April 30, 2004
Abaci
Or abacuses. I'm indifferent to the plural, but I'm not indifferent to the fact there are specious products on the market. Where the hell do we stand as a culture when a 2300 year old mathematics calculator gets morphed into a feel-good product intended to teach, not the abacus, but some base ten whore math?
Here is a real abacus:
Nice. A real abacus must have an upper deck, and lower deck, to separate the powers. Upper deck has the power of 5, lower deck has the power of 1. Simple. Even a Syrian couldn't fuck that up. (But he would, just to say he did it. Then he would blow himself up).
Now here is a fag ersatz abacus:
Totally dependent on base ten. This is a cruel tool devised to keep children dumbed down. No upper deck, no lower deck. What does that mean? Well, it means you are going to have a bitch of a time doing multiplication, and a bitch of a time doing division. As for square roots, and cubic roots, which a real abacus can solve, you're screwed. Hammered. Porked.
Yet we allow this tripe to be foisted upon us. Raise your hand if you have a damned bead game abacus in your possession: I see you, brothers. I hear you, sisters. Let us take our toys to the River, and immerse them. Absolve, if not the creators of these gimcracks, at least ourselves.
And let us buy new abaci, real abaci, and divine their secrets.