I agree that if we were to adopt an international standard for dates and times, the most logical sequence would be year/month/day/hour/minute/seconds/fractions-of-seconds. The largest units go farthest to the left, just the same as when we write other kinds of numbers. (Feet and inches; pounds, shillings, and pence; whatever.) Depending on the context, you could drop units from either end of the string if they aren't meaningful.

In the meantime, to avoid confusion, I think we should write the year as 4 digits, and write the month as a 3-letter abbreviation. Then, regardless of whether you write 13-Apr-2001, 2001-Apr-13, or Apr-13-2001, the meaning is always clear. But I digress from the original topic of this thread.