[Tutor] Magic numbers

[Phil]

I'm in the process of tidying up a recent project which was littered 
with magic numbers. This line of code is called approximately 80 times 
per second:

if variable-name < 128:

I'm doing bit shifting calculations and so  < 2 ** 7 does make sense or 
I could use a pre-calculated global constant. I'm thinking that, for 
Python, a global constant might be the better option or doesn't it 
matter and only adds an unnecessary complication making the code less 
readable.

It's not a matter of life or death, just wondering.

-- 
Regards,
Phil