The October Revolution being in November is because of a different drift problem. The Calendar drifts because the Earth's orbit isn't a whole number of days, so any attempt to have fixed length years drifts noticeably over just a few decades, the initial fix ("Julian" calendars) had the compensation factor wrong, and countries adopted an improved calendar ("Gregorian" calendars) at different points leading to that offset between Old and New dates.
The leap second is because the Earth's spin varies. The orbit isn't varying significantly, it's just not a whole number of day-night cycles which is inconvenient for us, but the spin actually varies. To "fix" this variation we have leap seconds. But unlike the very noticeable October versus November difference, a century of missed leap seconds adds up to much less than a minute of difference between solar time and civil time, and that's not something you'll actually notice.
I'm aware of the different periods involved (I have a degree in astronomy), my point is that because the Russian Empire put off the switch for so long the difference became a historical joke. Similarly, I would suggest that it is generally best practice to make small changes quickly rather than large changes slowly. So why is it in the case of leap seconds (given we can and do perform measurements below the second scale to take account in variations in local and global gravity) are we seemingly unable to handle something so trivial?
tialaramex|9 days ago
The leap second is because the Earth's spin varies. The orbit isn't varying significantly, it's just not a whole number of day-night cycles which is inconvenient for us, but the spin actually varies. To "fix" this variation we have leap seconds. But unlike the very noticeable October versus November difference, a century of missed leap seconds adds up to much less than a minute of difference between solar time and civil time, and that's not something you'll actually notice.
aragilar|8 days ago