On Thu, Aug 4, 2022, 15:53 Forrest Christian (List Account) <lists@packetflux.com> wrote:
Having at least a part of one foot in the global time and frequency community I'd say that it seems that the consensus is building toward eliminating leap seconds.  

There was a vote planned in 2012 to do so after a straw poll showed that most member countries was in favor to do so.   But in a typical committee move they elected to study it more before making a decision. 


Yes.

After all, modern democratic governance can solve any problem......

Next we should vote on those pesky leap years. They're the work of Julius Cesar, some old white guy who owned a tone of slaves, so anything he came up with is "problematic" and gotta go; and if you disagree someone's gonna burn down your Walgreens in a peaceful demonstration.

You know, I seem to remember some government body voting a while ago to simplify Pi to exactly 3.....

I think a much better answer to the nuisance of leap seconds (their uncertainty), instead of dropping them all together, MIGHT be let them build up for a century and deal with it every hundred years or every thousand.  Maybe every decade?

That way when the scheduled time comes, you can be pretty confident an adjustment is needed.  Whereas today its anyone's guess every 3 (6) months.

Then again, as fidgety as humanity is, saying no today might in practice BE the same thing as putting it off until the next century.  Then in a few generations they can play catch up if they really need to.

Maybe by 2300, we'll be able to snapshot Earth (and any other celestial bodies then inhabited by man) and test the change in a 'sandbox' before rolling it to prod.