Come to find out, at no point in Lilly’s schooling has anyone taught her about alternate numeral systems. You know, binary numerals, to cite the best known example, or Base 12 or any of the other bases. She’d never heard of it.

How did that happen? I remember learning about bases in the sixth grade. A number of students did presentations about various bases. Rick Reynolds, rest his soul, did Base 12 by coloring his face green and tying a pencil to each hand to be a 12-fingered Martian who counted from 0 to 9 and then t and e. I’m not making that up.

So I introduced the concept to her. For everyday living, it’s useless knowledge, which is often the sweetest kind.

Naturally, I had to look further into this other base business, especially Base 12, here in the age of the Internet, and it wasn’t long before I learned the term dozenal to refer to Base 12, and that there’s such a thing as the Dozenal Society of Great Britain and the Dozenal Society of America, which have a web site with a dozenal clock, among other things.  Man, I’m glad to be living in a world with eccentrics like this on the loose.

The web site says: “The Dozenal Society of Great Britain (founded 1959) and the Dozenal Society of America (founded 1944) are separate organisations with a common aim: to draw attention to the advantages of the Dozen (or twelve-based) system for numeration and measurement. We consider that the decimal system is inadequate and of limited competence in many aspects of numeration. Decimals handicap the teaching of arithmetic and so inhibit understanding of the physical world and the decimal system is unable to express in simple terms the common proportions by which we order our practical and economic activities”

I don’t know if this bloke is a member of the British society, but he knows about their arguments. Not-too-vehement arguments, but arguments all the same.