Nick Andrew wrote:
Indeed. The Earth's rotational period does vary slightly (effect of earthquakes notwithstanding). One reason time is hard to deal with sensibly is our insistence on synchronising it to the mean solar day.
// off topic Easter Time time ramblings Isaac Asimov figured it out years ago. From memory ... Create a new calendar with 52 weeks of 7 days = 364 days. Add one extra day, called World Day, at the end - 365 days. World Day does not have a day of the week. In this way, every date falls on the same day of the week in every year. For leaps years, add an extra Leap day after World Day. It too has no day of the week. To make things precise, every 100 years, there is no Leap Day, but every 400 years there is. That pretty well matches up the solar year to the earth's rotation. Easter Sunday would still be a lunar-based nightmare. Either that or redefine it to fall on the same date always, or perhaps just fall away completely. I don't recall Asimov dealing with the tetchy problem of daylight time. As for rejigging the months? I leave that as as exercise. cheers rickw -- _________________________________ Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services Hofstadter's Law. "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's law." -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
