Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[John Cowan]

Zefram scripsit:

> (Having been born some 601.266 Ms after TAI's birth, I'll be celebrating
> my personal gigasecond in two weeks time.  If anyone's keeping track,
> you can put me down as an early eschewer of solar time, for those things
> where I have the choice.)

If you enjoy high-end science fiction, check out Joan Vinge's _Heaven
Chronicles_, which is set in an asteroid belt.  All times are in kilosecs,
megasecs, and gigasecs.

-- 
There are three kinds of people in the world:   John Cowan
those who can count,[EMAIL PROTECTED]
and those who can't.
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Zefram]

John Cowan wrote:
>If you enjoy high-end science fiction, check out Joan Vinge's _Heaven
>Chronicles_, which is set in an asteroid belt.  All times are in kilosecs,
>megasecs, and gigasecs.

Thanks, I'll look out for that.  I'm a fan of Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness
In The Sky", where one of the participating civilisations keeps time in
that way.

-zefram
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
: Zefram scripsit:
: 
: > (Having been born some 601.266 Ms after TAI's birth, I'll be celebrating
: > my personal gigasecond in two weeks time.  If anyone's keeping track,
: > you can put me down as an early eschewer of solar time, for those things
: > where I have the choice.)
: 
: If you enjoy high-end science fiction, check out Joan Vinge's _Heaven
: Chronicles_, which is set in an asteroid belt.  All times are in kilosecs,
: megasecs, and gigasecs.

Cool...  A gigasecond is around 31 years, a megasecond is ~11 days and
a kilosecond is about 17 minutes.  How would you keep such divergent
times strait?  Let's meet for dinner in about 200 kiloseconds?

Warner
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "M. Warner Losh" write
s:

>Cool...  A gigasecond is around 31 years, a megasecond is ~11 days and
>a kilosecond is about 17 minutes.  How would you keep such divergent
>times strait?  Let's meet for dinner in about 200 kiloseconds?

Actually, gigasecond parties are cool.

The local Unix User group (DKUUG) threw a "uptime(1)" party to
celebrate when time_t rolled over 1e9 seconds a couple of years
back:

http://www.uptime1.dk/

I delivered the count-down display using a FreeBSD computer with a
Rb+GPS timelock:

http://www.superusers.dk/superusers/nyt/images/r0013703.jpg

Poul-Henning


-- 
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Zefram]

M. Warner Losh wrote:
>Cool...  A gigasecond is around 31 years, a megasecond is ~11 days and
>a kilosecond is about 17 minutes.

Yes.  The kilosecond is a convenient unit of time for intra-day planning.
(Metric day folks endorse the centiday, 864 s, for the same purpose.)
100 ks is a reasonable diurnal cycle.  I hypothesise that a human
civilisation entirely disconnected from natural diurnal cycles would
use an artificial 100 ks cycle for this purpose, and a 1 Ms cycle as
the analogue of our week.

>   How would you keep such divergent
>times strait?

Not sure what you mean here.  Relating the SI time units to conventional
time of day is messy; determining which calendar day my birthday falls on
is non-trivial.  In the absence of days and years, though, calculations
that involve only metric units are a lot easier than what we presently
put up with.

>Let's meet for dinner in about 200 kiloseconds?

The linear TAI time now, in my preferred notation, is 0m026.  (This means
26 ks after a 10 Ms rollover.  I'm dropping high- and low-order digits
that don't help for the task.)  Dinner will therefore be at 0m226.
I'll be having some other meals before that, of course, since I don't
want to starve.  If we're living in an asteroid belt, the 200 ks interval
is simply two sleep cycles.

-zefram
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[David Malone]

> Cool...  A gigasecond is around 31 years, a megasecond is ~11 days and
> a kilosecond is about 17 minutes.  How would you keep such divergent
> times strait?  Let's meet for dinner in about 200 kiloseconds?

90ks is probably round enough and close enough to a day that people
could use it as a day - it would be 25hrs, which I think people
have managed as a daily cycle relatively comfortably? 200ks is then
two days and two lots of 10ks, which would be an obvious next unit
down?

100ks is almost 28 hours. I don't know for certain, but I suspect
a flight accross 4 hours is enough to jetlag some people. That
probably means it's a little too long to use as a day.

David.
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Zefram]

David Malone wrote:
>100ks is almost 28 hours. I don't know for certain, but I suspect
>a flight accross 4 hours is enough to jetlag some people. That
>probably means it's a little too long to use as a day.

The problem there is in suddenly being 4 hours out of synch with the
sun, and having to shift phase.  Phase shifting is difficult.  I think
people are much more flexible about diurnal frequency than you think,
especially if the appropriate cues are around to support it.

There's some fairly well-known research to the effect that the human
biological clock actually has a natural period of 26 hours or so,
and its only our exposure to planetary rotation that keeps us on a 24
hour cycle.  I've previously mentioned on this list that my personal
free-running diurnal cycle is 40 hours, empirically determined when I
was an undergrad and had no daily responsibilities.

-zefram
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[David Malone]

> The problem there is in suddenly being 4 hours out of synch with the
> sun, and having to shift phase.  Phase shifting is difficult.  I think
> people are much more flexible about diurnal frequency than you think,
> especially if the appropriate cues are around to support it.

The cueues for this frequency shift look just like a 4 hour phase
shift every day. Of course, there could be a long-term adaption
I guess.

