[X] My Assistant

[Bob Shaw]

I grew up using old UK currency -

4 Farthings = 1 Penny - 1d (I was *very* young when they stopped using them!)
2 Halfpennies = 1 Penny - 1d
3 Pennies = 1 Threepenny - 3d
6 Pennies = 1 Sixpence - 6d
12 Pennies = 1 Shilling - 1/-
2 Shillings = 1 Florin - 2/-
2 Shillings and Sixpence = 1 Half Crown - 2/6d
120 Pence = 10 Shillings - 10/-
20 Shillings = 1 Pound - £1

There were also 'special issue' Crowns nominally worth 5/-, and the 'Guinea' was (and still is, actually) also in use, especially for fees, gambling etc - 21 Shillings.

The opportunities for mental arithmetic were enormous. A little bit of 'internal slide-rule' work gave you all sorts of tools to manipulate currency, all of which are lost. I don't want to sound like an old git who bangs on about educational standards, but it drives me nuts to see people in shops using a calculator to try to work out how much four items at 25p each might cost, and then get surprised when I'm standing there with a pound coin. And as for VAT at 17.5%, it's just a joke. I can generally work VAT out in my head faster than the twerps with calculators, and all by doing tricks similar to those I learned as a kid. I reckon that people used to be far more numerate, and at least in the UK, that it was all due to a non-decimal currency (and weights and measures). What the hell can you do with decimal measurements except move the point about? And if you depend wholly on calculators, and can't comprehend that four quarters of a Pound might make, er, a Pound, what do you do when your finger slips? Pah!

This has been a plea for mercy on behalf of the XVII Chapter (as reformed) of the Bring Back Base 32 Campaign.

Bob Shaw

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

In my novels The world of Dumria the guies live on a planet where they have four fingers, and for this reason they use a base eight counting. (It is a general hypothesis that nearby everybody on Earth use a base ten because we have ten fingers)
The hell comes when the dumrians try to connect their internet network with ours. Because our computers are based on octets (eight digits, for obscure reasons probably contingently linked to the first teletype systems) when theirs are based on nonets (nine bits, which in their octal system, make three digits). When transmitting up to Dumria, no problem, but when transmitting down, eight nonets have to be translated in a set of nine octets.

Also for obscure reason linked to molecular evolution, our genes are coded in hexets. (specialists suppose that this is the result of an evolution of a former system based on only four bits). I found on this page tyhe description of a code using DNA (or equivalent) to code texts in the unicode UTF6 format! (caution: although this page deals with standard science, it is not really in the style of a science paper)

But these numerical considerations lead us a bit far of the original topic of seing science like a new religion!!!

[ljk4-1]

How about this combination of religion and cosmonautics?


New church in once-atheist Baikonur readies for Orthodox Christmas

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10729300/

By James Oberg, NBC News space analyst // Special to MSNBC

Updated: 9:18 a.m. ET Jan. 6, 2006