Feb. 29, 2008 Friday
Hunky: . Humans go to impossible lengths to support their own conjured-up philosophies. Leap year is the consumate example. Someone figured out that one complete revolution of the sun took 365 days and built a calendar. Someone was wrong; it actually takes a quarter-day longer.Dorie: So every four years their calendar invention is off by a whole day. No problem; to the arbitrarily-derived calender they arbitrarily added an extra day every four years, and the Great Arbitrary Calender was made right, after three years of increasing inaccuracy.
Hunky: . But wait! That trip around the sun isn't exactly a quarter-day longer; it's actually twelve minutes shy of a quarter-day. So adding a day every four years eventually puts the calendar ahead of the constant, steady, unflinching, unadjusted orbit of the Earth that God and Nature had intended. No problem; every hundred years, mankind just drops one of the leap years to bring things back in line.
Dorie: Yes, calendar-dependent humans, once every hundred years, there is an eight-year stretch between February 29ths. It was determined (again, arbitrarily) that the hundredth year of further adjustment to be stripped of its February 29th would be that year ending in 00.
Hunky: But wait! Eight years ago ended in 00, and it had a February 29th! How can this be? Well, chronology junkies, that deficit in the extra quarter day isn't precisely twelve minutes; it is in actuality 11 minutes, 14.49 seconds (We are NOT making this up!).
Dorie: So every 400 years, another tweak puts back the leap year they took out. So, time-calculators, we are already eight years into another 400-year slide to imprecision.
Hunky: . And finally, the atomic scientists (the Keepers of the Holy Calendar) secretly and frequently add leap seconds to the grand scheme of things to cover all the imperfections not covered by the above machinations.
Dorie: But they don't tell you because your head would explode.