Leap years

I hate leap years.  It isn't that every four years (with some exceptions) we get an extra day.  What I hate is that we think we have it all figured out.  We know that a year is 375.25 days.... exactly.... right?  Wrong.  It's more along the lines of 365.242199 days per year.... But, it's even more complicated than that.

And it changes periodically, depending on a number of factors. The Earth is in orbit around the sun, but it isn't really in a vacuum.  The Earth picks up matter from space, expels matter into space, collisions from asteroids of various shapes distort our orbit, slightly.

Bad Astronomy also did a blog on something similar.  It is exceptionally difficult to determine when we determine when a year is up.  It should be based on when we return to the same place in our orbit.  Ok, when is that?  How do we determine that?  Based on the fixed stars?  But, the Sun is moving through its orbit in the galaxy, so those fixed frames of reference are themselves changing.

Why do I hate leap year?  Because we think we've got the year all figured out, and that we think it is precisely 365.25 days...

Discordianism states that all the order in the Universe is an illusion.  We wish there to be order, so we impose it on all our observations.  We create rules and structures and all of science is based upon those our observations whose underlying theorem is that there is a form or order... a set of rules which we must understand....  Maybe Chaos is just plays tricks with us...