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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

ENGLISH VICEROYAL EVILLIERS

http://wn.com/Futurama

Why is the number 1,729 hidden in Futurama episodes?
By Simon SinghScience writer

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The year 1913 marked the beginning of an extraordinary relationship between an impoverished Indian clerk and a Cambridge don. A century later, their remarkable friendship has left its mark in the strangest of places, namely in Futurama, the animated series from The Simpsons creator Matt Groening.

GH Hardy (1877-1947) and Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) were the archetypal odd couple. Hardy, whose parents were both teachers, grew up in a middle-class home in Surrey, England. At the age of two he was writing numbers that reached into the millions, so it was no surprise that he eventually read mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he joined an elite secret society known as the Cambridge Apostles.

Ramanujan was born in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. At the age of two he survived a bout of smallpox, but his three younger siblings were less fortunate, each one dying in infancy. Although he was enrolled in a local school, Ramanujan's most valuable education was thanks to a library book, A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure Mathematics by GS Carr, which contained thousands of theorems. He investigated these theorems one by one, relying on a chalk and slate for calculations, using his roughened elbows as erasers.

1,729 in Futurama

The serial number of robot Bender

The characters travel to Universe 1729

Registration number of the starship Nimbus

Aged 21, he married Janakiammal, who was just 10 years old. Unable to afford college fees and needing to support his wife, Ramanujan got a job as a clerk. Nevertheless, he continued his interest in mathematics in his spare time, developing novel ideas and proving fresh theorems.

Curious about the value of his research, Ramanujan began to write to mathematicians in England in the hope that someone would mentor him, or at least give him feedback. Academics such as MJM Hill, HF Baker and EW Hobson largely ignored Ramanujan's pleas for help, but Hardy was mesmerised by the two packages he received in 1913, which contained a total of 120 theorems.

Hardy's reaction veered between "fraud" and so brilliant that it was "scarcely possible to believe". In the end, he concluded that the theorems "must be true, because, if they were not true, no-one would have the imagination to invent them".

GH Hardy photo courtesy of the Royal Society - Srinivasa Ramanujan picture from Topfoto

The British professor made arrangements for the young Indian, still only 26, to visit Cambridge. Hardy took great pride in being the man who had rescued such raw talent and would later call it "the one romantic incident in my life".

The resulting partnership gave rise to discoveries in several areas of mathematics and Ramanujan's genius was recognised in 1918 when he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society.

About the author

Simon Singh is the author of "The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets"

He has a PhD in particle physics from Cambridge University and has studied at the Cern research institute in Geneva

Listen to Simon explain the maths secrets of The Simpsons

The young Indian savant would later say that many of his theorems were whispered to him in his sleep by Namagiri, an avatar of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi: "While asleep, I had an unusual experience. There was a red screen formed by flowing blood, as it were. I was observing it. Suddenly a hand began to write on the screen. I became all attention. That hand wrote a number of elliptic integrals. They stuck to my mind. As soon as I woke up, I committed them to writing."

Ramanujan's career was brilliant, but ended prematurely when he began to suffer from tuberculosis. He returned to India in 1919 and died the following year, aged 32.

However, the life of Ramanujan continues to fascinate modern mathematicians, including Dr Ken Keeler, who swapped his job as a researcher to join the writing team behind the science fiction sitcom Futurama.

He is actually one of a number of mathematicians - and there are many of them - who write for The Simpsons and its sister series Futurama. They have retained their love for the subject and they continue to express their passion for numbers by smuggling mathematical references into both series.

For example, in order to pay homage to Ramanujan, Keeler has repeatedly inserted 1,729 into Futurama, because this particular number cropped up in a famous conversation between Hardy and Ramanujan.

According to Hardy, he visited Ramanujan in a nursing home in 1918: "I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen. 'No,' he replied. 'It is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.'"

Their exchange can be unpacked and expressed as follows:

1,729 = 1³ + 12³ = 9³ + 10³

It is rare that a number can be split into two cubes, and even rarer that it can be split into two cubes in two different ways, and 1,729 is the smallest number that exhibits this property.

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It is in recognition of Ramanujan's comment that Bender, Futurama's cantankerous robot, has the serial number 1729.

The number also appears in an episode titled "The Farnsworth Parabox". The plot involves Fry, one Futurama's lead characters, hopping between multiple universes, and one of them is labelled "Universe 1729".

Moreover, the starship Nimbus has the hull registration number BP-1729.

This has certainly helped keep Ramanujan's memory alive, but it is probably not the sort of immortality that Hardy had in mind when he wrote: "Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. Immortality may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean."

Keeler is proud of his mathematical references in Futurama, and he is philosophical about the many years he spent as a mathematician before becoming a comedy writer: "Everything that happens to us has some effect on us, and I do suppose that the time I spent in grad school made me a better writer. I certainly don't regret it.

"For example, I chose Bender's serial number to be 1,729 and I think that reference alone completely justifies my doctorate. I don't know if my thesis advisor sees it that way though."

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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Irish Peace Process Without Due Process is an English Oxymoron

international | rights and freedoms | opinion/analysis

Tuesday August 28, 2012 10:28

by BrianClarkeNUJ - AllVoices

Ghengis Paterson

It is becoming more transparent, with each passing day, that the British Tory Government is working relentlessly to dismantle the Irish peace process and escape responsibility for decades of war crimes in Ireland including murder, corruption and human rights violations.Reports submitted by the Committee on the Administration of Justice, Relatives for Justice, British-Irish Rights Watch recently submitted to Congressmen Chris Smith and Senator Ben Cardin, Co-Chairs of the Committee on Security and Cooperation in Europe read like a Nazi war crime file.

