On 7/2/12 7:08 AM, Mike S wrote:
On 7/2/2012 9:28 AM, Jim Lux wrote:
but if we ARE going to establish artificial connections between wall
clock time (work hours, store opening times, bar closing times, etc.)
and the sun, why not do it gradually.
Time and the sun are certainly a _natural_ connection, not an artificial
one. Units of time start with the day. Subdivided, we get HMS, measured
from the maximum height of the sun. Greater, years, which were measured
in days. It's the artificial definition of the SI second which has
caused all the problems.
I was thinking of the artificial connection between wall clock and sun
in the daylight saving time sense.
We already deal with the variation between clock time and solar time
during the year (equation of time, and all that) which is of a much
larger magnitude than the leap second, and that probably antedates SI
time (or "mean time", in any case) since however long we've had clocks
that are stable enough to measure it.
If we are to retain the idea of the sun rising and setting later during
the warmer months (relative to mean time or normal clock time), then I
would suggest we do away with the large step change twice a year and
replace it with a 1 minute/day shift during 2 months, and then repeat
the process again later to bring it back into alignment.
This will have the benefit of:
1) providing work for software developers, who otherwise be laid off for
lack of work, and would no doubt do things bad for society: idle hands
and all that are bad enough; intelligent idle hands are even more dangerous.
2) improving the overall time change robustness of the software which
has an increasingly pervasive effect on our day to day life
3) provide work for many, many congressional aides and news media to
come up with talking points, analysis, and so forth; avoiding laying
them off as well; although I don't know that the danger of idle hands
from ex congressional aides is more or less than unemployed software
developers.
4) provide a political issue of little real consequence to occupy the
time and minds of legislators: a displacement activity, much like
cleaning out the garage when you should be doing your tax returns or
paying the bills.
5) provide work and employment for petition signature gatherers who will
no doubt appear in front of my local supermarket for initiatives to
either support or suppress or some of both the new scheme.
6) provide income for media outlets to run the plethora of
advertisements pro and con
7) provide something for the extraordinarily wealthy to spend their
money on through nebulous organizations to pay for those ads that
provides some degree of entertainment for time-nuts, without seriously
affecting the overall health and well-being of the populace, no matter
which way the decision goes.
Finally, my modest hope is that this scheme will achieve for me the fame
it achieved for Ben Franklin inventing daylight saving time. I look
forward to my great-great-grandchildren (should I have any) learning
about Lux time as being the revolution that fixed the problems with
Franklin time. (Ol' Ben and I have many shared interests.. electricity,
time, artificial tornadoes, lightning, etc., and I'm always pleased when
I can carry his finely engraved picture in my wallet) I mean, who can
name an arbitrary Nobel prize winner? But everyone knows who Ben is.
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