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According to Le Monde, representatives of the Catholic church in England are demanding the film of The Da Vinci Code carry a health warning
A group in Ireland are doing similar
The only report I can find in the mainland UK news is here in The Scotsman, and even then it's 2/3 of the way down an article which states that a significant proportion of people who've read the book actually believe the conspiracy theory as set forth in the book. Which on reflection is indeed worrying and would be more surprising if it weren't for the Bad Science I see people falling for every day.
I still don't see what the fuss is about - it's not like it's a particularly new conspiracy theory. Holy Blood and the Holy Grail came out in the 1980s, and even though it may have been the first work to put all the elements of the story together (which I doubt), none of the individual elements were new then, some of them hundreds of years old. I even have vague memories of reading a crappy thriller when I was about 12 revolving around Jesus having had children. The only difference is that The Da Vinci Code is more popular. And oh so badly written. Which makes me sad, because if you like that sort of thing, there's many better similar books out there that just don't get the recognition.
I was reading Le Monde because I'm off to France in less than 3 weeks & I haven't even looked at anything in French since the last time I was there. I like LeMonde - they use very proper textbook French that's easy to read. And it provides good coverage of stuff the Anglo world's media often doesn't. For instance, there's been a cholera epidemic going on in Angola for three months now. This is the first I've heard of it, and I read the Africa section of the BBC almost every day. At times like this I miss French CBC (I have cable, but zero foreign-language channels. How different from growing up in the sticks, having 3 channels one of which was in French). I suppose I could listen to French CBC radio but having images helps a lot.
I got out my French textbooks from university last night. I was clearly more advanced than I recall.
A group in Ireland are doing similar
The only report I can find in the mainland UK news is here in The Scotsman, and even then it's 2/3 of the way down an article which states that a significant proportion of people who've read the book actually believe the conspiracy theory as set forth in the book. Which on reflection is indeed worrying and would be more surprising if it weren't for the Bad Science I see people falling for every day.
I still don't see what the fuss is about - it's not like it's a particularly new conspiracy theory. Holy Blood and the Holy Grail came out in the 1980s, and even though it may have been the first work to put all the elements of the story together (which I doubt), none of the individual elements were new then, some of them hundreds of years old. I even have vague memories of reading a crappy thriller when I was about 12 revolving around Jesus having had children. The only difference is that The Da Vinci Code is more popular. And oh so badly written. Which makes me sad, because if you like that sort of thing, there's many better similar books out there that just don't get the recognition.
I was reading Le Monde because I'm off to France in less than 3 weeks & I haven't even looked at anything in French since the last time I was there. I like LeMonde - they use very proper textbook French that's easy to read. And it provides good coverage of stuff the Anglo world's media often doesn't. For instance, there's been a cholera epidemic going on in Angola for three months now. This is the first I've heard of it, and I read the Africa section of the BBC almost every day. At times like this I miss French CBC (I have cable, but zero foreign-language channels. How different from growing up in the sticks, having 3 channels one of which was in French). I suppose I could listen to French CBC radio but having images helps a lot.
I got out my French textbooks from university last night. I was clearly more advanced than I recall.
