Your laser printer is sending hardcopy to Big Brother

It used to be standard policy in the Soviet Union that if you - whether as a private individual or one of the few small businesses allowed during perestroika - wanted to purchase anything that produced printed material, the party wouldn't let you play with it right out of the box. Instead you first had to take your typewriter, printer, fax machine or copier down to the local KGB office where you would "register" it with the state: by submitting typewritten or printed samples created with the machine. The samples would be kept on file with the KGB so they would have a unique "fingerprint" of your particular device.

If you were ever suspected of circulating any "subversive literature" around, the offending leaflet could be compared to the samples of your machine. If they matched... well, it usually meant you'd won an express ticket straight to beautiful Dzerzhinsky Square in downtown Moscow, of which your hosts made sure that you'd get to tour "the basement". Hey, beats what would happen if you were found with an unregistered printing machine: those were usually dealt with by summary execution.

I mention all of this 'cuz since America is now well into the phase where we've gone beyond laughing at the Soviets and are now determined to actively imitate them, this next story is totally apropos. But think of the bright side: at least this way you don't have to burn gas money trudging your new printer down to the CIA... not when they've got its serial number tagged with the credit card that you bought it with. Convenient, no? Awright, just read this from PC World via Yahoo!...

Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Documents

Mon Nov 22, 4:00 AM ET
Jason Tuohey, Medill News Service

WASHINGTON--Next time you make a printout from your color laser printer, shine an LED flashlight beam on it and examine it closely with a magnifying glass. You might be able to see the small, scattered yellow dots printer there that could be used to trace the document back to you.

According to experts, several printer companies quietly encode the serial number and the manufacturing code of their color laser printers and color copiers on every document those machines produce. Governments, including the United States, already use the hidden markings to track counterfeiters.

Peter Crean, a senior research fellow at Xerox, says his company's laser printers, copiers and multifunction workstations, such as its WorkCentre Pro series, put the "serial number of each machine coded in little yellow dots" in every printout. The millimeter-sized dots appear about every inch on a page, nestled within the printed words and margins.

"It's a trail back to you, like a license plate," Crean says.

The dots' minuscule size, covering less than one-thousandth of the page, along with their color combination of yellow on white, makes them invisible to the naked eye, Crean says. One way to determine if your color laser is applying this tracking process is to shine a blue LED light--say, from a keychain laser flashlight--on your page and use a magnifier.

(snip)

If the practice disturbs you, don't bother trying to disable the encoding mechanism--you'll probably just break your printer.

Crean describes the device as a chip located "way in the machine, right near the laser" that embeds the dots when the document "is about 20 billionths of a second" from printing.

"Standard mischief won't get you around it," Crean adds.

Neither Crean nor Pagano has an estimate of how many laser printers, copiers, and multifunction devices track documents, but they say that the practice is commonplace among major printer companies.

"The industry absolutely has been extraordinarily helpful [to law enforcement]," Pagano says.

According to Pagano, counterfeiting cases are brought to the Secret Service, which checks the documents, determines the brand and serial number of the printer, and contacts the company. Some, like Xerox, have a customer database, and they share the information with the government.

Crean says Xerox and the government have a good relationship. "The U.S. government had been on board all along--they would actually come out to our labs," Crean says.

(snip)

For the rest of the story punch here.

So... if we're not just following the same procedure that the Soviets used in controlling the spread of printed material, but have instead improved upon it, that's not necessarily a good thing for the people of this country, right?

Right?

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"Despicable" computer game reloads the JFK assassination

Nope, Electronic Arts didn't roll out The Sims Lone Gunman Expansion Pack while we weren't looking. It ain't a joke either: this is an actual screenshot that I took from JFK Reloaded a short while ago.

