I wonder why algebraic notation?

Two reasons 1.Its economics, algebraic notation takes up less space so publishers can get the same amount of games in less pages in their books.

2. Its also much easier to understand that each square on the board only has one identifier rather than trying to work out that g4 is either KN4 for White or KN5 for Black

Read Macoute's proposal and you'll see why my non-serious vocalization suggestion was derived from algebraic notation.

N may seem non-intuitive as the mnemonic symbol for a knight, but in other countries the letter is different because the word for that piece is different (e.g., R for ritter in German). It seems that the Western chess world has not standardized on a single symbol set, so there is still room for confusion even with a system as logical algebraic. In truth, algebraic could be made more efficient and universal by removing the piece symbol all together. A move could be completely and unambiguously specified with nothing more than a source-destination coordinate pair. Using a piece symbol as shorthand for the source square seems more efficient because it is a single character, but its weakness becomes apparent when more than one piece of the same type can reach the destination square, in which case the source rank, file, or square must be specified anyway. We could dispense with the special-casing and the inconsistency in representation if we just allowed each move to contain a couple more characters. In doing so, every move would always be a fixed five character string (four if we decide we don't need a separator like a dash, which we really don't). Having such consistency has many benefits, but many of them will not be valued much by the romantics and traditionalists who ironically see the logic and efficiency of the notation system as incompatible with the so-called poetry of game they love.

Well, some books use the piece symbol instead of a letter to denote the piece.  That always seems to be good.

The strange thing is that he's replying to comments made months ago.

I think that the algebraic notation is better because its easier and faster to write down, e g, why write QNp-b3, when you can just write b3? No capital letter in front so its a pawn move to b3...simple!

Yes, Bishop and Knight are Läufer and Springer in german, which translates to runner and jumper respectively. Sometimes we prefer a more functional, less poetic language here.

I wonder why a tablespoon of flour shaken in a turkey baking bag is supposed to keep it from bursting during baking.   :)

The bag or the turkey?  >:[

The bag, I assume. 

We have never had that problem of a bag bursting while baking a  turkey. The solution to the problem: We use burlap bags!  >:[

Have you ever tried to cook a turkey that burst out laughing?

I usually don't use it, and it hasn't busted yet.

Thank God Conflagration_Planet brought up the subject of bursting turkeys. We were about to put a bullet through Our brain if We read one more post on whether algebraic was better or worse than descriptive notation. It almost made Us wish for the good old days about whether the stalemate rule should be abolished. We do not believe We just said that!  >:[

I'd written about a peculiar notation I came across once, too lengthy to reprint here, but can be found here: http://blog.chess.com/batgirl/unusual-notation

Numeric notation is very efficient in that it minimizes the size of representation and it conforms to a very straightforward regular lexical grammar. However, algebraic and descriptive notation express chess moves the way players think about them when they perform them, i.e., what piece am I moving, and where to? The fact that algebraic even encodes the intent of the move as well (relocation vs. capture) reveals just how important that intent is, however subconscious, in the minds of players. A purely numeric notation discards these connections to the psychology behind making moves. That alone may hinder its acceptance for a long time to come, no matter how efficient and logical it is.

You didn't need to.  In fact, how does a 4 month old post count as trolling you?  :-p

Well, Pawn's to King's 4, but you're right about e4 being easier.

Am I the only one who was reminded in the OP of the song "Sleeping Satellite" by Tasmyn Archer?