Last year at the Astronomical Data Analysis Software & Systems (ADASS)
conference a Birds of a Feather (BoF) session resulted in an
extemporaneous group formed to focus on the subjects of leap seconds
and UTC. This year the group continued to raise awareness at ADASS
with a poster presentation.
The poster is at
http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/adass/UTCposter.pdf
It is 36 inches by 46 inches, and with the exquisite background
artwork by Pete Marenfeld it consumes 2496378 bytes.
For brevity's sake of bandwidth the 6609 bytes of text are attached.
In an attempt to harmonize with all co-authors I adopted a viewpoint
which I'll summarize as:
Yes, the sky is falling, but it has been falling for 170 years.
You should be used to it by now. Consider it as job security.
The first reaction to the poster was "Get a life."
(Got one, thanks, next?)
Subsequent reactions went so far as to demonstrate that the IAU (and
other international agencies relevant to timekeeping) have produced
resolutions and decisions which are so obscure that lead scientists
for major flight project software are unaware enough of their
implications to provide self-inconsistent directives and Interface
Control Documents to their software teams.
--
Steve Allen <sla_at_ucolick.org> WGS-84 (GPS)
UCO/Lick Observatory Natural Sciences II, Room 165 Lat +36.99858
University of California Voice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06014
Santa Cruz, CA 95064 http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m
Received on Fri Oct 27 2006 - 23:14:30 PDT