BLOG NO-005

DA VINCI CODE 20-20

2008-04-06T01:54:00.006-07:00

The mystical teachings of the Kabbala drew heavily on anagrams—rearranging the letters of Hebrew words to derive new meanings. French kings throughout the Renaissance were so convinced that anagrams held magic power that they appointed royal anagrammatists to help them make better decisions by analyzing words in important documents. The Romans actually referred to the study of anagrams as ars magna—"the great art."

Langdon looked up at Sophie, locking eyes with her now. "Your grandfather's meaning was right in front of us all along, and he left us more than enough clues to see it."

Without another word, Langdon pulled a pen from his jacket pocket and rearranged the letters in each line.

O, Draconian devil! Oh, lame saint!

was a perfect anagram of...

Leonardo da Vinci! The Mona Lisa!

FOR CHAPTER 21 CLICK HERE

DA VINCI CODE 20-18

2008-04-06T01:54:00.005-07:00

O, Draconian devil!

Oh, lame saint!

What about the numbers?

"The scrambled Fibonacci sequence is a clue," Langdon said, taking the printout. "The numbers are a hint as to how to decipher the rest of the message. He wrote the sequence out of order to tell us to apply the same concept to the text. O, Draconian devil? Oh, lame saint? Those lines mean nothing.

They are simply letters written out of order."

Sophie needed only an instant to process Langdon's implication, and it seemed laughably simple. "You think this message is... une anagramme?" She stared at him. "Like a word jumble from a newspaper?"

Langdon could see the skepticism on Sophie's face and certainly understood. Few people realized that anagrams, despite being a trite modern amusement, had a rich history of sacred symbolism.

DA VINCI CODE 20-16

2008-04-06T01:54:00.003-07:00

There in the bowels of the Louvre... with images of PHI and Da Vinci swirling through his mind, Robert Langdon suddenly and unexpectedly deciphered Saunière's code.

"O, Draconian devil!" he said. "Oh, lame saint! It's the simplest kind of code!"

Sophie was stopped on the stairs below him, staring up in confusion. A code? She had been pondering the words all night and had not seen a code. Especially a simple one.

"You said it yourself." Langdon's voice reverberated with excitement. "Fibonacci numbers only have meaning in their proper order. Otherwise they're mathematical gibberish."

Sophie had no idea what he was talking about. The Fibonacci numbers? She was certain they had been intended as nothing more than a means to get the Cryptography Department involved tonight. They have another purpose? She plunged her hand into her pocket and pulled out the printout, studying her grandfather's message again.

13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5

DA VINCI CODE 20-14

2008-04-06T01:54:00.001-07:00

"One note, folks. We've only touched on Da Vinci today, but we'll be seeing a lot more of him this semester. Leonardo was a well-documented devotee of the ancient ways of the goddess. Tomorrow, I'll show you his fresco The Last Supper, which is one of the most astonishing tributes to the sacred feminine you will ever see."

"You're kidding, right?" somebody said. "I thought The Last Supper was about Jesus!"

Langdon winked. "There are symbols hidden in places you would never imagine."

"Come on," Sophie whispered. "What's wrong? We're almost there. Hurry!"

Langdon glanced up, feeling himself return from faraway thoughts. He realized he was standing at a dead stop on the stairs, paralyzed by sudden revelation.

O, Draconian devil! Oh, lame saint!

Sophie was looking back at him.

It can't be that simple, Langdon thought.

But he knew of course that it was.

DA VINCI CODE 20-12

2008-04-06T01:53:00.005-07:00

"In closing," Langdon said, walking to the chalkboard, "we return to symbols" He drew five intersecting lines that formed a five-pointed star. "This symbol is one of the most powerful images you will see this term. Formally known as a pentagram—or pentacle, as the ancients called it—this symbol is considered both divine and magical by many cultures. Can anyone tell me why that might be?"

Stettner, the math major, raised his hand. "Because if you draw a pentagram, the lines automatically divide themselves into segments according to the Divine Proportion."

Langdon gave the kid a proud nod. "Nice job. Yes, the ratios of line segments in a pentacle all equal PHI, making this symbol the ultimate expression of the Divine Proportion. For this reason, the five-pointed star has always been the symbol for beauty and perfection associated with the goddess and the sacred feminine."

The girls in class beamed.

DA VINCI CODE 20-11

2008-04-06T01:53:00.003-07:00

block for the world, and they worshipped Nature because of that. And one can understand why. God's hand is evident in Nature, and even to this day there exist pagan, Mother Earth-revering religions. Many of us celebrate nature the way the pagans did, and don't even know it. May Day is a perfect example, the celebration of spring... the earth coming back to life to produce her bounty. The mysterious magic inherent in the Divine Proportion was written at the beginning of time. Man is simply playing by Nature's rules, and because art is man's attempt to imitate the beauty of the Creator's hand, you can imagine we might be seeing a lot of instances of the Divine Proportion in art this semester."

Over the next half hour, Langdon showed them slides of artwork by Michelangelo, Albrecht Dürer, Da Vinci, and many others, demonstrating each artist's intentional and rigorous adherence to the Divine Proportion in the layout of his compositions. Langdon unveiled PHI in the architectural dimensions of the Greek Parthenon, the pyramids of Egypt, and even the United Nations Building in New York. PHI appeared in the organizational structures of Mozart's sonatas, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, as well as the works of Bartók, Debussy, and Schubert. The number PHI, Langdon told them, was even used by Stradivarius to calculate the exact placement of the f-holes in the construction of his famous violins.

DA VINCI 20-10

2008-04-06T01:53:00.001-07:00

A couple of football players snickered.

"Not just you insecure jocks," Langdon prompted. "All of you. Guys and girls. Try it. Measure the distance from the tip of your head to the floor. Then divide that by the distance from your belly button to the floor. Guess what number you get."

"Not PHI!" one of the jocks blurted out in disbelief.

"Yes, PHI," Langdon replied. "One-point-six-one-eight. Want another example? Measure the distance from your shoulder to your fingertips, and then divide it by the distance from your elbow to your fingertips. PHI again. Another? Hip to floor divided by knee to floor. PHI again. Finger joints. Toes. Spinal divisions. PHI. PHI. PHI. My friends, each of you is a walking tribute to the Divine Proportion."

Even in the darkness, Langdon could see they were all astounded. He felt a familiar warmth inside. This is why he taught. "My friends, as you can see, the chaos of the world has an underlying order. When the ancients discovered PHI, they were certain they had stumbled across God's building.

DA VINCICODE 20-9

2008-04-06T01:52:00.006-07:00

"Bingo." Langdon began racing through slides now—spiraled pinecone petals, leaf arrangement on plant stalks, insect segmentation—all displaying astonishing obedience to the Divine Proportion.

"This is amazing!" someone cried out.

"Yeah," someone else said, "but what does it have to do with art?"

"Aha!" Langdon said. "Glad you asked." He pulled up another slide—a pale yellow parchment displaying Leonardo da Vinci's famous male nude—The Vitruvian Man—named for Marcus Vitruvius, the brilliant Roman architect who praised the Divine Proportion in his text De Architectura.

