[LEAPSECS] Regarding the ITU's very immodest proposal

[Michael Sokolov]

Rob Seaman <seaman at noao.edu> wrote:


> Over all that time, it has been unclear exactly what entities are  

> pushing the inane initiative to eliminate leap seconds.  So, when I  

> say "ITU", it is indeed eminently true that I'm implicating a drab  

> body of unimaginative technocrats, but I simply don't know who better  

> to address.  And this tale doesn't depend on it.


I think I know who they are.  They are the PHKs of this world.  There
are plenty of people in our world who believe that their computers are
more important than the planet we live on.  Although we don't know
exactly who are the people behind WP7A, I think our own PHK is a
perfectly good example of what those people are like.  "Mean solar time
be damned, my computers don't care if the Sun is up or not!"  The
invisible entities behind WP7A probably have more political clout than
our own dear PHK, but that's probably the only difference.

If my hypothesis is correct in that the ITU people are like PHK, it
would follow that you and Steve are wasting your breath trying to reason
or plead with them.  PHK has already told you that he is deaf to your
pleas for mean solar time, he'll walk right over you because his systems
outnumber yours 100000 to 1.  The same would go for the ITU WP7A gang if
their mindset is the same as PHK's, as my hypothesis argues.

If this is the case, I think that those of us who care about mean solar
time need to take a totally different approach.  Stop wasting our breath
pleading to those who have already damned us, and commit civil
disobedience instead.  Forget about UTC and cut our losses.  Go back to
the old way we've used before UTC was invented.  Commit civil
disobedience by disregarding ITU orders and their leapless "UTC" radio
broadcasts, and set your wristwatch, your wall clock, the clocks on your
stove, microwave, PC and cellphone from your backyard analemmatic
sundial instead.  Run your own personal life on mean solar time in
direct defiance to the orders of the time lords.

This is what I am personally prepared to do.  Who else is with me?

I also wonder what will Monsieur Gambis do when push comes to shove...
When the day comes when ITU orders him to stop sending out Bulletin C,
will he have the courage to defy the bastards and continue sending leap
second announcements from his home PC during off-work hours?  If they
don't allow him to use mailing lists hosted at obspm.fr for this
purpose, there will be a long lineup of private citizens offering the
use of their mailing list servers - I'll be the first to offer mine!

Goddess Bless,
MS