Welcome again, my friends, to Mbashta's special blog - and I'm sure you will all agree that it is a most special blog. Where I come from, blogging has been part of everyday life for hundreds of years. In fact it is so commonplace that a boy in the neighbouring village have a medal for posting the world's first ever prenatal blog.

Today I would like to talk about the exciting subject of mathematics - kotobangi matematiki, as we say in my country. The other day, I was watching a most interesting programme with my English friend, Professor Jenkins, about an mathematician lady called Émilie du Châtelet who play a role in your famous Enlightenment and, amongst other things, build a station on the Parisian Métro. He agree with me that she deserve a damned good spanking for being such a cheeky little Enlightenment mathematician but he wonder whether it am the case that, in order to retain the viewers' attention, the producers of the docudrama ("That most highbrow of TV formats" as FR Leavis once called it) simply decided to cast a pert young filly in the role of du Châtelet, who might in reality have been what we in my land call hobobo ntodi. This is a difficult term to translate but it approximates as "a bit rough". Well, my friends, I am pleased to be able to confirm that the aristocratic one was indeed most pleasing to behold, as the contemporary photograph to the right demonstrates (© Count Froufrou "Man Ray" Furburger).

She also, I should mention as an aside, translated Oedipus Rex for relaxation, taught herself analytic geometry and synthesised the apparently opposing thinking of Leibniz and Newton. The brazen strumpet.

My father, he say "analytic" is rude.