Quote -
And while we're on about the illogical use of numbers ... what about those damn small billions the Americans use (which our beloved Government in GB has also saddled us with) - their billion is only a thousand million, not the real billion which is a million million.

{...}

Maybe no-one else cares, but it gets right up my nose.

Ah - that I think I can explain. You see, we (at least in the US) have always counted up by every three digits (because it's handy to stick in a comma once every three digits, unless you're in Europe, where they count as decimals, and stuff :) ). Each new fourth digit we tack on gets a name.

Makes logical sense when seen from that angle - and requires very little math to figure down how many trailing zeros go behind a given number. :) 

==

Back to the time thing, I'm guessing that once space travel (hopefully) becomes commonplace, and we start living on other planets, that someone sits down and figures out some sort of universal calendar. It'll have to be based on, well, something... I'm sure the flamewars will be fantastic.

I remember that someone once proposed (brace for it) Metric Time.