"Quadibloc" wrote in message ...
On Sep 22, 4:56 am, Quadibloc wrote:
On Sep 21, 7:05 pm, GogoJF wrote:

Why are we so damned determined to maintain that the duration of the
second stay the same throughout the year and time in general?

Because the microhenry and the millifarad and the watt and the ampere
and the megohm are joined together, in part, by the second. If that
changed during the course of a year, how would we turn our radios to
the correct station?

In fact, this explains why we have "leap seconds", and why we
emphasize the "sidereal day" as the period of the Earth's rotation
instead of the solar day (which is affected by the Equation of Time).

We have chosen, as more useful and convenient, to define our units of
time, and practice the craft of timekeeping, so as to regulate our
machines first and foremost, and only secondarily, almost as an
afterthought, to keep track of the Sun and the daytime - since it
doesn't really matter if solar noon comes a few minutes late or early.

And this is what has Oriel so exercised. But then, he has told us that
he is a Christian, and so why should I be surprised that he objects to
what has been called a Faustian bargain - the one that led to the
"dark, Satanic mills" of the Industrial Revolution.

I don't think that our use of human ingenuity to make our lives easier
is wrong, but we have made mistakes in the course of it. But it was
our own ingenuity, not a bargain with a demon. And we are already
recognizing the need to respect the environment and make amends to
indigenous people.

Thus, I don't think that we have to worry about Diana and Mother
Nature getting together and destroying our present civilization... so
that we can spend 3,000 years balancing the cha (or possibly the
Dao?), as we turn into really cool people with big muscles, until a
great climactic confrontation comes by, and one Michael Levy comes to
help us with magical powers from an alternate reality...

John Savard


Quite poetic, Savard. The only flaw I see in your argument is that
mankind or divided subsets of the same will change his religion
faster than he’ll change the second. The Greek, Roman and Nordic
gods are long gone in Europe, the crusades over who controls
Jerusalem still live on with the base 60 numbering system of
minutes and seconds and degrees of the ancient copper age.
Rome destroyed the civilisation of Greece in the interests of
religion, promoting that psychotic Jew they nailed to a tree
as a deity. And this is a sample of what was destroyed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
Rome’s power over plebeians like Kelleher still lives on in
Vatican City.
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