"Nobody understood better than Da Vinci the divine structure of the human body. Da Vinci actually exhumed corpses to measure the exact proportions of human bone structure. He was the first to show that the human body is literally made of building blocks whose proportional ratios always equal PHI."

Everyone in class gave him a dubious look.

"Don't believe me?" Langdon challenged. "Next time you're in the shower, take a tape measure."

DA VINCI CODE 20-7

2008-04-06T01:52:00.005-07:00

"You do?"

"Yup. PHI."

The girl gaped. "NO WAY!"

"Way!" Langdon fired back, smiling as he projected a slide of a spiral seashell. "Recognize this?"

"It's a nautilus," the bio major said. "A cephalopod mollusk that pumps gas into its chambered shell to adjust its buoyancy."

"Correct. And can you guess what the ratio is of each spiral's diameter to the next?"

The girl looked uncertain as she eyed the concentric arcs of the nautilus spiral.

Langdon nodded. "PHI. The Divine Proportion. One-point-six-one-eight to one."

The girl looked amazed.

Langdon advanced to the next slide—a close-up of a sunflower's seed head. "Sunflower seeds grow in opposing spirals. Can you guess the ratio of each rotation's diameter to the next?"

"PHI?" everyone said.

DA VINCI 20-7

2008-04-06T01:52:00.003-07:00

As Langdon loaded his slide projector, he explained that the number PHI was derived from the Fibonacci sequence—a progression famous not only because the sum of adjacent terms equaled the next term, but because the quotients of adjacent terms possessed the astonishing property of approaching the number 1.618—PHI!

Despite PHI's seemingly mystical mathematical origins, Langdon explained, the truly mind-boggling aspect of PHI was its role as a fundamental building block in nature. Plants, animals, and even human beings all possessed dimensional properties that adhered with eerie exactitude to the ratio of PHI to 1.

"PHI's ubiquity in nature," Langdon said, killing the lights, "clearly exceeds coincidence, and so the ancients assumed the number PHI must have been preordained by the Creator of the universe. Early scientists heralded one-point-six-one-eight as the Divine Proportion."

"Hold on," said a young woman in the front row. "I'm a bio major and I've never seen this Divine Proportion in nature."

"No?" Langdon grinned. "Ever study the relationship between females and males in a honeybee community?"

"Sure. The female bees always outnumber the male bees."

"Correct. And did you know that if you divide the number of female bees by the number of male bees in any beehive in the world, you always get the same number?"

DA VINCI 20-6

2008-04-06T01:52:00.001-07:00

He felt himself suddenly reeling back to Harvard, standing in front of his "Symbolism in Art" class, writing his favorite number on the chalkboard.

1.618

Langdon turned to face his sea of eager students. "Who can tell me what this number is?"

A long-legged math major in back raised his hand. "That's the number PHI." He pronounced it fee.

"Nice job, Stettner," Langdon said. "Everyone, meet PHI."

"Not to be confused with PI," Stettner added, grinning. "As we mathematicians like to say: PHI is one H of a lot cooler than PI!"

Langdon laughed, but nobody else seemed to get the joke.

Stettner slumped.

"This number PHI," Langdon continued, "one-point-six-one-eight, is a very important number in art. Who can tell me why?"

Stettner tried to redeem himself. "Because it's so pretty?"

Everyone laughed.

"Actually," Langdon said, "Stettner's right again. PHI is generally considered the most beautiful number in the universe."

The laughter abruptly stopped, and Stettner gloated

DA VINCI CODE 20-5

2008-04-06T01:51:00.006-07:00

"Your grandfather," Langdon said, hurrying behind her, "when he told you about the pentacle, did he mention goddess worship or any resentment of the Catholic Church?"

Sophie shook her head. "I was more interested in the mathematics of it—the Divine Proportion, PHI, Fibonacci sequences, that sort of thing."

Langdon was surprised. "Your grandfather taught you about the number PHI?"

"Of course. The Divine Proportion." Her expression turned sheepish. "In fact, he used to joke that I was half divine... you know, because of the letters in my name."

Langdon considered it a moment and then groaned.

s-o-PHI-e.

Still descending, Langdon refocused on PHI. He was starting to realize that Saunière's clues were even more consistent than he had first imagined.

Da Vinci... Fibonacci numbers... the pentacle.

Incredibly, all of these things were connected by a single concept so fundamental to art history that Langdon often spent several class periods on the topic.

PHI.

DA VINCI 20--4

2008-04-06T01:51:00.005-07:00

"Yes. I didn't get a chance to tell you, but the pentacle was a special symbol between my grandfather and me when I was growing up. We used to play Tarot cards for fun, and my indicator card always turned out to be from the suit of pentacles. I'm sure he stacked the deck, but pentacles got to be our little joke."

Langdon felt a chill. They played Tarot? The medieval Italian card game was so replete with hidden heretical symbolism that Langdon had dedicated an entire chapter in his new manuscript to the Tarot. The game's twenty-two cards bore names like The Female Pope, The Empress, and The Star. Originally, Tarot had been devised as a secret means to pass along ideologies banned by the Church. Now, Tarot's mystical qualities were passed on by modern fortune-tellers.

The Tarot indicator suit for feminine divinity is pentacles, Langdon thought, realizing that if Saunière had been stacking his granddaughter's deck for fun, pentacles was an apropos inside joke.

They arrived at the emergency stairwell, and Sophie carefully pulled open the door. No alarm sounded. Only the doors to the outside were wired. Sophie led Langdon down a tight set of switchback stairs toward the ground level, picking up speed as they went.

DA VINCI CODE 20-3

2008-04-06T01:51:00.003-07:00

"I've been thinking about the numbers all night. Sums, quotients, products. I don't see anything. Mathematically, they're arranged at random. Cryptographic gibberish."

"And yet they're all part of the Fibonacci sequence. That can't be coincidence."

"It's not. Using Fibonacci numbers was my grandfather's way of waving another flag at me—like writing the message in English, or arranging himself like my favorite piece of art, or drawing a pentacle on himself. All of it was to catch my attention."

"The pentacle has meaning to you?"

DA VINCI 20-2

2008-04-06T01:51:00.001-07:00

"And his phone call to me this afternoon," Sophie added. "He said he had to tell me something. I'm certain his message at the Louvre was his final effort to tell me something important, something he thought you could help me understand."

Langdon frowned. O, Draconian devil! Oh, lame saint.! He wished he could comprehend the message, both for Sophie's well-being and for his own. Things had definitely gotten worse since he first laid eyes on the cryptic words. His fake leap out the bathroom window was not going to help Langdon's popularity with Fache one bit. Somehow he doubted the captain of the French police would see the humor in chasing down and arresting a bar of soap.

"The doorway isn't much farther," Sophie said.

"Do you think there's a possibility that the numbers in your grandfather's message hold the key to understanding the other lines?" Langdon had once worked on a series of Baconian manuscripts that contained epigraphical ciphers in which certain lines of code were clues as to how to decipher the

other lines.

DA VINCI 20-1

2008-04-06T01:49:00.000-07:00

Emerging from the shadows, Langdon and Sophie moved stealthily up the deserted Grand Gallery corridor toward the emergency exit stairwell.

