On Dec 20, 2005, at 4:12 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
Maybe obscurity in scheduling and implementation is not a desirable
characteristic after all. Perhaps the problem would "solve itself"
through market forces if leap seconds were simply required to occur
on normal business days at 9:00 am EST, just in time for the opening
of the NYSE.
They already happen during business hours in Asia. Since most of the
US debt is owned by asia these days, it may even be a more efficient
market pressure venue.
I presume January 1 is a holiday for much of Asia, as well as in the
West. The calendar for the Tokyo Exchange implies such (although
January 1 has fallen on a weekend for the past two years): http://
www.tse.or.jp/english/guide/calendar.html. Not aware of any world
holidays falling on July 1, but my (extensive) ignorance is no
guarantee.
So a quick estimate is that half of all leap seconds occur during the
observance of a major world holiday in the great majority of
localities, especially since North America, for instance, where the
leap second occurs during the evening of local December 31 also
observes New Year's Eve as a de facto holiday. And, of course, two-
sevenths of the remaining leap seconds occur during weekends, and the
remainder occur outside normal business hours in two-thirds of the
timezones (including North and South America, Africa, and Europe
extending well east). So yes, you can get leap seconds affecting the
far east during business hours, but this occurs only something like
36% of the time. Would greatly appreciate knowledgeable comments
from list members in Japan or Australia.
This scheduling was a conscious design choice. I'm asserting it may
not have been the right choice.
Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory
