Saturday, April 2, 2016

093.366 - 2016 project and the Gregorian rule

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

the Gregorian rule

in case you've forgotten it:  we add a leap day to the calendar every four years except every hundredth year we skip it (skip adding a leap day) except every four-hundredth year we don't skip it

what an extraordinarily clever way to solve the problem!  what problem?  the astronomical year is roughly 365.24 days long.  if we didn't correct for that pesky .24whatever, then the calendar would become a nuisance.  Christmas would slide into summer eventually, and the Ides of March would eventually happen in the fall, and so on.  trust me, people get upset over these things!  how upset?  riots in the streets upset.  sulking for years upset.  refusing to acknowledge the correction upset.  but - except for the deniers - along comes a rule that suffices to jiggle the daily calendar into almost agreement with the astronomical calendar for damn near 8000 years!  golly wow!  that's clever!  that's an amazing win!  bless human brilliance!  yea us!

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