[LEAPSECS] Consensus building?

[Rob Seaman]

Um - as I said I will refrain from comment on the assertions.  However, I also said a glossary might be a good idea.  The "SI second" is a well defined concept.  These others certainly have no normative force.  In particular, the essence of the problem in front of us is that the Gregorian calendar does not count something called "SI days".  Since the exercise is to build as much consensus as possible, we might most productively avoid strong assertions about points in dispute.

Regarding vocabulary, I'd suggest that fully qualified terms will raise the fewest hackles.  For instance, "SI second" has a very clear meaning, but "second" is ambiguous (and will remain so no matter what action is taken).

Rob
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On Feb 2, 2011, at 8:33 AM, Finkleman, Dave wrote:


> I suggest that the terms second, minute, hour, day, and month stated

> without qualification have "normative" status:  the SI second, 60 SI

> seconds, 3600 SI seconds, 86,400 SI seconds, and Gregorian calendar

> numbers of days expressed as 86,400 seconds.

> 

> Anything else requires qualification such as: mean solar seconds.

> Actually I can't think of other forms of hour, day, etc. that require

> qualification, since those are neither fundamental time intervals nor

> time scales.