DAN BROWN was in the witness stand yesterday in the Da Vinci Code trial. I have no great love for Brown, but I don't think the plagiarism case against him holds up. Here's a Telegraph article that covers yesterday's events:

I did not hijack book's plot, Dan Brown tells court
By Hugh Davies
(Filed: 14/03/2006)

The writer Dan Brown said he was astounded to be in court accused of stealing the ideas behind his runaway bestseller The Da Vinci Code.

Mr Brown, whose book helped him earn £45 million last year and the title of the world's highest paid author, insisted that claims that he had based The Da Vinci Code on decades of research by British-based writers were completely false.

[...]

But to defend him against the charge of copyright violation is not to defend him against the charge of cluelessness. This Times piece provides yet another example:

In an early novel a hero uses the words “without wax” as code for sincere, because “the English word evolved from the Spanish sin cera”, a term used by sculptors to describe works where they had not cheated by patching marble with wax. Sorry, Dan, “sincere” comes from the Latin sincerus, meaning “clean, pure or sound”. Next time, include the OED, in your “detailed research”.