Greetings, especially to those in favour of stopping leap seconds! A conference concerning astronomical software is coming up at the start of October and there will be a discussion forum (BoF) on the leap second proposals. The conference (www.adass.org) is mainly directed towards, and attended by astronomical software engineers, a number of whom have contributed to this list.
Part of the discussion forum will be to explain the background and reasons for eliminating leap seconds. As a co-organizer it occurred to me that rather than have your views espoused by "astronomer-types", who you may imagine to be biassed, that you may wish to present a summary of the reasons why you believe leap seconds must be discontinued. If any of you will be in the vicinity of Madrid in the period Oct/03-05 (the BoF is yet to be scheduled) and would like to give a five to ten minute presentation then we would be delighted to receive it. If you can't attend, but could prepare a half-dozen or so slides (in whatever format you desire), or perhaps some plain text that can be read out, I will undertake to present it, verbatim, on your behalf. As the audience will be scientific/technical in nature, a few well chosen, specific examples that illustrate the technical aspects of your argument would be most effective. Mark Calabretta ATNF
