[LEAPSECS] final report of the UK leap seconds dialog

[Kevin Birth]

On 2/5/15 9:09 AM, "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk at phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:

>I wonder how different the outcome of the "dialog" would have been,
>if they had been told that leap seconds would happen at 8 or 9am
>on any day of the week, ie: during the busiest hour of traffic,
>on roads, rails and in the air ?
>
>That's what a similar "dialog" would warn about, if it were conducted
>in China or Japan.
>

Good point!  If one looks at the announcement of the leap second in Japan
one sees that it is occurring not on on June 30 at midnight, but on
Wednesday, July 1, at 9:00. A leap at midweek on the first day of the
month at the opening of a business day (and arguably the most important
business day of the month) is probably bad timing.  The link below is to
the announcement from Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and
Communications.   One need not know Japanese to see the dates and times
since they are printed in arabic numerals.

http://www.soumu.go.jp/menu_news/s-news/02tsushin03_03000140.html

That said, this is a problem with the policy of implementing the leap
second at the prime meridian at midnight UTC, not a problem with the leap
second itself.  Indeed, I'm waiting for China to suggest implementing the
leap at a different meridian. If combined with China's proposal for a once
a century adjustment, that could be great fun--particularly if it would
happen at the opening bell on Wall Street!

Cheers,

Kevin


Department of Anthropology
Queens College, City University of New York
65-30 Kissena Boulevard
Flushing, NY 11367
telephone: 718/997-5518

"We may live longer but we may be subject to peculiar contagion and
spiritual torpor or illiteracies of the imagination" --Wilson Harris

"Tempus est mundi instabilis motus, rerumque labentium cursus." --Hrabanus
Maurus



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