The 100 best novels: an introduction

Robert McCrum introduces our definitive list of the greatest novels written in English, a 100-week project that begins tomorrow with John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (Read on)

The Simpsons' secret formula: it's written by maths geeks

When one of Britain's best-known science writers went to Los Angeles to meet the show's writers for a new book, he found a team dedicated to inserting gags about complex maths problems. And you thought it was just a cartoon…
Without doubt, the most mathematically sophisticated television show in the history of primetime broadcasting is The Simpsons. This is not a figment of my deranged mind, which admittedly is obsessed with both The Simpsons and mathematics, but rather it is a concrete claim backed up in a series of remarkable episodes.
(read on) (by Simon Singh / The Guardian)