[LEAPSECS] Following an open source process

[Nero Imhard]

On 2011-03-06, at 20:57, Tom Van Baak wrote:


>> - the civil day is the synodic day

> 

> Rob, please define "is". Surely you don't mean equality, in a

> mathematical sense. What really is meant by this statement?


I had no trouble understanding it as "always has been" (but of course I may be wrong).


> You bring this topic up a lot. But everyone knows civil time is

> now only grossly associated with anything solar; it doesn't match

> at the second level, not even the minute level, though usually near

> an hour or two, the equivalent of hundreds or thousands of miles.


Oh please! It's not the magnitude of the difference that is relevant to this debate. It's the change in magnitude. The best sundials achieve accuracies below the minute, possible only because civil time has some constant offset from local time (disregarding DST, which, of course, must die).

It's not that I mean to insist on a requirement to have sundials functioning properly (although as a strong wish it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable), but they serve as a nice illustration of the essence of the proposed change.

N