Four or five fingers

[Kristian PEDERSEN]

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Nils Lid Hjort [SMTP:nils at math.uio.no]
> Sent:	mercredi 24 janvier 2001 13:19
> To:	dcomics at strindberg.ling.uu.se
> Subject:	reference needed 
> 
> 
> The inhabitants of Duckburg generally have four fingers
> (unless stress situations cause them to develop spontaneous
> polydactylism, as can be seen in a couple of even Barks
> stories, where Donald on a couple of occasions can be seen
> having five fingers). For civilisations with four fingers
> per hand one might speculate that the inhabitants would
> develop the octal rather than the decimal number system. 
> Perhaps Scrooge counts his money in an octal way, for example. 
> 
-- Now it would be really interesting if we checked all the speech bubbles
in the stories and never found any instances of the digits "8" and "9", so
that the numbers we see are actually represented in octal notation! That
would probably mean that Scrooge is much less rich than we've assumed.
	Sadly, even off the top of my head I can recall stories - such as
The Pixilated Parrot - that proves the theory wrong. But of course, it could
be that Scrooge really *thinks* in the octal system, and that the numbers in
the bubbles are just translated for the reader's benefit :)

Strangely, the inhabitants of Tralla La have five fingers per hand.

Kristian