One of my interests is improving the public understanding of science and maths. There's so much maths that would be really useful to programmers, AI people, cognitive scientists and others — if only somebody would explain it in ways they can understand. So I want to show you an n-Category Café thread, Gerbes in the Guardian. Compare the Guardian science-writer's explanation near the top of the thread with those of John Baez and Urs Schreiber further down. Which is better?
As Todd Trimble says in the same thread:
The idea is supposed to be that math is "cool", in a way — at least we use a bunch of cool-sounding and mysterious words — but please let'ss keep it at arm's length, because you have to be a genius (or weirdo) or something to actually understand it. It's hard to find the idea in mass culture that anyone does math because it's fun.