still multiplying negatives

I misspoke when I said prophet, clearly preacher is a better term.  I see him as sort of country preacher, some guy who was far from the central church, tending to his flock, though they probably didn't call it that because I don't think that ovine nomenclature took off until after Jesus showed up.  I think he is a little disillusioned with things, tired of pretending that there are answers to things when really it is all, as the band Kansas discovered, dust in the wind.  Maybe I should read it again, it has been years.  My Elsdon Methodist King James Version sits just feet away on a bookshelf because I think sometimes I should look up something, but I never get around to doing so.  I'm pretty sure that David and his son are mythical.  There is no historical record of him, which there would be if he was some big king.  Likewise the Queen of Sheba sadly.

I don't understand how multiplying a positive number by a negative number is un-multiplying it.  I would think that division is the reverse operation of multiplication.  I don't understand how you are un-multiplying something twice, or how a second negative will cancel out a first negative by un-multiplying it.  I don't understand Beagles' explanation at all.

I think negative numbers were allowed into the pantheon by the practice of commerce.  When balancing the books you would have to account for debts owed to you and debts that you owed and you would subtract what you owed from what was owed to you and if the former was greater than the latter than you would be in a hole, your net worth would be a negative number.  I think if you converted a debt owed by you to one owed to you that would be the equivalent of multiplying it by negative one, but you know that is not much of an explanation.  I wonder why what should be so obvious is so hard to explain.  I am a few clicks away from googling why does multiplying a negative by a negative result in  a positive, but like that reach for the good book I will hold it in abeyance until at least this is posted. 

I was inclined for kind thoughts for the late Herbert Walker, but here it is Tuesday and the funeral isn't until Wednesday and then it will be Thursday when they bury him.  I guess that's the way it always is when a prez dies, but isn't it a bit too long?  There's no trouble at all having nice thoughts for the departed not long after they have departed, but the longer thereafter when everytime you turn on the tube there is that casket, you begin to think he wasn't really all that hot.