Finally, an explanation for what's wrong with government, academia, and The DaVinci Code

A re-post from 9/28/05: I stumbled on this one while hunting through the past and was surprised to realize how much this strange book influenced my writing at the time. I wonder if it's common for a nonfiction book to take such hold of a writer's imagination... And I can't say that it has happened since.

Like everybody else, I've wondered why the world sometimes appears such a miscreant place,