Subject: Re:HEX advert... (Don't know what it was)

From: "G. Dyke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2001 12:33:51 +0200

Craig :

<the first lists only one that it gives an example for with a base (as
opposed to a lack of one a la one-two-many) lower than ten, and that is the
ancient Egyptians, who are all dead. The second lists a few lower bases
without any examples to back it up.
However, I must agree that Lojban does not in fact count as neutral vis a
vis the ancient egyptians, who will likely have trouble learning a higher
base. As soon as time travel is invented, we will need to switch lojban over
to base 4 before we can effectively teach it as a means of communication
5000 years ago.>

So we won't convert to HEX because if we had, we'd have taught it to the
Egyptians.

thinkit:
<it's pretty simple. 16 is a power of 2. 8 is too, but the exponent
is not itself a power of 2. 4 is nice, however--i should look into
those egyptians. 4 is actually very intrinsic to us--being the base
of our DNA. 16 is the most usable of all these, though.>

1 is also a power of two - although the exponent itself is not, and the
romans did not have a [0] so they would find 2^0 a bit confusing. It also
happens to be the base of our nose, our heart and our liver, not to mention
our brain. 16 is not a number that is usefull or usable (except for defining
colours on www and for those who like programming in assembler)- we don't
have anything to count on, although we could add three extra digits to our
toes. Then we could use our nose for base 1, our legs for base two, the
fingers of one hand for base 4, fingers and thumbs for base 5, toes of one
foot for base 8, both hands for base 10 a pack of eggs for base 12 (half
for base 6) a bakers dozen of loaves for 13 and our feet for 16.

Apart from the beauty of it, why have better divisibility ? whether I have
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII , 10111, 27, 23, 1#, or 17 people, you still won't
share IIIII cakes fairly between them with any ease.

mi'e greg