> There's some fairly well-known research to the effect that the human
> biological clock actually has a natural period of 26 hours or so,
> and its only our exposure to planetary rotation that keeps us on a 24
> hour cycle.

AFAIK, that research has been shown to be flawed.

> I've previously mentioned on this list that my personal
> free-running diurnal cycle is 40 hours, empirically determined when I
> was an undergrad and had no daily responsibilities.

Unless you were living divorced from daylight, it's unlikely this
is your natural period.  According to this article (found via
wikipedia):

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/07.15/bioclock24.html

95% of people have a natural period of 24h11m +/- 11 minutes, though
the range went from 13 to 65 hours. The article also suggests that
a 28 hr day is long enough to prevent people's hormones getting in
sync with the day. I'm not sure what the practical implications of
this are.

David.
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Zefram]

David Malone wrote:
>The cueues for this frequency shift look just like a 4 hour phase
>shift every day.

Except that it's a continuous `shift', rather than an instantaneous
four-hour jump.

> Of course, there could be a long-term adaption
>I guess.

That's what I'm expecting.  With jetlag you're expected to retain the
same frequency and shift phase, so there's no adaptation to a different
frequency.

>Unless you were living divorced from daylight, it's unlikely this
>is your natural period.

I had *some* exposure to the outdoors, but this was only a couple of
percent of the time, when taking buses between home and campus.  Half the
time this did not involve sunlight.  At both ends of that journey I
lived a completely indoor existence, without unobstructed sight of an
external window.  So desynchronisation seems quite feasible.

Probably relevant: before the free-running period I was accustomed to
irregular sleep periods that had little synchrony with the planet.
Even when I had lectures to go to, I kept completely ad hoc hours.
In those years I could shift phase to an arbitrary extent within
two days, by simply staying up until the bedtime of the target phase.
Nowadays I've become conditioned to working (approximately) office hours,
and I seem to be much more tied to the regular cycle: I have difficulty
staying up as much as 24 hours.  When I need to, though, I still break
phase entirely rather than shift gradually.

>   http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/07.15/bioclock24.html

Interesting work.  This still, like the discredited earlier work, shows
a biological cycle longer than the natural solar day.  Evolutionarily
you'd expect us to be built for a shorter cycle, since the Earth rotated
faster in our evolutionary past.  But the day was only a few minutes
shorter when our ancestors switched from nocturnal to diurnal behaviour,
so there shouldn't be much in it.

>a 28 hr day is long enough to prevent people's hormones getting in
>sync with the day.

They're drawing a strong distinction between the hormone-controlled
circadian rhythm and actual sleep/wake rhythm.  I hadn't thought about
this before.  On those occasions when I've stayed awake for lengthy
periods of time, occasionally 60 and once over 70 hours, I've certainly
had periods of lowered body temperature and lower physical activity,
matching what they describe for the hormonally-sleepy phase.  I recognised
it as such at the time.  But the regular 40-hour cycle was different.
As I recall, I just didn't feel sleepy at all until I'd been up more
than 20 hours.  The cycle of 24 hours awake and 16 asleep felt like a
normal circadian rhythm, not overriding the natural state at any point.

-zefram
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Magnus Danielson]

Zefram wrote:

David Malone wrote:

The cueues for this frequency shift look just like a 4 hour phase
shift every day.


Except that it's a continuous `shift', rather than an instantaneous
four-hour jump.


Of course, there could be a long-term adaption
I guess.


That's what I'm expecting.  With jetlag you're expected to retain the
same frequency and shift phase, so there's no adaptation to a different
frequency.


Unless you were living divorced from daylight, it's unlikely this
is your natural period.


I had *some* exposure to the outdoors, but this was only a couple of
percent of the time, when taking buses between home and campus.  Half the
time this did not involve sunlight.  At both ends of that journey I
lived a completely indoor existence, without unobstructed sight of an
external window.  So desynchronisation seems quite feasible.

Probably relevant: before the free-running period I was accustomed to
irregular sleep periods that had little synchrony with the planet.
Even when I had lectures to go to, I kept completely ad hoc hours.
In those years I could shift phase to an arbitrary extent within
two days, by simply staying up until the bedtime of the target phase.
Nowadays I've become conditioned to working (approximately) office hours,
and I seem to be much more tied to the regular cycle: I have difficulty
staying up as much as 24 hours.  When I need to, though, I still break
phase entirely rather than shift gradually.


http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/07.15/bioclock24.html


Interesting work.  This still, like the discredited earlier work, shows
a biological cycle longer than the natural solar day.  Evolutionarily
you'd expect us to be built for a shorter cycle, since the Earth rotated
faster in our evolutionary past.  But the day was only a few minutes
shorter when our ancestors switched from nocturnal to diurnal behaviour,
so there shouldn't be much in it.


a 28 hr day is long enough to prevent people's hormones getting in
sync with the day.


They're drawing a strong distinction between the hormone-controlled
circadian rhythm and actual sleep/wake rhythm.  I hadn't thought about
this before.  On those occasions when I've stayed awake for lengthy
periods of time, occasionally 60 and once over 70 hours, I've certainly
had periods of lowered body temperature and lower physical activity,
matching what they describe for the hormonally-sleepy phase.  I recognised
it as such at the time.  But the regular 40-hour cycle was different.
As I recall, I just didn't feel sleepy at all until I'd been up more
than 20 hours.  The cycle of 24 hours awake and 16 asleep felt like a
normal circadian rhythm, not overriding the natural state at any point.


