by Matthew Cobb
Jerry is visiting the puces at Clignancourt, leaving Paris for the northern suburbs. Hili is similarly making a quantitative change that turns into quality. Or is she?
Hili: By walking across this treshold I’m changing habitat.A: I notice a slight exaggeration in this statement.
In Polish:
Hili: Przekraczając próg zmieniam środowisko.
Ja: Dostrzegam w tym twierdzeniu odrobinę przesady.
.
The Google doodle is an animation that marks the leap year (l’année bissextile in French) (click to go and see what happens):
Or you can take a more artistic approach to the leap year. Here is a leaping hare, by one of my favourite modern artists, the late Barry Flanagan:
Happy Leap Day! Occurring once every four years leap days are observed to compensate for the earth actually taking six hours longer than 365 whole days to orbit the sun.
'Six Foot Leaping Hare on Steel Pyramid' (1990) installed at @YSPsculpture in 1992. pic.twitter.com/3XoD4AXboT— Barry Flanagan (@JBFinfo) February 29, 2020
🐾🐾
In Barry Flanagan’s early career he was a process artist making interesting 3 dimensional forms. Here’s a sample:
https://medium.com/@milenaolesinska77/barry-flanagan-sculpture-aaba5f7ab3ea
Later he took a whimsical turn and focused on amusing hares. Some criticized this move as apostasy – as are many of us here.
Each year the Earth rotates on itself 366 times, except leap years, in which it rotates on itself 367 times.
The boss is doubtless having too much fun to check Titania regularly, but she recently posted this video. She makes her point, as ever, but the video is too disturbing for it to be funny. I wonder what others think?
https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/1233448455173025797
That video is waaaaay too disturbing to be funny.
But then what about this devious word, “bissextile”? Who’s trying to slip such a transgressive transsexual word into our everyday vocabulary and claim it has only to do with leap year and nothing to do with stealthily attempting to corrupt language in order to normalize deviant postmodern sexuality. It’s just masquerading as a number, in drag, as it were. That, I think, would be better fare for Titania to turn her investigative gaze on.
Hi
I don’t know your style well enough to tell if your remarks on “bissextile” are serious or satire. Either way, they led me to explore the Julian/Georgian transition and to discover “Julian calendar’s original reckoning of its quadrennial intercalary day as a 48-hour February 24”.
Yippee! That’s my birthday! Naturally I
resolved to celbrate it twice.
According to Julian it was Feb 11, so sadly I have missed it this year. But in 2021 I shall enforce it. Fiercely, and with impeccable historical provenance.
On the original matter, my concerns are twofold. First, drag is inherently and by it’s very nature sexual; second, look at the little girl’s face.
I did begin my remarks by agreeing with you that the video is exceedingly disturbing and repugnant. I worry for that poor little girl.
My remarks about “bissextile” are satirical. I’m a superannuated old fogey with a puerile sense of humor; that remark may seem oxymoronic and perhaps it is. I should have posted them separately, so it wouldn’t seem as if I was treating that video lightly.
Nowt wrong with superannuated old fogey-dom. I only wish I were that young.
And in such a state humour is essential (what else ya gonna do?).
The NY Post trades in yellow journalism but it does have some great animal videos. These two on lizard CPR
A gecko revived after drowning in a glass of beer
https://nypost.com/video/man-performs-mouth-to-mouth-resuscitation-on-gecko-that-drowned-in-his-beer/
Another lizard revived after drowning in a swimming pool
https://nypost.com/video/lizard-cpr-saves-life-after-near-drowning/
We should all have lizard CPR training. Never know when it’ll come in handy
And of course, those of us who grew up reading Li’l Abner know it’s Sadie Hawkins Day.
Every 400 years, (e.g. 1600, 2000, 2400) there is no leap year as adding a day every four years is still not quite correct.
There are also “leap seconds”. I’m not sure when they’re added, but it’s done via the World Atomic Clock. (I can’t be bothered looking it up.)
that’s rather an odd thing, when you think about it. If God, in his wisdom, designed and proscribed the universe and it’s process of unfolding, you wouldn’t think you’d need a leap anything. God, if he has any real power, should have designed a more crisp and accurate mechanism – not one controlled by variation, such as entropy. Why not a simple continuous, steady, changeless, universal, clockwork? Well, I guess too many such questions lead to madness. Let the texts teach us truth and dogma. After all, we’re all Bozos on this bus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=51&v=vkTfPWhiyXY&feature=emb_logo
Excellent observation!