Tag Archives: math

When 2+2=22

Posted by Caleb Coy on

“You may have a reason why two and two should make five, but they will still make but four.” -Samuel Johnson

We all know, if we’ve even so much as heard of Orwell’s 1984, that a totalitarian government can brainwash its citizens into believing that 2+2=5. Well, maybe it could happen. It would actually be very hard to accomplish. The novel is an exercise in imagining the power of language to erase and impose.

And while Orwell’s ’84 does an astounding job at creating a world alien and familiar where the state has coerced us to accepting any lie imaginable, the truth is that it doesn’t have to take an all-powerful oligarchy to do so. Continue reading →

_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Part 2: “Science Has Shown There is No God”

Posted by Caleb Coy on

_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Part 2: “Science Has Shown There is No God”

An official statement from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences:
“Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.”
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Why It Ain’t a Crime to Say “Ain’t”

Posted by Caleb Coy on

” ‘Ain’t’ ain’t in the dictionary.”

Ever hear that one?  The colloquial phrase “ain’t” is typically a contracted variation of “am/is/are/was/were not”.

We commonly hear that “ain’t” is improper, is bad grammar, is a sign of ignorance.  Is this true?  And what does the use of “ain’t” say about us?

Conventionally, many people suppose that it is.  After all, in none of the preceding forms of “to be” that ends in the word combination “ain”.  Yet somehow we have ain’t.  This leaves us with the question, “how did this develop?”
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Why There Ain’t Nothing Wrong With Double Negatives

Posted by Caleb Coy on

“I didn’t do nothing,” is a double negative.  The words didn’t and nothing, both being negative, create a sentence in which there are two negatives, when it is otherwise assumed that the speaker meant to enforce a single negation: Nothing was done.

Is this an error?  Is this bad grammar?
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