"Porter. Mason Porter."

Through a stray Google search during a spare few minutes, I found episode 16 of an audio drama called Action Science Theatre.

This episode contains a spy named "Mason Porter" and has three mathematics-related tags (math, maths, and catastrophe theory). The brief 'explanation' of catastrophe theory in the episode is ok but not quite right. It is amusing, though, that their brief discussion of catastrophe theory is reminiscent of the more science-fictiony aspects of catastrophe theory that were hyped for years. (In Vladimir Arnold's book on catastrophe theory, he has some very snarky things to say about that with respect to the work of René Thom.)

Here are few lines from this episode:



The character with my name, who is a spy who works for British Intelligence: "Let me introduce myself. [...ominous music...] Porter. Mason Porter."

Main character (the mathematician): "What? Really?"

"Me": "I'm sorry."

Mathematician: "Is that really your name?"

"Me": "Well of course it is. Why?"

Mathematician: "It just sounds a bit made up."



Hmpf. That's my real name --- so not exactly made up. Anyway, at least my namesake wasn't killed off in chapter 1 this time. (The link in my old blog entry is now dead. Perhaps that suggests that that book project might not be completed any time soon?)