Riotgear Flames NIST and The French (sort of)

[Riotgear]

I recently found out that to know what time it is we average the times from 300 Cesium clocks from 60 different countries. This gives what is called the UTC. UTC is a backronym (seriously) for Coordinated Universal Time or Universal Time: Coordinated. You can thank the French for those monkey shines.

Anyway, it turns out these Cesium clocks are accurate to within one second over a period 70 million years but it takes six weeks to compile and process the results of all clocks averaged together. Some of my smarter readers will already realize the problem.

We don't know what time it is.

We will know what time it is in six weeks.

Incredibly accurate atomic clocks that take six weeks to produce specific results??

RESULTS THAT ARE BY DEFINITION TIME SENSITIVE?!?

FOR FUCK SAKE PEOPLE!

The human race is stupid. I quit. I will be running for that mothership because of stupid shit like this.

Don't get me started on leap seconds.

God, irony is thy name.

 

[eloisel]

Yes, well, if you get on that ship be careful of what planet you choose as your destination. The light that you are just now seeing from that star could be millions of years old already and from a planet that died long, long ago. There is nothing worse than to get all the way there just to discover "there" isn't there anymore.

 

[Riotgear]

Yes, well, if you get on that ship be careful of what planet you choose as your destination. The light that you are just now seeing from that star could be millions of years old already and from a planet that died long, long ago. There is nothing worse than to get all the way there just to discover "there" isn't there anymore.

LOL Yeah. "I tried to visit a distant star and all I got is this lousy t-shirt"

 

[Donovan]

"Leap-second": noun. The exact amount of time the dickhead in the car behind me made up as he zoomed around me across a double-yellow line, racing his engine and flipping the bird as he passed so I would know he was annoyed that I chose to follow the posted limit. Also known as, "Caught you at the light, fuckwit, now what?"