[LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Rob Seaman]

On Sep 15, 2008, at 9:52 AM, John Cowan wrote:


> Rob Seaman scripsit:

>

>> Decimal and sexagesimal notation persist because over centuries and

>> millennia lay people have demonstrated the ability to reach a minimal

>> level of competency.  Which is to say that, for whatever reason, they

>> are better tailored to our purposes.

>

> That's vulgar Darwinism.  Base 10, like English spelling and the  

> QWERTY

> keyboard, are good enough, and may even constitute a local minimum.

> But it's absurd to suppose that they are necessarily a global minimum.


Which was the point of some of my earlier comments.

Binary is, however, not good enough for day-to-day human purposes.   
And to bring this back to the topic of the mailing list, "good enough"  
civil timekeeping requires a close mimicry of mean solar time.  Vulgar  
or not, Darwin certainly recognized the selective value of mimicry.


> Do you suppose that the reason that francophones go on speaking  

> French is

> because in some sense French is better suited to those particular  

> people

> than English, or Dogon, or Mandarin Chinese?  Hardly.  They continue

> to speak French because children continue to acquire French from their

> francophone parents and peers.


And do we expect society to be show any less inertia in its diurnality?

Rob