As he moved, Langdon felt like he was trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle in the dark. The newest aspect of this mystery was a deeply troubling one: The captain of the Judicial Police is trying to frame me for murder

"Do you think," he whispered, "that maybe Fache wrote that message on the floor?"

Sophie didn't even turn. "Impossible."

Langdon wasn't so sure. "He seems pretty intent on making me look guilty. Maybe he thought writing my name on the floor would help his case?"

"The Fibonacci sequence? The P.S.? All the Da Vinci and goddess symbolism? That had to be my grandfather."

Langdon knew she was right. The symbolism of the clues meshed too perfectly—the pentacle, The Vitruvian Man, Da Vinci, the goddess, and even the Fibonacci sequence. A coherent symbolic set, as iconographers would call it. All inextricably tied.

DA VINCI CODE 6-16

2008-02-23T21:28:00.001-08:00

Fache's eyes shone white. "That, monsieur, is precisely the question you are here to answer."

Not far away, inside Saunière's office, Lieutenant Collet had returned to the Louvre and was huddled over an audio console set up on the curator's enormous desk. With the exception of the eerie, robot-like doll of a medieval knight that seemed to be staring at him from the corner of Saunière's desk, Collet was comfortable. He adjusted his AKG headphones and checked the input levels on the hard-disk recording system. All systems were go. The microphones were functioning flawlessly, and the audio feed was crystal clear.

Le moment de vérité, he mused.

Smiling, he closed his eyes and settled in to enjoy the rest of the conversation now being taped inside the Grand Gallery.

FOR CHAPTER 7 CLICK HERE .

DA VINCI CODE 6-16

2008-02-23T21:27:00.004-08:00

As Langdon stood up, Fache walked over to the spotlight and turned it off. The gallery plunged into sudden darkness.

Momentarily blinded, Langdon felt a rising uncertainty. Fache's silhouette appeared, illuminated in bright purple. He approached carrying a portable light source, which shrouded him in a violet haze.

"As you may know," Fache said, his eyes luminescing in the violet glow, "police use black-light illumination to search crime scenes for blood and other forensic evidence. So you can imagine our surprise..." Abruptly, he pointed the light down at the corpse.

Langdon looked down and jumped back in shock.

His heart pounded as he took in the bizarre sight now glowing before him on the parquet floor. Scrawled in luminescent handwriting, the curator's final words glowed purple beside his corpse. As Langdon stared at the shimmering text, he felt the fog that had surrounded this entire night growing thicker.

Langdon read the message again and looked up at Fache. "What the hell does this mean!"

DA VINCI CODE 6-15

2008-02-23T21:27:00.003-08:00

"Saunière was holding it when we found him," Fache said, leaving Langdon and moving several yards to a portable table covered with investigation tools, cables, and assorted electronic gear. "As I told you," he said, rummaging around the table, "we have touched nothing. Are you familiar with this kind of pen?"

Langdon knelt down farther to see the pen's label.

STYLO DE LUMIERE NOIRE.

He glanced up in surprise.

The black-light pen or watermark stylus was a specialized felt-tipped marker originally designed by museums, restorers, and forgery police to place invisible marks on items. The stylus wrote in a noncorrosive, alcohol-based fluorescent ink that was visible only under black light. Nowadays, museum maintenance staffs carried these markers on their daily rounds to place invisible "tick marks" on the frames of paintings that needed restoration.

DA VINCI CODE 6-14

2008-02-23T21:27:00.001-08:00

"Mr. Fache, I obviously can't tell you why Mr. Saunière drew that symbol on himself or placed himself in this way, but I can tell you that a man like Jacques Saunière would consider the pentacle a sign of the female deity. The correlation between this symbol and the sacred feminine is widely known by art historians and symbologists."

"Fine. And the use of his own blood as ink?"

"Obviously he had nothing else to write with."

Fache was silent a moment. "Actually, I believe he used blood such that the police would follow certain forensic procedures."

"I'm sorry?"

"Look at his left hand."

Langdon's eyes traced the length of the curator's pale arm to his left hand but saw nothing. Uncertain, he circled the corpse and crouched down, now noting with surprise that the curator was clutching a large, felt-tipped marker.

DA VINCI CODE 6-14

2008-02-23T21:26:00.003-08:00

Fache's expression clouded. "I beg your pardon?"

"Replication. Repeating a symbol is the simplest way to strengthen its meaning. Jacques Saunière positioned himself in the shape of a five-pointed star." If one pentacle is good, two is better.

Fache's eyes followed the five points of Saunière's arms, legs, and head as he again ran a hand across his slick hair. "Interesting analysis." He paused. "And the nudity?" He grumbled as he spoke the word, sounding repulsed by the sight of an aging male body. "Why did he remove his clothing?"

Damned good question, Langdon thought. He'd been wondering the same thing ever since he first saw the Polaroid. His best guess was that a naked human form was yet another endorsement of Venus—the goddess of human sexuality. Although modern culture had erased much of Venus's association with the male/female physical union, a sharp etymological eye could still spot a vestige of Venus's original meaning in the word "venereal." Langdon decided not to go there.

DA VINCI CODE 6-13

2008-02-23T21:26:00.001-08:00

"Go on."

"This is very common in times of turmoil," Langdon continued. "A newly emerging power will

take over the existing symbols and degrade them over time in an attempt to erase their meaning. In the battle between the pagan symbols and Christian symbols, the pagans lost; Poseidon's trident became the devil's pitchfork, the wise crone's pointed hat became the symbol of a witch, and Venus's pentacle became a sign of the devil." Langdon paused. "Unfortunately, the United States military has also perverted the pentacle; it's now our foremost symbol of war. We paint it on all our fighter jets and hang it on the shoulders of all our generals." So much for the goddess of love and beauty.

"Interesting." Fache nodded toward the spread-eagle corpse. "And the positioning of the body? What do you make of that?"

Langdon shrugged. "The position simply reinforces the reference to the pentacle and sacred feminine."

DA VINCI CODE 6-11

2008-02-23T21:25:00.004-08:00

"Mr. Langdon," Fache said abruptly. "Obviously, the pentacle must also relate to the devil. Your American horror movies make that point clearly."

Langdon frowned. Thank you, Hollywood. The five-pointed star was now a virtual cliché in Satanic serial killer movies, usually scrawled on the wall of some Satanist's apartment along with other alleged demonic symbology. Langdon was always frustrated when he saw the symbol in this context; the pentacle's true origins were actually quite godly.

"I assure you," Langdon said, "despite what you see in the movies, the pentacle's demonic interpretation is historically inaccurate. The original feminine meaning is correct, but the symbolism of the pentacle has been distorted over the millennia. In this case, through bloodshed."

"I'm not sure I follow."

Langdon glanced at Fache's crucifix, uncertain how to phrase his next point. "The Church, sir. Symbols are very resilient, but the pentacle was altered by the early Roman Catholic Church. As part of the Vatican's campaign to eradicate pagan religions and convert the masses to Christianity, the Church launched a smear campaign against the pagan gods and goddesses, recasting their divine symbols as evil."

DA VINCI CODE 6-10

2008-02-23T21:25:00.003-08:00

Langdon had to admit, it seemed odd. "In its most specific interpretation, the pentacle symbolizes Venus—the goddess of female sexual love and beauty."

