Pharyngula

The two most amusing explanations for why we have leap years that I’ve heard came from creationists:

Those scientists can’t even measure the length of the year accurately! They have to keep fudging their numbers every few years to make everything add up, so why should I trust them?
We have leap years because the earth is slowing down in its orbit, which proves that the earth can’t be old — a million years ago the earth would have been whirling around the sun so fast it would have flown out of orbit!

Phil’s detailed explanation isn’t quite as funny. My simple answer: the earth goes around the sun in 365 days plus a fraction. We carry the fraction each year until it adds up to one, and then we add a day to the year. We know with great precision how long a day is and how long a year is, and the adjustment is not to “fudge” the numbers, and we also know the rate at which both the day length is changing and the orbit is changing, and those numbers are miniscule and are not the reasons we have leap years.

Comments

#1 Dan
February 28, 2008

No no no… We have leap years because God didn’t make the earth spin correctly.
#2 Brian English
February 28, 2008

Just to explain: A leap year occurs every 4 years, except when that year is divisible by 100 and not 400. Like the year 1900 or 2100.
#3 Bill from Dover
February 28, 2008

I think get it now… its like saying that Bush knows what he is talking about until he opens his mouth unless he closes it immediately.
#4 True Bob
February 28, 2008

You know, they lined up perfectly, moon too, until Adam ate the fruit…
#5 MAJeff, OM
February 28, 2008

It’s all in the hand of Providence!

Could we at least get a city with over a million people?
#6 Crudely Wrott
February 28, 2008

You mean I can stop leaping out of bed every February 29th? So the reaction of my jump would speed up the earth? So we could have an even number of days? And not be late or get yelled at?

Gee. Thanks, mister.

Science. It works better than anything else.
#7 Rich F
February 28, 2008

Doesn’t it have something to do with the earth’s rotation slowing down under the weight of all that collected sin?
#8 s1mplex
February 28, 2008

You forgot to ask Bill O’Reilly about Leap Year! How could we forget his interview with Michael Grant (ACLU)…

GRANT: …The proper place to talk about [creationism] is in comparative religion. It’s in the philosophy classes. Biology classes should be science.

O’Reilly: OK. But science is incomplete in this area of creationism, is it not?

GRANT: Science is always incomplete in all areas.

O’Reilly: Well, I don’t agree with that. Science is not always incomplete and I’ll give you an example. There are twenty-four hours in a day. Alright. That’s science. And there are four seasons. That’s science. So you can state things with certainty in biology or any other science you want.
#9 Dahan
February 28, 2008

well, actually, like PUTTING fossils…
#10 Brian English
February 28, 2008

…or when sounded as A, as in neighbor and weigh.”
Never heard that one before. Must be an ad-hoc explanation of why English don’t follow it’s own rules.
And I’m Aussie. But I’ve got an American spelling plugin in FireFox and I let it have it’s way. It sulks so much when I spell favour, neighbour, etc.
#11 Bride of Shrek
February 28, 2008

Speak for yourself PJC, ,my ancestors weren’t colonists, they were smelly, toothless, street-living, pick pocketing crims…and nothing has really changed.
#12 Janine
February 29, 2008

Speak for yourself PJC, ,my ancestors weren’t colonists, they were smelly, toothless, street-living, pick pocketing crims…and nothing has really changed.

Posted by: Bride of Shrek

So, tell us how much your live resembles The Three Penny Opera? Or would you prefer The Beggar’s Opera?
#13 dzho
February 29, 2008

I before E, except after C,
or when sounded like A
as in neighbor and weigh

Except for seize, foreign and seizure
or weird height and leisure,
and not either, neither.

Not in protein, seismic or caffeine,
feisty atheists, heifer,
or stein or whatever.
#14 Masks of Eris
February 29, 2008

A non-mathematical person might cry: “Why? Why, when I get an extra day, it has to be a workday?”

That’s, however, not how “adding a day” works.

