The term comes from an old joke, according to which President Calvin Coolidge and his wife allegedly visited a poultry farm. During the tour, Mrs. Coolidge inquired of the farmer how his farm managed to produce so many fertile eggs with such a small number of roosters. The farmer proudly explained that his roosters performed their duty dozens of times each day.
"Perhaps you could point that out to Mr. Coolidge," pointedly replied the First Lady.
The President, overhearing the remark, asked the farmer, "Does each rooster service the same hen each time?"
"No," replied the farmer, "there are many hens for each rooster."
"Perhaps you could point that out to Mrs. Coolidge," replied the President.
ASSISTANT: I wonder if I am adequately explaining the freeness of him.
CHRIS: I really think I’ve got it.
ASSISTANT: He could go home with you right now.
CHRIS: Uh huh.
ASSISTANT: I could just, you know, pop him in your bag.
CHRIS: Or you could not.
ASSISTANT: He’s poppable.
CHRIS: Palpable, even.
ASSISTANT: Oh, touche!
CHRIS: Thanks.
ASSISTANT: So you’ll take one!
CHRIS: I didn’t say that.
ASSISTANT: Oh, come on.
CHRIS: What guarantee do I have that it won’t come to life and try to murder me in my sleep?
ASSISTANT: What?
CHRIS: I would like some sort of guarantee that this is not a killer doll. Like Chucky.
ASSISTANT: It’s not Chucky.
CHRIS: No, it doesn’t look like Chucky. But it could, you know, sympathize. With the killing.
ASSISTANT: But MacGyver is a good guy!
OTHER ASSISTANT: It’s Captain -
ASSISTANT: Nobody cares.
CHRIS: So was MacBeth. Then he murdered the King of Scotland.
ASSISTANT: Good point.
CHRIS: I thought so.
ASSISTANT: But this figure wasn’t made in Scotland! HA!
CHRIS: Where was it made?
Actually, "philosophy" means "love of wisdon", not "love of knowledge". While not claiming philosophical rigour about the definitions, "knowledge" is basically "acquired information", whereas "wisdom" is "applicable knowledge".To which this guy decides to slam back...and thinks the only way to do it is to nuke it from orbit. Christ, never fuck with a guy who has intimate knowledge of Ancient Greek, and knows the Unicode for it:
That's simply incorrect. The literal translation of the Greek Sophos (Slashdot doesn't allow greek, but put & #931;& #959;& #966;& #959;& #962; [note: remove spaces if you want to actually see the greek, you weirdo] in your browser) is able, skilled or clever, and was applied as a title to those with the training to read the future from objects, as opposed to the innate ability. The word is in specific opposition to the modern term "wisdom." There isn't a word in ancient Greek for Wisdom, as they seperate between scholarly-attained internal wisdom and naturally-attained internal wisdom as two distinct topics. In Greek, scholarly wisdom is called skholastikos, and innate wisdom is referred to with the now largely forgotten word bleptor (which has largely been replaced by the Latin "vidensi" whence we retain "evident.")
A philosopher is a lover of knowlege, skill, ability, and cleverness, not a lover of wisdom, experience, or history. The word you're looking for is the extinct term "philobleptorist," which you can see in several contemporary references to Greek great minds, particularly Herotodeus, Aristotle, Anaximander, Democritus, Protagoras and so on; it's also occasionally used in the proto-Renaissance during the "omg Latin = smart" phase, and so you see it bandied about for people like Bacon, Newton and Galileo often.
By example, consider Mike Michaelmiker from WZZZ TV, John Brown from the Brown Family Farm and The Great Mage Darkcloud from Avalon. All three people are able to read the weather. Mike uses doppler radar. John uses what farmers have figured out over the last few thousand years. Darkcloud summons a demon and binds it to just go look at the future.
Mike Michaelmiker is a philosopher of weather. He understands how weather works. He understands why a tornado happens, and can evaluate data to estimate the likely upcoming weather patterns. With sufficient tools, his predictions are highly accurate in the near future. Mike doesn't need significant historical data for the local terrain; a map, some hardware and a few hours are sufficient for him to get up and going. However, without tools he cannot function.
