[LEAPSECS] Schedule for success

[Rob Seaman]

On Dec 30, 2008, at 1:25 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:


> Rob Seaman writes:

>

>> Nobody other than geeks has a problem with leap seconds.  Geeks are

>> competent to deal with what residual problems there may be.   

>> Therefore

>> leap seconds must die.

>

> We in the "realitybased community" know this to be not true.


Um.  It's the rest of us (whatever our positions) who are reality  
based.  You are in the other category.  The quote continues:

"That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued.  
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And  
while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act  
again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and  
that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all  
of you, will be left to just study what we do."

The assertion has almost literally been that the Earth and Moon, Sun  
and stars bow down before the mighty ITU.

Some of us are skeptical.  (Google "Ozymandias".)

The ITU proposal is insufficient - as a concept and as a document.   
For those who may like the concept, the best way to sell it is to  
improve the document.  If this were a NASA or NSF proposal, the  
referees would reject it as incomplete.

Others might have additional suggestions for improvement, but I would  
like to see 1) a convincing explanation of why the Torino consensus  
was rejected, 2) an improved mechanism for conveying DUT1 (since the  
proposal makes the need much more critical), rather than  
decommissioning the mechanism we have now, and 3) a clear analysis of  
how the inevitable intercalary corrections will be handled.

(Maybe some of this text already exist as internal work products of  
the WP7A, USNO, BIPM, IERS or other organization?)

In particular, those who like the entertainment value of the  
perpetually circulating carousel of timezones would be well advised to  
document how this might work in practice.  This could be a tool to  
help convince the holdouts in the working party to change their votes  
in your direction.

It is to the ITU's benefit to demonstrate a little humility.  Would a  
coherent analysis of how the proposal mitigates risks hurt so much to  
generate?  After all, the announced motivation for making a change is  
that leap seconds are risky.  Document how they are risky and how  
their absence is not.  If you think a paragraph is sufficient to the  
task, then just add it under the heading "Risks mitigated by this  
proposal".  No proposal avoids issues simply by failing to note them.   
On the other hand, if an issue is truly trivial, it should be trivial  
to discuss it.

I will still dislike the concept, but why do you care so much about  
that?  I'm not a member of WP7A.

Rob