Time, measures and words: a rant

"It's all about the time we have (left) and how we choose to use it."  

I heard this in a TV drama and it got me thinking.

Time is a currency more precious than money.  Everything is about time.  From the moment we are born we are all on borrowed time.  We are each a ticking time bomb.

I often wonder why time is divided the way it is.  Who decided we measure time by years and that a year is 12 months and a month is 4.5 weeks, and a week 7 days and a day 24 hours.  Why?

And while I'm thinking about numbers and measures, why is a "blockbuster" novel supposed to be at least 100,000 words and a standard novel 60,000 words?  Who decreed this?  Why do competitions state that a short story should be 1000 words, or 2000 or 4000 or 9000?

This obsession we have with numbers and quantification (is there such a word?) is not helpful.  Can't a story or a novel be as long as it needs to be?

Rant over, although it is a topic I will likely return to....