Available for download starting today - the 41st anniversary of the JFK assassination - the computer game from British software outfit Traffic puts you in the role of Lee Harvey Oswald at the infamous sixth-floor window of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. The left mouse button toggles the sniper scope, while hitting the right one rains down virtual bullets from your Mannlicher-Carcano. Score points by sticking to the "findings" of the Warren Commission, but they’re deducted if you accidentally put a round through First Lady Jackie. Apart from the absence of the cheering crowds (sorry: no "Umbrella Man" or "Babushka Lady" here) you're opening fire on a VERY realistic 3D-rendered simulacrum of Dealey Plaza that Traffic assembled from the most studied motion picture footage in history: the Abraham Zapruder film. Watch the scene unfold in first-person mode, in third-person overlooking Oswald's perch, or from the "Grassy Knoll". You can download a demo of the game that's fully-functional minus being able to actually shoot (thus letting Kennedy safely ride off) or pay $9.99 online to unlock the full game so you can get "JFK blown away, what else do I have to say?"

Well, for starters paying ten bucks to register the game makes you eligible for a $100,000 prize if you're the one who comes closest to replicating Oswald's ummm... "accomplishment". And Traffic is assuming that it was Oswald and no other: "We've created the game with the belief that Oswald was the only person that fired the shots on that day," Traffic's managing editor Kirk Ewing said, "although this recreation proves how immensely difficult his task was."

Having a big cash payout for best imitation of the murder of the century is a pretty cold thing to do, in my opinion. JFK's younger brother Senator Ted Kennedy released a statement calling the game "despicable"... something that's maybe the first thing I've ever agreed 100% with him on. And thinking that a videogame like JFK Reloaded will encourage young people to become more interested in history – which Traffic claims was one of their motives in producing it - is pretty condescending. But I've got to admit: after downloading the demo and installing the optional high-resolution patch, it must be said that JFK Reloaded is an amazing marriage of historical events with modern gaming technology. Simply put, the game looks stunning, though I couldn't possibly shell out money for the full version with a clear conscience.

Meanwhile, unsubstantiated rumors persist that two days from now Traffic will be publishing an add-on pack to JFK Reloaded, tentatively-titled Jail Basement Transfer. Players can either act as Jack Ruby or witness his lunge forward from the perspective of "the Man in the White Hat".

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ATTENTION LADIES: Kyle Williams is officially an eligible bachelor!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to wunderkind writer and teenage theological revolutionary (and great guy to have as a friend) Kyle Williams, who hits SWEET SIXTEEN today. This day holds special meaning for Kyle: he can now drive a car, he can now date his female admirers (of which one has told me that "Kyle looks HOT!") and never again can someone dismiss his thoughts and claim that "he's too young a pundit" out of desperation!

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Internet history - and other kinds - got made three years ago this weekend

Would have remembered to post about this yesterday, 'cept at the time I'd been going on 7 hours sleep total across the past four days (most of that time spent working on this film). Anyhoo...

It was November 20 in 2001 that six months of planning, starting from the moment this bizarre plot was first hatched, culminated in a single keystroke. My friend Joshua Griffin did the honors: as Editor of TheForce.net he was the one who had first brought me aboard the site. And more than just a co-worker, he became an awesome friend and brother in the Lord... and a great counselor in all things about love between a guy and his girl. I couldn't bring myself to do this so I asked if he would. How much did I trust Josh? Enough to put the entire rest of my life into his hands... literally!

"It's away!" Josh yelled over the phone as his finger went down on the "Post Article" button. Lisa didn't arrive at my apartment for another hour and a half. By the time she did the entire free world had come to know that she had to be something very special if her boyfriend was crazy in love with her (or just plain crazy) enough to announce just HOW much it was that he loved her!

It was after I had read her a passage of scripture from Ephesians, and then removed her boots and sock to wash her feet in a basin of warm water as a sign of how I wanted to serve her, that Lisa got to see that. I was kneeling beside her by then, wearing the same outfit and holding out the REAL ring (but no lightsaber this time :-) She said "yes" in less than a second.

A few people have told me since that so far as anyone's been able to figure out, this was the very first time ever that a major website like this was used to do a marriage proposal, and possibly even done on the Internet at all. That's neat that TheForce.net got to make history like that... 'cuz it sure did for me and Lisa :-)

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"...Because there were no more worlds to conquer."

CNN is reporting on several angry Greeks threatening to sue Warner Brothers over the upcoming film Alexander. The contention is whether or not Alexander the Great was bisexual.

