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And then, once that religious war is settled, and we're calculating C in furlongs per fortnight....

Lets us talk about calendars.

Gregorian? Julian? Jewish? Mayan? Chineese?

The Babylonians used 24 hours a day, 60 minutes per hour. WTF? That's divisible by... what? It's great if you are an idiot savant.

Humans are absolutely insane when it comes to systems of measurement.

The only good news is that there are so many standards to choose from.... /cook rant

Cook that on gas range 4.

/johnny

The Babylonians used 24 hours a day, 60 minutes per hour. WTF? That's divisible by... what? It's great if you are an idiot savant.

12. Which is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12.

The 60 which is 5 times 12 is divisible by 1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30 and 60. A system based on 10s is divisible by 1,2,5 and 10 only.

So a third of a hour is 20 minutes. On a tens system a third of a hour is 33.33333333333333333 Ad infinitum.

The Babylonians used 24 hours a day, 60 minutes per hour. WTF? That's divisible by... what? It's great if you are an idiot savant.

Divisible by 3. I'm not sure it matters with time, but the British system of 12 pennies in a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound meant the pound was evenly divisible by 3. It makes for a lot of math, but it's not bad if you have two partners and want to divide your earnings up equally.

Britain also had a unit, the guinea, equal to 21 shillings. I guess it was divisible by 7, but more importantly, professionals could charge in guineas, rather than pounds, and pick up an extra shilling for every 20 charged.

Lets us talk about calendars.

Yeah. Let's talk about calendars. Our measurement of time goes all the way back to Babylonia from what I understand. If I recall correctly, they had used base 60 as their numerical system. Of course this is off the top of my pointy head, so I could be wrong. :-)

Let's talk about some metric time. Personally, I like the martian time system.

The International Meridian Conference Proceedings, Oct. 1884 - Resolution VII of the Final Act of these proceedings, which established the Greenich Prime Meridian, states: "That the Conference expresses the hope that the technical studies designed to regulate and extend the application of the decimal system to the division of angular space and of time shall be resumed, so as to permit he extension of this application to all cases in which it presents real advantages." All parties to the conference voted in the affirmative on this resolution except Germany, Sweden, and Guatemala which abstained.
A New Time For Australia - Will Australia be the first country to switch to MT?
Aristean Decimal Time - "New time system in decimal format covering the duration or elapsed time issue, and the clock time or time of day issue." Uses "aristo" for centidays and starts the day at sundown (18:00 ABT).
The Decimal Time Society - With a decimalized date starting on the vernal equinox, AD 2000. Also a 10 day week. Also includes a poem.
Global Standard Time (XTime) - Coordinated to the International Date Line.
Grand Admiral Petry's Metric Time Page - "American Standard Metric Time: the HESIT ... Metric time divides the day into 40 demur(s) and centigrad hesit(s)".
John Hynes' Decimal Time - Overview of decimalized time formats including (Modified|Truncated) Julian Dates, Unix, French Republic, Stardates, etc. with java clocks (digital and analog) illustrating them and a conversion table. Also links and a discussion board.
Martian Time - Proposal for decimalized time system (and others) and calendar to be used by martian colonists. Will they beat the Aussies?
Metric Time - Uses a 25h/100m/100s format plus has nonstandard years.
Metric Time - This one uses a unit called a "tick" which is based on the solar year. It has a metric calendar too. It also has a links section which looks strangely familiar...
RyoSystem - A replacement for a portion of the SI metric system that includes a decimilized time based on a centiday, here called a Choi (Ch).
Universal Time Organization - "Promoting a metric based system that is co-ordinated on UTC".
WRLD.time - IDL Coordinated, day divided into 100 measures of 100 beats. predecessor of GST.
XAQ Metric Time (XMT) - Base unit is a Pulse (a mean solar day), also has a decimalized calandar system.