No, no, no... with the new SI second based on the observation that a 
second is 10639620104 and 1/6 oscillation from the hyperfine transition 
of Cs-133. 100 ks becomes just a day.


Let's keep the prespective here! Also, 1 meter is the precission 
calibrated distance from my fingertip to my noise, assuming of course 
that I have been given the necessary beers before you are allowed to 
measure. Instability of measures can't be guaranteed otherwise.


Cheers,
Magnus
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Steve Allen]

On Sat 2008-09-13T13:26:07 +0100, Zefram hath writ:
> After a mere four millennia at the current
> rate of drift, TT(TAI) will not be accurate to the precision implied by
> its defining equation: once the accumulated drift has exceeded 500 us,
> TT will be better approximated by TT ~ TAI + 32.185 s.It's only a
> matter of time before noon TT coincides with midnight TT(TAI)!

I noted when preparing my Delta T plots that the 1.e-12
change in the rate of TAI on 1977-01-01 amounts to a difference
of 0.1 s at the earliest point on my plots, or less than 0.25 s at
the earliest written records of humans.
I can't imagine any astronomical observation which, even if
described in totally unambiguous language, could make the distinction.
I expect that at the time the astronomers who were unconcerned with
the rate change of TAI had a similar viewpoint.

Looking the other way, I still take a lesson from the agencies which
launch payloads intended for rendevous.  Their countdowns have always
accepted the notion of a discontinuous "hold" in the time scale
leading to a future event.

--
Steve Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   WGS-84 (GPS)
UCO/Lick ObservatoryNatural Sciences II, Room 165   Lat  +36.99858
University of CaliforniaVoice: +1 831 459 3046  Lng -122.06014
Santa Cruz, CA 95064http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/Hgt +250 m
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Rob Seaman]

Zefram wrote:

I hypothesise that a human civilisation entirely disconnected from  
natural diurnal cycles would use an artificial 100 ks cycle for this  
purpose, and a 1 Ms cycle as the analogue of our week.


A jejune (and rather moot) hypothesis.  In such circumstances, why  
assume the existence of a week in the first place?  Or the use of base  
10 at all?


I'm not sure I want to encourage this thread :-) but the answer is  
precisely that you are positing a human enterprise.  Merely by  
referring to "civilization", you are conjuring vast webs of  
connections to natural cycles at all scales.  Even in an extreme  
"Caves of Steel" scenario, the troglodyte trillions are locked to  
diurnal cycles of solar power stations and the daily cadences of   
robotic combine harvesters to feed the buried billions, and even  
commerce with other star systems points to the rhythms of other suns

.
In the absence of days and years, though, calculations that involve  
only metric units are a lot easier than what we presently put up with.


Hence the prevalence of radians in everyday use :-)  The only thing  
natural about the metric system is that humans have ten fingers and  
the quadrant of the Earth something approximating 10 megameters.  That  
sexagesimal notation emerged from the fertile crescent merely attests  
to the notation's durability compared to the system debouched by the  
Reign of Terror.


Rob Seaman
NOAO

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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Rob Seaman writes:

>Hence the prevalence of radians in everyday use :-)  The only thing  
>natural about the metric system is [...]

As the T-shirt says:

There are 10 kinds of people:
Those who understand binary
and those who don't.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp   | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Tony Finch]

On Mon, 15 Sep 2008, Rob Seaman wrote:
>
> Hence the prevalence of radians in everyday use :-)  The only thing natural
> about the metric system is that humans have ten fingers and the quadrant of
> the Earth something approximating 10 megameters.

The latter was an artificial and deliberate design choice. Nothing natural
about it.

Tony.
-- 
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TYNE DOGGER FISHER GERMAN BIGHT HUMBER THAMES DOVER WIGHT PORTLAND EASTERLY 3
OR 4, OCCASIONALLY 5. SLIGHT OR MODERATE. MAINLY FAIR. GOOD.
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Rob Seaman]

On Sep 15, 2008, at 6:45 AM, Tony Finch wrote:


On Mon, 15 Sep 2008, Rob Seaman wrote:




The only thing natural about the metric system is that humans have  
ten fingers and the quadrant of the Earth something approximating  
10 megameters.


The latter was an artificial and deliberate design choice. Nothing  
natural about it.


Some would say the same about the former :-)

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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Magnus Danielson]

> On Sep 15, 2008, at 6:45 AM, Tony Finch wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 15 Sep 2008, Rob Seaman wrote:
>>>
>>
>>> The only thing natural about the metric system is that humans have
>>> ten fingers and the quadrant of the Earth something approximating
>>> 10 megameters.
>>
>> The latter was an artificial and deliberate design choice. Nothing
>> natural about it.
>
> Some would say the same about the former :-)

You could just as easilly use base 8 (not counting thumbs, a possible
alternative use of hands) or base 20 (counting toes also, which some
cultures do).

Everything is arbitrary as base scale and division. There are some fixed
relations in which for instance PI comes up, which seems not to be that
arbitrary as a relationship between measures.

That the SI second still is indirectly defined out of the 24x60x60
division system is certainly annoyingly non-decadent but practical.

