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Re: The leap second is dead
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2022 Nov 21, 10:58 -0800

Tony Oz, you wrote:
"Future is NOT deterministic - by its Nature."

That's a fair point. The future is completely unknown, and let's face it: we all could die tomorrow... or next month... or next year... or in 30 minutes. So let us eat, drink, and be merry! The party starts at 23:59:00 UTC on December 10 at my house. Be there to celebrate the tragic uncertainty of the future!! Note: see why it's nice to have a deterministic calendar even if future events themselves will surely surprise us?? You would miss the party celebrating the tragic and genuinely horrifying unpredictability of the future if the calendar itself was unpredictable. A predictable, deterministic global calendar and global time standard is a good thing.

You added:
"The leap second's abolition is just a hype to distract people from their real problems."

Heh. Funny. :) But let's take that idea seriously for a moment. This is a speculative hypothesis which you can easily dispose of experimentally. Ask your friends in the real world: have you heard that leap seconds are scheduled to be abolished by 2035? If the answer is yes (low probability), ask them if the story has distracted or concerned them in any way. You will discover that certainly not one person in a thousand and probably not one person in fifty thousand has even heard about this story. It's not news at all for the simplest reason: it shouldn't be news; it's a minor technicality. Thus fantasies of conspiracy like you suggest here can be easily kicked to the curb. And yes, I do realize you were just joking. :)

There are precious few news sources that have covered this story. I provided links to a couple in earlier messages. A few more have appeared in the past few days:
https://phys.org/news/2022-11-time-out-seconds.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/science/time-leap-second-bipm.html
https://gizmodo.com/leap-second-time-1849807606

Frank Reed
Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Island USA

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