COWABUNGA!

Are you a Simpsons fan? (...if you have a pulse you should be!)

"The Simpsons" is one of the longest running shows in the history of television, and D'OH! this looks grand: turns out best-selling science-writer Simon Singh's next volume is entitled, "The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets" (due out in October). You may or may not know that several PhD. mathematicians work as writers for the show (who says mathematicians aren't funny!), but if you're a loyal viewer you know that mathematical references slip into the show with some regularity. A post I did earlier this year touches on it:

http://math-frolic.blogspot.com/2013/03/simpsons-math.html

About the upcoming book, Singh says, "I think it is a fairly lighthearted and hopefully entertaining read, but it also contains some serious mathematics." There's a combination I look forward to!
Read a li'l more from Singh here:

http://simonsinghblog.wordpress.com/2013/06/23/the-simpsons-and-their-mathematical-secrets-sitp/

or, just watch him talk about it in this interview excerpt:



And on a side-note, going from the brand new to the decades-old... I saw William Poundstone's classic "The Recursive Universe" in Barnes & Noble this weekend, apparently it's been newly released (by Dover) having originally appeared in 1985. Anything Poundstone writes is usually good, and this was one of his earliest works, a delightful exposition centered around John Conway's 'Game of Life.' In another bit of synchronicity, a little over a week ago I posted about Conway, only to now stumble upon this almost 30-year-old volume which, despite it's age, is a wonderful interweaving of Conway's work with cosmology, information theory, game theory, and complexity. If you're not already familiar with it, I recommend it, as do some other folks.