Cheers,
Magnus
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Ma
gnus Danielson" writes:

>Everything is arbitrary as base scale and division.

Uhm no.

All bases larger than 2 are arbitrary and all scalings are arbitrary.

But base 2 represents the fundamental counting system, and as such is
is unique.

This has been acknowledged since Leibnitz.

However, following the subsequent mathematical proof that the choice
of base makes no difference to any kind of math, apart from expense
of ink and paper to write the numbers, base-2 was left alone until
somebody much later got the heritical idea to drive thermionic
valves way pas their linear behaviour.

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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Tony Finch]

On Mon, 15 Sep 2008, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>
> However, following the subsequent mathematical proof that the choice
> of base makes no difference to any kind of math, apart from expense
> of ink and paper to write the numbers, base-2 was left alone until
> somebody much later got the heritical idea to drive thermionic
> valves way pas their linear behaviour.

"Makes no difference" so long as the base is uniform :-) The civilized
world has mostly eliminated non-uniform bases, except for dealing with
time. The Americans (and the British to a lesser extent) still cling to
the handicap of non-uniform bases for other measurements. Still, could
be worse: at least there aren't leap-ounces.

Tony.
-- 
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FAIR ISLE: SOUTHERLY 4 OR 5, BECOMING VARIABLE 3 OR 4. MODERATE OR ROUGH. RAIN
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[John Cowan]

Rob Seaman scripsit:

> I'm not sure I want to encourage this thread :-) but the answer is  
> precisely that you are positing a human enterprise.  Merely by  
> referring to "civilization", you are conjuring vast webs of  
> connections to natural cycles at all scales.  Even in an extreme  
> "Caves of Steel" scenario, the troglodyte trillions are locked to  
> diurnal cycles of solar power stations and the daily cadences of   
> robotic combine harvesters to feed the buried billions, and even  
> commerce with other star systems points to the rhythms of other suns

That's what the author of "The Caves Of Steel" called planetary
chauvinism.  There weren't any terrestroid planets in the Heaven system,
so when it was settled by slower-than-light starships, the colonists
occupied the asteroids and the moons of a Saturn-type gas giant.
(The book was written thirty years ago, before we fully realized just
how nasty the Van Allen radiation around such planets actually is.)
With fusion-based interplanetary ships and interstellar communication
lasers, the Heavenites grew rich and prosperous.  They even went so
far as to wrap their capital asteroid, which appears to be Ceres-type,
in a transparent bubble and create an atmosphere inside the bubble.

But there was war in Heaven, a civil war (no surprise), and when Vinge's
book opens, the Main Belt is mostly a wreck of abandoned settlements and
desperate survivors.  Fusion power has been lost, so Heaven has been cut
off from other human colonies.  Most of what post-20th-century technology
remains is closely held by a government in the trojans of a Jupiter-type
giant, but they are starved of hydrogen for reaction mass, fuel, and water
-- another government holds the Saturn rings, which are the only remaining
accessible source.  The two societies have been locked in a mixture of
cold war and grudging trade since the fall of the Main Belt, and when
a starship from a troubled colony world arrives in the Heaven system,
looking for help, all they find is chaos.  

-- 
Said Agatha Christie / To E. Philips Oppenheim  John Cowan
"Who is this Hemingway? / Who is this Proust?   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Rob Seaman]

On Sep 15, 2008, at 8:42 AM, John Cowan wrote:


Rob Seaman scripsit:


I'm not sure I want to encourage this thread :-) but the answer is
precisely that you are positing a human enterprise.  Merely by
referring to "civilization", you are conjuring vast webs of
connections to natural cycles at all scales.  Even in an extreme
"Caves of Steel" scenario, the troglodyte trillions are locked to
diurnal cycles of solar power stations and the daily cadences of
robotic combine harvesters to feed the buried billions, and even
commerce with other star systems points to the rhythms of other suns


That's what the author of "The Caves Of Steel" called planetary
chauvinism.


I was referring to the Asimov novel - agoraphobe detective and his  
positronic partner.  Asimov's fiction is firmly located in the so- 
called hard SF realm of nuts and bolts and the laws of physics.  No  
blood dripping Frazetta princesses on the covers of Isaac's books.  It  
is precisely this common sense world view that was required of the  
creator of psychohistory.  (Although I'm not sure wikipedia will serve  
to preserve civilization through the coming collapse :-)


In both his fiction and nonfiction, Asimov focused on human needs in a  
technical context.  This is heart and soul of issues like timekeeping,  
systems of units and mathematical notations.


Rob

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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Rob Seaman]

On Sep 15, 2008, at 8:23 AM, Magnus Danielson wrote:

There where plans for converting Sweden to a base 8 country, but I  
don't

have the TAOCP I need at hand to give the details.


This sounds like either an urban legend or some isolated...how do you  
say "nut job" in Swedish?  Another example would be the Indiana  
legislature voting on pi=3.


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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Rob Seaman]

On Sep 15, 2008, at 8:06 AM, Tony Finch wrote:

The civilized world has mostly eliminated non-uniform bases, except  
for dealing with time.


And angle.  The fundamental confusion here is between TAI - purely a  
decimal count from some zero epoch - and UTC, an orientation angle.   
Angles are often expressed using sexagesimal notation.  TAI should  
never be.


The Americans (and the British to a lesser extent) still cling to  
the handicap of non-uniform bases for other measurements. Still,  
could be worse: at least there aren't leap-ounces.