A person in mathematical education, like me, has a better understanding of the issue, and knows that pain is inevitable.
#15 Brian English
February 29, 2008

use the Australian English Dictionary add-on for Firefox, it works well. (New Zealander)
Damn energetic Kiwi’s. Do you think I can find the time to update my plugin that’s almost good enough when there’s cricket, pre-season footy and beer? Se ve que no eres australiano…..
#16 Graculus
February 29, 2008

They developed some rules

Not in the ase of English. They developed some ad hoc little sayings to help young children learn how to spell most stuff, and figured that they would be old enough to not rely on them by the time they hit the “big” words.

One of the most endearing things about the English language is that it is a complete bastard.
#17 John Scanlon, FCD
February 29, 2008

Ross #61, I think you’ll find the ‘vase/… face’ rhyme NOT in Dr Seuss, but it is certainly in Madeline. OK, it might also be somewhere in Seuss but if so it’s one of the few I haven’t collected.
It’s not even a real rhyme in American is it? – don’t they all say ‘vase’ with a zed or soft s, not like in faiss at all?
Bemelmans wasn’t what I’d call a great poet, far below Geisel, and even further from our own Cuttlefish (who knows more than one metre and has never posted a dud line as far as I’ve seen).
#18 dogmeatIB
February 29, 2008

Wrong, all wrong!
The extra day is so the creotards, like the two quoted above, can catch up.

I think we’re going to need a lot more leap years.
#19 dogmeatIB
February 29, 2008

Sigh. This is just like junior high all over again. I guess I’ll just head over to the fridge to bury my emotions in a tub of Rocky Road.

So that’s what you kids are calling it these days.
#20 Flex
February 29, 2008

This may be as good a place as any to wish Frederick a happy 38th birthday.

For those who are wondering who Frederick is, he’s the tenor in Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘The Pirates of Penzance’. Born on leap year, and indentured to pirates until his 21 _birthday_, he celebrates his 38th natal day today, 156 years after his birth.

So raise a Pirate Toast to Frederick’s birthday today!

Okay, off-topic but it’s a silly thread anyway.
#21 g
February 29, 2008

The plague of pi in the sky.

Let’s construct our own reality and do away with irrationals – it’s a personal “thing” where we just read in our own needs & preferences – and it is so easy.

Make it “fit” – “my needs.”

It should be just as easy to do away with the people that we disagree with – the human irrationals.

“Be gone,” ye bastards & devils.
“I just don’t like her; she reads herself and her sexuality into everything, Mama.”

Imaginary numbers too because “they” give license to unbounded literary criticism – like Darwin making (not making?) Hitler crazy.
All paradoxes and conundrums are so incommensurable – in their “essences.”

I know what he means!
He means what I say he means.
I know what preversion is, Man.
#22 AJS
February 29, 2008

Oh yeah. If you ever need to implement that formula and are working with a microcontroller where bytes and cycles are critical, you can use the remainder from each division in the next; because of the identity $A % ($B * $C) % $C == $A % $C.
#23 Glen Davidson
February 29, 2008

Mercury’s the only planet that gets to avoid a leap year (or other manipulation to make days and years correlate overa long time range), since resonance between Mercury’s planetary rotation and its period of orbit locks its day and year into a simple ratio.

On Mercury, its day simply lasts for two of its years. It makes for an inconveniently long day, at least by our understanding, but at least its calendar is relatively simple.

Maybe creationists can have a new goal, to get to the one planet in the solar system that they might believe is “rationally designed.” Of course it’s a rational year/day relationship, but well-explained without design. That shouldn’t trouble them much, though, since scientific matters have escaped their brains–and at least Mercury’s year/day pattern mimics the rationality of design far better than does anything in life (indeed, the ancients always looked to the heavens for the regularity and order that seemed so lacking on earth).

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
#24 Bill
February 29, 2008

… It just proves that God used pulleys and v belts to connect the heavenly spheres.

