Warner Losh <[email protected]> wrote: |On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 8:17 AM, John Sauter <[1]John_Sauter@systemey\ |escomputerstore.com[/1]> wrote: |I have proposed a schedule of leap seconds prior to 1972 based on the |Earth's rotation rate, which was deduced from ancient observations of |the Sun and Moon. The complete paper is available on my web site, at
|[2]https://www.systemeyescomputerstore.com/proleptic_UTC.pdf[/2]. |I both love and hate this. |I love it because the rules are clear and mechanical. This means |that it can be implemented relatively easily in code. I'd prefer simpler |rules, but it's a lot better than the 'surprise' model we have today. It |also show just how crazy leap seconds are given the crazy number | | [2] https://www.systemeyescomputerstore.com/proleptic_UTC.pdf | |of leap seconds needed (see years -1000's for example). |I hate it because nobody did it. It's a complete artificial construct |that's different from modern UTC. Modern UTC isn't so neat. There's One of the improvements that engineering brought into the world of that sensitive animal with the brain that can be fooled so easily via simple false sensory perceptions is that the logical conclusions that very brain has phantasized and deduced from some context that itself has often been only phantasized and deduced is the exact justification that the mechanism of leap seconds provides. Other things still remain mysterious: how exactly do trees know when they can dare to end the winter season, why do sheeps that life free most often know when they can dare to give life to their lambs? For example, our (dozens of) sheeps did so this weekend, which is almost five weeks earlier than last year. So there a second doesn't really seem to matter, but the male homo sapiens sapiens seems to prefer symbols of its virility: take the piston engine (pistons pound up and down in a cylinder) which is used in favour of the smooth Wankel (spinning triangle) or, possible since decades (more or less, the tanks have become leakproof, but with some will that wouldn't really have been a problem, except for convenience of human, rather than preservation of the earth), and would allow to concentrate pollution in a few instead of millions and millions of places, electrical wheel hub motors powered by fuel cells, rockets not flying saucers, cigarettes not pipes or heavily triangular herb bags, and whatever other figurative forms of what a male has in his underwear there is available. A world where men and women come together in front of large clocks just to see the two inconspicuous and innocent numbers 6 and 0. Without raising an arm, at least not promptly. And scientists and engineers know how to. Yesterday there was Stonehenge, today we know a bit better. Why not move further and further away from the natural world? I personally dislike that we don't have CLOCK_TAI in POSIX, and that it isn't distributed and easily accessible. If the potato goes grazy you can well invent a leapsecond-couple, then the girls and boys would see 6 and 1: also not bad. I wonder what the feelings were shall we need a ménage à trois in the end? Ciao, --steffen _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] https://pairlist6.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
