[LEAPSECS] Conversational caffeine

[Warner Losh]

On 01/28/2011 18:05, Stephen Colebourne wrote:

> On 28 January 2011 23:58, Rob Seaman<seaman at noao.edu>  wrote:

>>         - The length-of-day on Earth has never been 86400 SI seconds long.

>>

>>         - There are two different kinds of timekeeping.

>>

>>         - It is the attempt to pretend otherwise that is causing the friction.

> This isn't primarily my discussion, but I agree with these three points 100%.

>

> Acceptable solutions

> - human-day (following the Sun) = 86400 human-seconds (not equal to SI-seconds)

> - human-day (following the Sun) = 86400 SI-seconds + an occasional

> fudge factor (leap seconds)

> - defining a scientific-day that is always 86400 SI seconds

>

> Non acceptable solutions

> - redefining the meaning of the human-day (such as simply removing leap seconds)


Why is this not an acceptable solution?  A TAI day is a reasonable 
approximation of the human day.  There's nothing magical about leap 
seconds: we got on well without them until 1972.  The last statement 
isn't self obvious.

My point is there are other ways to align what humans experience as a 
day, have everybody be cool with it, and not have leap seconds involved 
at all.

Warner



> There is certainly nothing whatsoever wrong with TAI that I can see.

>

> Stephen

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