Fache eyed the naked man, and grunted.

"Early religion was based on the divine order of Nature. The goddess Venus and the planet Venus were one and the same. The goddess had a place in the nighttime sky and was known by many names—Venus, the Eastern Star, Ishtar, Astarte—all of them powerful female concepts with ties to Nature and Mother Earth."

Fache looked more troubled now, as if he somehow preferred the idea of devil worship.

Langdon decided not to share the pentacle's most astonishing property—the graphic origin of its ties to Venus. As a young astronomy student, Langdon had been stunned to learn the planet Venus traced a perfect pentacle across the ecliptic sky every four years. So astonished were the ancients to observe this phenomenon, that Venus and her pentacle became symbols of perfection, beauty, and the cyclic qualities of sexual love. As a tribute to the magic of Venus, the Greeks used her four-year cycle to organize their Olympiads. Nowadays, few people realized that the four-year schedule of modern Olympic Games still followed the cycles of Venus. Even fewer people knew that the five-pointed star had almost become the official Olympic seal but was modified at the last moment—its five points exchanged for five intersecting rings to better reflect the games' spirit of inclusion and harmony.

DA VINCI CODE 6-9

2008-02-23T21:25:00.001-08:00

"Symbols carry different meanings in different settings," Langdon said. "Primarily, the pentacle is a pagan religious symbol."

Fache nodded. "Devil worship."

"No," Langdon corrected, immediately realizing his choice of vocabulary should have been clearer.

Nowadays, the term pagan had become almost synonymous with devil worship—a gross misconception. The word's roots actually reached back to the Latin paganus, meaning country-dwellers. "Pagans" were literally unindoctrinated country-folk who clung to the old, rural religions of Nature worship. In fact, so strong was the Church's fear of those who lived in the rural villes that the once innocuous word for "villager"—villain—came to mean a wicked soul.

"The pentacle," Langdon clarified, "is a pre-Christian symbol that relates to Nature worship. The ancients envisioned their world in two halves—masculine and feminine. Their gods and goddesses worked to keep a balance of power. Yin and yang. When male and female were balanced, there was harmony in the world. When they were unbalanced, there was chaos." Langdon motioned to Saunière's stomach. "This pentacle is representative of the female half of all things—a concept religious historians call the 'sacred feminine' or the 'divine goddess.' Saunière, of all people, would know this."

"Saunière drew a goddess symbol on his stomach?"

DA VINCI CODE 6-8

2008-02-23T21:24:00.004-08:00

Saunière's left index finger was also bloody, apparently having been dipped into the wound to create the most unsettling aspect of his own macabre deathbed; using his own blood as ink, and employing his own naked abdomen as a canvas, Saunière had drawn a simple symbol on his flesh—five straight lines that intersected to form a five-pointed star.

The pentacle.

The bloody star, centered on Saunière's navel, gave his corpse a distinctly ghoulish aura. The photo

Langdon had seen was chilling enough, but now, witnessing the scene in person, Langdon felt a deepening uneasiness.

He did this to himself.

"Mr. Langdon?" Fache's dark eyes settled on him again.

"It's a pentacle," Langdon offered, his voice feeling hollow in the huge space. "One of the oldest symbols on earth. Used over four thousand years before Christ."

"And what does it mean?"

Langdon always hesitated when he got this question. Telling someone what a symbol "meant" was like telling them how a song should make them feel—it was different for all people. A white Ku Klux Klan headpiece conjured images of hatred and racism in the United States, and yet the same costume carried a meaning of religious faith in Spain.

DA VINCI CODE 6-7

2008-02-23T21:24:00.003-08:00

"You saw the photograph," Fache said, "so this should be of no surprise."

Langdon felt a deep chill as they approached the body. Before him was one of the strangest images he had ever seen.

The pallid corpse of Jacques Saunière lay on the parquet floor exactly as it appeared in the photograph. As Langdon stood over the body and squinted in the harsh light, he reminded himself to his amazement that Saunière had spent his last minutes of life arranging his own body in this strange fashion.

Saunière looked remarkably fit for a man of his years... and all of his musculature was in plain view. He had stripped off every shred of clothing, placed it neatly on the floor, and laid down on his back in the center of the wide corridor, perfectly aligned with the long axis of the room. His arms and legs were sprawled outward in a wide spread eagle, like those of a child making a snow angel... or, perhaps more appropriately, like a man being drawn and quartered by some invisible force.

Just below Saunière's breastbone, a bloody smear marked the spot where the bullet had pierced his flesh. The wound had bled surprisingly little, leaving only a small pool of blackened blood.

DA VINCI CODE 6-5

2008-02-23T21:24:00.001-08:00

They continued walking briskly, yet Langdon still saw no corpse. "Jacques Saunière went this far?"

"Mr. Saunière suffered a bullet wound to his stomach. He died very slowly. Perhaps over fifteen or twenty minutes. He was obviously a man of great personal strength."

Langdon turned, appalled. "Security took fifteen minutes to get here?"

"Of course not. Louvre security responded immediately to the alarm and found the Grand Gallery sealed. Through the gate, they could hear someone moving around at the far end of the corridor, but they could not see who it was. They shouted, but they got no answer. Assuming it could only be a criminal, they followed protocol and called in the Judicial Police. We took up positions within fifteen minutes. When we arrived, we raised the barricade enough to slip underneath, and I sent a

dozen armed agents inside. They swept the length of the gallery to corner the intruder."

"And?"

"They found no one inside. Except..." He pointed farther down the hall. "Him."

Langdon lifted his gaze and followed Fache's outstretched finger. At first he thought Fache was pointing to a large marble statue in the middle of the hallway. As they continued, though, Langdon began to see past the statue. Thirty yards down the hall, a single spotlight on a portable pole stand shone down on the floor, creating a stark island of white light in the dark crimson gallery. In the center of the light, like an insect under a microscope, the corpse of the curator lay naked on the parquet floor.

DA VINCI CODE 6-4

2008-02-23T21:23:00.003-08:00

The muted crimson lighting unfortunately conjured memories of Langdon's last experience in noninvasive lighting in the Vatican Secret Archives. This was tonight's second unsettling parallel with his near-death in Rome. He flashed on Vittoria again. She had been absent from his dreams for months. Langdon could not believe Rome had been only a year ago; it felt like decades. Another life. His last correspondence from Vittoria had been in December—a postcard saying she was headed to the Java Sea to continue her research in entanglement physics... something about using satellites to track manta ray migrations. Langdon had never harbored delusions that a woman like Vittoria Vetra could have been happy living with him on a college campus, but their encounter in Rome had unlocked in him a longing he never imagined he could feel. His lifelong affinity for bachelorhood and the simple freedoms it allowed had been shaken somehow... replaced by an unexpected emptiness that seemed to have grown over the past year.

DA VINCI CODE 6-3

2008-02-23T21:23:00.001-08:00

Fache shook his head. "The security gate separated Saunière from his attacker. The killer was locked out there in the hallway and shot Saunière through this gate." Fache pointed toward an orange tag hanging from one of the bars on the gate under which they had just passed. "The PTS team found flashback residue from a gun. He fired through the bars. Saunière died in here alone."

