His veiled mathematical homages are usually in the background, and are done mostly “to amuse ourselves,” he says. One of his favorite clandestine operations was an allusion to Fermat’s Last Theorem in an episode of The Simpsons entitled “Homer3.” In the name of entertainment, he wrote a computer program to search for very near misses of the theorem, and found some so close that they could not be invalidated by a standard 8-digit calculator.[...]
Despite his passion for burying physics treasure in a trove of episodes, Cohen, along with Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons, and Executive Producer along with Cohen of Futurama), made the conscious decision early on that “we would make sure that the story and the humor would take the first position and science would take the second position. As much respect as we have for science, we have to make the show entertaining.” This requires Cohen to bend natural laws, but “we try to come up with an explanation that will amuse scientists, even if it is bogus,” he says.
For example, since the show’s universe requires travel faster than the speed of light, “we stuck something in one episode where we stated that the characters weren’t actually traveling faster than light, but that scientists had in fact managed to increase the speed of light,” Cohen explains. “We like to at least acknowledge it when we know we’re wrong.”
We consider the black pieces to be the Cthulhoid forces, with dread Cthulhu itself as king, and menacing Dagon as swift and malevolent queen, and the mouldering green pieces to be led by Yog-Sothoth as king, in all its gibbering madness, and primordial Ubbo-Sathla as queen. Of course, you're the cultist, so you're entitled to assign whatever mythos iconography you like. The interpretations, fortunately for all life in this dimension, are loose.
The bishops of each side are mad alien priests, the knights grotesque mounts with vile curved spines, the rooks writhe horribly within their blasted towers. The black pawns are sinister, writhing spawn of dread Cthulhu, and the green pawns mocking little tentacular skulls.
The NES came out in 1985. I was born in 1983, so I grew up in the NES's heyday. I remember blowing into those games like it was yesterday. To me, reminiscing about the cartridge blow is like a secret handshake. When you meet someone who knows what you are talking about when you mention blowing into a cartridge, you know you have met another classic gamer. That is why I make these harmonicas, it is a way to remember that old gamers ritual while having a good laugh at the same time.
I've always been a big Star Wars fan and was looking for a subject that made sense for this design. A Walker already had four legs and it seemed an obvious choice to base my design on. I wanted it to look as real as possible. In order to accomplish movement, I made the bunk beds appear to be walking. I also made several additions to the beds, for example a complete Hoth lego display case on the second level as well as additional areas for the kids to play and climb.
