Ubuntu 10.04, Thunderbird and a 24-hour clock

I'll cut straight to the point and spare the philosophical pondering to the end.

To make Thunderbird in Ubuntu display dates (and time) in ISO 8601 you need to do is:

sudo nano /etc/default/locale

on the command line and add the following line to the file:

LC_TIME="en_DK.utf8"

That's it.

Now to my rant.
Why is this so difficult, it shouldn't be needed to touch the command line to make this change?
Why can't the locale en_DK.utf8 (English as they speak in Denmark) be named something better?
Why can't you Americans use a 24 hour day(and night)? You don't even have a word for it like e.g. Swedish dygn or Finnish vuorokausi which both mean a 24-hour period.
Don't even get me started on the dates, 4/5/2010 and 4/5/2010 is it April 5:th or May 4:th, how about trying to update the date Blogger displayed, 5/5/10, from the fifth to the seventh!?

And don't forget Letter vs. A4, but I'll save that for another time.