Langdon pictured the photograph of Saunière's body. They said he did that to himself. Langdon looked out at the enormous corridor before them. "So where is his body?"

Fache straightened his cruciform tie clip and began to walk. "As you probably know, the Grand Gallery is quite long."

The exact length, if Langdon recalled correctly, was around fifteen hundred feet, the length of three Washington Monuments laid end to end. Equally breathtaking was the corridor's width, which easily could have accommodated a pair of side-by-side passenger trains. The center of the hallway was dotted by the occasional statue or colossal porcelain urn, which served as a tasteful divider and kept the flow of traffic moving down one wall and up the other.

Fache was silent now, striding briskly up the right side of the corridor with his gaze dead ahead. Langdon felt almost disrespectful to be racing past so many masterpieces without pausing for so much as a glance.

Not that I could see anything in this lighting, he thought.

DA VINCI CODE 6-2

2008-02-23T21:22:00.002-08:00

As Langdon's gaze began to trace the inlay, his eyes stopped short on an unexpected object lying on the floor just a few yards to his left, surrounded by police tape. He spun toward Fache. "Is that... a Caravaggio on the floor?"

Fache nodded without even looking.

The painting, Langdon guessed, was worth upward of two million dollars, and yet it was lying on the floor like a discarded poster. "What the devil is it doing on the floor!"

Fache glowered, clearly unmoved. "This is a crime scene, Mr. Langdon. We have touched nothing. That canvas was pulled from the wall by the curator. It was how he activated the security system."

Langdon looked back at the gate, trying to picture what had happened.

"The curator was attacked in his office, fled into the Grand Gallery, and activated the security gate by pulling that painting from the wall. The gate fell immediately, sealing off all access. This is the only door in or out of this gallery."

Langdon felt confused. "So the curator actually captured his attacker inside the Grand Gallery?"

DAVINCI CODE 6-1

2008-02-23T21:22:00.001-08:00

Having squeezed beneath the security gate, Robert Langdon now stood just inside the entrance to the Grand Gallery. He was staring into the mouth of a long, deep canyon. On either side of the gallery, stark walls rose thirty feet, evaporating into the darkness above. The reddish glow of the service lighting sifted upward, casting an unnatural smolder across a staggering collection of Da Vincis, Titians, and Caravaggios that hung suspended from ceiling cables. Still lifes, religious scenes, and landscapes accompanied portraits of nobility and politicians.

Although the Grand Gallery housed the Louvre's most famous Italian art, many visitors felt the wing's most stunning offering was actually its famous parquet floor. Laid out in a dazzling geometric design of diagonal oak slats, the floor produced an ephemeral optical illusion—a multi-dimensional network that gave visitors the sense they were floating through the gallery on a surface that changed with every step.

DA VINCI CODE CHAPTER 1-8

2008-02-23T05:07:00.002-08:00

Langdon stared at the picture, his horror now laced with fear. The image was gruesome and profoundly strange, bringing with it an unsettling sense of déjà vu. A little over a year ago, Langdon had received a photograph of a corpse and a similar request for help. Twenty-four hours later, he had almost lost his life inside Vatican City. This photo was entirely different, and yet something about the scenario felt disquietingly familiar.

The agent checked his watch. "My capitaine is waiting, sir."

Langdon barely heard him. His eyes were still riveted on the picture. "This symbol here, and the way his body is so oddly..."

"Positioned?" the agent offered.

Langdon nodded, feeling a chill as he looked up. "I can't imagine who would do this to someone."

The agent looked grim. "You don't understand, Mr. Langdon. What you see in this photograph..." He paused. "Monsieur Saunière did that to himself."

READ CHAPTER 2 HERE

DA VINCI CODE CHAPTER 1-6

2008-02-23T05:07:00.001-08:00

I trust nothing is wrong?"

The agent gave a dire sigh and slid a Polaroid snapshot through the narrow opening in the door.

When Langdon saw the photo, his entire body went rigid.

"This photo was taken less than an hour ago. Inside the Louvre."

As Langdon stared at the bizarre image, his initial revulsion and shock gave way to a sudden upwelling of anger. "Who would do this!"

"We had hoped that you might help us answer that very question, considering your knowledge in symbology and your plans to meet with him."

DA VINCI CODE CHAPTER 1-5

2008-02-23T05:06:00.003-08:00

"Thank you, Monique," Langdon said, standing prematurely and edging her away from the podium. "Boston Magazine clearly has a gift for fiction." He turned to the audience with an embarrassed sigh. "And if I find which one of you provided that article, I'll have the consulate deport you."

The crowd laughed.

"Well, folks, as you all know, I'm here tonight to talk about the power of symbols..."

The ringing of Langdon's hotel phone once again broke the silence.

Groaning in disbelief, he picked up. "Yes?"

As expected, it was the concierge. "Mr. Langdon, again my apologies. I am calling to inform you that your guest is now en route to your room. I thought I should alert you."

Langdon was wide awake now. "You sent someone to my room?"

"I apologize, monsieur, but a man like this... I cannot presume the authority to stop him."

"Who exactly is he?"

But the concierge was gone.

Almost immediately, a heavy fist pounded on Langdon's door.

Uncertain, Langdon slid off the bed, feeling his toes sink deep into the savonniere carpet. He donned the hotel bathrobe and moved toward the door. "Who is it?"

"Mr. Langdon? I need to speak with you." The man's English was accented—a sharp, authoritative bark. "My name is Lieutenant Jerome Collet. Direction Centrale Police Judiciaire."

Langdon paused. The Judicial Police? The DCPJ was the rough equivalent of the U.S. FBI.

Leaving the security chain in place, Langdon opened the door a few inches. The face staring back at him was thin and washed out. The man was exceptionally lean, dressed in an official-looking blue uniform.

"May I come in?" the agent asked.

Langdon hesitated, feeling uncertain as the stranger's sallow eyes studied him. "What is this all about?"

"My capitaine requires your expertise in a private matter."

"Now?" Langdon managed. "It's after midnight."

"Am I correct that you were scheduled to meet with the curator of the Louvre this evening?"

Langdon felt a sudden surge of uneasiness. He and the revered curator Jacques Saunière had been slated to meet for drinks after Langdon's lecture tonight, but Saunière had never shown up. "Yes. How did you know that?"

"We found your name in his daily planner."

DA VINCI CODE CHAPTER 1-4

2008-02-23T05:06:00.001-08:00

Langdon cringed. Where the hell did she get that?

The hostess began reading choice excerpts from the inane article, and Langdon felt himself sinking lower and lower in his chair. Thirty seconds later, the crowd was grinning, and the woman showed no signs of letting up. "And Mr. Langdon's refusal to speak publicly about his unusual role in last year's Vatican conclave certainly wins him points on our intrigue-o-meter." The hostess goaded the crowd. "Would you like to hear more?"

The crowd applauded.

Somebody stop her, Langdon pleaded as she dove into the article again.

"Although Professor Langdon might not be considered hunk-handsome like some of our younger awardees, this forty-something academic has more than his share of scholarly allure. His captivating presence is punctuated by an unusually low, baritone speaking voice, which his female students describe as 'chocolate for the ears.' "

The hall erupted in laughter.

