Viraj's Weblog

Today I got to see an advance screening of The Illusionist with a discussion with the director afterwards. This movie stars Ed Norton and Paul Giamatti, both incredible actors. The movie was brilliant and I loved it. The music was by Philip Glass, who is an amazing composer. I love every movie he does music for because the music really becomes the star of such movies. Our screening was a DVD projected on a wall, and I definitely would like to catch this in the theatres. The scenes are beautifully done.

This movie is about, well, illusions. Norton plays a magician whose acts become very controversial for his time. You can never tell whether Norton has supernatural powers or not, and as the director confirmed afterwards, this is an important theme of the movie. We may witness events that challenge our reason, that make us wonder, could the illusion be real? How does such a conflict with our mind manifest itself, how does it change our behavior and reactions? It's almost like such events trigger the primitive instinct in us, the embrace of that which is unknowable.

Very interesting story on car anti-theft devices and the lovely insurance companies. This quote boggled me:

I went to see Montes at his custom motor-cycle shop about a half hour south of San Francisco and asked him how someone could have stolen my car. He just laughed. “If I want to take your Civic, I’ll do it in 10 seconds,” he said. Then he confirmed Hyser’s story. The mythical Honda override exists: It’s a series of presses and pulls of the emergency brake. Each car, it seems, has a unique override code, which correlates to the VIN.

“You want to get yours?” Montes asked.

Sure, I said.

He called an acquaintance who worked at a Honda dealership. I listened, awestruck, as Montes fed the guy a barely credible story about a cousin who had dropped his keys down a sewer. The dealership employee was at home but evidently could access the Honda database online. I gave Honky’s VIN to Montes, who passed it along to his friend. We soon had the prescribed sequence of pulls, which I scribbled down in my notebook.

I walked outside and approached Honky. The door lock would have been easy – a thief would have used a jiggle key, and a stranded motorist would have had a locksmith cut a fresh one. I just wrapped the grip of my key in tinfoil to jam the transponder. The key still fit, but it no longer started the car.

Then I grabbed the emergency brake handle between the front seats and performed the specific series of pumps, interspersed with rotations of the ignition between the On and Start positions. After my second attempt, Honky’s hybrid engine awoke with its customary whisper.

I had just jacked my own car.

Yeah that's right, my civic is jackable. And all it takes is a phone call!