{"id":4845,"date":"2005-07-25T14:42:17","date_gmt":"2005-07-25T14:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/de-code-this.html"},"modified":"2005-07-25T14:42:17","modified_gmt":"2005-07-25T14:42:17","slug":"de-code-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/de-code-this.html","title":{"rendered":"De-Code This!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.amazon.com\/images\/P\/0751537683.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This is a highly amusing parody of a Certain Book. I don&#8217;t know if you want to actually spend money on it (unless you have someone in your life who is really taken with DVC and can take a joke. Or not &#8211; then it might even be more useful.), but it&#8217;s worth a few minutes in the bookstore.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0751537683\/qid=1122320093\/sr=2-1\/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1\/102-8407681-8254503\">It&#8217;s actually a little more complex (!) than DVC and cleverly written. <\/a>I&#8217;ve not finished it yet, but the best thing Clements does is play off Brown&#8217;s habit of making simple things so <em>very very<\/em> sinister and mysterious:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>The Grand Bibliotheque was an extraordinary building, a confection of intersecting right angles, so that each of its four perfectly straight sides met in four perfectly geometrical corners. Built in 1823, many believed it was modelled on the Pengaton, in Washington, the headquarters of the most powerful army the world had ever seen, but this was a mistake. It was in fact based on a far older symbol, the square, which cropped up almost everywhere you cared to look, but was not, in fact, a shape that existed in nature.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">And let the people say, &quot;Heh.&quot;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">(And thanks to the reader who passed it on to me!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a highly amusing parody of a Certain Book. I don&#8217;t know if you want to actually spend money on it (unless you have someone in your life who is really taken with DVC and can take a joke. Or not &#8211; then it might even be more useful.), but it&#8217;s worth a few&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>De-Code This! - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/de-code-this.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"De-Code This! - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is a highly amusing parody of a Certain Book. I don&#8217;t know if you want to actually spend money on it (unless you have someone in your life who is really taken with DVC and can take a joke. Or not &#8211; then it might even be more useful.), but it&#8217;s worth a few&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/de-code-this.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-07-25T14:42:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/images.amazon.com\/images\/P\/0751537683.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"De-Code This! - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/de-code-this.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"De-Code This! - Via Media","og_description":"This is a highly amusing parody of a Certain Book. I don&#8217;t know if you want to actually spend money on it (unless you have someone in your life who is really taken with DVC and can take a joke. Or not &#8211; then it might even be more useful.), but it&#8217;s worth a few&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/de-code-this.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-07-25T14:42:17+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/images.amazon.com\/images\/P\/0751537683.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg"}],"author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/de-code-this.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/de-code-this.html","name":"De-Code This! - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/de-code-this.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/de-code-this.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/images.amazon.com\/images\/P\/0751537683.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg","datePublished":"2005-07-25T14:42:17+00:00","dateModified":"2005-07-25T14:42:17+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/de-code-this.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/de-code-this.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/de-code-this.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/images.amazon.com\/images\/P\/0751537683.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/images.amazon.com\/images\/P\/0751537683.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/de-code-this.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"De-Code This!"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4845\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}