Ever tare a balance in chem lab?

Rob

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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Magnus Danielson]

> In message
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Ma
> gnus Danielson" writes:
>
>>Everything is arbitrary as base scale and division.
>
> Uhm no.
>
> All bases larger than 2 are arbitrary and all scalings are arbitrary.
>
> But base 2 represents the fundamental counting system, and as such is
> is unique.

You may still choose any base, which was my point. I agree that base 2 is
much more convenient, but nothing suggest you must choose base 2 or we
would have picked it for general counting much easlier. We have two hands,
so it is not too far fetched.

> This has been acknowledged since Leibnitz.
>
> However, following the subsequent mathematical proof that the choice
> of base makes no difference to any kind of math, apart from expense
> of ink and paper to write the numbers, base-2 was left alone until
> somebody much later got the heritical idea to drive thermionic
> valves way pas their linear behaviour.

The insights of Liebnitz was several thousand years to late for the choice
of propper base. We may grumble at this fact and move on. But for a
completely normalized world it would be possible choice and probably.
However, even if we rescale everything one unit would probably be required
to be the master unit which would scale everything else even if every
orhter arbitrary unit conversion factor (other than pure mathematical
relations) is canceled out.

There where plans for converting Sweden to a base 8 country, but I don't
have the TAOCP I need at hand to give the details.

Cheers,
Magnus
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Zefram]

Magnus Danielson wrote:
>The insights of Liebnitz was several thousand years to late for the choice
>of propper base. We may grumble at this fact and move on. But for a
>completely normalized world it would be possible choice and probably.

In positing the use of gigaseconds in a future spacefaring society,
I'm obviously assuming some continuity with our present civilisation.
Specifically, I'm assuming the survival of the SI base units and of the
pervasive use of decimal arithmetic.  If we switch radix, presumably
we'd invent new prefixes to use with the existing units.  (Actually we
already have, with the binary prefixes such as "Ki".)

In a completely normalised system, though, there'd be no reason to use
the current SI base units, other than the radian.  They're all arbitrary.
I'd expect to switch to Planck units, or something similar.  How would
you fancy road speed limits expressed in nanoplancks?  (The nanoplanck
(unit of speed) is equal to one nanoplanck (length) per planck (time).)
Actually it'd be a pity to lose all dimensional analysis, as one would
in the pure Planck system, but we could have dimensionful units that
just have the same value as the Planck units.  Need some hefty prefixes
for everyday quantities, of course.

>There where plans for converting Sweden to a base 8 country, but I don't
>have the TAOCP I need at hand to give the details.

Section 4.1, page 200 in the third edition of volume 2:

Charles XII of Sweden, whose talent for mathematics perhaps exceeded
that of all other kings in the history of the world, hit on the
idea of radix-8 arithmetic about 1717.  This was probably his own
invention, although he had met Leibniz briefly in 1707.  Charles felt
that radix 8 or 64 would be more convenient for calculation than
the decimal system, and he considered introducing octal arithmetic
into Sweden; but he died in battle before decreeing such a change.
[See /The Works of Voltaire/ *21* (Paris: E. R. DuMont, 1901), 49;
E. Swedenborg, /Gentleman's Magazine/ *24* (1754), 423-424.]

Wikipedia has a couple of other details.

Octal has the advantage of both being interconvertible with binary
and also matching human cognitive capacity (one of those "magic number
seven" effects).  Strangely there doesn't seem to be much of a movement to
adopt it.  Unlike dozenal, which has fairly organised groups promoting it.
(Unfortunately these groups sometimes get mixed up with the anti-metric
crowd, which is a separate issue.)  Dozenal seems unwieldy, and only
has the factor-3 thing in its favour.

-zefram
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[John Cowan]

Rob Seaman scripsit:

> I was referring to the Asimov novel - agoraphobe detective and his  
> positronic partner.

Yes, I know.  I forget in exactly which of his thousand or so essays
Asimov coined the phrase "planetary chauvinism" for the belief that
human civilization (in later uses, life) can only exist on or near
the surfaces of planets, but the term is definitely out there:
415 Google hits, including a Wikipedia article and a 1971 _Time_
magazine essay called "Is There Life On Mars?"

> Asimov's fiction is firmly located in the so-called hard SF realm of
> nuts and bolts and the laws of physics.

Well, unless you count hyperspace travel and subspace communication,
time travel (in _The End Of Eternity_), and a bunch of very clear
fantasy stories written near the end of his life, then I don't think so.
If anything, the _Heaven Chronicles_ are closer to what is known to be
known: slower-than-light starships, for example.

-- 
In my last lifetime,John Cowan
I believed in reincarnation;http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
in this lifetime,   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I don't.  --Thiagi
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[John Cowan]

Rob Seaman scripsit:

> This sounds like either an urban legend or some isolated...how do you  
> say "nut job" in Swedish?  

Well, it's neither.

The nut-job in question was King Charles XII (1682-1718), and he
scribbled down his idea for using base-8 numeration in a meeting with
Emanuel Swedenborg in 1716.  At the time, Swedenborg was just beginning
his successful career as a mining engineer -- it was not until 1744 that
he became a theologian -- and was trying (unsuccessfully) to persuade
the King to build an astronomical observatory (one of Swedenborg's other
interests) in the north.  Swedenborg reported that the King thought
base 8 more suitable for war purposes (he was a most martial monarch)
because the packing boxes used in the Swedish Army for materiel were cubical.

