The Simpsons - a cartoon for mathletes

The Guardian reports that the popular long-running TV cartoon series the Simpsons is written by and for math geeks. Apparently hidden within many episodes are references to obscure (and not so obscure) mathematical expressions, formulae and facts including: Fermat's last theorem, perfect numbers, a narcissistic number, a Mersenne prime (all shown in the picture to the right), Euler's identity, a googolplex, the mass of the Higgs boson, appearances by the French mathematician Blaise Pascal, numerous jokes about π and of course the all important geometry of doughnuts. And you thought it was just a kids show.

Julian #Assange on the #Simpsons

Julian Assange on the Simpsons

Last night the 500th episode of the Simpsons aired on New Zealand TV - yes I know it was shown months ago in the US, but New Zealand is a long way away and obviously those electrons took some time to make the journey. One of the episodes special guests was WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
   He's of course most famous for his website WikiLeaks but you may not know that he used to be a hacker going by the pseudoname Mendax. Assange contributed to an excellent book titled, Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier, which provides an excellent insight into the secretive world of hacking. You can buy the book on Amazon, but in true hacker spirit it's freely available to download online.