About the bases... I wonder what's so great about base 60? I personally like to write my numbers with one symbol per digit. As he was saying, people like to divide things into halves, thirds, quarters. So why not take the least common multiple of 2,3,4? It's 12 (2*2*3), only 2 more symbols needed. I myself wouldn't mind doing away with a 5 factor, if it meant having base 12 rather than 60.