-- 
All Gaul is divided into three parts: the part  John Cowan
that cooks with lard and goose fat, the parthttp://ccil.org/~cowan
that cooks with olive oil, and the part that[EMAIL PROTECTED]
cooks with butter. --David Chessler
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Rob Seaman]

On Sep 15, 2008, at 7:50 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
>, "Ma

gnus Danielson" writes:


Everything is arbitrary as base scale and division.


Uhm no.

All bases larger than 2 are arbitrary and all scalings are arbitrary.

But base 2 represents the fundamental counting system, and as such is
is unique.


The place value system itself is a design artifact.  Also, calling  
something "base 2" doesn't denote a unique encoding.  1's complement?   
2's complement?  Gray code?  BCD?


The initiation into the secret society of computer scientists includes  
a requirement for mastery of binary notation.  This is similar to ham  
operators having to master Morse code.  (I believe this requirement  
has been relaxed.)  Everyday citizens don't know Morse - and they  
aren't fluent in binary arithmetic.


Decimal and sexagesimal notation persist because over centuries and  
millennia lay people have demonstrated the ability to reach a minimal  
level of competency.  Which is to say that, for whatever reason, they  
are better tailored to our purposes.


Rob

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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[John Cowan]

Rob Seaman scripsit:

> Decimal and sexagesimal notation persist because over centuries and  
> millennia lay people have demonstrated the ability to reach a minimal  
> level of competency.  Which is to say that, for whatever reason, they  
> are better tailored to our purposes.

That's vulgar Darwinism.  Base 10, like English spelling and the QWERTY
keyboard, are good enough, and may even constitute a local minimum.
But it's absurd to suppose that they are necessarily a global minimum.

Do you suppose that the reason that francophones go on speaking French is
because in some sense French is better suited to those particular people
than English, or Dogon, or Mandarin Chinese?  Hardly.  They continue
to speak French because children continue to acquire French from their
francophone parents and peers.

-- 
"But I am the real Strider, fortunately,"   John Cowan
he said, looking down at them with his face [EMAIL PROTECTED]
softened by a sudden smile.  "I am Aragorn son  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
of Arathorn, and if by life or death I can
save you, I will."  --LotR Book I Chapter 10
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Rob Seaman]

On Sep 15, 2008, at 9:32 AM, John Cowan wrote:


Rob Seaman scripsit:


I was referring to the Asimov novel - agoraphobe detective and his
positronic partner.


Yes, I know.  I forget in exactly which of his thousand or so essays
Asimov coined the phrase "planetary chauvinism" for the belief that
human civilization (in later uses, life) can only exist on or near
the surfaces of planets, but the term is definitely out there:
415 Google hits, including a Wikipedia article and a 1971 _Time_
magazine essay called "Is There Life On Mars?"


And the missions that actually reached Mars chose clocks based on  
Solar time.



Asimov's fiction is firmly located in the so-called hard SF realm of
nuts and bolts and the laws of physics.


Well, unless you count hyperspace travel and subspace communication,
time travel (in _The End Of Eternity_), and a bunch of very clear
fantasy stories written near the end of his life, then I don't think  
so.

If anything, the _Heaven Chronicles_ are closer to what is known to be
known: slower-than-light starships, for example.


Physicists speculate about the laws of physics.  Why not authors?  The  
point being that a typical Asimov story was representative of the  
"Campbellian" mode of positing some delta universe to our own and  
rigorously deducing logical consequences.  One doesn't speculate about  
technology alone, but rather, its impact on humanity and other  
intelligent species.


Niven's FTL spacecraft make voyages to neutron stars and the center of  
our Galaxy.  But it is the effect of these voyages on Beowulf Shaeffer  
that makes the story.  That is, the stories of even the nerdiest  
practitioners of this nerdiest profession still hinge on characters  
and the theatricality of their experience.  Not much has changed since  
the original Beowulf, other than the media used to tell the stories.


Rob

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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[John Cowan]

Rob Seaman scripsit:

> Niven's FTL spacecraft make voyages to neutron stars and the center of  
> our Galaxy.  But it is the effect of these voyages on Beowulf Shaeffer  
> that makes the story.  That is, the stories of even the nerdiest  
> practitioners of this nerdiest profession still hinge on characters  
> and the theatricality of their experience.  Not much has changed since  
> the original Beowulf, other than the media used to tell the stories.

I agree absolutely.  So pick up a copy of _The Heaven Chronicles_
from your favorite out-of-print bookstore, online or brick and mortar,
and enjoy.

-- 
John Cowan  [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://ccil.org/~cowan
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main.  If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a
manor of thy friends or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for
whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.  --John Donne
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Rob Seaman]

On Sep 15, 2008, at 9:52 AM, John Cowan wrote:


Rob Seaman scripsit:


Decimal and sexagesimal notation persist because over centuries and
millennia lay people have demonstrated the ability to reach a minimal
level of competency.  Which is to say that, for whatever reason, they
are better tailored to our purposes.


That's vulgar Darwinism.  Base 10, like English spelling and the  
QWERTY

keyboard, are good enough, and may even constitute a local minimum.
But it's absurd to suppose that they are necessarily a global minimum.


