From seaman at noao.edu  Fri Oct 24 00:31:39 2008
From: seaman at noao.edu (Rob Seaman)
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:31:39 -0700
Subject: [LEAPSECS] Michael, brother of Jerry - a parable of timekeeping
Message-ID: <B8181E90-3793-42DD-A1D5-9E7B9E7A2B67@noao.edu>

 From Jack London, a question:  "Why did you sail with only one  
chronometer?"

	http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.41.html#subj10

If two chronometers are "no better than one", why are three better  
than two?

Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory

From cowan at ccil.org  Fri Oct 24 01:15:40 2008
From: cowan at ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:15:40 -0400
Subject: [LEAPSECS] Michael, brother of Jerry - a parable of timekeeping
In-Reply-To: <B8181E90-3793-42DD-A1D5-9E7B9E7A2B67@noao.edu>
References: <B8181E90-3793-42DD-A1D5-9E7B9E7A2B67@noao.edu>
Message-ID: <20081024051540.GA3770@mercury.ccil.org>

Rob Seaman scripsit:

> From Jack London, a question:  "Why did you sail with only one  
> chronometer?"
> 
> 	http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.41.html#subj10
> 
> If two chronometers are "no better than one", why are three better  
> than two?

Per contra, from an anonymous Irish stationmaster:

An English businessman travelled to Ireland in order to attend to some
important matters.  He stood waiting in the rail station at Ballyhough.

Unfortunately he seemed to have misplaced his pocket watch. Since it
was important that he arrive on time,  he looked for the clock in the
station and noticed that there were two clocks.  The clocks showed times
which disagreed by some six minutes.

When the irate Englishman asked the stationmaster, "Why in bloody 'ell
are there two clocks if they don't tell the same time?", the stationmaster
smiled broadly and replied, "And what would we be wanting with two clocks
if they told the same time?"

-- 
My corporate data's a mess!                     John Cowan
It's all semi-structured, no less.              http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
    But I'll be carefree                        cowan at ccil.org
    Using XSLT
On an XML DBMS.

From pvince at theiet.org  Fri Oct 24 03:41:40 2008
From: pvince at theiet.org (Peter Vince)
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 08:41:40 +0100
Subject: [LEAPSECS] Michael, brother of Jerry - a parable of timekeeping
Message-ID: <58690.1224834100@uk2.net>



On Fri Oct 24  5:31 , Rob Seaman <seaman at noao.edu> sent:

> From Jack London, a question:  "Why did you sail with only one  
>chronometer?"
>
>	http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.41.html#subj10
>
>If two chronometers are "no better than one", why are three better  
>than two?
>
>Rob Seaman
>National Optical Astronomy Observatory
>_______________________________________________
>LEAPSECS mailing list
>LEAPSECS at leapsecond.com
>http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
>
>______________________________________________________________________
>This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System.
>For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email 
>______________________________________________________________________




From pvince at theiet.org  Fri Oct 24 03:45:17 2008
From: pvince at theiet.org (Peter Vince)
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 08:45:17 +0100
Subject: [LEAPSECS] Michael, brother of Jerry - a parable of timekeeping
Message-ID: <58696.1224834317@uk2.net>

Hi Rob,

	Two would give you SOME confidence if they read the same, and at least you would know to be wary if they didn't.  With 
three, you can use a majority voting system, and that is what we do (although we are not at sea!)

	Peter Vince  (London, England)


On Fri Oct 24  5:31 , Rob Seaman <seaman at noao.edu> sent:

> From Jack London, a question:  "Why did you sail with only one  
>chronometer?"
>
>	http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.41.html#subj10
>
>If two chronometers are "no better than one", why are three better  
>than two?
>
>Rob Seaman
>National Optical Astronomy Observatory



From ashley at semantic.org  Fri Oct 24 03:48:22 2008
From: ashley at semantic.org (Ashley Yakeley)
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:48:22 -0700
Subject: [LEAPSECS] Michael, brother of Jerry - a parable of timekeeping
In-Reply-To: <58696.1224834317@uk2.net>
References: <58696.1224834317@uk2.net>
Message-ID: <1224834502.17371.0.camel@glastonbury>

One can, of course, acquire this confidence by setting one to the other.

