[Hey, it’s almost summer, so how about some diversion from the everyday grind of science?]
Apparently, Mr Justice Peter Smith of London’s High Court embedded his very own code in his judgment in the Da Vinci Code plagiarism case. All puzzle fanatics should download the pdf of the judgment and follow the clues reported in the NY Times article.
[Update: The code has been broken.]
On the plagiarism issue:
One thing about most of the books published in English speaking Countries as well as in many industrial nations, where the book market is both viable and profitable, is that they are not real literature. They are part of the so called Pop market, the show business, and as such are mere products for consumption. Their authors have no serious literary ambitions and no aesthetic or Philosophical concern.
Indeed, if we take one single best-seller author, we see the same story re-told again and again in all books by him or her. To make things worse, we also see examples of the same story re-told again and again by different individuals, reflecting the absolute lack of originality.
The idea of inventing new versions about the lives of Jesus and of the Saints for making novels has been fashionable since the Nazis tried to inculcate the version that Mary was impregnated by a Roman soldier, called Panthera. The Nazis themselves probably took this story from an ancient writer, Celsus, again an instance of lack of originality.
May 2nd, 2006, at 5:57 am #