To mark the solemn occasion of the two-hundredth case being entered into the annals of the Temple, I asked the nun Yíwen to prepare for me a long, informative, and heavily-footnoted treatise on the history of the Boolean data type. To my dismay I received this bit of doggerel instead. Many apologies to those of you who came here seeking edification.—Qi.

You might

not know

that long

ago

most words,

when new,

came two

by two:

you / me,

aye / nay,

he / she,

we / they,

girl / boy,

yang / yin,

grief / joy,

out / in.

This is,

you see,

our ten-

dency—

treat all

in sight

as black

or white:

yes / no,

old / new,

stop / go,

false / true,

live / dead,

here / gone,

tail / head,

off / on.

No place

halfway.

No shades

of gray.

Just hit

or miss.

Just that

or this:

strong / frail,

smile / frown,

pass / fail,

up / down,



quick / slow,

luck / fate,

high / low,

love / hate.

But if

you dare

to look

with care—

to stare

foursquare





at each allegedly opposing pair,







fully aware

you must distrust your every instinct, and forswear

that inborn, impulsive tendency

to impose binary simplicity—

then eventually

you may see

that almost nothing

is wholly one thing or another.

For words—like floats and ints and bools—

are merely tools,

providing only crude approximation

for the facilitation of communication.

And any string of words, however nice,

at best is imprecise,

while at worst may be tragically misleading

(and that includes the sentence you’re currently reading).





So here’s

my rule:

don’t think

in bool.

Leave cer-

tainty

to cir-

cuitry

(unless

you trust

the world

is just ...

sane / mad,

short / long,

good / bad,

right / wrong,



left / right,

all / none,

day / night,

oh / one).