Deals.Woot

have you heard about the guys that have created a callendar where every year your birthday will be on the same day of the week? they have 30 days in all but 2 or 3 months and have completely elimanted the need for leap day. i think the year has 364 days. also since seasons aren't exact, why do we need january to always be winter, etc?
but as for your question: it will never happen because what about all those people with birthdays or other occasions...

I do not want to denigrate the questioner, but what is wrong with our education system that people don't understand such fundamental issues? Anyone mature enough to be typing on a computer should know the reason for a leap year, and if you don't then you have been short changed in your education. I am willing to bet that only people taught in American public schools have this kind of deficiency of understanding.

@nortonsark: I don't want to denigrate myself, but I had to Google that term to find out what it meant.

@baqui63: If we have one day every four years how does 7 make a full month? Math seems a bit off IMO.

@w00tgurl: It really is wrong what they did to Pluto. Disowning him like that.

Who has that kind of power anyways? What man actually has the power to unmake a planet? Did we elect him?

@captainsuperdawg:

I believe months were each 28 days as well, though I will freely acknowledge that it has been years since I looked into this and I did not do so before answering above.

Leap years are not a gimmick like daylight savings time. They are a necessary correction to an imperfect calendar.

The calendar is based on the earth's orbit of the sun. Every year on a given day, the earth's position in its orbit will be very close to the same place on that same day year after year.

That is because 1 year = 1 orbit. Almost.

I say almost because the orbit takes approximately 365.25 days. Because the calendar year only has 365 days, the calendar becomes out of sync (by 6 hours each year) with the earth's true position in its orbit.
After 4 years, the earth's position would be a full day behind what the calendar reads.

The calender would essentially be acting like a clock that is running fast. And what do you do with a clock that runs fast? You adjust it.

The only difference is with a clock, you typically move the hands back so you are essentially repeating some minutes. With the calendar, we add a new day instead of repeating a day.

who let the kids in the group home on the interweb again?