John Brown is a philoblapterer of weather. He is aware of the historic trends for weather in the area. He knows dozens of signals from the natural world - if the air smells like metal, then an electrical storm is likely; if the air feels wet and drops rapidly in temperature, then rain is likely; if the wind seems faster at the ground than ten feet up, then local weather is about to turn from cloudy to clear. He doesn't know that the metallic smell is loose ozone from electrical interactions in the clouds, or so on; he just knows that that smell is an indicator of a well known process. With a few weeks to get a sense of the pattern and provided that his knowledge is locationally appropriate, his predictions are also highly accurate, but for completely different reasons. John is only effective in terrain he knows the history of, because even similar terrain can have radically different weather contexts, but needs no real tools other than some time.
Darkcloud is meteonephelamancia, and lord only knows how he works. The point was to distinguish between academics and learned innate knowledge. The Greeks believed that there was a block of knowledge waiting to be unlocked piecemeal inside each of us, and went as far as to distinguish that from scholastic information right in the language. Sophos is clearly knowledge of skill, not innate wisdom, by the very nature of the Greek lexicon.
The counterpart by scholarly skill is an academician; it was common but not required for a philosopher to be an academician. Counterexamples, however, include Pythagoras, who never attended a day of school in his life and proudly attested to that (people who call the Akousmatos a school are mistaken; it was a think-tank and a borderline cult. People went there to work, not to learn.) Pythagoras is remembered among other things as a great Philosopher, but it would be a mistake to call him an academic. Granted in the modern sense academic has begun to blur with researcher, but remember at that time it had not. The Chaerephon notwithstanding, Socrates is probably another philosopher which was not an academic; though what we know about him is second hand, several of his students including Plato indicate that he frequently denied accepting money for his "public conversations" which others viewed as teaching, and there is the supposition that he relied on wealthy friends, presumably Crito, Euclides and eventually Stilpo.
The counterpart by innate knowledge doesn't have a title, because you don't really get people who choose to have innate knowledge. However, when that knowledge was believed to be derived of gods or powerful beings, these people were called Oracles from the Greek "orare" to pray or plead. Otherwise, it would be typically referred to as a magician with respect to some specific topic, rather than as a group, such as sciomantia - someone who speaks with shadows and shades (the idea of referring to them as dead is modern, since referring to a dead creature as dead back then was taboo and believed to be a good way to get haunted, so you never would have heard necromantia.) By the way, -mantia has turned into the modern "-mancy," whence we get rhabdomancer, pyromancer, osteomancer and so on.
They believed in all sorts of weird divinations, and as such referred to them almost like professions; they had, say, leatherworkers and ironworkers, but no word for tradesmen, by metaphor. (That is, there were arithmantia and alectryomantia and oneiromantia, but no generic "mantia.") My favorite is gyromantia. It's funnier than it sounds; look it up.
By the by, the myth that sophia comes from wisdom comes from the mistranslation applied in the 1600s by someone in reference to Hippocrates' identification of what we now call Wisdom Teeth as "sophronisteres," or teeth which come in once the person is characterized of self-control (adult teeth, in the modern vernacular; the ancients would call us intensely age-discriminatory.)
At any rate, don't argue with people because someone told you something. That someone is frequently wrong, and the person you're arguing with frequently isn't. Argue with other people only when you know the specifics, which in the case of etymology means the particular path the word has taken to get to where it is today. It is especially important to not argue the meanings of words in a language you apparently don't speak.
The best thing about arguing the definitions of words in ancient Greek is that you can't pull the "well that's what it means today because there are a lot of people making the same mistake" routine.
I arrived in Bagram Air Force Base (BAF), Afghanistan on Sept. 27th, 2008, and over the course of two days, turned in my ammunition and sat through briefings about vehicle safety, family discord, suicide awareness, and mental health. Collectively, soldiers call them the “don’t-beat-your-wife classes.”
...
My cynicism did not prevent me from accomplishing the assigned mission. For my efforts, I was awarded a Bronze Star, the usual award given to non-staff officers who get through a deployment without doing anything catastrophically stupid.
In which I write of paint continuing to dry
October 22nd, 2008, 10:32pm by Sam Wang
There’s just so many posts like this a guy can write. Today, Obama is still crushing McCain. Still. Crushing. McCain. The Popular Meta-margin is approximately Obama +7.5%. It would take that much shift in state polls to make the Median EV Estimator a 269-269 dead heat. The national margin is Obama +7.0+/-1.1% (n=10, surveys spanning 10/17-21). These measures are consistent.
