[LEAPSECS] Schedule for success

[Rob Seaman]

Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:


> Until now I have never seen any indication anywhere that longitude

> or lattitude would be affected in any way.

>

> Pray, show us the documentation for this hyperbole.


Ah!  That explains it.  You believe documentation is the master  
definition of a system.

Rather, requirements rooted in real world issues are the master.   
Whereas the requirements listed in the documentation are always  
incomplete and never completely self-consistent.

If this were a religious argument (which so many technology issues  
resemble), there would be a fundamentalist versus a liberal  
interpretation of every point.

Greenwich Mean Time has a clear definition that has nothing to do with  
technology.  The prime meridian likely has an official definition  
distinct from GMT, but in origin and practice the two are inextricably  
linked.

It is through the actions of CCIR as inherited by the ITU that UTC was  
linked to GMT.

Presumably nobody disputes that the ITU seeks to sunder this connection.

The Earth has a large moon.  As a result, the Earth's rotational  
angular momentum is being transferred to the Moon's orbit.  The Earth  
slows down.

Civil time is related to diurnal rhythms.  As a result, a timekeeper  
built on non-diurnal rhythms, like an ensemble of atomic clocks, will  
inevitably diverge from a timekeeper for civil time.

The ITU proposal is to flip the interpretation of the last paragraph.   
There are world's of possibilities in how this might be done.  The ITU  
has only ever considered the most garish option.

So civil time is to tick, tick, tick at a steady rate and the Sun in  
the sky is to fend for itself.  On some schedule (some of us prefer  
quick and some slow), intercalary adjustments will have to be made.

The implicit ITU position appears to be that these adjustments will be  
made through the system of timezones that were conveniently set up in  
the 19th century.  Consider this a preadaptation in the evolutionary  
sense.

Well, it just so happens that one of the timezones, actually the  
keystone of the whole system, is tied to GMT.  If the ITU's implicit  
assumption as to the future mechanism for intercalary adjustments is  
to work, then GMT must also be redefined to continue to serve as an  
approximation to the new UTC timescale.

So the ITU demands both that GMT != UTC and that GMT == UTC.

If the definition of GMT changes to be ITU-centric, rather than  
astronomical, the question of the definition and meaning of the prime  
meridian is left in limbo.  I certainly don't think the nice folks at  
the ITU have missed this point, so I am requesting that they make it  
evident in their proposal.  It would also help if the proposal were  
made publicly accessible.

So, I just typed that in without review.  I'll read through it once to  
look for typos, bad phraseology and so forth.  I had no problem  
navigating from top to bottom - and could continue to add levels of  
details - because the logic of the message is rooted in the logic of  
how the world works (and 9 years of practice :-)

The world, that is, is automatically self-consistent.  Documentation  
can be assumed to be always inconsistent.  Just because nobody has  
said anything about implications for latitude and longitude it doesn't  
mean that time and space aren't related in various ways, prosaic and  
sublime.

Ok - my read through is finished.  The only change I made was to add  
the smiley and break the last paragraph at that point.  By comparison,  
a message layered on an analysis of ITU standards would be very  
laborious to construct since one would have to keep referring back to  
other documents and glosses on those documents.

Nature rulez!

Rob