>....the Archbishop of Sydney has made an impassioned plea for retention of BC >/ AD, and to eschew the secular adoption of BCE / CE. I wonder who will win this particular ideological battle?< He’s absolutely right of course and I hope the status quo is retained. The terms CE/BCE may be understood in the US and possibly Canada too but the ‘so called secular’ approach simply raises confusion in the rest of the world. I was a referee for the Institute of Physics for over 30 years on a specific topic of mass spectrometry instrumentation. At that time that encompassed those instruments used for carbon dating and I well recall a 2000 year discrepancy that was disclosed in one paper that arose from confusion between stating dates as Before the Current Era and Before the Common Era. Let the world retain what is understood. There is no need for change.- especially change that requires the entire world to be taught it consequences. Patrick From: John Pickard Sent: Friday, December 23, 2011 8:38 PM To: Frank King Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: Proceedings for Future of UTC meeting
Good morning Frank, In the spirit of Christmas, I offer the following apocryphal story from Australia. A British Airways pilot approaching Darwin requested a time check from the control tower and was informed that "at the third stroke, the time will be "twenty thirty and thirty seconds Zulu ... beep beep beep" A pilot from a local airline made a similar request and was told "six o'clock in the morning, welcome to Darwin" A private pilot from a remote cattle station also asked, and got the reply "it's Saturday, mate, what are you doing out of bed so early?". For most of us, near enough is good enough. More seriously, it seems that a few pedants are driving this, and the Royal Institute of Navigation seems to have the right idea. Happy Christmas to all who observe it, and happy holidays to others. I'm still not sure how happy the holiday will be here. It's been rain, rain, and more rain for the last few days in Sydney, and more forecast. So much for my planned camping trip. Oh well. BTW, and linking time / date and Christmas: in his annual Christmas broadcast, the Archbishop of Sydney has made an impassioned plea for retention of BC / AD, and to eschew the secular adoption of BCE / CE. I wonder who will win this particular ideological battle? Cheers, John John Pickard [email protected] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Frank King" <[email protected]> To: "Rob Seaman" <[email protected]> Cc: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, December 23, 2011 11:47 PM Subject: Re: Proceedings for Future of UTC meeting > Dear Rob, > > No one seems to have responded to your message > of 1 December in which you drew attention to: > > http://futureofutc.org/preprints > > Apart from the nice picture of the Prague clock > this is rather heavy going! > > For lighter reading, I turned to the comments > that were sent in from round the world: > > > http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/futureofutc/preprints/18_AAS_11-668_Epilogue.pdf > > Numerous contributors familiar to readers of > this mailing list sent in comments including: > > Tony Finch > Rob Seaman > Patrick Powers > Frank King > John Davis > Christopher Daniel > > The summary showed that there were about 450 > contributors of whom 76% were in favour of > the status quo [keeping the leap second]. > > Two comments especially appealed to me: > > John Davis said: > > I (or my descendants) do not wish to have > noon drift into the middle of the night. > > An anonymous contributor said: > > If you want a timescale with a constant > offset from TAI, why not just use TAI? > > Many others said much the same less succinctly! > > The Royal Institute of Navigation seem to have > been allowed the last words and say: > > In summary, making this change to UTC has a > rather esoteric rationale, limited benefits > and potentially significant costs. > > Unfortunately, the matter remains unresolved. > > Frank King > Cambridge, U.K. > > --------------------------------------------------- > https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial > --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
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