Which was the point of some of my earlier comments.

Binary is, however, not good enough for day-to-day human purposes.   
And to bring this back to the topic of the mailing list, "good enough"  
civil timekeeping requires a close mimicry of mean solar time.  Vulgar  
or not, Darwin certainly recognized the selective value of mimicry.


Do you suppose that the reason that francophones go on speaking  
French is
because in some sense French is better suited to those particular  
people

than English, or Dogon, or Mandarin Chinese?  Hardly.  They continue
to speak French because children continue to acquire French from their
francophone parents and peers.


And do we expect society to be show any less inertia in its diurnality?

Rob

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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[John Cowan]

Rob Seaman scripsit:

> And do we expect society to be show any less inertia in its diurnality?

Not unless we move to somewhere like Heaven, where days are preposterously
short, months aren't even a concept, and years depend on what town you
live in.  Then the kilosecs, megasecs, and gigasecs come into their own.

-- 
Possession is said to be nine points of the law,John Cowan
but that's not saying how many points the law might have.   [EMAIL 
PROTECTED]
--Thomas A. Cowan (law professor and my father)
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Tony Finch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
: On Mon, 15 Sep 2008, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
: >
: > However, following the subsequent mathematical proof that the choice
: > of base makes no difference to any kind of math, apart from expense
: > of ink and paper to write the numbers, base-2 was left alone until
: > somebody much later got the heritical idea to drive thermionic
: > valves way pas their linear behaviour.
: 
: "Makes no difference" so long as the base is uniform :-) The civilized
: world has mostly eliminated non-uniform bases, except for dealing with
: time. The Americans (and the British to a lesser extent) still cling to
: the handicap of non-uniform bases for other measurements. Still, could
: be worse: at least there aren't leap-ounces.

UTC is the best example of a variable radix system I can think of.
You count 0 to 59, except when you don't :-)

Warner
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Steve Allen]

On Mon 2008-09-15T09:16:45 -0700, Rob Seaman hath writ:
> (Although I'm not sure wikipedia will serve
> to preserve civilization through the coming collapse :-)

Not a chance.  Wikipedia is the realization of Bradbury's wall viewers
in Fahrenheit 451.  The view it gives is always changing.

The story it gives about the decisions that spawned this newsgroup
are paraphrases of memoirs by folks who wrote down the story the
way they wish it had played out at the time.  I can't say how much
I value the paper in the Lick library for showing what folks were
really thinking back then.

Along those lines ...
The earliest use of the term UTC as such (and TUC in the French) that
I have found is in the Jan/Feb 1964 Bulletin Horaire from the BIH.
This was the first issue done by Guinot after Anna Stoyko gave it up.

Does anyone know of a use of the term UTC/TUC which predates that?

--
Steve Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   WGS-84 (GPS)
UCO/Lick ObservatoryNatural Sciences II, Room 165   Lat  +36.99858
University of CaliforniaVoice: +1 831 459 3046  Lng -122.06014
Santa Cruz, CA 95064http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/Hgt +250 m
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Adi Stav]

(Hi, I'm Adi, long-time lurker, first-time caller)

On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 01:29:13AM -0700, Rob Seaman wrote:
>> In the absence of days and years, though, calculations that involve  
>> only metric units are a lot easier than what we presently put up with.
>
> Hence the prevalence of radians in everyday use :-)

That's a separate issue. You can base your angle units on perimeter or 
radius length, and then you can divide them into decimal or sexagesimal
subunits as a completely independent decision. Several systems dividing 
the circle into decimal units have been propsed and used in practice, 
some still today; on the other hand, it's easy to divide the radian into
sexagesimal units. (I'm surprised that I'd never encountered
such a system -- dividing the radian into 60 "degrees", each divided
into turn into 60 minutes and 3600 seconds, would not only have given
"degrees" that are only slighly (5%) smaller than perimetral degrees,
but also be more consistent with regards to division by 60.)

Actually, our radians don't require any particular radix at all, we use 
them as whole units. A computer might display a radian in decimal
notation, yet stores them in binary floating-point representation, or as
nominator-denominator pair, or whatever. Nothing decimal about them.
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Richard B. Langley]

On Mon, 15 Sep 2008, Steve Allen wrote:

>Along those lines ...
>The earliest use of the term UTC as such (and TUC in the French) that
>I have found is in the Jan/Feb 1964 Bulletin Horaire from the BIH.
>This was the first issue done by Guinot after Anna Stoyko gave it up.
>
>Does anyone know of a use of the term UTC/TUC which predates that?

At the time I wrote this for lay people
 (scroll down to "The Origin
of UTC"), I knew of nothing earlier.
-- Richard

>--
>Steve Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   WGS-84 (GPS)
>UCO/Lick ObservatoryNatural Sciences II, Room 165   Lat  +36.99858
>University of CaliforniaVoice: +1 831 459 3046  Lng -122.06014
>Santa Cruz, CA 95064http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/Hgt +250 m
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 Dept. of Geodesy and Geomatics EngineeringPhone:+1 506 453-5142
 University of New Brunswick   Fax:  +1 506 453-4943
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Tom Van Baak]

Along those lines ...
The earliest use of the term UTC as such (and TUC in the French) that
I have found is in the Jan/Feb 1964 Bulletin Horaire from the BIH.
This was the first issue done by Guinot after Anna Stoyko gave it up.