Langdon forced an awkward smile. He knew what came next—some ridiculous line about "Harrison Ford in Harris tweed"—and because this evening he had figured it was finally safe again to wear his Harris tweed and Burberry turtleneck, he decided to take action.

DAVINCI CODE CHAPTER 1-3

2008-02-23T05:05:00.001-08:00

If Boston Magazine could see me now.

Last month, much to Langdon's embarrassment, Boston Magazine had listed him as one of that city's top ten most intriguing people—a dubious honor that made him the brunt of endless ribbing by his Harvard colleagues. Tonight, three thousand miles from home, the accolade had resurfaced to haunt him at the lecture he had given.

"Ladies and gentlemen..." the hostess had announced to a full house at the American University of Paris's Pavilion Dauphine, "Our guest tonight needs no introduction. He is the author of numerous books: The Symbology of Secret Sects, The An of the Illuminati, The Lost Language of Ideograms, and when I say he wrote the book on Religious Iconology, I mean that quite literally. Many of you use his textbooks in class."

The students in the crowd nodded enthusiastically.

"I had planned to introduce him tonight by sharing his impressive curriculum vitae. However..." She glanced playfully at Langdon, who was seated onstage. "An audience member has just handed me a far more, shall we say... intriguing introduction."

She held up a copy of Boston Magazine.

DA VINCI CODE CHAPTER 1 -2

2008-02-23T05:04:00.002-08:00

Langdon groaned. Tonight's lecture—a slide show about pagan symbolism hidden in the stones of Chartres Cathedral—had probably ruffled some conservative feathers in the audience. Most likely,

some religious scholar had trailed him home to pick a fight.

"I'm sorry," Langdon said, "but I'm very tired and—"

"Mais, monsieur," the concierge pressed, lowering his voice to an urgent whisper. "Your guest is an important man."

Langdon had little doubt. His books on religious paintings and cult symbology had made him a reluctant celebrity in the art world, and last year Langdon's visibility had increased a hundredfold after his involvement in a widely publicized incident at the Vatican. Since then, the stream of self-important historians and art buffs arriving at his door had seemed never-ending.

"If you would be so kind," Langdon said, doing his best to remain polite, "could you take the man's name and number, and tell him I'll try to call him before I leave Paris on Tuesday? Thank you." He hung up before the concierge could protest.

Sitting up now, Langdon frowned at his bedside Guest Relations Handbook, whose cover boasted: SLEEP LIKE A BABY IN THE CITY OF LIGHTS. SLUMBER AT THE PARIS RITZ. He turned and gazed tiredly into the full-length mirror across the room. The man staring back at him was a stranger—tousled and weary.

You need a vacation, Robert.

The past year had taken a heavy toll on him, but he didn't appreciate seeing proof in the mirror. His usually sharp blue eyes looked hazy and drawn tonight. A dark stubble was shrouding his strong jaw and dimpled chin. Around his temples, the gray highlights were advancing, making their way deeper into his thicket of coarse black hair. Although his female colleagues insisted the gray only accentuated his bookish appeal, Langdon knew better.
CONTINUED....

DAVINCI CODE CHAPTER 1

2008-02-23T05:04:00.001-08:00

Robert Langdon awoke slowly.

A telephone was ringing in the darkness—a tinny, unfamiliar ring. He fumbled for the bedside lamp and turned it on. Squinting at his surroundings he saw a plush Renaissance bedroom with Louis XVI furniture, hand-frescoed walls, and a colossal mahogany four-poster bed.

Where the hell am I?

The jacquard bathrobe hanging on his bedpost bore the monogram: HOTEL RITZ PARIS.

Slowly, the fog began to lift.

Langdon picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

"Monsieur Langdon?" a man's voice said. "I hope I have not awoken you?"

Dazed, Langdon looked at the bedside clock. It was 12:32 A.M. He had been asleep only an hour, but he felt like the dead.

"This is the concierge, monsieur. I apologize for this intrusion, but you have a visitor. He insists it is urgent."

Langdon still felt fuzzy. A visitor? His eyes focused now on a crumpled flyer on his bedside table.

CONTINUED.....

HISTORY OF CASINO

2007-12-08T19:35:00.000-08:00

The term originally meant a small villa, summerhouse or pavilion built for pleasure, usually on the grounds of a larger Italian villa or palazzo. There are examples of such casinos at Villa Giulia and Villa Farnese. In modern Italian, this term designates a bordello (also called "casa chiusa", literally "closed house"), while the gambling house is spelled casinò with an accent.

During the 19th century, the term casino came to include other public buildings where pleasurable activities, including gambling and sports, took place. An example of this type of building is the Newport Casino in Newport, Rhode Island.

Not all casinos were used for gaming. The Copenhagen Casino was a theatre, known for the use made of its hall for mass public meetings during the 1848 Revolution which made Denmark a constitutional monarchy. Until 1937 it was a well-known Danish theatre.^[2] The Hanko Casino at Hanko, Finland - one of that town's most conspicuous landmarks - was never used for gambling. Rather, it was a banquet hall for the Russian nobility which frequented this spa resort in the late 1800s, and is presently a restaurant.

Ex-Bangla premier Sheikh Hasina expected to stand trial

2007-12-07T01:42:00.001-08:00

Detained former Bangladesh Prime Minister and Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina is to appear before a court in Dhaka as her trial for alleged bribery involving Taka three crore is set to be started on Monday.

Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions Judge Azizul Hoque set the date for indicting Hasina and two other co-accused, her expatriate younger sister Sheikh Rehana and cousin and former health minister Sheikh Fazlul Karim Selim.

Due to "safety reasons", the court moved to its makeshift premises at the Parliament complex, where Hasina has been kept turning a building into a temporary sub-jail.

The court decision came as police filed the charge sheet against Hasina, Rehana and Selim after investigations on a case filed by Bangladeshi businessmen Azam Jahangir Chowdhury on June 13.

Chowdhury alleged that Hasina and the two others forced him to pay Taka 2.99 crore in bribes in return for allowing him to build a power plant in suburban Naraynganj while her Awami League was in power in 1996-2001.

Police formally charged Hasina with extortion on July 24 after her arrest on July 16.

SINUS CAN'T BE HELPED BY ANTI BIOTICS

2007-12-07T01:41:00.000-08:00

Just in time for runny nose season, new research suggests routine sinus infections aren't really helped by antibiotics and other medicine that's often prescribed.

Sinus infections are diagnosed in about 31 million Americans each year.

In the British study, people suffering from facial pain and a runny nose with greenish or yellowish mucus generally improved within about two weeks -- whether they took the standard antibiotic amoxicillin, steroid nose spray or fake medicine.

The results, based on patients' reporting whether their symptoms had improved, echo previous findings in children.

Antibiotics, particularly the penicillin-like drug amoxicillin, are among the most commonly prescribed medicines for sinus infections.

Steroid sprays sometimes are used, but the study found they also were no better than dummy drugs, although they appeared to provide some relief for patients with only minor symptoms.

The study should lead to a "reconsideration of antibiotic use for acute sinusitis. The current view that antibiotics are effective can now be challenged, particularly for the routine cases which physicians treat," said lead author Dr. Ian Williamson of the University of Southampton in England.

