Re: REMINDER: Leap Second

[Ken Chase <math () sizone org>]

the quote from the GNU coreutils manpages on Date Input Formats:

"Our units of temporal measurement, from seconds on up to months, are so complicated, asymmetrical and disjunctive so 
as to make coherent mental reckoning in time all but impossible. Indeed, had some tyrannical god contrived to enslave 
our minds to time, to make it all but impossible for us to escape subjection to sodden routines and unpleasant 
surprises, he could hardly have done better than handing down our present system. It is like a set of trapezoidal 
building blocks, with no vertical or horizontal surfaces, like a language in which the simplest thought demands ornate 
constructions, useless particles and lengthy circumlocutions. Unlike the more successful patterns of language and 
science, which enable us to face experience boldly or at least level-headedly, our system of temporal calculation 
silently and persistently encourages our terror of time. ...

 It is as though architects had to measure length in feet, width in meters and height in ells; as though basic 
instruction manuals demanded a knowledge of five different languages. It is no wonder then that we often look into our 
own immediate past or future, last Tuesday or a week from Sunday, with feelings of helpless confusion."

 -Robert Grudin, Time and the Art of Living. 

http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#Date-input-formats

/kc

On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 01:15:27PM -0500, Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu said:
  >
  >And of course doing interval math across several years where you cross multiple
  >leap seconds is even more problematic - for some corner cases that have an
  >endppoint nearmidnight, doing a naive "timestamp in seconds +/- 86400 * number
  >of days" can land you on the wrong *day*, with possibly serious consequences...
  >

/kc
-- 
Ken Chase - math () sizone org Toronto