A father and son team have deciphered a 600-year-old code hidden in a church featured in The Da Vinci Code. "The music has been frozen in time by symbolism. It was only a matter of time before the symbolism began to thaw out and begin to make sense to scientific and musical perception." Whoa, that's bad enough to be worthy of Dan Brown himself.
Not a joke: James Cameron claims to have discovered the burial cave of Jesus and his family. Includes the obligatory Da Vinci Code reference. "The [burial] boxes bear the names: Yeshua [Jesus] bar Yosef [son of Joseph]; Maria [the Latin version of Miriam, which is the English Mary]; Matia [the Hebrew equivalent of Matthew, a name common in the lineage of both Mary and Joseph]; Yose [the Gospel of Mark refers to Yose as a brother of Jesus]; Yehuda bar Yeshua, or Judah, son of Jesus; and in Greek, Mariamne e mara, meaning 'Mariamne, known as the master.' According to Harvard professor Francois Bovon, interviewed in the film, Mariamne was Mary Magdalene's real name."
Reading at a 4th grade level
We're leaving tomorrow for a trip of the relaxing sort, so I went to the bookstore this morning to collect some reading material. I had decided not to read anything that felt too much like work or that I had to think about. What I needed was fiction like television: passive but engaging. Having procured a paperback copy of The Da Vinci Code in the B section, I wandered over to the Rs. Robbins. Roth. Rowlandson. Salinger. Hmm. No luck in the Teen section either. Finally I hit paydirt in the Kids section: the 1085 pages of the first three years of Harry Potter's adventures at Hogwarts.
Perfect.
So, I'll see you in a week. Posting will be light until then, but feel free to enjoy some random posts from the last 9 years of kottke.org, peruse the Best Links of 2006 list again, look at some of my photos from Anguilla in 2004, dream of NYC in the snow (will it ever again?), imagine if Manhattan visited other US cities, or visit the many fine sites in the sidebar of the front page. I'll send you a postcard when I get back.
