[LEAPSECS] Leap smear

[Warner Losh]

On Sep 19, 2011, at 7:46 AM, Rob Seaman wrote:

>> THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS IN THE REAL WORLD.

> 

> The real world has a way of asserting "how it works".


I think we are talking past each other.

Rob keeps talking about how the rotating rock actually behaves.  This can easily be measured and quantified.

Everybody else keeps talking about man's psychological reaction to the rock's rotation.  This is less easily measured and there's much evidence to show that man's gut feel reaction to small variations of time is small to non-existant indeed.  People get worked up more easily over an hour difference to change the clocks, than the day to day variation of apparent noon.  Nobody rioted in the streets when UTC was redefined to move the prime meridian away from the Greenwich observatory's telescope by hundreds of meters.

Warner