If this movie is based on the script I read parts of years ago, it would not only be a great flick but the issue might be a legit one for polite discussion. But it so happens that the addition of a single factor should poison the well of historical debate as much as it leads me to weigh against plunking my money down at the box office to see it at all...

Alexander is directed by Oliver Stone.

After what he did with JFK and Nixon, I can only surmise that Alexander of Macedonia was a safe target 'cuz so far as major world leaders go, there are no more for Stone to conquer... errr, I mean "to obfuscate".

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A thought that came to me a few days ago...

No minority is so despised and ignored as the individual.

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Thoughts and prayers with Condi Rice this afternoon

It's being reported today that Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's now-National Security Advisor and soon-Secretary of State, underwent surgery this morning to remove non-malignant growths in her uterus. The procedure is called a "uterine fibroid embolization" and word from the surgeons who performed the task is that Rice came through very well.

I'm led to keep Doctor Rice in prayer this afternoon, and wish her a speedy recover so that she'll soon be back in action and none the worse for wear. Yes, I know: she's one of Bush's innermost cabal and I've made it quite clear - and with very good reasons - why he can't be trusted. How he's deluded a lot of Christians into believing he's the embodiment of saintly righteousness when his real character shows him to be a very bitter, angry, vindictive and hateful man attempting to hide an evil nature behind the Bible. How he and a lot of other people in his administration are making America a far more socialist - and I don't mind saying "fascist" also - state than it's ever been before. And I don't agree with a lot of things that she's said previously...

...but Condi Rice has always been my very favorite person in this White House. Easily the smartest brain in there. On top of the Doctorate in Political Science she's fluent in French, Russian and Spanish. She helped engineer the reunification of Germany. She plays concert cello and her biggest dream is to someday be running the National Football League. And she's the one I'm inclined to find more trustworthy than most of the others in this administration. In a sane world, she'd be living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue right now instead of working there. Say what one will of the people around her, she's the kind of lady you just gotta admire despite all that.

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Psychedelic Sydney: Australians may "trip" over toads in more ways than one.

See this toad? I was looking over the stories on the Oddly Enough section of Yahoo! News and came across this lil' item about how this species - the cane toad - is swarming all over Sydney. Being overrun by a Biblical plague is bad enough, but our friends Down Under had better pray that the cane toad's other "properties" stay off the radar. Or else Australia threatens to become the Haight-Ashbury of the South Pacific...

Ground 'Moves' as Cane Toads Invade Park

Fri Nov 19, 9:21 AM ET
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of poisonous baby cane toads invaded an Australian national park Friday, hopping around in such numbers that the ground seemed to move, an ecologist said.

The ugly amphibians moved into the Arakwal National Park near one of the country's famous surfing meccas, Byron Bay, following an explosion in toad numbers after recent rains.

"You should see the ground down there, it is just black and it is just moving, it is a seething mass of young cane toads, it looks like the ground is moving," local ecologist Steve Phillips told Australian radio.
Park officials plan to destroy as many of the toads as possible before they grow into adults, hoping that once numbers are reduced the threatened wallum froglet and wallum sedge frog populations will pick up.

Cane toads are one of Australia's worst environmental pests.

They were introduced to Australia from Hawaii in 1935 to stop the French Cane Beetle and Greyback Cane Beetle from destroying sugar cane crops in the northeastern state of Queensland.

(snip)

While cane toads will eat anything and appear easy prey for larger animals, they possess highly poisonous sacs behind their heads which kill predators quickly.

What this Reuters story from Yahoo! neglected to mention was that the Aussies have a potentially bigger problem on their hands than just the cane toad's vast numbers. Here's where the real fun begins...

The poison secreted by the cane toad's glands spreads throughout its body and is very permeable through its skin. In other words, the entire cane toad becomes a poison pill, with a toxin strong enough to kill most enemies of the toad that are relative to its size by mere contact. It's even been known to injure and kill larger animals like dogs that happen to eat the toads. So you'd think that most rationale human beings would known enough to leave the cane toad alone, right?

Right??