-- Ashley

On Fri, 2008-10-24 at 08:45 +0100, Peter Vince wrote:
> Hi Rob,
> 
> 	Two would give you SOME confidence if they read the same, and at least you would know to be wary if they didn't.  With 
> three, you can use a majority voting system, and that is what we do (although we are not at sea!)
> 
> 	Peter Vince  (London, England)
> 
> 
> On Fri Oct 24  5:31 , Rob Seaman <seaman at noao.edu> sent:
> 
> > From Jack London, a question:  "Why did you sail with only one  
> >chronometer?"
> >
> >	http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.41.html#subj10
> >
> >If two chronometers are "no better than one", why are three better  
> >than two?
> >
> >Rob Seaman
> >National Optical Astronomy Observatory
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> LEAPSECS mailing list
> LEAPSECS at leapsecond.com
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
> 


From sla at ucolick.org  Wed Oct 29 01:46:08 2008
From: sla at ucolick.org (Steve Allen)
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:46:08 -0700
Subject: [LEAPSECS] princes
Message-ID: <20081029054608.GA14129@ucolick.org>

On slashdot last month the discussion about the USNO poll on leap
seconds in broadcast time signals degenerated into one largely about
daylight time.  On contributor pointed out something notable: Civil
Time has always been the purview of princes.  That poster did not
mention Machiavelli, but I think that's very much the point.

A year or so back Hugo Chavez simply announced that Venezuela's
timezone would shift by half an hour starting the next week.
A couple of years back some folks in the US Capitol proclaimed that we
would save energy if we changed to and from daylight time on different
dates, and since Sunday my VCR is off by an hour.
In 1999 the parliaments of the Australian states decided that
their daylight dates would shift because of the Olympics.
In 2006 all of Indiana started using daylight time because
the governor said so.
In 1974 and 1975 I stood awaiting my school bus in the dark
because congress decided that would save energy.
In 1970 the CCIR decided that an agency headquartered in Paris would
get to tell us all when to stop our clocks for a second.
It goes back to 1901, when the whole world started to tell what time
it was based on Simon Newcomb, which was about the time he himself was
recanting what he said in 1884 while the French delegates were
realizing that the POTUS and USDoS had called a conference that would
railroad the world to choose Greenwich.

Some of the princes are politically that, others are scientifically
so, but really civil time under the dictate of princes goes back much
farther than that.  A coworker pointed out that the clock in his
upstairs bathroom was always 5 minutes fast, but when he reset it to
match the rest of the world both of the women in the house objected.

Every one of us knows that in order for things to remain civil, it's
imperative to listen to whoever has the authority to say "It's time
for bed," and "It's time to get up."  That's civil time.

--
Steve Allen                 <sla at ucolick.org>                WGS-84 (GPS)
UCO/Lick Observatory        Natural Sciences II, Room 165    Lat  +36.99855
University of California    Voice: +1 831 459 3046           Lng -122.06015
Santa Cruz, CA 95064        http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/     Hgt +250 m

From dot at dotat.at  Wed Oct 29 07:53:54 2008
From: dot at dotat.at (Tony Finch)
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:53:54 +0000
Subject: [LEAPSECS] princes
In-Reply-To: <20081029054608.GA14129@ucolick.org>
References: <20081029054608.GA14129@ucolick.org>
Message-ID: <alpine.LSU.2.00.0810291146550.30582@hermes-1.csi.cam.ac.uk>

On Tue, 28 Oct 2008, Steve Allen wrote:

> On slashdot last month the discussion about the USNO poll on leap
> seconds in broadcast time signals degenerated into one largely about
> daylight time.  On contributor pointed out something notable: Civil
> Time has always been the purview of princes.

Before the invention of reliable clocks, time was a matter for the sun -
though princes still fiddled around with the calendar. As well as the
egregious example of the pre-Julian Roman calendar, I'm amused and
disgusted by the anti-Jewish fiddles in the rules for determining Easter
to minimise when it coincides with Passover.

> That poster did not mention Machiavelli, but I think that's very much
> the point.

Perhaps because he predates clocks :-) Also in his time Christendom had
had a stable calendar for over 1000 years, which is pretty good.

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  <dot at dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/
LUNDY FASTNET: NORTH OR NORTHWEST, BACKING SOUTHWEST FOR A TIME, 4 OR 5
INCREASING 6 TO GALE 8, PERHAPS SEVERE GALE 9 LATER IN FASTNET. ROUGH OR VERY
ROUGH. RAIN OR SHOWERS. MODERATE OR GOOD.