"Physicians can focus on effective remedies that improve symptom control," which include ibuprofen and other over-the-counter painkillers, Williamson said.

FOR BLOGGERS

2007-12-07T01:39:00.000-08:00

perspective As the world of "new new media" unfolds, consumers are in the driver's seat, and the content they are creating--via blogs and social networks--is proving to be highly influential.

So how come advertising on blogs is so dirt cheap? Sure, not every blogger's content is designed or even appropriate for hosting ad listings. And certainly, not every blogger with killer content desires to run AdSense. All the same, as more bloggers continue opening their sites up to contextual ads in an effort to monetize traffic, the balance of power will shift.

My hope? That more individuals will have the incentive to develop and contribute quality content--and that bloggers will command the bigger ad revenue that they deserve.

There has to be a balance between advertisers accessing the social media inventory that will perform and the influential bloggers getting paid what they deserve for aggregating quality traffic. Right now, there is an imbalance. More often than not, independent publishers creating compelling content are getting the short end of the stick. Advertisers haven't found them yet because they are looking for the wrong things.

Recent trends speak for themselves. Consumers are leaving the major Internet hubs in droves and spreading themselves thinly across the very fragmented online media landscape. As people increasingly turn to blogs, social-networking sites, and other sources of user-generated media, the "big four"--Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Time Warner's AOL--have spent more than $10 billion this year to acquire companies and technologies to extend their network reach to new and differentiated areas online.

Blogs represent a fairly large chunk of that new or differentiated inventory, which is often referred to as the "long tail." Despite the phrase's hype and overuse, it's accurate to say "the tail" encompasses clusters of linking activity centered around influential hotspots--bloggers who command an audience on everything from tax advice and knitting to triathlon training and advice on high def TVs. The Internet, in a sense, has turned into a million "mini" Oprah Winfreys who have a strong pull with consumers. That is advertiser gold.

Despite being picked apart the last several years by marketers hungry to demystify their ad potential, blogs still have not attained real advertiser street cred. True, there have been some interesting industry developments on the blog monetization front--everything from pay per post to the birth of blog ad networks--yet, the jury is still out.

Online measurement complicates matters even further: no one can agree on how best to approach a standard of measurement, so marketers' collective comfort levels in dedicating budget to blog advertising is low. Page views got a real beating in the press last quarter, and, though the time-spent metric didn't fare much better, the overall take-away is that a popular site isn't necessarily an influential one. In this fragmented environment, the proxy for what a consumer is influenced by in terms of purchasing behavior is not necessarily tied to popularity.

That leaves advertisers asking big questions--how do we access quality blog ad inventory? How do we measure whether a blog is a good ad buy? How does this approach scale? And of course the biggie--is this safe for my brand?

One key to knowing how to answer these questions is understanding the influence of particular blogs on a particular topic. Isolating influence online is not as hard as it seems. Advertisers just have to know where to look, and what to look for--see beyond who the obvious leaders are, and instead focus on what these people are actually saying, who they go to for information, and who is listening in.

Unlike the offline world, influence online leaves a lasting footprint via links, trackbacks, and comments. These influential "conversations" become influential online content. And with more blogs looking to monetize, this influential content becomes quality ad inventory.

RUSSIAN POLLS ON MARCH 2

2007-12-01T18:39:00.000-08:00

Russia will go to polls on March two next year to elect its new president for a four-year term to replace incumbent Vladimir Putin, who would be completing two successive terms and cannot seek re-election.

The date for the regular presidential polls was formally announced on Monday by the chairman of the Federation Council, Sergei Mironov as per the Constitutional norms.

The upper house unanimously voted for holding election on first Sunday of March 2008 as the second Sunday set for the presidential polls falls immediately after the March 8 holiday on International Women's Day.

The formal announcement of the election has cleared the ground for kick-starting the presidential campaign.

Fans and foes of President Putin are taking their election campaign to the Internet, battling for votes on blogs and websites -- a measure seen as freedom from the constraints imposed on Russia's broadcast media.

Putin's allies are also trying to woo Russia's young urbanites who have been surfing the net for years and are frequent guests to the blogosphere.

Meanwhile, Putin was due to meet voters later today in his hometown Saint Petersburg, the former Russian imperial capital, on a campaign trip ahead of parliamentary polls slated for Sunday.

The Russian leader was to meet youth activists from the dominant United Russia party in his home city, Kremlin officials said.

WORDPRESS GET EXPLOITED

2007-12-01T18:38:00.000-08:00

WordPress is growing quickly - both as a hosted platform and also via standalone blog installations. The rapid growth and its open, flexible approach to blog design, means it may become a target for hackers who embed malicious code within themes they distribute.

One of the reasons for its success is the flexibility it offers for customization. WordPress is built around a central engine, written in PHP, called The Loop. Every time a blog is viewed, The Loop processes each part of the page — a header, the body and posts, a sidebar, and a footer. Blog operators are free to change these elements: They can modify the stylesheets to change fonts and colors. They can change the PHP code to display things like author details, popular tags, and so on. And they can put in plug-ins to further extend the capabilities of their site.

Designers bundle up stylesheets, PHP code, and sometimes plug-ins, into themes. A WordPress theme isn’t just cosmetics: It’s code. If you change a theme in Powerpoint, you’re just changing fonts and colors. But when you change a theme in WordPress, you’re also modifying the underlying structure of the site, including database queries and PHP execution.

WOMEN REUNTES WITH HER MOTHER AFTER 62 YEARS

2007-12-01T18:37:00.000-08:00

A woman who was given up for adoption while she was a child has tracked down her real mother after a time gap of 62 years.

After finding her mother, Annie Burriss also met her real 7 brothers and sisters about whom she had no knowledge.

Burriss, of Littlehampton, West Sussex, discovered that she had been adopted when she applied for a passport in 1973.

A nephew of hers helped her to trace her roots through genealogy websites.

“Mum touched my face and said, ‘You’re beautiful – I’m sorry,’” The Sun quoted Burriss, as saying.

“She suffers from short-term memory loss but she knew who I was straight away. She held my hand – it’s all I’ve ever wanted.

“It was quite overwhelming, I was so happy that I just wept. I’ve wanted to touch her for as long as I can remember,” she said.

Burriss was born after her mother Hilda Berry, now 91 years, had an affair while her husband was away at war, and was put up for adoption weeks later.

The reunion took place at a pub in Cheltenham.

Sister Trixie Foster, of Burriss said: “I could tell it was her as soon as she got out of the taxi. She looked so much like us.”

Mum-of-two Burris said: “The joy is that I’ve got all my brothers and sisters to get to know. It’s a fairytale. I’ve got two lovely families now – my children are delighted.”

PLANE CRASH : 56 FEARED DEAD

2007-12-01T18:36:00.001-08:00

An Atlasjet plane carrying 56 people crashed just before landing in central Turkey early on Friday, and all aboard are believed to have died, officials said.

A rescue helicopter had reached the wreckage of the plane and reported back that no one had survived the crash, airline CEO Tuncay Doganer said.

The plane's wreckage was seen near the town of Keciborlu in Isparta province, and search teams were headed to the area, local governor Alper Faruk Gungor said.