Turns out that the cane frog is a natural producer of the chemical bufotenine, and it's one of the poison's components. Bufotenine is also a powerful hallucinogenic drug: if your body manages to intake enough of it (usually a small amount) you'll experience an effect very similar to what would happen if you took a drop of LSD. It's similar to mescaline in that both drugs are also found naturally in certain mushrooms (like peyote) that have been used for centuries by Native Americans of North and South America for religious rituals, including the modern-day Native American Church. "Your people go into your churches and talk to Jesus," one practitioner told a white Christian after a long night of the peyote ritual: "our people go into our teepees and we see Jesus!"

The upshot of all of this is, bufotenine is considered a controlled substance. Court cases have upheld Native American rights to use such hallucinogens in religious ceremonies, but otherwise the general public isn't supposed to have access to bufotenine. In fact, possession of bufotenine is considered highly illegal.

Possession of a cane toad, however, is very legal.

Take a wild guess where this is going. Or if you've figured it out, take a wild guess how exactly the bufotenine is extracted from the cane frog by people who want to turn on, tune in, and drop out.

It's been documented for years, but most people still (and for good reason) either haven't heard or can't accept that such a thing as toad-licking goes on in this world. It's really pretty simple: if you want to "trip out" on bufotenine you merely pick up your handy-dandy cane toad and lick its back (supposedly the REAL buzz comes from applying your moist wet tongue to the very top and rear of the toad's head). The poison secreted from the toad's skin enters your body via the capillaries of your tongue and from there the toxin - and the bufotenine it contains - makes its way to your brain and nervous system.

Sounds crazy... but it got so bad for awhile that even the generally strange People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals condemned the practice. Although their concern wasn't so much for human safety as it was for the toads': "We find LSD is a much better animal free alternative," a PETA spokeslady said. "We know the toad licking lobby is powerful, but the message needs to be heard." To which one toad-licker replied: "LSD just doesn't give as intense hallucinations as toad licking. PETA can take my toad away when they tear it from my cold dead lips."

In other words, the Australians are going to have a massive drug abuse crisis on their hands if people over there are as dumb (which judging from the Aussies I've met isn't very likely) as the ones in America tend to be and start licking these things. But on the bright side of things: since you CAN legally own a cane toad and do whatever you want to with it, I think the Australians should make the best of a bad situation and start up a massive industry cultivating and exporting these things all over the world. They could make jillions of dollars from this, could become the Southern Hemisphere's answer to Afghanistan's opium trade... and it would all be legit!

All that said though, I still feel more than a little conflicted about putting my mouth to a toad to suck on its skin.

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Ridley Scott making a Halo movie? Maybe.

Halo is something I've never played but have come to be familiar with, since every Xbox owners around me has raved about it for the past few years like it was the only game for that system. I'm still not at the level where I can tell a "Covenant" from a "Master Chief" whatever the heck that is, but I understood way ahead of time that when Halo 2 came out last week that it was going to be a big, big deal for a lot of people. They'll prolly spooge to no end if there's any basis to this story...

Ain't It Cool News is reporting this morning that Ridley Scott might be in talks to turn Halo into a big-screen flick: read the full story by AICN's Quint here. Looks interesting. Though I still have to wonder if Larry Niven could sue Microsoft and Bungie Studios for ripping off Ringworld.

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Finally added a syndication feed

If - and Lord only knows why you may feel so inclined - you want The Knight Shift to come straight to your desktop via a newsreader program, you can do that now. Here's the Atom Feed for this blog. Earlier this morning I finally sat myself down to figure out what this feed/RSS/Atom stuff was all about. It wasn't really until I found Pluck during a search at Download.com that everything fell into place and ya know what, this is a pretty neat gimmick!

Oh yeah, I'm going to begin slowly revamping this blog's appearance during the next week or so. Nothing major yet but if you want something different, head over to Zip's Mighty Blog, run by a really cool guy I met at my wife's high school reunion this past weekend. It musta been Zip's picture with Bruce Campbell that turned my mind to think about Army of Darkness for yesterday's entry about Sears and KMart merging.

More later.