If He had used gears, there would be an exact rational number ratio.
#25 magula mcsnickers
February 29, 2008

I before E except after C
or when sounded like A as in neighbour and weigh.
If short E or long I is the sound that is right,
place E before I as in their or in height.
#26 Carlie
February 29, 2008

Wait, so is the earth really old or not? Because if it’s not, then losing 35 days in the last 6000 years is something we would kind of notice. And if the rotation is slowing, why do we add days onto the year? Shouldn’t they be subtracted instead? My brain hurts.
#27 June
February 29, 2008

MikeM, I did look it up.
1 Kings 7:26 says the tank wall was a hand breadth thick.
That may make Pi come out to about 3.14.

But where did you find car tires in the Bible
#28 David Marjanovi?, OM
February 29, 2008

No Olympics or elections in 2100 I guess then.

Of course not. Hey, you didn’t have elections in 2000 either… :-� <innocent whistling>

Well, unless you plan on submitting yourself as food for Cthulhu (the beat the rush plan).

LOL!

I think get it now… its like saying that Bush knows what he is talking about until he opens his mouth unless he closes it immediately.

Oh, ow, ow. my side hurts from laughing. The earth is slowing. Ow, it hurts. The illogic of it all.

Not the illogic, the moon. The moon is a brake.

The rules match precisely; Therefore, I conclude that the solar system was intelligently disegned by an intelligent disegner who couldn’t spell.

Brilliant.

However, the whole “I before E” crap is a red herring.

Every rule has an exception.
Except this one.

ROTFL!

But a second is precisely defined, as the amount of time it takes for light to travel 299 792 458 metres.

The other way around. Look it up.

per Daniel Webster.

Noah Webster.
#29 David Marjanovi?, OM
February 29, 2008

7.1th Day Adventists here I come!
#30 David Marjanovi?, OM
February 29, 2008

7.1th Day Adventists here I come!
#31 Kseniya
March 1, 2008

That would be weird, but the idea is interesting. Along those lines, I propose instead that Dec 31st be 30 hours long.
#32 AJS
March 2, 2008

I know, I know, the second is defined first and the metre is defined in terms of the second ….. It was a joke. I thought the “building trade” comment might have given it away …..

If one takes a cubit to be 50cm., then assuming the inner circumference of the biblical bowl is 30 cubits and the outside diameter is 10 cubits, we get the thickness of the walls as (5 – (15 / pi)) / 2 = 0.1127m. = 11.3cm. That’s probably close enough to the “hand’s breadth” (nominally 10cm.) mentioned. However, and it’s a big however, the laws of physics do rather tend to get in the way of measuring the inside circumference of a bowl. What I think more probable is that the circumference was between 14.5 and 15.5m. (29 and 31 cubits), the diameter somewhere between 4.5 and 5.5m. (9 and 11 cubits) and the author of the passage simply rounded both figures to the nearest whole number. You can solve graphically to find the range in which D and P may lie, if you’re really that bothered.

Someone also mentioned daylight saving time. This is a concept inextricably bound with the nine-to-five working day.

The Earth always receive the same amount of daylight before solar midday as after, and solar midday is always within a few minutes of 12:00. Working hours of 08:00 to 16:00 would maximise daylight during the working day. The reason why the working day was chosen to begin at 09:00 was simply that this allowed sufficient daylight for the whole routine of washing, shaving, dressing and travelling to work, even in the depths of Winter.

For some reason, instead of simply running business hours from 09:00 to 17:00 in the Winter and 08:00 to 16:00 in the Summer (which would have required adjusting only the alarm hand on one clock in any home where someone worked in business), someone had the bright idea to spend the Summer pretending that it was an hour later than it really was (thereby requiring adjusting the timekeeping hands on all clocks everywhere).

Since then, buildings have been designed not to be dependent upon natural daylight, and forms of communication such as fax, e-mail and voicemail have been developed which do not require the two parties to be present at the same time. So the original justifications for fart-arsing about with all the clocks twice a year no longer exist, while the contraindications remain in force as strong as ever.