The Arkanssouri Blog.: "anti-math atrocities"?

Friday, October 14, 2005

"anti-math atrocities"?

This is a joke, right?

It's hard not to cut and paste the whole thing; it's so absurd, but here's a selection (emphasis mine):

Hebron -- A high school student in this West Bank town has been arrested for "multiplication denial" after repeatedly insisting that a negative number multiplied by another negative number yields a negative product. A world-wide consensus of mathematicians determined long ago that two negative numbers multiplied together produces a POSITIVE product.

"But it's obvious," said the 14-year-old student, Rihab Hanafi, as she was led away in chains by Uzi-toting guards, "multiplication magnifies; therefore two negative numbers multiplied together necessarily produces a MORE NEGATIVE product."Hanafi's repeating her false claims over and over and refusing to instantly accept the word of others gave her away as a died-in-the-wool Holocaust Denier right off the bat. "This kind of superficially plausible reasoning is characteristic of Holocaust Deniers, to which Mathematics Denial is obviously related," said Abraham Foxman, Director of the Anti-Defamation League. "But the underlying motive is obviously hatred for truth and hatred for Jews, the principal bearers of truth."


No, this isn't The Onion. I don't know what's worse, "multiplication denial" or the fact that the girl was arrested for it. Can you say "Thoughtcrime?"

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