[LEAPSECS] Straw men

[Rob Seaman]

Warner Losh wrote:


> Actually it is a fair engineering question: Why pay the cost of leap seconds when we can keep civil time aligned to the sun with time zones once every N generations.


First off - what is that cost?  There is an absence of costing efforts for either leap seconds as they are, or redefined UTC as is proposed.

Also, an "engineering question" is not the same as a "question uttered somewhere in the vicinity of an engineer".  It has been asserted at random intervals on this list that fiddling with the timezones can address the same requirements as intercalary adjustments such as leap seconds.  Nowhere has this assertion been tested - or even written up in a coherent fashion.  And yet it appears to be taken as gospel in support of achieving a specific goal in the ITU process.  That is, indeed, a straw man.  Set it up in the field and don't even bother to knock it down.

	Dorothy: Now which way do we go? 
	Scarecrow: Pardon me, this way is a very nice way. 
	Dorothy: Who said that? 
	[Toto barks at scarecrow] 
	Dorothy: Don't be silly, Toto. Scarecrows don't talk. 
	Scarecrow: [points other way] It's pleasant down that way, too. 
	Dorothy: That's funny. Wasn't he pointing the other way? 
	Scarecrow: [points both ways] Of course, some people do go both ways. 


>>> It is a hell of a stretch to claim that re-aligning time zones once every ten generation is unreasonable.

>> 

>> Again, a straw man.  The proponents of the Draft revision in front of the ITU have not suggested anything like this.  But there also has not been the slightest attempt to work through the implications of such a notion.

> 

> It isn't a straw-man argument.


Glad to hear it!  A pointer to the white paper would be appreciated.

By all means rip into my own paper in the mean time:

	http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/futureofutc/preprints/02_AAS_11-661_Seaman.pdf

Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory