Rob Seaman wrote on 2012-02-05 20:59 UTC: > > http://www.zeit.de/2012/05/Schaltsekunde > The fading remnants of my college German are insufficient to the task > - as is Google Translate. Hopefully the translators at RA-12 were better. > The article may say more about current German opinions of the Swiss > (the "Gray gentlemen of Geneva") than of timekeeping issues.
No, the title is a reference to the well-known 1973 children's fantasy novel "Momo" by Michael Ende, where "Men in Grey" steal time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_%28novel%29 The author dwells on the striking similarity of the RA session video on youtube and scenes with the Men in Grey from Momo. (I quite like that reference actually.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03wZ8ue12N4&feature=fvwrel The view expressed by Andreas Bauch (PTB) in the article seems pretty pragmatic: "Things would work fine either way, with or without leap seconds. Any problem that might have occured because of a leap seconds is fixable, if one really cares. On the other hand, if people really had serious problems with leap seconds, things would also work without them." The German objection against abolishing the leap second came from the commerce ministry, but they were not available for comment. There is mention of a rumour that the German defence ministry expressed concerns about abolishing leap seconds, but as usual, everything there is top secret. > My curiosity is also piqued by the linked article: > "Antenna octopus on space mission" Not much of a translation error: the spiral layout of the SKA does indeed look a bit like a twisted kraken. http://www.skatelescope.org/the-sites/layout/ Markus -- Markus Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ || CB3 0FD, Great Britain _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
