everyday math

I think Old Dog is referring to the if/then statement.  If the if and then phrases are both true then the statement is true.  If the if phrase is true and the then phrase is false then the statement is false.  If the if phrase is false and the then statement is true, then the statement is true which seems fair enough but also if the if statement and then statement are both false then the statement is true also.  The whole thing seems a little unbalanced, but then if you start with a false premise it doesn't matter what your conclusion is.  The statement is true but it's useless in the real world.

My mathematical model, which worked fine for enemy of my enemy and friend of my friend also operates just fine for the enemy of my enemy of my enemy, which can be simplified to the (enemy of my enemy) of my enemy which becomes the (friend) of my enemy which becomes my enemy.  (-1)X(-1)X(-1)= ( (-1)X(-1) )X(-1) = (+1)X(-1) = -1.  The situation with the three of us all being enemies is different because it is three sided. 

What Old Dog should do is open peace talks with whichever of us is weaker, then if his ally and he defeat the stronger foe it will be easier for him to defeat his former ally and become king of the hill.  If he allies himself with the stronger foe then once the weaker foe is defeated the stronger foe will easily defeat him. And of course Old Dog has to keep in mind that both me and Beagles know this and are considering the same thing about picking an ally.

The difference between Canada and the Roman Empire is that the Roman Empire consisted of most of the civilized world whereas Canada is a small part of the civilized world.  Civilized world is hard to define of course, but how about if we consider people who have a written language.

I think Old Dog's cousin would have done well to invest in a better doctor.


I think Beagles is conflating addition with multiplication  With addition we have no such odd thing as a negative times a negative becoming a positive, it is all just a walk along the number line with negative meaning go left and positive meaning go right.  When we are subtracting a negative number we are taking away steps to the left which translates to steps to the right. 

Multiplication came into vogue because that is how you measure the area of your field, the width times the length, it gets a little more complicated if you have to use triangles but that is still multiplying.  When you toss negative numbers into that mix they don't make much sense.  How can you call a negative four by negative four field equal to sixteen units?

When quadratic equations were fooled with it was soon realized that they must all have two solutions (cubic three, etc), but it often turns out that one of the answers was negative or worse than that a number involving the square root of minus one, and initially these answers were tossed out.  How can Susie have negative three, or worse, three times the square root of minus one apples?  But it turns out that when you are doing math on complicated things like magnetic fields you need these numbers to make the math work, so I guess they are as real as the integers.

There are two kinds of biblical scholars, the kind who take the bible and associated writings as true and work from there, and the kind that assume no such thing and use written history backed up by archaeology to look for evidence of biblical figures there.  Beagles is a man of the first kind, and the second kind are the guys that have found no evidence of David or Solomon.