Via the Princeton Election Consortium.
Is there anything Hitler can't do? Oh Hitler.
By the way, this is the one true Kitler.
Err. W. T. F. Something for the whole family!
7. Have you ever noticed how sun-dried tomatoes and top-grade peyote look exactly the same? Not a suggestion, really. Just saying.Yes, I understand the somewhat heavy-handed and ham-fisted promotion of the New Yorker here. But what can I say, they publish some good shit.
14. Hepatitis! (Note: This is not technically an appetizer.)
The box of Big Rigs states that the player may "race trucks across the country, with cops chasing [them]." GameSpot's Alex Navarro wrote that this description of the game is nothing more than "horrible, horrible lies", since there are no police in the game. Additionally, they pointed out, the computer-controlled opponent vehicles have no AI and never move from the starting position, making even the description of the gameplay as a "race" questionable.I mean, who actually goes to the trouble of coding all that, and releasing and distribution? Is it even a game as such? I mean, a game involves challenges and obstacles and some process of achievement, and it's arguable that this game achieves even the bare minimum of that. It seems more like some self-reflexive, postmodern exercise in minimalism/lying. The Gamefaqs review page and board on the game is also highly amusing as well.
This is what happens when evolution isn't smart, which is always. Unlike the hand of the one true Lord, FSM.
I'm more or less convinced that whatever is recorded in human history is more or less long strings of paredolia and apophenia, with some postdiction thrown in there for 'good' measure. Which brings me to my main point:
Michael Drosnin is a douchebag.
I've just bumped up the pagerank (albeit infinitesimally) for his wiki article for the keyword 'douchebag', though they are many a candidate competing for that position.
Don't read too much into this; I may do an expanded post more fully exploring the implications of this. But this is food for thought, so to speak:
If I could loan out my physical books without giving up possession of them, I would. The fact that I can do so with digital files is not a bug, it's a feature, and a damned fine one. It's embarrassing to see all these writers and musicians and artists bemoaning the fact that art just got this wicked new feature: the ability to be shared without losing access to it in the first place. It's like watching restaurant owners crying down their shirts about the new free lunch machine that's feeding the world's starving people because it'll force them to reconsider their business-models. Yes, that's gonna be tricky, but let's not lose sight of the main attraction: free lunches!
Universal access to human knowledge is in our grasp, for the first time in the history of the world. This is not a bad thing.
AN INTERESTING HYPOTHESIS ABOUT A WOMAN, THE PRESIDENCY AND LAME DUCKS
There's been a lot of brouhaha about the choice of Palin as VP nominee on the Republican ticket, and atleast some of this comes from concerns surrouding McCains' health. In addition to his somewhat 'statured' age (72), his tortuous and brutal treatment at the Hanoi Hilton (he can't lift his arms above his head; all those victory-cheer shots of him lifting his hands above head are done by his wife holding his hand and raising them for him) McCain has had a history of melanomal skin cancer, and in 2000 underwent an operation for that condition that left a noticeable mark on his face.
All of this plays into the secret hope that McCain could shuffle off his mortal coil sometime during the next four years; or at the very least, have a recurrence of cancer or something serious enough to warrant the 'abdication' of his presidency. Schadenfreude has broken out.
However, even if mooseburger lady were to come into the top job at the Oval Office, she would have a tough time at the post. Simply put, she'd be a lame duck. She would have absolutely no credibility, and possibly even less power. The Dems will most likely control atleast one, if not both houses of Congress, and won't listen to her; and the Republicans (at the best of times) haven't been a women-friendly party.
Unless we have some kind of October surprise where Palin bares her teeth and proves that she could use bully pulpit (emphasis 'bully') of the presidency, it's probably safe to say her (theoretical) presidency would likely be a deadlocked one.
McCain picks his VP. Incredibly good political move.
Plus, she's a VPILF to boot.
Also, i'm writing this down and checkin' it twice, as to make a record; if McCain does infact win the election, you have to join Facebook. You know who.
That joke may very well make up for the Facebook.