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Forced medication on our kids?! (Awright Bush-bots, explain how THIS could possibly be conservative or Christian)

Every sensible and conscientious parent in America should swear an oath before Almighty God that they will KILL anyone from the government that tries to do this to their children. Failing to do that would only go to prove that they didn't really love or care for their own kids at all.

Seriously. The line has to be drawn somewhere and if not here... well, then where?

To all the people who voted for George W. Bush a few weeks ago: congratulations, you elected a Nazi.

Because this is exactly what Nazism was as a political/economic system. It was (and is) an all-powerful central government married to corporate interests that serve toward furthering the state's goals in exchange for a wide latitude for profit.

Looks like sometime in the next few days the U.S. Senate is going to vote on the "New Freedom Initiative", Bush's plan to force mandatory mental-health screenings on eventually all Americans, beginning with young schoolchildren. The whole thing is a massive nod by Bush toward the pharmaceutical companies that donated to his political campaigns. In other words, kickbacks and corruption in broad daylight. These companies stand to make BILLIONS when government agents start diagnosing kids for mental disorders and forcing expensive medications upon them... that only these companies happen to produce.

As of this writing Rep. Ron Paul (from Texas) is making an attempt to strip out the mandatory conditions of the bill, so that this kind of thing can only be done by parental consent. Paul is one of the few people on Capitol Hill that genuinely believes in the United States Constitution. Which probably lent itself toward his last effort to stop this going down in flames. With help from his own party, the Republicans: you know, the party of smaller government?

There is nothing "small government" about this. There is nothing conservative about this. And there sure as heck ain't nothing Christian about it either. Whoever conceived of this plan is a madman. And I would like to add my usual comment that whoever came up with this should be "dragged out into the street and shot" but I've no idea if that would entail a visit from guys in trenchcoats and dark glasses and earpieces.

That said though, I'm going to make this vow:

If someone from the government tries to force medications on me without my consent, I will kill him.

If someone from the government tries to force medications on my wife without either of our consent, I will kill him.

If someone from the government tries to force medications on my children without my consent, I will not just kill him. I will shoot him in both legs, drag him screaming to the center of town, make him suffer and die in the most painfully slow manner that I can come up with, and hang his carcass from the nearest telephone pole by its circular reproductive units with piano wire as a warning to the next ten generations of would-be gods that "sic semper tyrannis".

Like I said, if we don't put a stop to this madness NOW, WHEN do we do it? And what can we possibly tell our children when they ask why we didn't stop it when we had the chance?

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"Shop smart... shop S-Mart!"

"Name's Ash. Housewares."
Well why not? With Sears and Kmart merging it sounds a lot better than "Big S".


"THIS IS MY BOOMSTICK!!"
Hail to the king, baby.

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Boy Scouts abandoned as Pentagon retreats on sponsorship

Let me get this straight: our military can take over a hostile town in the middle of a god-forsaken desert... but can't sponsor Boy Scouts meeting on their own bases?

It's almost funny: that our government can topple most of the others in the world, but folds completely when taking on the ACLU.

Whoever made the ultimate decision to implement this policy is an idiot. For one thing, although it doesn't ban Boy Scouts from meeting on bases, it certainly does discourage it, especially overseas where there are no realistic alternatives for meeting places. For another, a very large number of officers in the U.S. military were once Boy Scouts, and a lot of them made it all the way to Eagle Scout. By caving to the ACLU on this, the U.S. government is giving no appreciation to the Boy Scouts of America for the fine young men that have come out of it and into the military's ranks: it's like plowing up your best garden on account of a single gopher.

Read the full story as USA Today is reporting it here.

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NEW COMMENT POLICY: Time to separate the wheat from the chaff

Starting a new policy this afternoon: the comment feature is getting turned off. If anyone wants to e-mail me at theknightshift@gmail.com, I will read you comment there and choose whether or not to edit the post to include your remarks.

