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Re: OT: needed: witty facts re: positive aspects of Islamic culture

From:Hanuman Zhang <zhang@...>
Date:Tuesday, April 8, 2008, 23:47
on 4/8/08 4:26 PM, caeruleancentaur at caeruleancentaur@YAHOO.COM wrote:

>> Hanuman Zhang <zhang@...> wrote: > >> I am writing a blog post to counter all the blatantly Islamophobic >> "conventional wisdom" and needed lil witty bonbons like Kurt >> Vonnegut's "Do you think Arabs are dumb? They gave us our numbers. >> Try doing long division with Roman numerals." > > Intending no disrespect to Mr. Vonnegut, a great writer, I hope I am > not being pedantic to remark that our numerals are Indian > in origin. The Arabs only passed them on to us. The Wikipedia article > on "Arabic Numerals" states that, in Arabic, the numerals are > called "Hindu numerals."
Yes, but still it is a good summation, giving credit to the Spanish Moors who did "give" the Europeans the Hindu number system as they modified it - SEE _From One to Zero: A Universal History of Nyumbers_ by Georges Ifrah, translated by Lowell Bair, 1985, Viking Penguin.
> > And surely Hanuman Zhang means "bon mots" and not "bonbons." I don't > see any indication that his statement is intended as humorous.
;P~
> Charlie
-- Hanuman Zhang "A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead." - Leo Rosten "There is no total revolution, there is only _perpetual_ Revolution, real life, like love, dazzling at every moment." ~ Paul Eluard "There is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy." - Jean Anouilh "The price of existence is eternal warfare." - Aleister Crowley

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ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...>