Is it my birthday?

This post is posted at 12:06 and 40 seconds, on February 18th 2012. This is my 1,000,000,000 seconds' birthday!

Is it more meaningful than having a birthday every year (except of course that the number is easier to remember)? Having a yearly birthday is tied to the Earth's orbit around the sun - what good is that?

On the other hand, having a birthsecond (?) at different milestones of counter increment is closely tied to the arbitrary definition of a second, relative to the Caesium-133 atom. Add to that the fact that the said milestones would be defined according to decimal base-10, which has been itself arbitrarily chosen a long time ago from how many fingers we have.

If we colonize other planets, it would become complicated during intergalactic conversations to talk about Earth-years. If we encounter aliens, they may well not have 10 fingers on their hands, if hands they even possess. So far, the inherent characteristic of Caesium-133 should be pretty much constant in different parts of the universe, so the second would be a safe bet to start with. Of course, the definition of a second was decided in 1967, much later than it was approximated for 60 of them to make up a minute, 3,600 to make an hour, and
86,400 to make a day, which itself is tied to the rotation of the Earth around its axis. But let's suppose for argument's sake that the scientists on Earth have enough intergalactic power to impose this ridiculous definition of a second as the universal standard.

From here, the only possible milestone would be in decimal base-2 (binary). This has the benefit of not being tied to biology nor astronomy - it's only a set of digits, true or false, on or off, open or close, up or down... This would mean we would have a long celebration in the beginning, but would become increasingly separated. These examples give an idea, with their rough equivalent in Earth-time:

Age 0 - 1 second - 00:00:01
Age 1 - 2 seconds - 00:00:02
Age 2 - 4 seconds - 00:00:04
Age 3 - 8 seconds - 00:00:08
Age 4 - 16 seconds - 00:00:16
Age 5 - 32 seconds - 00:00:32
Age 6 - 64 seconds - 00:01:04
Age 7 - 128 seconds - 00:02:08
Age 8 - 256 seconds - 00:04:16
Age 9 - 512 seconds - 00:08:32
Age 10 - 1,024 seconds - 00:17:04
Age 11 - 2,048 seconds - 00:34:08
Age 12 - 4,096 seconds - 01:08:16
Age 13 - 8,192 seconds - 02:16:32
Age 14 - 16,384 seconds - 04:33:04
Age 15 - 32,768 seconds - 09:06:08
Age 16 - 65,536 seconds - 18:12:16
Age 17 - 131,072 seconds - 1 day, 12:24:32
Age 18 - 262,144 seconds - 3 days, 00:49:04
Age 19 - 524,288 seconds - 6 days, 01:38:08
Age 20 - 1,048,576 seconds - 12 days, 03:16:16
Age 21 - 2,097,152 seconds - 24 days, 06:32:32
Age 22 - 4,194,304 seconds - 48 days, 13:05:04
Age 23 - 8,388,608 seconds - 97 days, 02:10:08
Age 24 - 16,777,216 seconds - 194 days, 04:20:16
Age 25 - 33,554,432 seconds - 1 year, 23 days, 08:40:32
Age 26 - 67,108,864 seconds - 2 years, 46 days, 17:21:04
Age 27 - 134,217,728 seconds - 4 years, 93 days, 10:42:08
Age 28 - 268,435,456 seconds - 8 years, 186 days, 21:24:16
Age 29 - 536,870,912 seconds - 17 years, 8 days, 18:48:32
Age 30 - 1,073,741,824 seconds - 34 years, 17days, 13:37:04
Age 31 - 2,147,483,648 seconds - 68 years, 35 days, 03:14:08
Age 32 - 4,294,967,296 seconds - 136 years, 70 days, 06:28:16

There is a number of benefits to this:

• Reaching 100 years old is not a challenge anymore - reaching age 32, now, would be something.
• Less birthdays to celebrate means less money wasted on gifts.
• When someone is born, people celebrate for a few days anyway.
• Could be used on other planets too.
• Less parties in a lifetime could mean that when they do happen, it's really something to celebrate.
• My age 30 is only in 73 million seconds.
• Infant before age 25, baby at age 25, toddler at age 26, child at age 27, teen at age 28, adult at age 29, wise adult at age 30, senior at age 31, and genetically-modified android at age 32 and up. This is an awesome scale, you have to admit!
• Dating someone would be easier, in the case when both are the same age, but are clearly born far apart in time. Age is merely a number, but knowing someone's age would give you a good idea of that person's maturity.
• You would have a pretty good idea of what age someone exactly is.
• Some people have difficulties counting up to a hundred - limiting the age to 32 may help a mentally disabled person feel smarter.
• You wouldn't live to whine about how being in your forties is boring, being in your fifties is making you look old, being in your sixties is great when you retire, being in your seventies is boring, being in your eighties makes you a lot of friends at the hospital, being in your nineties is making you wait for death, and being in your hundreds is awesome only if you are conscious enough to brag about it. Now there would only be age 30 and 31 to whine about. If you would live to age 32, you could brag about it all day - people will make human sacrifices for you daily.
• If you're alone, you have less birthdays to remind you of how alone you are.

There are, however, a problem to this:

• Forget it, there is nothing wrong with this age system - it's so awesome I'm eager to reach age 30 in a couple years!
• No seriously, it's a perfect system. I'm going to run for president next year.