[Fwd: Re: datacentric terms from WordNet]

[Ed Shaya]

Rob Seaman wrote:

> Hi Ed,
>
>> These terms and their definitions are at the level of what you need 
>> to read an science article in a major newspaper or something like it.
>
> Read, but not necessarily comprehend :-)
>
> ...but then, the comprehension of the people writing the articles is 
> equally in question.
>
>> second 0 | 1/60 of a minute; the basic unit of time adopted under the 
>> Systeme International d'Unites
>
> I feel obligated to point out that definition 0 here is really two 
> different things:
>
>> second 0 (a) | 1/60 of a minute (1/1440 of a day)
>
>> second 0 (b) | the basic unit of time adopted under the Systeme 
>> International d'Unites

When we become aware of true different senses of meaning we will have to 
invent new terms.  For instance,
we can call (b) second and (a) can become second_0a or secondOf 
MeanSolarDay or something like that.
Which reminds me, that in one case I altered the WordNet in the other 
direction.  WordNet had two miles_per_hour terms.  Miles_per_hour_0 was 
the instantaneous speed of an object eg as read on the speedometer of an 
automobile and miles_per_hour_1 was the miles traveled divided by the 
time in units of hours traveled.  I took the giant leap of faith that an 
infinitesmal interval is an interval and made that one definition.
(I do suggest also that we change this to km_per_hour).

> This is the crux of the issue with leap seconds.  The point being that 
> a "second 0 (a)" may be referenced to different kinds of days, 
> although typically this is the mean solar day.  A "second 0 (b)" is 
> guaranteed to be nondenumerable to any of them, including the mean 
> solar day.
>