[LEAPSECS] The definition of a day

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Athena Madeleina <athenamadeleina at gmail.com> wrote:
 |From the point of view of conflict resolution, there is a difference
 |between disagreeing with someone about what is important or what is
 |valid, and not acknowledging that his argument even exists.
 |
 |Several recent emails by those who want to end leap seconds are saying
 |that sometimes the other side just ignores their arguments as if they
 |had never been made, and that various resolutions are greatly
 |misquoted.
 |
 |There is a presentation on the USNO web pages that says it has
 |referenced every argument made by those who want to keep leap seconds.
 |Do people who want to keep leap seconds claim that this presentation
 |and others like it have not even acknowledged the very existence of
 |their concerns?  This is different from saying that their opinions are
 |disagreed with, considered not important, or even ridiculed.

I'm very, very far from christianity, but the following is very
old yet quite describes the problem:

  Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his
  savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good
  for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot
  of men

(Hm, i'm still with the anniversary of World War I and read Józef
Wittlin's «Das Salz der Erde» not so long ago -- the translator
then died in a Nazi concentration camp -- unfortunately it seems
the English do not even know him??!?)

So civil time is defined and uses leap drifts to accomodate the
home planet.  Why do the protocols not adhere to that?  Deliver
civil time as the running distance to monotonic TAI and implement
Markus Kuhn's leap smear to avoid sudden time changes -- the next
generation of NTP servers may incorporate that in their usual
adjtimex clock adjustment business (unless they do already?), so
you may not even notice.

My personal Notebook hardware reality relativises all that for me:
  sntp: time changed by -2.031 secs to 2015 Jan 28 18:29:11.072 +/- 0.009+0.092
  sntp: time changed by -1.971 secs to 2015 Jan 29 10:33:24.597 +/- 0.012+0.350

For example (now i even get chatty), take the American or newer
German culture: people get fatter and fatter, even if they know
about heart attacks and have an uncountable amount of other health
issues that are also *very* costly for themselves *and* society,
let aside the environmental damage because of humiliating
agriculture and resource wastage (like in "one kilogram meat
requires a hundred kilogram of greenstuff").
Measurable better in Italy and most parts of Japan (this data is
from twenty years ago, i'm not up-to-date).

The question is thus the plain: do we take care, or do we extend
the artificial environment to civil time-keeping.  Granted that
«La Grande Bouffe» is a French film, but still.  Yes we could all
die before the next leap second occurs, let aside the approved
early bird hotel booking...  Damn, another discount missed!
It is a matter of culture and philosophy wether leap seconds are
dropped or not, not at all a matter of engineering.

--steffen

("Soylent Green is people!")