Saturday, 27 June 2015

It's About Time

Tuesday (June 30, 2015) was one second longer, due to the addition of a "leap second", to synchronize the infinitesimally precise atomic master-clocks to the Earth's anything-but-precise rotation. These leap seconds are added arbitrarily, when the difference in synchronization reaches more than 0.9 seconds. This will be the 26th leap second to be added, since the procedure began in 1972.

Let's think about that, shall we?

This adjustment to the human-imposed arbitrary system of breaking time into ever tinier and more obsessively accurate segments, to ensure that our computers and other machines run in perfect synchronization with our arbitrarily imposed schedule, is necessary because THE EARTH'S ROTATION IS ANYTHING BUT PRECISE, AND FREQUENTLY EXPERIENCES RANDOM WOBBLES DUE TO THE MOON, EARTHQUAKES, VOLCANOES, AND STORMS.

Which means that the real problem is that the silly humans are trying to impose their neat & orderly system onto something that has its own system that cannot be made as obsessively neat & orderly as the silly humans want to make it.

No wonder we ADDers have trouble with time! 

To us (and every other living species of plant and animal, except for "civilized" humans), "time" is what we see and experience around us. Not the frequency of the vibrations of microscopic atoms that have to be scattered by a laser beam and counted by a machine that then gives us the "time", accurate to within nanoseconds over a period of 60 million years.

So, don't bitch at me if I'm late for an appointment, okay?