You've written before about initiatives to integrate writing in courses which aren't obviously writing-centric--perhaps trying to get an LTE published in the NYT would be a useful take on that?
My takeaway from the NYT article is that almost everyone agrees that the leap second should go except for the Russians (because GLONASS) and the Vatican (because of some mysticism). I think the most important part of your letter is the third paragraph, to point out that we've practically decoupled clock and astronomical time for well over a century now. Besides the Egyptian details, I'm not sure what an NYT Letters editor would think your first two paragraphs add to the discussion?
You didn't seem to address the biggest complaint with the leap second, which is that it creates havoc among computer systems. I don't know if I agree that dealing with leap seconds should rightfully be considered "too much work; not worth it," but I do think there are a lot of smart people making this argument, so it bears consideration.
Yeah, I was trying to keep it short (they want letters under 250 words), so had to leave some stuff out. The original piece goes into a bit more detail about the problems for comptuer time, and I agree that it seems a considerable hassle. The solutions are either to stop doing leap seconds, or achieve some sort of industry-wide standardization of methods for incorporating it which, yeah, not remotely going to happen...
My bad. I forgot about the length constraint when writing letters to editors.
I think the straw that broke the proverbial was when the possibility of a negative leap second was raised. This increased my sympathy for the anti-LS crowd. But it also made me wonder, Does anyone write robust code anymore, or is it just "move fast and break things" all the way down?
I do have to admit that saying "all the way down" makes me sympathize with senior people who are (would be held) responsible for who knows how many layers of legacy code.
Ultimately, as I understand it, choosing not to add (or subtract) leap seconds is probably NBD. Wikipedia[1] reminds me that going NLS will result in accumulated disagreement between "atomic and astronomical time" that will have grown to a minute in about fifty or a hundred years.. So, an interesting question, philosophically, but probably pretty moot.
You've written before about initiatives to integrate writing in courses which aren't obviously writing-centric--perhaps trying to get an LTE published in the NYT would be a useful take on that?
My takeaway from the NYT article is that almost everyone agrees that the leap second should go except for the Russians (because GLONASS) and the Vatican (because of some mysticism). I think the most important part of your letter is the third paragraph, to point out that we've practically decoupled clock and astronomical time for well over a century now. Besides the Egyptian details, I'm not sure what an NYT Letters editor would think your first two paragraphs add to the discussion?
You didn't seem to address the biggest complaint with the leap second, which is that it creates havoc among computer systems. I don't know if I agree that dealing with leap seconds should rightfully be considered "too much work; not worth it," but I do think there are a lot of smart people making this argument, so it bears consideration.
Yeah, I was trying to keep it short (they want letters under 250 words), so had to leave some stuff out. The original piece goes into a bit more detail about the problems for comptuer time, and I agree that it seems a considerable hassle. The solutions are either to stop doing leap seconds, or achieve some sort of industry-wide standardization of methods for incorporating it which, yeah, not remotely going to happen...
Thanks for your response, Chad.
My bad. I forgot about the length constraint when writing letters to editors.
I think the straw that broke the proverbial was when the possibility of a negative leap second was raised. This increased my sympathy for the anti-LS crowd. But it also made me wonder, Does anyone write robust code anymore, or is it just "move fast and break things" all the way down?
I do have to admit that saying "all the way down" makes me sympathize with senior people who are (would be held) responsible for who knows how many layers of legacy code.
Ultimately, as I understand it, choosing not to add (or subtract) leap seconds is probably NBD. Wikipedia[1] reminds me that going NLS will result in accumulated disagreement between "atomic and astronomical time" that will have grown to a minute in about fifty or a hundred years.. So, an interesting question, philosophically, but probably pretty moot.
__________
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second
Not surprised at NYT does not want to see any dissent from whatever opinion piece they decide to publish.