Re: [LEAPSECS] the tail wags the dog

From: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk_at_phk.freebsd.dk>
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 15:21:56 +0100

In message <07005A27-BDE5-4A51-8735-485AB3DA9DD7_at_noao.edu>, Rob Seaman writes:

>Quadratic despair still lurks, of course, since the month is
>lengthening for exactly the same reason as the day. Well, despair
>would be lurking if we tried to match the length of the month (a
>natural phenomenon) to an SI unit (such as the second).

You mean the kind of despair where every so often we would
have to put our finger on the scales to make them balance ?

Ie: Just like when we match the length of the day/year to the SI
second ?

I think the crucial insight here is that geophysics makes (comparatively)
lousy clocks and we should stop using rotating bodies of geophysics for
timekeeping.

--
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk_at_FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
Received on Tue Jan 24 2006 - 06:32:24 PST

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