[LEAPSECS] final report of the UK leap seconds dialog

Thu Feb 5 09:52:40 EST 2015

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the relevant verse is Genesis 1:14 which says that the sun and moon are to be used to mark the times, days, and years.

That said, in Orthodox Judaism, mean time is seen as at variance with this teaching.  The prayers are set to zmanim—times that vary with the amount of daylight and are locally defined.  The zmanim are then represented in UTC for convenience, but those who do this work recognize the difference between UTC and local apparent solar time.  The prayer times in Islam are based on a variety of factors, including non-celestial events.  Like in Judaism, there are now experts who convert the traditional non-clock times into UTC for the convenience of non-experts.

Most Christian traditions have gone completely over to clock time rather than the old canonical hours (which were like zmanim).  The RC Church's liturgy of the hours is set to clock times, not the position of the sun.  There are a few monasteries, I think mostly in the Orthodoox Church, that still use the canonical hours, but not many.

In my view, in a strictly Biblical perspective, the problem is with mean time not with leap seconds.  This is why I often argue that we insufficiently understand the cultural consequences of mean time, so we have little empirical foundation for understanding leap seconds.   Mean time was adopted during processes of nationalization in Europe and then imposed on the world through colonialism.  The process of its widespread distribution did not involve any deliberative bodies like the ITU-R.  Imperialism makes policy changes easier (but not necessarily better).

Cheers,

Kevin

Kevin K. Birth, Professor
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

From: Alex Currant via LEAPSECS <leapsecs at leapsecond.com<mailto:leapsecs at leapsecond.com>>
Reply-To: Alex Currant <alexcurrant911 at yahoo.com<mailto:alexcurrant911 at yahoo.com>>, Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com<mailto:leapsecs at leapsecond.com>>
Date: Thursday, February 5, 2015 9:39 AM
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com<mailto:leapsecs at leapsecond.com>>
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] final report of the UK leap seconds dialog

I trust Kevin Birth.  Without questioning the efforts of the stakeholders such as Peter Vince to be impartial, it is well known that there are dozens of ways a person makes his opinions known inadvertently.  A slight change of tone, a choice of words, a brief look, was all it took for the OJ Simpson jurors to know what the others were thinking.   Books have been written about body language and facial signals people give off and others pick up.   Also, there were overt pro-leap seconds statements like the one from the Science Minister.

Sorry, I was put off by some of the anti-American and anti-finance statements.  I also didn't think much of the Christian who said changing time offended his religious views.  I've read the Bible, and the Koran.  I wasn't looking for leap seconds back then, but I do remember that the Sun was made on the fourth day.  The Bible does not mention the Earth as rotating, and briefly alludes to a pillar holding up the sky.   Yet a religious stakeholder quoted an information sheet saying the Earth was "God's clock".  How can that be if there were days before there was a Sun?  Cesium atoms came before our Sun, according to the Big Bang, and (if you read between the lines) to the Bible too,

I see the culture thing was a big factor for some.  The WWI memorial whose sundial would not mark 11 AM on Nov 11, was mentioned, but I can't believe this memorial was brought up when the idea of switching England's time zone was floated.   Or if WWI had ended on the 9th day of September, would England not have daylight time so it can mark 9 AM correctly on that day?  Do all the British really eat lunch at 12:00?  I know plenty of Americans who eat as early as 11 or as late as 1.   I am convinced that culture means being able to pretend UTC is still GMT, and this survey had a foregone conclusion.

They showed a movie fast-forwarding 600 years to the future.  I wonder if everything was the same except that clock readings were different - or were children going to school in the dark.  It doesn't say.

All that said, the report was not entirely biased.  According to it, astronomers do not agree with another one of Seaman's unjustified claims, that this would be hugely expensive for them.   I guess that's why the IAU ended up not taking an official stand.  If Seaman could have convinced the other astronomers that getting rid of leap seconds had large costs, they would have gone his way.

________________________________
From: Kevin Birth <Kevin.Birth at qc.cuny.edu<mailto:Kevin.Birth at qc.cuny.edu>>
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com<mailto:leapsecs at leapsecond.com>>
Sent: Thursday, February 5, 2015 9:06 AM
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] final report of the UK leap seconds dialog

I've looked at the report and it is bad social science.  The protocols are
too leading to provide reliable information.  Basically, from a
methodological perspective, the deck was stacked in this "research" to
ensure the results it obtained.

That said, the report does reflect a dominant opinion of the UK if for no
other reason that it reflects how sophisticated some stakeholders in the
UK have become at pushing public opinion in a particular direction.
Embedded in the questioning and report was even former minister Willets'
concern about US influence.

There is an incredible need to sound social scientific research on the
consequences of eliminating leap seconds, but a protocol based on
information sessions followed by soliciting opinions is completely
unsound.  In social scientific research, it is extremely easy to shape the
opinions of those studied so that those opinions reflect one's own views
rather than learning anything new. In fact, most of the report merely
echoes things that have already be said on this listserv.

This report does demonstrate how hard it is to do quality social
scientific research on this topic, and how likely those who enter into
such research with an opinion will shape that research to support their
opinion.

Cheers,

Kevin

Kevin K. Birth, Professor
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

On 2/4/15 9:49 AM, "Steve Allen" <sla at ucolick.org<mailto:sla at ucolick.org>> wrote:

>The final report of the UK leap seconds dialog is at
>http://leapseconds.co.uk/reports-findings-dialogue/
>
>Search for the word "congestion" where it looks as if it once had a
>footnote mentioning a system which has avoided leap second problems by
>adopting a purely atomic time scale.
>
>--
>Steve Allen                <sla at ucolick.org<mailto:sla at ucolick.org>>                WGS-84 (GPS)
>UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB  Natural Sciences II, Room 165    Lat
>+36.99855
>1156 High Street            Voice: +1 831 459 3046          Lng
>-122.06015
>Santa Cruz, CA 95064        http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/     Hgt +250 m
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