Monday, May 05, 2003

A short history of blogs.

A curious episode in the recent history of Lojban was the Hexadecimalist Heresy. A certain Lojbanist, observing that Lojban had single-syllable words for numbers up to fifteen, maintained that the default number base of Lojban must be Base-16 (i.e. counting ...8, 9, A=10, B=11, C=12, D=13, E=14, F=15, "10"=16 in conventional notation). This created an immense & vituperative controversy, only ending when the arch-hexidecimalist withdrew from the community. Lojban remains default-decimal today, but in the imaginary city of Lojbanistan called "La Xagvar", where nonconforming Lojbanists are said to congregate, it is still the customary greeting to ask, "What base do you count in?"

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