Today’s date in the American numerical calendar is 02192019. In the “everywhere else that uses CE dating” calendar, it’s 19022019, which is almost a numerical palindrome! Neat! You don’t get those very often; there are just 38 in the 21st century if you use the American style of Month/Day/Year dating and eliminate the zeroes in front of the day. I think that’s cheating, but whatever.

I’m always amused at some of the things that American culture held over from colonial English culture that survive centuries later, even if those things no longer exist in England itself. The two most popular examples of that are the calendar and the imperial system of weights and measures. The United States is the only country in the world that formats dates the way we do, and there isn’t any discernable reason why. The English, who converted to the metric system of weights and measures in the 19th century, had already been kicked out of the US by then, who held onto feet, yards, miles, ounces, and gallons, etc. The English still use these kinds of terms colloquially but certainly not officially.

What’s more, while it’s certainly easier to use base-10 for units of measure of most things, it’s not always the best. The imperial system uses base 3 and 4 numbers, which have more factors than 10, and therefore can be more useful. As a result you can divide 12 by 3 or 4 without ending up with decimals or reconverting the whole unit system.  Also, if base 10 were actually superior, we wouldn’t be measuring time in 60ths of a minute or hour, or angles based on 360 degrees, a year wouldn’t be 12 months or 52 weeks or 365(ish) days long, and binary wouldn’t just be a set of ones and zeroes set out in six or seven digit blocks, it would be ten digit blocks. No, logically, the absence of something isn’t proof that it does or doesn’t exist, but now your brain is a pretzel.

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