Irish Peace Process Vice Royal English Oxymoron

In their bullying arrogance and rank hypocrisy, the UK criticizes China for its persecution and record on human rights, while they threaten invasion of an Embassy and torture political prisoners interned without trial in Ireland such as Marian Price, while they have also admitted, colluding in the murder of Irish human rights attorney Patrick Finucane, because he knew too much about their dirty laundry in British Occupied Ireland. While this collusion came as a surprise to Congressman Speaker Boehner in the States and minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, it certainly came as no surprise to the long persecuted Irish.

Many believe their bullying arrogance displayed with their imperial dismissal of the Irish government's request for British Army documents, relating to the act of greatest slaughter of the current conflict, the no-warning car bombing of Dublin & Monaghan, is calculated to break the peace process in Ireland once and for all. Every dog on an Irish street knows, that the cars involved in delivering the bombs, were primed by British Army members and handlers. Their consistent meddling in the affairs of another country, something they always complain about with others, while the world objected to their brutal massacre of the civil rights movement in Derry, their corruption of their own supposed rule of law, their re-introduction of internment without trial, their continued use of torture, despite promises to the contrary after guilty verdicts at the Court of Human Rights in Europe, their rampant media censorship or all things genuinely Irish, their destruction of democracy with ongoing political assassinations.

The ongoing internment without trial of Marian Price exemplifies their efforts to provoke a violent reaction from the Irish and finally end the peace process, in an example of their determination to end the agreement. Marian a 58 year old political activist, should be released from internment without trial in British Occupied Ireland immediately, because rather than being 'on licence' she was given a full royal pardon or the Royal Prerogative of Mercy. Vice Royal Paterson's claims that this document, which would set Marian free, has been lost or shredded.

Patrick Ramsey, a Social Democratic Labour member of the elected British Assembly recently wrote to Paterson about this "lost" pardon and formally asked;

-- Where would Mrs. Price-McGlinchey's pardon have been held?
-- How many staff are currently seeking the document and in what departments?
-- Are those looking for it doing so on a full-time basis, if not, why not?
-- Has the Northern Ireland Office received comment from the judiciary on the apparent loss of the document?
-- How many Royal Prerogative's have been lost (or destroyed) that the government has record of?
-- Who is ultimately responsible for the care and maintenance of the building where these documents are kept?
-- What communication [has Paterson] personally had with this person/Department?
-- Can [Paterson] confirm the Department is still seeking the document and will do so until it is found?

The Unelected English Paterson in Ireland contemptuously dismissed the elected Irish Assembly members Ramsey's inquiry stating that "unfortunately the Royal Prerogative of Mercy was not recovered but has no bearing on current circumstances."

Vice royal Paterson has placed himself above the British Occupied Ireland Assembly, which was supposedly elected to govern British Occupied Ireland, just as he has previously overruled the judiciary. Two judges previously ruled that Marian Price should be released on bail and was no danger to society, both having seen precisely the same intelligence reports as Paterson. Each time Vice Royal Paterson negated the judge's decisions and ordered Marian Price interned without trial in solitary confinement sensory deprivation torture, for which Britain promised to cease, when previously found guilty of the same torture by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The bigot Paterson, a sadistic blood sport enthusiast, is vindictively determined to keep Marian Price locked up, to keep his sectarian fox hunting loyalist friends happy and ensure the ongoing sadistic damage to her health, while the behavior of the sectarian prison regime is ongoing and deliberately torturing Marian daily.

There is big money involved and considerable political capital for the new Tory regime. British Occupied Ireland has for several decades now served as both a research laboratory and a conflict theatre, to showcase to prospective buyers and their Commonwealth neo-colonial Governments, the evolved crowd control equipment and Kitsonian tactics, developed over 40 years in their latest phase of British repression in Ireland.The peace process is also undermining the justification of hugely bloated taxpayer securocrat budgets of billions in their secret service gestapo establishment, aptly named Hollywood in British Occupied Ireland the centre that compiles secret service reports like movie scripts of pure fiction, that intern without trial for life, Irish prisoners of political conscience, like Marian price.

This Hollywood home of the faceless secret service gestapo, along with the Industrial war complex spending billions of taxpayers money, are about the only thriving British industry left, while they continue with a vested interest in compiling secret intelligence reports, that are never made public or can be refuted by the interned without trial. How can these scripts be regarded as impartial or part of any sort of impartial fair process?. There is big money in repression, internment without trial and torture for the Tories. There is much power too, in that their campaign coffers get bigger contributions from the arms industry, to promote wars abroad and continue to provoke the Irish to break the peace process nearer home.

Vice royal Paterson, the Shropshire leather businessman who married into royalty and the high society horsey set, knows this very well, from his lucrative career expereince in the Tory party.The gravy train pretence of democracy, has being expanded to include some recent Irish recruits to Stormont too, the boasted sectarian parliament for a sectarian people. In the instances of the British gravy that recruited Lord Muck of Londonderry to Stormont not being sufficient, a spot of blackmail on the enablers of child rape in both DUP and PSF circles doing the trick.

Meanwhile the long suffering impoverished working class nationalist people, the institutionalized, victims of British sponsored sectarianism from which Marian Price comes, still struggle for freedom. The slow moving gravy train has clearly not delivered the promised Bill of Rights or basics of justice, necessary for long term peace in this sectarian scum state, the product of age old imperial divide and conquer tactics, they still sponsor in British Occupied Ireland. The injustice of the internment of Marian Price is a good starting point for anyone remotely concerned with peace and justice in Ireland, both critically interdependent. A Peace Process without Due Process is clearly an english oxymoron.