I love student life. Sitting on homely couches at Stucco (this beautiful, gorgeous, amazing place in the middle of Newtown, with lovely doors and bohemian perfection) working out policy points, tuning lecture bashes, screen printing shirts; this is what it's about. Spending time with possibly the largest group of incredibly funny, smart, talented, dedicated people i'm ever going to meet in one place, wearing bear masks and getting paint everywhere. I'm tired. I'm exhausted incredibly, from going from one wonderful party to helping out PULP, hungover and 5 hours of sleeping on the floor.
I want to feel like this forever.
See? The Internet is more than just a channel for the faster delivery of pornography and gossip! It can also deliver funny cat pictures!! LOLZ
P.S. Never actually do this to a cat. That would be horrifying, and hasn't Gotham got enough supervillains as it is?
Oh Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116: Reasons why people and children do not mix, and should never be allowed to happen. More to the point, parents using pataphysics would be a terrible name for a 'rock band'.
Not what you're thinking
Joss Whedon new project!! Go watch now, because it's gone after 20th midnight of this month. Read the master plan too.
Also amusing: ads from the 30s. The last one is super great, especially if you enjoy fancy calligraphy/promiscuity/'being everyone's pal'.
Standing on the shoulders of giants, I prefer to call it. Or atleast crouching at their knees.
Exceeding moment of hilarity! Ran across this video today. While the advertisement itself isn't particularly great (it's about beer and soccer and cross-dressing or some such crap), the comments are priceless:
Headcrabb (4 hours ago)
What the hell do you mean fake?
Its not a real commercial?
Bittermanscolon (7 hours ago)
of course it's fake, it's a COMMERCIAL! Fuck sakes.
manupdude1 (7 hours ago)
fake
Quick addendum:
I'm going to talk today about dragons in garages.
In Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World, he opens with a passage about a dragon in his garage. Obviously, you're intrigued. He shows you his garage, but you see no dragon. Of course not, he replies, because the dragon is invisible. You try to touch the dragon, but that's no use, as Sagan says the dragon is incorporeal. You try to smell it, but no odour. This process continues so on and so forth, until you exhaust all your possible attempts to prove the existence of this dragon in some way.
This leads on to a wonderful quote by Sagan:
Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?
Rightly, he concludes, there isn't.
However, sometimes, there is a dragon in the garage. Newton had one such famous dragon: gravity. He could 'see' it; he could percieve its existence, and had to come up with a new mode of understanding (calculus) to prove it.
Sometimes, some people's dragons are interesting purely for their imaginative quality. The New Yorker is running a review of a retrospective exhibition held in New York on the life and times of Buckminster Fuller. Fuller was either a eccentric visionary or complete madman; "Fuller’s schemes often had the hallucinatory quality associated with science fiction (or mental hospitals)."
Fuller was a strange, fantastic figure, who invented the idea of using geodesic domes as houses and gave eight hour lectures on everything, from environmentalism to architecture. Quote:
"instead of finding a job, [BF] took to spending his days in the library, reading Gandhi and Leonardo."
We need more people like this. I'm not saying that it would be a good thing if everyone were like this, but we do need more dream sellers.
If nothing else, they make the world less boring.
I think that's what I want to be. Penny for a dream?
This post cribbed and crafted from here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Repressed gays on the Supreme Court?! Say it isn't so!
That one comes from awesome Harry Andrew Blackmun, who also authored the majority opinion on Roe v. Wade. Another great opinion to read, if you have the time. Actually, the Roe v. Wade opinion is one of the nicer legal decisions i've read, managing a surprisingly nimble balance between women's rights and public outcry. Mind you, it's a long opinion, which is somewhat expected I guess.
For all you sexy chemists out there:
Periodic Tables don't come much sexier.
Legal trouble, again. Actual, blood-boiling style outrage.
About fucking time. Seriously, this sort of bullshit has gone on for too long. 6 years?! Christ. What's even more appalling is the umitigated douchery of Scalia's dissenting opinion:
Of the two dissenting opinions, Justice Antonin Scalia’s was the more apocalyptic, predicting “devastating” and “disastrous consequences” from the decision. “It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed,” he said. “The nation will live to regret what the court has done today.” He said the decision was based not on principle, “but rather an inflated notion of judicial supremacy.”
Yes. Habeus Corpus. A quaint, inflated notion of judicial supremacy. How these people get into power still baffles/saddens me.
