Re: [LEAPSECS] our customers' needs

From: Clive D.W. Feather <clive_at_demon.net>
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 11:54:00 +0000

Rob Seaman said:
> Our modern sensibility may lead us to discount Egyptian and Druidic (or
> earlier) world views, but surely the many cultures worldwide that
> produced pyramids and other monolithic structures do demonstrate the
> frequent centrality of spirituality in human decision making. Those
> cultures most definitely knew the motions of the Sun, Moon, stars and
> planets intimately. Steve Allen already provided a convincing real
> world example of the response of a more recent mainstream religious
> community to civil calendar issues.

This would be the point about sunrise on saints' days?

All these issues have one thing in common - they pre-date the introduction
of atomic time, but rather date back to when mean solar time was assumed to
be constant rate and therefore unchanging.

What, I wonder, did the various churches do about the Eleven Days? They can
hardly have been taken down and rebuilt at a slight angle, after all.

> At this critical point in world
> history, what possible justification could there be for truncating the
> discovery process for uncovering similar requirements placed on civil
> time by the great religions of the world before making a large change
> in the definition of civil time?

I have no problem with trying to identify the issues involved. But we can
reasonably ask whether the alignment of a few buildings in Oxfordshire [*]
is grounds for forcing the whole world to cope with the kludge of leap
seconds for the next thousand years.

[* Usual Cambridge-Oxford rivalry deleted for brevity.]

--
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Thus plc            |                            |
Received on Thu Jan 27 2005 - 03:54:34 PST

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