Subject: Re: [lojban] periodic hexadecimal reminder

From: "James F. Carter" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 12:33:17 -0700 (PDT)

Everyone get your finger on the "D" key :-)

On Thu, 27 Sep 2001 [email-masked] wrote:
> Ummmm. Is it not the case that the base of a number when specified by {ju'u}
> has to be given in decimal, the Lojbanic default? If it were given in some
> other base, that would have to be specified by another {ju'u} in decimal --
> and so on back. So, specifying bases does not seem to be a real problem (or
> have I missed something dropping in late on this from indirect-question-land?)

To me it seems rather inelegant that a language feature fails to function
in the absence of a default radix. For example, if you were a rabid
dozenal fanatic (or hex :-), would you want to be forced to specify the
radix of your own favorite number system in that depraved base X (ten)?
Or, stretching the point rather more than seems justified, perhaps if you
were a heptapus you could not manage base ten, and it's nasty and dumb to
shut the heptapi out of the Lojban world just over the radix.

Even more off topic: the (fictional) heptapi are described in
http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc/river_h.d/river06.html

James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673
UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555
Email: [email-masked] http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)