On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 1:39 AM, Rick Johnson <rantingrickjohn...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Jul 5, 10:19 am, Steven D'Aprano <steve > +comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: >> The number of seconds in a day (true solar day) varies by between 13 and >> 30 seconds depending on the time of the year and the position of the sun. > > Indeed. Which proves that a time keeping system based on the haphazard > movements of celestial bodies is antiquated technology. Talk about job > security!
The current *time keeping system* is based atomic clocks. It's only when you want to display this thing called "civil time" (so-called because it causes very uncivil arguments) that you concern yourself with astronomy, base 60, base 24, and other constructs. Now, if you want to argue about a poor choice of standard, look at so-called "Internet Time" that a Swiss watch company invented, which divides a day into 1000 beats. Why use the day as your basis and make it hard to convert to SI units reliably? ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list