Does anyone know of a use of the term UTC/TUC which predates that?


Steve,

I don't have one earlier than your 1964.

Essen, 1958, no mention of UTC (way too early):
http://www.leapsecond.com/history/1958-PhysRev-v1-n3-Markowitz-Hall-Essen-Parry.pdf

Essen, 1968, mentions UTC, and proposes what would become leap seconds:
http://www.leapsecond.com/history/1968-Metrologia-v4-n4-Essen.pdf

/tvb

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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Magnus Danielson]

Rob Seaman wrote:

On Sep 15, 2008, at 8:23 AM, Magnus Danielson wrote:


There where plans for converting Sweden to a base 8 country, but I don't
have the TAOCP I need at hand to give the details.


This sounds like either an urban legend or some isolated...


You obviously haven't read Donald Knuths "The Art of Computer 
Programming; Seminumerical Algorithms" (Vol 2) where chapter 4.1 would 
be an interesting reading on the topic of number systems. Prof. Knuth is 
 fairly keen on researching his stuff.


Charles XII of Sweden (Carl XII in swedish texts) had the idea of 
radix-8 arithmetic 1717 but was killed in a battle before he could 
convert this idea into reality. He met Liebniz in 1707, but it is not 
known if Liebniz work on binary numbers was discussed or known to Carl.


I just didn't have that book at hand when I wrote that reference, but it 
was a quick thing to look up now as I have it at hand.


> how do you say "nut job" in Swedish?

There are many ways to say it. I am not sure I can properly convey it in 
the 1717 lingo thougth. I think you are best served in this instance by 
learning what we call a nutter... "galenpanna". I think you would need 
to learn some grammar and more words to propperly use it in a 
meaningfull way thought.



Another example would be the Indiana legislature voting on pi=3.


Don't bring US local legislation into this...

Cheers,
MAgnus
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Magnus Danielson]

Adi Stav wrote:

(Hi, I'm Adi, long-time lurker, first-time caller)

On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 01:29:13AM -0700, Rob Seaman wrote:
In the absence of days and years, though, calculations that involve  
only metric units are a lot easier than what we presently put up with.

Hence the prevalence of radians in everyday use :-)


That's a separate issue. You can base your angle units on perimeter or 
radius length, and then you can divide them into decimal or sexagesimal
subunits as a completely independent decision. Several systems dividing 
the circle into decimal units have been propsed and used in practice, 
some still today; on the other hand, it's easy to divide the radian into

sexagesimal units. (I'm surprised that I'd never encountered
such a system -- dividing the radian into 60 "degrees", each divided
into turn into 60 minutes and 3600 seconds, would not only have given
"degrees" that are only slighly (5%) smaller than perimetral degrees,
but also be more consistent with regards to division by 60.)

Actually, our radians don't require any particular radix at all, we use 
them as whole units. A computer might display a radian in decimal

notation, yet stores them in binary floating-point representation, or as
nominator-denominator pair, or whatever. Nothing decimal about them.


There are several military systems that approximate radians in this 
fashion. Used when making precission measurements (of its time in the 
field) for measuring the destination of ordinance.


Cheers,
Magnus
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Re: [LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Rob Seaman]

Knuth has been quite an idiosyncratic seeker after truth, himself :-)

Not sure why this thread is reviving now (the continued drift of TAI?)  
but I see I previously resisted the obvious rejoinder that since it  
was a monarch who was pursuing this agenda, it proved my assertion  
about his being a nutjob.


One remains skeptical that even a grandee such as Carl XII would have  
successfully managed to convince the hoi polloi to adopt octal over  
decimal.  Consider the requirements of international trade, for one  
thing.


Does anyone "read" Knuth?  If we're moving on to book lists about  
measurement theory and data representation, I can strongly recommend  
Widrow and Kollár's "Quantization Noise", just published.  Also  
"Lavoisier in the Year One", by Madison Smartt Bell, is a good little  
cautionary tale.


Rob
--

On Sep 27, 2008, at 3:07 AM, Magnus Danielson wrote:


Rob Seaman wrote:

On Sep 15, 2008, at 8:23 AM, Magnus Danielson wrote:
There where plans for converting Sweden to a base 8 country, but I  
don't

have the TAOCP I need at hand to give the details.

This sounds like either an urban legend or some isolated...


You obviously haven't read Donald Knuths "The Art of Computer  
Programming; Seminumerical Algorithms" (Vol 2) where chapter 4.1  
would be an interesting reading on the topic of number systems.  
Prof. Knuth is  fairly keen on researching his stuff.


Charles XII of Sweden (Carl XII in swedish texts) had the idea of  
radix-8 arithmetic 1717 but was killed in a battle before he could  
convert this idea into reality. He met Liebniz in 1707, but it is  
not known if Liebniz work on binary numbers was discussed or known  
to Carl.


I just didn't have that book at hand when I wrote that reference,  
but it was a quick thing to look up now as I have it at hand.


> how do you say "nut job" in Swedish?

There are many ways to say it. I am not sure I can properly convey  
it in the 1717 lingo thougth. I think you are best served in this  
instance by learning what we call a nutter... "galenpanna". I think  
you would need to learn some grammar and more words to propperly use  
it in a meaningfull way thought.



Another example would be the Indiana legislature voting on pi=3.


Don't bring US local legislation into this...

Cheers,
MAgnus
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