Wish I didn't have to do this, but over the past several days this blog has attracted - in addition to plenty of good and sincere readers - way too many idiots. One of them, claiming to be a Marine stationed in Washington D.C., resorted to posting threats of murder after finding himself on the losing end of a discussion. I doubt that he was a real Marine: all the ones I've known weren't hot-heads. They're also a smart enough bunch that they can think for themselves: they have to be. This one didn't have an original thought in his head. And a real Marine wouldn't threaten violence or death like this guy was: when you learn how to kill a man, you also learn how not to kill a man. Whoever this phony is, his lack of self-discipline would have gotten him booted out of Parris Island and classified 4F before "Taps" tonight.

I'm not obligated to give him a mouthpiece for his stupidity. His or anyone else's for that matter.

It did cross my mind that I could merely make the commenting available only to registered Blogger users... but that would be unfair to those who wanted to comment but had no desire to start a blog of their own. It couldn't remain something open for just anyone to post to though: not as nasty as some of them have been. All of those have come from people who may or may not have been too coward to publish their identity, so they kept it "Anonymous". It's just me doing this blog, not a staff of dozens, and I have neither the time or the desire to go through and cull out the bad ones from the good. And I believe that if you've something to say and if you really believe in it, unless you've a darned good reason for hiding your identity you better stand up where everyone can see you as you say it. Not doing that destroys the credibility of both your message and yourself.

To all the people who've been serious and considerate toward this blog, even those who may stand in disagreement with me on some things but still gave me a polite and enjoyable discussion: I apologize to you, and it hadn't come to this. But I'll strive to keep it going even if I have to add comments to each post manually.

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One of the things in this life that I've never understood

Have a few things to do this afternoon but to kill time while working on other projects I flicked through some TV channels to see if anything good was on (hardly ever watch TV, truth be known, apart from "The Simpsons", "Smallville", "Powerpuff Girls" and "Johnny Bravo" on Cartoon Network, and the Hitler... I mean, History Channel).

Lo and behold, right now HBO is running 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I've seen this dozens of times over the years since I was ten years old. It's been out since 1968.

Can anybody please tell me what the hell is the plot of this movie?!?

I mean, what STORY is being told here??? Big black brick makes apes throw bones in the air, followed by big black brick hurting some dudes' ears on the moon, followed by big black brick making a computer go murderously nuts before said big black brick makes some astronaut guy do an LSD trip then turns him into a really really big baby.

To reiterate: "Huh?"

There's a fine line between genius and insanity, and here Stanley Kubrick dipped his toes into more than enough of both. But it's still his greatest movie ever... and one of the greatest movies ever made. True, it's somewhat dated now: 2001 didn't happen like the film prophesied be (which in 1997 Arthur C. Clarke - who co-wrote the screenplay with Kubrick - blamed on the Vietnam War, Watergate and the Challenger disaster) but on every level this movie still holds its own against the test of time. For one thing, I know of no other document from the early space age that best represents the hopefulness and optimism that people back then had in the future. That's going to make 2001 especially haunting in years to come: we're going to look back on this movie and the time it's from and ask ourselves "What happened? Where did we go wrong?"

Why did we go wrong? At 30 I'm way young, but plenty old enough to remember reading about the things that were going to happen in my lifetime: colonies on the moon. Pleasure excursions to Mars. Mining the asteroid belt. Something called the Daedalus Project that British engineers hoped to launch toward Barnard's Star and arrive there 50 years later to see if planets were there). A "space bridge" that would connect a station on earth with a geosynchronous satellite so that stuff could be hoisted into orbit without costly rockets... and a zillion other things that a six-year old kid back then daydreamed about seeing before he hit retirement age (at which point Winnebago would be selling an interplanetary mobile home to tool around in).

What do kids dream about nowadays? Do they still look forward to when they can wave back at their friends home on Earth while they're off at summer camp on the Moon? And if they can't... why? Where did we cross the line that turned a far-off glimpse toward a bright tomorrow into escapist nonsense and delusions of grandeur? I mean, given the choice to determine which way this world went, I'd rather it head in the direction that Kubrick and Clarke showed us in 2001 instead of the over-computerized drug-riddled corporate-driven wasteland of William Gibson's Neuromancer (a very good book by the way: it's where the term "cyberspace" was first coined, not to mention paving the way for modern sci-fi like The Matrix). Is it too much to think that we can still aspire for something better than the soulless decadence that we're barreling headlong into? Do any of us dare to dream anymore?