That one was easy, if late. Now, in general, the RIAA are dicks, and their lawyers more so. But this...this is a new standard.
To summarise: The RIAA filed a 'making available' suit against Cassin, when said defendant filed a motion to dismiss aforementioned suit. Just before the judge made that ruling however, the RIAA submitted a voluntary notice of dismissal on the suit, and it was over. Or so we thought.
The bastards then resubmitted the suit, only they renamed the defendants to 'Does 1-4' (in legal terms, John Doe is a placeholder name for defendants who are either unknown or anonymous). In addition, the fuckers filed another motion for ex parte discovery!
To say that this is a gross violation of legal principles would be, frankly, an understatement. One needs Jon Stewartesque style to adequately convey the sheer gall and principled evil of these people.
But RAD. I especially like the fact that some-bodys went to the trouble of dressing up as the Imperial Royal Guard.Stop all this "organic" and "natural" treehuggery. Because that's all it is. Well, that and money grubbing on the part of the people selling you that overpriced stuff.
"Organic" means almost nothing in the USA thanks to the influence of the USDA, and "Natural" means less than nothing.
However, you are sadly mistaken about the basic realities of farming..."Organic" and "natural" crops cannot even remotely compete in terms of volume of perfectly safe, edible food with the genetically modified, pest free varieties.
The following things are true:
1. A hundred years ago, there was no such thing as agriculture which was not "organic", because we did not turn petroleum into fertilizer or, for that matter, pesticide.
2. The use of shallow tilling of soil, especially when done with heavy machinery, creates hardpan.
3. The use of petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers (as well as other artificially-sourced pesticides etc) harms soil diversity. Good soil is over 60% organic material (ideally, over 80%!) and can be 20% or more living matter. The chemicals with which you are so enamored harm beneficial insects, the worms which we depend on to create soil (they are also defeated by our tilling practices) as well as nematodes and mycelium.
Enough facts, I don't want to confuse anyone with them. Let's get back to the battle. Again, a hundred years ago it was all "organic" farming. Therefore "organic" itself doesn't mean a whole lot. If you're fertilizing only with poop and the like you can still be horribly harmful to the environment by simply allowing topsoil to wash into rivers. Or, for that matter, by tilling it and leaving it uncovered, which allows it not just to wash away, but even to blow away. This results in harm to air quality and thus to our ability to breathe - living in agricultural areas is no fun. I am living in Lake Country now; I was living in Marysville last. Here it's vineyards, and you can find them south (Napa) or west (Hopland) where various items are sprayed on the plants - and into the air, where we get to breathe them. That shit sets off my asthma every time, so I really don't want to hear about how "safe" your inorganic farming is.
Now, let us discuss the issue of sustainability in more depth. "organic farming is mining the soil of its vital minerals, particularly phosphorus and potassium. ... Conventional farming, on the other hand, restores mineral balances through fertilization." This is amazingly empty-headed cheerleading bullshit. In fact, organic farming restores mineral balances through fertilization, but in conventional farming techniques (those of the so-called "Green Revolution") instead of correctly amending the soil with those things which it requires, and allowing natural forces to fix those nutrients and make them available to your crops (these "natural forces" are also called "other plants" or, by the ignorant, "weeds") we spray ready sources of the food into the soil and feed the plants. Feeding the soil is a basic tenet of true (i.e. nothing to do with the USDA) organic gardening, but I understand that there is always a temptation to simply ignore facts in the pursuit of a good argument.
It just so happens that in my yard there is an organic garden which produces food crops at an extremely economical rate. It is based on compost, poop (steer, llama, seabird, bat, and chicken shit) and the usual range of organic soil amendments including alfalfa meal, blood meal, bone meal, feather meal, seaweed meal and so on. Those with an eye for detail will note that much of this is actually recycled refuse from animal processing and the like - I'm no space cadet from Vega. The soil is better this year than it was the year before - it's been obvious for months because the cover crop (mustard) was about four times taller this year in spite of similar (if anything, less ideal) conditions otherwise.
