[LEAPSECS] Leapin' on the Merry-go-round

[Steve Allen]

On Wed 2008-01-02T23:44:25 +0000, Poul-Henning Kamp hath writ:

> Any rulemaking we may propose, that our grandchildren or later will

> have to implement, is at best a pointless waste of time, they're going

> to do it their own way anyway.

>

> All we have to do is to leave them a clear notice what the issue

> is, then they can decide if it is a problem and how they want to

> fix it.


But if we are talking about international agreements, treaties,
or contracts, our grandparents have left us a very clear notice.

The International Meridian Conference of 1884 clearly indicated
that the Universal Day was to be a mean solar day, and by extension
the notion of Universal Time was mean solar.

In 1975 the 15th CGPM resolved that UTC, UT, and mean solar time
were approximately synonymous.

The countries who attended IMC or who are members of CGPM should
understand that to allow their ITU-R delegates to abandon leap seconds
in UTC is to violate both of these.

--
Steve Allen                 <sla at ucolick.org>                WGS-84 (GPS)
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