One for Les - aaaaarrrggghh!!!! now they want to change the fabric of time

[Krocktopus]

This is pretty fucked I think.
Apparently since 1972 the Paris observatory issues instructions to add or subtract one second from atomic clocks around the world so that they are in sync with the rototation of the earth, and so that scientists can do all the calculations and stuff they do with sums and time and stuff so that the earth doesn't fall out of the cosmos or something (can you tell I studied social sciences?).

This is called a leap second and we get one a year, of course you and I would never even notice.
But apparently it's a minor inconvenience for US telecommunication companies and cuts into their profit margins by a negligible amount so they want to get rid of it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4271810.stm

Next month they're going to change the magnetic poles and rearrange the earth's mass so that fucking Ohio or somewhere is the official centre of the earth.

[beshemoth]

Wow, that's even better than that Aussie campaign to have all the maps reprinted with Australia at the top

[Foxglove]

Les is going to love this thread.

Hilarious!

[LesMTS]

Yeah, those leap seconds really fuck your year up don't they? I hate that time of year when they adjust them, it takes me a whole week to temporally re-orientate myself.

[Foxglove]

Originally Posted by LesMTS

Yeah, those leap seconds really fuck your year up don't they? I hate that time of year when they adjust them, it takes me a whole week to temporally re-orientate myself.

That is not the leap seconds - that is just when you have to fly someone

[esperant]

they will probably throw a mental fit if they dont get their way. i can imagine them making up their own time, like changing to metric. i can see an american second being 1 and a quarter of a standard second, just to stick up two fingers to the world.

[LesMTS]

When I was working in the lab there was a piece of equipment which used metric time (instead of seconds it used centiminutes, if that's what they're called). I didn't know this is what it did and it confused me, especially as I was meant to be noting down readings every thirty seconds. Turned out I was doing it every approximately 18 seconds because I was taking the reading when it said 30 when I should have been looking for 50. I kept thinking that it was going strangely fast. Had to start the whole thing again. Why use metric time? I bet it was an American machine.

[Krocktopus]

Time is an abstract concept anyway, is it not? so it doesn't really exist.

Speaking of metricisation (is that a real word?), have you ever seen Dan Ackroyd's Decabet sketch, about how the alphabet is going to go metric, and what words will be changed to?

its good good good