The plane went missing after it reported approaching toward the airport near the city of Isparta.

The MD 83 jetliner took off from Istanbul at around 7 pm EST and headed to Isparta.

INDIA'S WATER FUTURE

2007-11-23T19:55:00.000-08:00

The World Bank has recently (25.06.05) released a draft report on "India's Water Economy: Bracing for a Turbulent Future."

By reducing water to an "economy" and further reducing the water economy to "a market economy", the World Bank's worldview makes water privatization and commodification inevitable. In this worldview there is no "water ecology", no "water culture", no "water democracy".

In fact, dismantling structures of democracy, the public good, ecological sustainability, and protection of the water commons and defense of community rights is the prime objective of the World Bank approach. According to the World Bank, "the major liability is a public water sector". For people, defense of the public water sector is necessary for the defense of people's water rights. A public water sector includes both the community-managed systems of self-provisioning, as well as the public utilities like municipal water supply and irrigation. In spite of privatisation having failed in country after country, and in spite of community-based approaches having been successful in different parts of India, the World Bank is aggressively pushing for water privatisation, the dismantling of community rights, and the enclosure of the water commons.

The proposal is to replace community rights and the common good with individual rights and the private interest. Under conditions of inequality, this implies that powerful individuals get exclusive access to the water commons through water markets. In effect the Bank would like water monopolies instead of water democracy. In the case of irrigation, the World Bank report states, "Here an approach, which begins with acknowledgement of and respect for the private interests of individual farmers will be for more successful than approaches which resort to command and control, or ones based on a communitarian ideal."

What the Bank refers to as "command and control" is public services. Its own "command and control" reform process is, however, the real problem for the people of India. The report also clearly states its vision for the future, "Large members of people will move from the informal, self-providing, water economy into the formal service sector."

The self-organized community based water systems are the backbone of India's water democracy and water culture. By deliberately destroying community-based systems, the World Bank is ensuring total dependence of people on water markets controlled by water corporations and water mafias.

This is the equivalent of the Seed Act of 2004, which aims at preventing farmers from saving their own traditional seeds, thus forcing them to buy patented, genetically engineered or hybrid seeds every year.

When seeds are a community resource, shared, saved and exchanged in a biodiversity commons, farmers have access to quality seeds at zero cost, biodiversity is conserved and quality food with high nutrition is produced. When seeds are corporate property, and a commodity farmer must buy each year, farmers are pushed into debt and suicides, biodiversity disappears and malnutrition, hunger and poverty grow. The market grows, the farmers die.

What happens with seed happens with water. When the water commons are destroyed, and community managed self-provisioning structures dismantled, a common resource accessible to all at zero cost disappears. People are forced into the water market. The poor, the marginalized get excluded. The water market grows; people's water rights are extinguished, the water commons is enclosed.

The World Bank's myopic focus on water markets portrays the scarcity imposed on the poor as "growth". Water does not exist in the Bank's vision, nor do people with inalienable, fundamental rights to water. All that exists is markets. Markets can grow while water resources shrink. Corporate profits can grow, while people's water rights shrink.

Examples of the World Bank's ontological confusion are its obsession to shift from supply management to demand management and its promotion of limitless consumption of water through 24 x 7 schemes in the context of limited water supplies and a deepening water crisis. By ignoring the ecological and hydrological limits of water availability and allowing water access and water distribution to be driven by insatiable markets, the Bank is prescribing a deepening of the water crisis and a growing polarization in access the water. The Bank's future vision is the vision for a hydro-apartheid.

It is also a vision that promotes non-sustainability. In an era when the high ecological and social costs of large dams are well known, the Bank promotes large dams. Its Madhya Pradesh water sector loan is supporting the Ken-Betwa link, the first link in the $200 billion River Linking Project based on large dams, and long distance canals, which reroute rivers from rural areas to urban and industrial centres where water markets can be easily established because of higher purchasing power.

The Bank is using fraudulent figures like per capita storage to push its agenda for large dams. "Whereas arid rich countries (such as the U.S. and Australia) have built over 5000 cubic meters of water storage per capita, and middle income countries like South Africa, Mexico, Morocco, and China can store about 1000 cubic meters per capita, India's dams can store only 200 cubic meters per capita. These figures are misleading because they leave out the millions of tanks and ponds managed by communities, which store more water than the dams and serve people in a more decentralized and democratic way. If large dams have displaced 40 million people since independence a five-fold increase in dam storage will mean the displacement of 200 million, i.e. a fifth of India's population.

Since neither nature, nor communities exist in the World Bank's vision, the social and ecological costs of its recipes are totally discounted. And to push its agenda of giant corporations controlling India's water through gigantic water projects, the Bank transforms its failures into successes.

It cites the Sonia Vihar Plant, which has been privatized to the Suez Corporation as a success, which is serving the people of Delhi. However, not a drop of water has reached Delhi citizens. The Sonia Vihar has not been functioning because it is based on bringing Ganga water from Tehri Dam, 300 kms away, and Uttar Pradesh has refused to divert Ganga water from its farmers for corporate water markets in Delhi. The contract for the Sonia Vihar Plant is based on the public utility, Delhi Jal Board, providing free water and electricity to Suez, and paying a fine of Rs. 50,000 a day if bulk supply is not provided. Failures thus generate corporate profits.

Similarly, the Veeranam project, which was to bring water 235 kms from Chennai, has totally failed. It is cited by the World Bank as another success story.

In our report "Financing the Water Crisis: World Bank, International Aid Agencies and Water Privatisation", we have shown how the Bank has created India's water crisis and how its water sector reform conditionalities imposing privatisation will leave our water culture in ruins, our water ecology disrupted, and our communities disenfranchised.

WHAT IS AN IMAGE ??????

2007-11-16T08:40:00.000-08:00

In common usage, an image (from Latin imago) or picture is an artifact, usually two-dimensional, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person.

Images may be two-dimensional, such as a photograph, screen display, and as well as a three-dimensional, such as a statue. They may be captured by optical devices—such as cameras, mirrors, lenses, telescopes, microscopes, etc. and natural objects and phenomena, such as the human eye or water surfaces.

The word image is also used in the broader sense of any two-dimensional figure such as a map, a graph, a pie chart, or an abstract painting. In this wider sense, images can also be rendered manually, such as by drawing, painting, carving, rendered automatically by printing or computer graphics technology, or developed by a combination of methods, especially in a pseudo-photograph.

A volatile image is one that exists only for a short period of time. This may be a reflection of an object by a mirror, a projection of a camera obscura, or a scene displayed on a cathode ray tube. A fixed image, also called a hardcopy, is one that has been recorded on a material object, such as paper or textile.

A mental image exists in an individual's mind: something one remembers or imagines. The subject of an image need not be real; it may be an abstract concept, such as a graph, function, or "imaginary" entity. For example, Sigmund Freud claimed to have dreamt purely in aural-images of dialogues. The development of synthetic acoustic technologies and the creation of sound art have led to a consideration of the possibilities of a sound-image comprised of irreducible phonic substance beyond linguistic or musicological analysis.Image:Jordan!.jpg

A collection of non-volatile images providing an image changing with time is a film or motion picture