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

1. 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?

2. 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.

But perhaps some of our Korean readers will appreciate it. All I know is that I was interviewed for an article on the Han/Warda paper, and that’s my face in the Korean news.

In response to your efforts to turn Pharyngula’s domination of the virtual scienceblog world into a real world conquest, John Wilkins has suggested another strategy for organizing meetups: Facebook. There is a Scienceblogs Facebook group, which could be a useful tool for finding people in your region. There is also a Pharyngula Facebook group and a PZ Myers for World President Facebook group (shouldn’t that be “PZ Myers for Galactic Overlord”?)

So there we go, another mechanism for finding each other.

What? Today was Roy Chapman Andrews’ birthday! I almost missed it, but I shall raise a cup of tea to one of my heroes.

It’s all about that goofy Abunga bookstore nonsense — I love how a couple of paragraphs and a few hundred comments can make the zealots swoon.

There are lots of comments there, too, most seem to either dislike Abunga’s model, or are defending it on false pretenses: “we MUST maintain the integrity of our free enterprise system”!!! It seems to me that having a swarm of people using their rating system exactly as they designed it is perfectly fair and a fine example of free enterprise in action.

Neil Shubin, recent guest on The Colbert Report, author of the cover story of this month’s Natural History magazine, author of the newly released book, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body ^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)}, and most significantly, well known scientist and co-discoverer of the lovely transitional fossil, Tiktaalik roseae, has made a guest post on Pharyngula, describing his experiences in preparing for appearing on television — it’s good stuff to read if you’re thinking of communicating science to the mass media, or if you’re a fan of either Shubin or Colbert.

Shubin apparently reads Pharyngula now and then, and he’ll probably take a look at the comments on that article — if you’ve got questions, ask away, and maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll grace us with a reply.

Here’s an interesting twist of view: comparing the perspectives of a Law (Paul Davies) and Chaos (yours truly^*) and applying the ideas to chess. Even in a relatively simple system where all the rules are fixed and known, is there an orderly, formulaic solution to the problem?

^*There is a reason my oldest son is named Alaric, and why there is a shrine to Arioch in the infernal pit in the subbasement.

This is hilarious. That wacky Islamic creationist, Harun Yahya, sent all those copies of his great big expensive book, Atlas of Creation, to biologists all around the country, and darned few of us have actually bothered to look at it in any detail. The general pattern of the book is repetitious and predictable: the book shows a picture of a fossil and a photo of a living animal, and declares that they haven’t changed a bit, therefore evolution is false. Over and over. It gets old fast, and it’s usually wrong (they have changed!) and the photography, while lovely, is entirely stolen.

Here’s the latest funny part: someone did scrutinize the photos a little more carefully, and discovered a few of the photos are actually of fishing lures, hook and all. That’s the level of competence we’re talking about in this book.

By the way, I recently got another copy of the Atlas — the only difference seems to be that the new version has an emerald green cover, while the previous was bright red. Man, it’s impressive that they’ve got so much money that they’ll send out new editions just to change the cover color.

I believe “pharyngula” has a Greek root, so it’s only natural that someone would translate one of my posts into Greek.

(via Too Many Tribbles)

Let’s start the new year on a wishful note — here’s hoping we have a wonderful 2008 with a sweet song from Israel KamakawiwoÊ»ole.

If you’d prefer the classic version, here’s Judy Garland and Sarah Vaughan. I had to go with Iz, though, just because tropical islands and ukeleles are about as un-Morris-like as you can get.