Now, let me address the issue of food quality. In theory, commercial farming methods can safely produce food of the same quality as organic methods, or even superior quality. In actuality, this almost never happens. First of all, the pesticides are unequivocally not safe for you (I don't know what makes you think that the food is safe, when it has repeatedly been shown to not be so - some of the pesticides don't wash off conveniently and we even have special vegetable washing products for this purpose now - the global "We" you understand, because I produce my own produce and otherwise general buy organic) and honestly, you should never spray anything on your plants that you wouldn't at least spray on your own body, if not something that you wouldn't mind putting in it. Common sense here. While the food for the plants is taken apart one molecule at a time and put back together the way mother nature intended regardless of if it comes from poop or from oil, the pesticides don't get the same treatment.
The next factor negatively affecting food quality is the process with which these products are shipped to the store. It affects every stage of the plant's existence from its very selection - the varieties of food available on the shelf at your local supermarket are based more or less entirely on appearance and ability to travel. Food is picked early, gassed to force "ripening" (as if it were ripe after that) and then shipped hundreds of miles to the store. Consequently, not only does organic food generally taste better simply because it's a superior variety, but also because organic farming is usually carried out on a smaller scale, with the product being used closer to the point of production. Far from being a "throwback", this makes good economic sense and you can see the principle at work all over the world; in fact, China is going to have cars built in Mexico to sell to the American market in spite of the fact that American companies have things built in China to sell to the American market because it's cheaper than having them built in Mexico. Welcome to our world. Because the food does not have to travel so far, it can be picked at an actual state of ripeness, when the parts of the plant which we eat are fully developed, and thus the macronutrients are fully developed. Genuinely ripened products are always substantially richer in the things which are interesting to us; things with antioxidants have more of them, things with beneficial complex amino acids have more of them, et cetera.Shocking to discover that fertilizer and pesticides yield more crops.
Food is rotting in silos all over the world (except maybe for Africa - wait, it's rotting in warehouses!) which should clearly make the point that the reason people are starving in this world has nothing to do with adequate supplies of food being available on the planet, but with them being available locally. Right now Mexicans are going hungry because our demand for subsidized ethanol fuel has increased the demand and thus the price for corn. The issue with people starving on this planet has nothing whatsoever to do with the amount of food available, and everything to do with greed. It is really just that simple.
NOW, where do we go from here? How do we correct the downward spiral that is destroying the soil all over this planet?
The first step is to stop throwing away valuable poop. In this country almost all sewage is pumped (at great expense) to sewage treatment plants where it is processed (at further great expense) and then generally put right back into some water system that someone will be drinking out of later. Then we later pump that water out of the stream, spend huge amounts of money to clean it up so that we can drink it or take a crap in it and flush it towards the treatment plant. The solid waste (lovely euphemism) left over from this process is usually either burned or landfilled. Or burned and then landfilled.
Instead of doing this, we need to recycle this human waste and feed the plants. You don't just pump the shit out into the fields, that's a recipe for E.Coli sprouts. You do have to process it slightly, but there are actually a number of methods to do this which involve very low (or basically zero) energy input aside from the crap, and which not only produce fertilizer but also methane gas. The methane gas can be used onsite for cooking, or compressed and taken offsite. It can be used pretty much anywhere we normally use propane or "natural gas". Most sewage plants actually just "flare off" or simply burn this methane, putting the CO2 right back into the atmosphere without any gain. And we pay them for the privilege of having our shit processed in the most inane way possible.
Of course, a lot of basic assumptions about the way people should live have to be revised - we have to reconsider location, location, and location. Or we can still spend a lot of money to pump the shit, but instead of pumping it to a treatment plant, we pump it to what amounts to an array of wildlife refuges with submerged plastic tents which capture methane. The shit is pumped into the bottom with a supply of water, and bacteria process it and heavy metals settle out and are fixed by other bacteria. The process produces algae which can be used to make biodiesel and alcohol fuels, and methane which I have already discussed. The only reason we're not doing this today is the very same reason that there is so much resistance against organic farming - in order to protect the profits of oil barons and their vassals, who are making big metric fuckloads of money by shitting on the planet and taking our money unnecessarily.
If you would like clarification of any of these points, or any further explanation of why organic farming is absolutely essential and why modern mass agriculture is destroying the planet, I will be happy to provide you with more information.
Obviously, there are points worth debating here. I'm willing to let certain features go; the differentiation of 'a' and 'an' isn't strictly necessary in my books. It can be retained for aesthetic purposes if you wish, as could a whole host of other linguistic features.
One day, we will all speak in binary or hex, and it will be good.