[LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[John Cowan]

Rob Seaman scripsit:


> Decimal and sexagesimal notation persist because over centuries and  

> millennia lay people have demonstrated the ability to reach a minimal  

> level of competency.  Which is to say that, for whatever reason, they  

> are better tailored to our purposes.


That's vulgar Darwinism.  Base 10, like English spelling and the QWERTY
keyboard, are good enough, and may even constitute a local minimum.
But it's absurd to suppose that they are necessarily a global minimum.

Do you suppose that the reason that francophones go on speaking French is
because in some sense French is better suited to those particular people
than English, or Dogon, or Mandarin Chinese?  Hardly.  They continue
to speak French because children continue to acquire French from their
francophone parents and peers.

-- 
"But I am the real Strider, fortunately,"       John Cowan
he said, looking down at them with his face     cowan at ccil.org
softened by a sudden smile.  "I am Aragorn son  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
of Arathorn, and if by life or death I can
save you, I will."  --LotR Book I Chapter 10