers in the United States - since its release in March 2003.
It came out in paperback earlier this year, with 600,000 copies earmarked for Canada.