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Perhaps my favorite deliberate error in arithmetic is from Winston Groom's Forrest Gump, during the protagonist's tour in Vietnam: > I am the machine gun ammo
by RunSet 1y ago
Perhaps my favorite deliberate error in arithmetic is from Winston Groom's Forrest Gump, during the protagonist's tour in Vietnam:
> I am the machine gun ammo bearer, cause they figger I can carry a lot of shit on account of my size. Before we lef, a couple of other fellers axed if I would mind carryin some of their han grenades so’s they could carry more orations, an I agreed. It didn’t hurt me none. Also, Sergeant Kranz made me carry a ten-gallon water can that weighed about fifty pounds.
Unlike Forrest, the reader knows a gallon of water weighs roughly eight pounds and is not spared the extent of his burden.
- gowld 1y agoEighty pounds is "about fifty pounds", especially considering that a water can worth carrying at all is often not full, and insofar as nothing else in the paragraph is given a specific weight so the precise number doesn't really matter.
- qotgalaxy 1y ago[dead]
- FearNotDaniel 1y ago> the reader knows a gallon of water weighs roughly eight pounds Haha, you have to love those quaint, backwards Americans and their “freedom units”. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, we can peacefully enjoy the fact that 3.785 litres of water weighs exactly 3.785 kg.
- lmm 1y ago> Unlike Forrest, the reader knows a gallon of water weighs roughly eight pounds Maybe at the time. Presumably that gets an explanatory footnote in modern editions?