DEEEEEEEEEEEECEMBER FIRST 2007

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 5:13 pm

The FIRST DAY of the LAST MONTH of the YEAR!

KJASHFKASHFKASHF:A

hello hi!

um

qotd: How many toes do you have? I have 10

Lord of Oats · Post by **Lord of Oats** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 5:23 pm

Crazy how quickly this year has gone by. December is going to be hectic for me.

I have ten toes as well.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 5:26 pm

10 is not necessarily ten

Lord of Oats · Post by **Lord of Oats** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 5:40 pm

What, were you using binary?

I have ten. If you want to be mysterious about it, whatever.

Nobody likes math. Get over it. Actually, I was alright with it, until I had bad teachers. Once I lost my way, it was way too boring for me to catch up on my own. But I guess it wasn't all that interesting in the first place. In other subjects, I used to read ahead on my own and stuff. I was kind of always right on par in math, and then one day, I realized I was way behind. So the potential for any math/science oriented careers is probably ruined for me forever.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 5:50 pm

Most humans use base ten because most humans have ten fingers. A member of some other species which had a different number of phalanges would still likely say they had 10 digits, assuming they used a similar numerical notation to us.

Base ten isn't universal amongst humanity, either. There are vestiges of base twelve and base sixty (mostly in how we tell time), which were used by the Phoenicians, and the Mayans used something similar to base twenty.

Lots of people like math.

Post by **Spud** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 5:57 pm

This type of question really pisses me off, not so much because of the question, but because you are supposed to have 10 toes. I have a friend who was born with 11, and his parents had a doctor cut one off at a very young age. Why? This is how freaking handcuffed we are to societal norms. When someone's number of toes doesn't conform, it must be changed. When he got to be much older, this guy sought out the doctor and like, took a dump on his door step or something.

I was born with three front teeth. This is really a personal issue for me. I have little need to conform. However, a team of doctors had a different idea.

QOTD: I have ten. WHAT OF IT?

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 6:07 pm

I'm totally with you on that, Spud. I'm always interested in things like polydactyly (it's not like the first creatures on the planet had four major limbs terminated by five phalanges!), and other conditions which "must" be "fixed" like hermaphroditism.

Also there's things like unfortunate accidents with farming equipment or whatever.

Mostly I couldn't think of a question for today though.

Lord of Oats · Post by **Lord of Oats** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 7:10 pm

I never liked the idea of 10 not dividing evenly. For a while, I thought base 12 would be cool. But then I was thinking base 8 would probably be the way to go, since 8 is a power of two.

I'd heard about the Mayans using twenty. Do you think they were going after the total phalangeal count? And uh, weren't they the people whose mathematical discoveries were pinned down by a failure to grasp zero? Or was that the Incas?

And yeah, I'm not really for messing with nature too much, unless it's some kind of life-threatening situation. At the very least, leave that up to the individual. The problem with parenting is that anybody can do it, with no experience or training, with no purposeful goals in mind. But yeah, I've seen those things on TV, with the stories of doctors "fixing" babies and whatnot. Even worse than trying to "correct" hermaphroditism are the ones where they botch a circumcision, and then they say, "Whoops! We better make this one a female!"

But don't get me started on circumcision. I typed out a little bit about it and accidentally lost it, but maybe it's for the best.

Ross · Post by **Ross** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 8:43 pm

Busy day doing decorating for the upcoming holidays and such. No progress on my songfight song for the week besides in my head.

QOTD: I have ten toes but the second and third are partly webbed on both feet.

Billy's Little Trip · Sat Dec 01, 2007 10:33 pm

QOTD: I hang ten

Ross, I had a friend, when I was growing up, with all ten toes webbed. I just remember thinking how cool that was.

Lord of Oats · Post by **Lord of Oats** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 10:54 pm

Just remember, Ross. You'll never be quite as cool as Chris' childhood friend.

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 11:15 pm

fluffy wrote: Lots of people like math.

I like maths. I also like sport.

I don't like "math" or "sports".

Reist · Post by **Reist** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 11:15 pm

QOTD: 10. Great question, by the way.

sausage boy · Post by **sausage boy** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 12:54 am

QOTD: I have ten, but I met a guy yesterday who has six.

Lord of Oats · Post by **Lord of Oats** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:51 am

Did he use base six?

Paco Del Stinko · Post by **Paco Del Stinko** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 10:22 am

Hey, as long as whatever you have works, yer all set. I have ten toes and the ones next to my gargantuan big toes look like fingers. Can't wrap them around a tree branch though.

Don't like me math or maths, but do like a bit of sport and sports.

Rabid Garfunkel · Post by **Rabid Garfunkel** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 10:55 am

Paco!

Adam! · Post by **Adam!** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 5:41 pm

fluffy wrote:10 is not necessarily ten

I didn't know that. I've always taken for granted that 10 is pronounced "ten", regardless of what bass you are in. I guess all those jokes ("there are ten types of people in this world..." or Portal's "two plus two equals ten... IN BASE 4 HAHA I'M FINE" or pedantic Hitchhiker's fans' "six times nine IS fourty two... in base 13!") are wrong, then. That's a shame.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 5:47 pm

In those jokes, it's written 10, if it's mathematically correct.

If Portal has a joke like that out-loud (I still haven't played it), the humor is likely because it's specifically mathematically incorrect that way. That's the way that Chet & Eric roll.

10 and ten are different things. At least when mathematicians refer to them, typically the word-based is the platonic abstract number whereas 10 is the actual representation of the number.

Reist · Post by **Reist** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 9:56 pm

Wow. Great lesson. Howsabout base 4?

hmmm. 1 2 3 4 10 11 12 13 14 20.

20 ...

Is that right? I'm new to this stuff.

Märk · Post by **Märk** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 10:15 pm

Reïst wrote:Wow. Great lesson. Howsabout base 4?

hmmm. 1 2 3 4 10 11 12 13 14 20.

20 ...

Is that right? I'm new to this stuff.

Base 4 would be 0 1 2 3 10 11 12 13 20 21 22 23 30... etc.

Post by **Spud** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 11:43 pm

Adam! wrote:I've always taken for granted that 10 is pronounced "ten", regardless of what bass (sic) you are in.

In that case, they would all be called base ten, which would be a little confusing...