Time just makes more sense that way. Otherwise you get weirdness like this: 12:00 AM occurs before 11:00 AM on the same day.
I too prefer a 24-hour clock, but when I don't use it I always use 'midnight' and 'noon' (or, sometimes, '12:00m' for 'meridiem'), just to be completely clear.
Let's make a day be 86400 seconds (already a SI standard), and then you can divide that into tenths, hundreds or whatever. One thousand of a day is 84.4 seconds, which is close to a minute (which is (/ 60 (/ 24 one-day))).
We have metric for measurements in space, but something as simple for day-to-day time measurement would be nice.
I'm sorry I'm making fun of you, but I just can't help myself as this happens all the time -- somebody comes up with a reasonable idea, and then the next commenter takes it so widely out of proportion, willing to re-engineer the whole society just to marginally improve his own comfort.
It's not a bad idea in principle, but the massive cost of switching wouldn't be worth the marginal gains.
Why not keep the day as it is, which can be conveniently divided into halves, thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, eights, ninths, tenths and twelfths, as well as any multiples of those you like?
It's expensive, the benefits are minor, and our system is fine (it could be better of course: a switch to nautical miles would be nice, and making a gallon 256 cubic inches would be great). I've never seen a compelling reason to convert — and neither have Americans in general.
> Every other country faced the same expense and learning curve.
If every other country jumped off of a bridge, would you? The French system really isn't as good as it's cracked up to be.
French units optimise for abstract unit conversion (e.g. inches to feet or millimetres to kilometres); standard units optimise for concrete manipulation (e.g. dividing a gallon into cups, or a litre into decilitres). The thing is, unit conversion really isn't that common compared to manipulation (after all, what do units of measure exist for if not to manipulate objects?).
It was imposed on much of the world by Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin (much like right-hand driving, as it happens); one can't really say that many folks had any choice in the matter.
> Standardization is so prevalent in many aspects of our world for good reason - suggesting that the metric system is somehow immune to these benefits is ridiculous.
I'd never deny it. There really are benefits to standardization. The rest of the world is free to standardize on feet and pounds any time it wants grin