In message <20050120124225.GH27951_at_skunk.reutershealth.com>, John Cowan writes:
>Markus Kuhn scripsit:
>
>> In my eyes, a UTC leap hour is an unrealistic phantasy.
I think your critizism of it is just as unrealistic.
If 600 years down the road we have colonized the solar system, then a
large fraction of the population wouldn't care about terrestial
solar time anyway, and I'm sure the leap hour will be cancled well
in advance.
Given that the average western citizen under 30 years already today
can barely add up three items in the supermarket without resorting
to their mobile phones built in calculator today, I think you can
safely assume that you can do anything to the timescale 100 years
from now.
At that time most people will just as they're told on television
(probably in 3D and with full olfactory support) and the few
scientists who care will be bogged down in a very theoretical
discussion about what it would have done to the cows milk, had cows
not been outlawed for foodstuff production many years ago.
Considering that the last couple of changes to our timescales were
forced through in very short time, say 20 years to be very generous
then we can change our timescales 130 times between now and the
first leap-hour, and that is provided earthquakes and yet unknown
geophysics don't make them unnecessary or make it more necessary.
We certainly don't need to decide now who is going to call the leap
hour 600 years from now, all we need to decided is who gets to call
it as long as the next treaty on time is in force. If that turns
out to be 600 years, then it stands for 600 years, if ten years
from now we find out what the real nature of time is and need to
make a new timescale, then somebody had an easy job for 10 years.
The one thing we don't need is flaming rethoric...
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Received on Thu Jan 20 2005 - 08:17:19 PST