It all seems so systematic, arranged, and orderly. Sixty seconds make a minute, 60 minutes make an hour, 24 hours make a day, and one day equals one complete rotation of the planet earth. Roughly every 30 days the moon orbits the earth – which is one month. Then every 12 months the earth orbits the sun – which is one year. So far so good…right?
Oldish German calendar. Image via sciencesource.com
But here’s where the nice and neat order of it all breaks down. For if you try to measure one of earth’s orbits of the sun in days it’s not so divinely tidy. For it takes 365 days plus an inconvenient 6 hours to fully complete the cycle. Nonetheless, we don’t let these inconvenient 6 hours hamper our perfection.
We’re humans, after all. We innovate, invent, and make the world in our image. So when the numbers don’t jive, we do what must be done. We fudge them. We create an off balance account, we concoct a new theory, we contrive negative interest rate policy…and we invent a leap year.
This coming Monday is the day the books must be reckoned. Peering into our off balance account we find 24 accrued hours that must be tallied up and rectified. Consequently, we must have a day of correction for the disorder of the last four years. We must resynchronize the calendar year with the astronomical year. Moreover, we must reground our measuring system with its baseline – its reference point.
Did you really think we’d let you get away with that calendar-fudging, oh Julius? February 29? Seriously? Photo credit: MGM/Turner Ent.
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