Re: [LEAPSECS] Galileo to the rescue

From: Rob Seaman <seaman_at_noao.edu>
Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 23:33:38 -0700 (MST)

I've been distracted lately by various personal doings, including having
to sell my house unexpectedly to fend off eminent domain. Like many of
the folks on this list, I also don't have the luxury of considering the
protection of civil time (that is - some approximation of Greenwich Mean
Time) as a primary function of my job. On the other hand, there seem to
be several folks agitating for the demise of leap seconds who appear to
have infinite time on their hands for whatever hidden agenda is actually
driving this stupid - sorry - "shortsighted" initiative.

As Steve Allen rather dramatically points out, the word "consensual" is
at best an insult to those of us who violently oppose the bastardization
of civil time - and at worst is - well - a crime against humanity. Name
some other circumstance where the well understood daily needs of literally
every single person on the planet are considered subordinate to a naive
analysis of the needs of some obscure and badly designed systems that
will be obsolete before you can say "Moore's Law".

If you need unsegmented time, use TAI. Leave UTC alone. Invest your
resources in improving the infrastructure of time and in fixing your
own broken software and systems - not in breaking our systems. If the
hidden agenda was to raise the profile of this issue - perhaps to lobby
for increased funding to support UTC infrastructure and education - then
you have succeeded. Now back off and focus on the real issue - how best
to distribute time signals, and what timescales (note the plural) to
distribute.

Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory
Received on Mon May 26 2003 - 23:33:47 PDT