That's one of the things in this life that I've never understood (thought I was just talking about the title of the movie there, huh? :-)

All that said, and for everything it stands for that never came to pass (yet anyway), 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of my all-time favorite movies: even though every time I watch it I can grasp the storyline... but when I wake up the next morning I can remember nothing about what it was really all about.

But next time you do, here's some neat things to keep in mind when you watch 2001: A Space Odyssey:

- Not a single note of music was explicitly written for the movie. Every piece heard derived from previously-composed works, including the film's signature theme from "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss.
- The graphics shown on the computer monitors were all hand-drawn slides. Computer technology could not yet render the complex images expected from those that would be operating spacecraft systems thirty years in the future.
- After production, director Kubrick ordered all the models, sets, and costumes used in the movie to be destroyed. And just to be safe he had the respective blueprints burned and trashed as well. His reason? That 2001 shouldn't be cheapened by future low-budget sci-fi flicks making use of its props (though it also created a major headache when its sorta-sequel 2010 started production in 1983).
- "Daisy", the song that HAL sings while dying was in reality the very first song performed by a real computer, at IBM in 1961. Incidentally, one part of the song goes "I'm half crazy".
- The ACTUAL beginning of the movie is rarely shown on television... and for a long time wasn't even available on home video. It's several minutes of Gyorgy Ligeti's "Atmospheres" (later used during the "stargate" sequence as the monolith hurls David Bowman across countless light-years to the source of its power) played against a pitch-black screen. This overture has been restored in recent VHS and DVD releases.
- Speaking of which, Ligeti sued Kubrick for using his music without permission in the movie. He won.
- The movie is 139 minutes long but contains no dialogue for 88 minutes of its run... including within the half-hours at both the beginning and end of the film.
- HAL's name came from going one-letter away from each letter in "IBM".
- The "floating pen" in the shuttle is actually attached to a sheet of glass that the camera is aiming through. The stewardess merely pulls it off the sheet when she sticks it back into Heywood Floyd's pocket.
- There was real text written for the instructions on the zero-gravity toilet that Floyd uses en route to the Moon. You can read them for yourself at IMDB's page about 2001 trivia.
- Supposedly when the screen says "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite" you can listen to "Echoes" from Pink Floyd's "Meddle" album and it perfectly syncs-up with the stargate sequence (much the same way that the band's "Dark Side of the Moon" album can be played alongside The Wizard of Oz).
- During one screening during its initial run, the image of Bowman reborn as the Starchild at the end of the movie caused one theater-goer to run wildly toward the screen screaming "IT'S GOD!! IT'S GOD!!"

And finally, Arthur C. Clarke no doubt put it best when describing 2001: A Space Odyssey: "If you understand 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered."

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The Polar Express review

Every ten years or so Robert Zemeckis comes out of hiding and does something that makes you go "Wow!" In 1985 it was the first Back to the Future flick, followed up nine years later by Forrest Gump (maybe one of the most perfect movies ever). So what's Zemeckis got to show us in 2004, especially now that he's re-teamed up with Tom Hanks? Well, it depends...

There are two ways to watch The Polar Express: as a wide-eyed seven-year old kid or as a rationale and "wiser" adult, and the choice is going to shape how you feel when you walk away from the theater. If you don't want to be set up for potential letdown, go in as the kid. Or at least – at risk of giving away the theme of the movie – have a little faith.

The Polar Express is a visual feast and assault on the senses that shreds the envelope that used to hold everything possible with computer-generated animation. It also breaks new ground on how the virtual camera is used. In that respect it's sorta the CGI-equivalent to Citizen Kane, when Orson Welles pioneered striking new camera angles that conveyed the story as much as the actual acting did. I know that juxtaposition of Zemeckis with Welles is going to blow some people’s minds, but I'm serious: there are things in The Polar Express that to the best of my knowledge haven’t been done before in terms of computer cinematography.

