Re: [LEAPSECS] BBC - Leap second talks are postponed

From: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk_at_phk.freebsd.dk>
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 20:23:28 +0100

In message <Pine.GSO.4.58.0511181455160.8917_at_cass18>, Peter Bunclark writes:
>On Fri, 18 Nov 2005, Ed Davies wrote:
>> On the other hand, I rather snigger at the reservation of the
>> word "universal" to mean time based on the Earth's rotation.
>> It's all rather parochial but it is the established terminology.
>Doesn't "Universal" hint at the join of the SI second and Solar Time?

Oftentimes labels of X are put on things to give the impression of
a good bit more X than is actually at hand.

I suspect that "Universal" in UTC has the same lineage as "democratic"
in "The Democratic Republic of Congo".

UTCs proper name would have been ITC, "International Time Coordinated".

--
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk_at_FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
Received on Fri Nov 18 2005 - 11:34:31 PST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Sat Sep 04 2010 - 09:44:54 PDT