It seems the British Judge who recently ruled that author Dan Brown did not plagarize portions of his mega-hit book, Da Vinci Code, decied to have a little fun of his own. The Times of London is on the case:

In another twist to the publishing phenomenon, it was disclosed yesterday that the judge in the recent plagiarism court case included a coded message in his written judgment.

Contained within certain words, Mr Justice Peter Smith wrote certain letters in bold italic. On first inspection, there seems to be no pattern or reason why the letters are chosen and they could be easily viewed as a typographical errors. But Dan Tench, an observant solicitor at the London-based law firm Olswang, thought otherwise. “We’re not sure yet what it means, but we’re working on it,” he said.

Half of Britain is spending their evening piecing together the message. So we’ll leave the deciphering to the decendants of Blechly Park and raise our pint in a toast to Mr. Justice Peter Smith. Outstanding, sir!

Jim: Okay, halfway relevant confession time: I absolutely despise The Da Vinci Code. Not because it’s a bad airport thriller novel, but for the airs that it puts on of “blowing the lid off the hidden truth”! And, of course, the roughly eighty bazillion rip-off novels taking up space in bookstores. Ironically, I love all of the elements of TDVC - secret brotherhoods, lethal and menacing henchmen, exotic locations and a race around the globe for long-lost treasure with mystical/religious significance. (The Raiders of the Lost Ark formula.) But now every thriller has to have meaning, and revealed moral and philosophical truths, blah blah blah.

Also, if you read the comments left on the book’s Amazon page… it’s just depressing the number of people who read this novel - a work of fiction - and completely buy into its premise. To spoil it for the one person who hadn’t heard it yet, TDVC posits that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were an item and had kids and there was a holy bloodline running around long after they departed this earth, and the Vatican has been covering up this shocking revelation for centuries.

What you believe religiously is up to you. But please, please, please don’t change your view of God, Jesus, the Church, Christianity, etc. based on a thriller novel. (In which the Vatican is ruthless and has stunningly lethal and effective hitmen, I add. Right. We can’t weed out pedophiles, but we can whack somebody like Tony Soprano or Ernst Blofeld when we need to. Sure.)

Just a smidgen of legwork and historical research will show you that Dan Brown took a lot of liberties with his portrayal of early church history, and that more facts are aligned against his theory than in favor of it.

Marshall: Whoah. Jim went all serious on me. Not to worry, though. I’m bringing it all back to my new favorite judge.

Seems someone cracked the judge’s code.

And it’s a message about World War I era Admiral Jackie Fisher, the Royal Navy’s visionary leader who came up with the idea for Deadnought battleships and single-handedly transformed naval warfare. Like the judge, I too am a bit of a naval buff, and the fact that he chose to celebrate Admiral Fisher and make a few headlines along the way, absolutely makes my day.