But the strength of that was likely an unintended byproduct of the REAL achievement: the ultra-photo-realistic computer rendering. Tom Hanks plays six different characters in The Polar Express, having to endure countless hours of acting before motion-capture cameras with dozens of tiny computer-trackable balls glued to his face to get every nuance of his expressions. Intellectually I knew that but when faced with the actual experience: that was Tom Hanks – the REAL Tom Hanks – onscreen, not a digital doppleganger. It sure as heck doesn't look fake. Very little does look synthetic: at the very least something or a person (the main girl character easily comes to mind 'cuz her face seemed almost fish-frozen at times, like they couldn't get her expressions to work quite right) is only minimally artificial... but the onslaught of vividness around those instances make them pretty forgivable. See the kid at the beginning of the movie? Try and believe that he's NOT a real boy. Sure fooled the heck out of my wife and her parents when we saw the movie two days ago.

All of these and more makes The Polar Express work as I believe Zemeckis intended it to be: a living, breathing illustrated children's storybook (a living, breathing adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg's original book, anyway). To that end it succeeds wildly, and I tend to believe that in years to come this will be a classic Christmas movie. The real problem comes in when you try to enjoy this movie on the level of most adults and in that respect, it's a little lacking of things. The plot could do with some beefing-up and there is very little in the way of character development: we aren't even told the names of the boy who first gets on the train or of the girl he befriends (voiced by Nona Gaye from The Matrix sequels). It would have been nice to know something a little more about the train and its crew (including two roles – Smokey and Steamer – that were voiced by Michael Jeter just before he passed away) and without that the whole enterprise seems too surreal: when you think about it for awhile the Polar Express seems like a "train of damned souls" from some 1950s EC Comics book.

When the train arrives at the North Pole we are treated to a vast megalopolis of elven bureaucracy... but there was something missing from its personality a bit, like instead of the focus being on Christmas it's on Santa Claus. That was kinda creepy also: watching millions of elves rallying to fix their gaze on Santa was too much like Triumph of the Will with a Perry Como soundtrack. Still, it was pretty fun to discover how it is that Santa knows who is naughty and nice, with a system that would have made George Orwell beam with pride.

But for all the things that could be said about what it's wanting of, The Polar Express more than makes up for it in utter spell-binding awe. I'd love to see this in full glory on an IMAX screen someday. But even if you can't, The Polar Express is worth the gas and ticket money to check out this holiday season. And don't worry about some of the more negative reviews that have been floating around: you can hear the bell, even if they cannot.

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Coming Soon: The civil war of American Christianity

This is the last post I intend to make for this weekend, at least 'til tomorrow night when a full review of The Polar Express should appear here. My mind has been too fixated on the Serious the past few weeks: it needs some time bathing in the Silly. Apart from church and quality time with my lovely spousal overunit, the rest of this weekend is devoted toward reading some good comic books (speaking of which, the last few issues of "Amazing Spider-Man" are something I'd love to touch upon soon) and playing Star Wars Galaxies... which has become a WAY heckuva lot more fun since the space expansion was added a few weeks ago. I'm now flying my own personal Star Wars character around the galaxy in a luxury space-yacht that I christened the "Not For Hire": first person who can tell me where exactly that name comes from gets a Gmail account all their very own. Send your answer here.

But before tuning out completely from more sober affairs, I'm going to posit the following notion for consideration, 'cuz it's one that's grown pretty apparent from this side of things...

There is now a schism within Christianity in America. It is steadily becoming more perceivable that two distinct factions are developing and each of us that profess faith in Christ, whether we realize it or not, will have to choose which of the two sides it is that the heart's desires will find fulfillment. But the difference will become so great that it will be impossible for both sides to enjoy concourse and communion between them. One way or the other, we're going to have to measure and consider which it will be that we are compelled to serve more. And though I doubt that it will entail any violent repercussions, there will arise conflict enough to impact most of our society in more ways than I care to think about at this late hour.

I'll elaborate on this again, probably sometime this week. But if you want a hint as to what I'm talking about: one side prays that our desires will be met, while the other merely prays that "Thy will be done".

More on this later. Now, go to bed!

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