Cashing In On The DaVinci Code : Mona Lisa Speaks, And So Does DaVinci

Just in time to cash in the big one (together with Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and the countless "Encoding", "Decoding" blah blah blah), A Japanese Scientist (?) had figured out a way to make good'ol Leonardo speak! Check this out. The Mona Lisa's smile may always remain a mystery, but it is now possible to hear what her voice would have sounded like, thanks to a Japanese acoustics expert. Dr Matsumi Suzuki, who generally uses his skills to help with criminal investigations, measured the face and hands of Leonardo da Vinci's famous 16th century portrait to estimate her height and create a model of her skull. "Once we have that, we can create a voice very similar to that of the person concerned," Suzuki told Reuters in an interview at his Tokyo office last week. "We have recreated the voices of a lot of famous people that were very close to the real thing and have been used in film dubbing." The chart of any individual's voice, known as a voice print, is unique to that person and Suzuki says he believes he has achieved 90 percent accuracy in recreating the quality of the enigmatic woman's speaking tone. "I am the Mona Lisa. My true identity is shrouded in mystery," the portrait proclaims on a Web site at http://promotion.msn.co.jp/davinci/voice.htm "In Mona Lisa's case, the lower part of her face is quite wide and her chin is pointed," Suzuki explained. "The extra volume means a relatively low voice, while the pointed chin adds mid-pitch tones," he added. The scientists brought in an Italian woman to add the necessary intonation to the voice. "We then had to think about what to have her say," Suzuki said. "We tried having her speak Japanese, but it didn't suit her image." Experts disagree over who was represented in the portrait, with some saying the smiling woman is Leonardo himself, or his mother. The team also attempted to recreate Leonardo's own voice in a project timed to coincide with the release of the film "The Da Vinci Code." Suzuki said he was less confident about its accuracy because he had to work from self-portraits where the artist wore a beard, concealing the shape of his face. Suzuki's work has made contributions to criminal investigations -- in one case after he successfully aged a person's voice by a decade. A recording of the voice was broadcast on television, leading to the apprehension of a suspect...

The Judge And His Three Mystic Dwalves

A Philippine judge who claimed he could see into the future and admitted consulting imaginary mystic dwarfs has asked for his job back after being fired by the country's Supreme Court. "They should not have dismissed me for what I believed," Florentino Floro, a trial judge in the capital's Malabon northern suburb, told reporters after filing his appeal. Floro was sacked last month and fined 40,000 pesos ($780) after a three-year investigation found he was incompetent, had shown bias in a case he was trying and had criticized court procedure, a ruling showed. He told investigators that three mystic dwarfs -- Armand, Luis and Angel -- helped him carry out healing sessions during breaks in his chambers. The Supreme Court said it was not within its expertise to conclude that Floro was insane, but agreed with the court clinic's finding that he was suffering from psychosis.

Party's Workers

Serangoon Stadium. 5th of May, 2006, 2120hrs. Workers' Party Rally. Probably 20, 000 odd Singaporean working hard at having the party of their life.

Stephen Harper Eats Babies.

Gerry Nicholls thought he was hallucinating as he kicked back in his seat to take the 35-minute GO train ride to his Oakville home. About every three seconds, the scrolling electronic sign that usually carries transit updates and advertisements had a very different message that he just could not keep his eyes off. "Stephen Harper Eats Babies. Stephen Harper Eats Babies. Stephen Harper Eats Babies," the message kept repeating. "No one (in the car) seemed to be reacting to it," said Nicholls, who happens to be vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, the same conservative think-tank formerly headed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. "You go home and you are trying to rest from work and all of a sudden where they usually talk about Ticketmaster, all of a sudden you see this thing say `Stephen Harper Eats Babies,'" Nicholls said yesterday. "I wasn't even sure when I got off the train. Was I hallucinating?" Turns out he wasn't. An ingenious hacker, who boarded the Lakeshore GO Transit westbound train, made sure that on Thursday, Friday and yesterday, suburban commuters in at least five different cars continued to get his or her subliminal message. His weapon of choice was a remote control device that can be bought at a Sam's Club and used to discreetly program scrolling electronic signs found commonly in shop windows — and in every GO Transit train car — from about two metres away. When Exclusive Advertising, the company that sells interior advertising on GO trains, installed the LED signs about nine years ago, the signs, which have to be individually programmed, couldn't be password protected, said company president Greg Donohue. The company sells advertisers $8,690 of space a month to play 15-second messages with 52 characters on a three-minute loop. Donohue said the hacker appears to have always gotten on the train at the third car from the locomotive and used the upper levels of the train. "We have never had any problems until now," said Donahue. GO Transit spokesperson Ed Shea called it "a case of electronic vandalism." "Unfortunately it's a slur, it's an offensive message," said Shea. "We regret it happened and we're sorry if anybody was offended, including the Prime Minister." To prevent it from happening again, GO Transit will have to power down all the signs on their cars and use special software that is being couriered from the United States to password protect 790 such digital signs. The whole process will take about three days. Meanwhile, Nicholls said he's still not sure what to make of the whole episode, except to say that he was more startled by the over-the-top attack than anything. "I kept waiting for the kicker," he said. "There's got to be something to this. It's a joke, they're going to explain it. It's an ad for baby food or something like that. It just kept going over and over again and I realized that this is something that could be pretty serious. "I'm sure a lot of people could take offence, and I guess the other point is what other message could they put there?" Asked about his time with Harper at the National Citizens Coalition, Nicholls said: "I worked with Stephen Harper for five years and never once did he in that time eat a baby." Gotta get one of those remote control...