From cowan at ccil.org  Wed Oct 29 16:35:23 2008
From: cowan at ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:35:23 -0400
Subject: [LEAPSECS] princes
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LSU.2.00.0810291146550.30582@hermes-1.csi.cam.ac.uk>
References: <20081029054608.GA14129@ucolick.org>
	<alpine.LSU.2.00.0810291146550.30582@hermes-1.csi.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <20081029203523.GE8103@mercury.ccil.org>

Tony Finch scripsit:

> > That poster did not mention Machiavelli, but I think that's very much
> > the point.
> 
> Perhaps because he predates clocks :-) 

Actually not.  Machiavelli's dates are 1469-1527, by which time mechanical
clocks were all over the place.  The oldest surviving such clock in
Europe is that in Salisbury Cathedral, dated 1386.

-- 
Andrew Watt on Microsoft:                       John Cowan
Never in the field of human computing           cowan at ccil.org
has so much been paid by so many                http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
to so few! (pace Winston Churchill)

From mgy1912 at cox.net  Wed Oct 29 20:19:02 2008
From: mgy1912 at cox.net (Brian Garrett)
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:19:02 -0700
Subject: [LEAPSECS] princes
References: <20081029054608.GA14129@ucolick.org>
Message-ID: <44EF1DC53F854819B3972B469908BF01@company48fcb68>


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Allen" <sla at ucolick.org>
To: "Leap Second Discussion List" <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 10:46 PM
Subject: [LEAPSECS] princes


> Some of the princes are politically that, others are scientifically
> so, but really civil time under the dictate of princes goes back much
> farther than that.  A coworker pointed out that the clock in his
> upstairs bathroom was always 5 minutes fast, but when he reset it to
> match the rest of the world both of the women in the house objected.
>
I guess that in his house, he was the clocksetter formerly known as prince 
;-)


Brian Garrett 


From magnus at rubidium.dyndns.org  Thu Oct 30 20:14:09 2008
From: magnus at rubidium.dyndns.org (Magnus Danielson)
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 01:14:09 +0100
Subject: [LEAPSECS] princes
In-Reply-To: <20081029054608.GA14129@ucolick.org>
References: <20081029054608.GA14129@ucolick.org>
Message-ID: <490A4DD1.5030804@rubidium.dyndns.org>

Steve Allen wrote:
> On slashdot last month the discussion about the USNO poll on leap
> seconds in broadcast time signals degenerated into one largely about
> daylight time.  On contributor pointed out something notable: Civil
> Time has always been the purview of princes.  That poster did not
> mention Machiavelli, but I think that's very much the point.
> 
> A year or so back Hugo Chavez simply announced that Venezuela's
> timezone would shift by half an hour starting the next week.
> A couple of years back some folks in the US Capitol proclaimed that we
> would save energy if we changed to and from daylight time on different
> dates, and since Sunday my VCR is off by an hour.
> In 1999 the parliaments of the Australian states decided that
> their daylight dates would shift because of the Olympics.
> In 2006 all of Indiana started using daylight time because
> the governor said so.
> In 1974 and 1975 I stood awaiting my school bus in the dark
> because congress decided that would save energy.
> In 1970 the CCIR decided that an agency headquartered in Paris would
> get to tell us all when to stop our clocks for a second.
> It goes back to 1901, when the whole world started to tell what time
> it was based on Simon Newcomb, which was about the time he himself was
> recanting what he said in 1884 while the French delegates were
> realizing that the POTUS and USDoS had called a conference that would
> railroad the world to choose Greenwich.
> 
> Some of the princes are politically that, others are scientifically
> so, but really civil time under the dictate of princes goes back much
> farther than that.  A coworker pointed out that the clock in his
> upstairs bathroom was always 5 minutes fast, but when he reset it to
> match the rest of the world both of the women in the house objected.
> 
> Every one of us knows that in order for things to remain civil, it's
> imperative to listen to whoever has the authority to say "It's time
> for bed," and "It's time to get up."  That's civil time.

In an old Swedish movie a famous actor gets the question "What time is 
it?", he pulls up his sleve and looks, gets a new question: "Why do you 
have three clocks". The answer is "One goes fast, one goes slow and one 
doesn't go at all!".

Cheers,
Magnus