Hoping to head off a large amount of postings on Larry's suggestion:

> "our" calendar.  So, my proposal is, let's make a day 24 hours and =
> how-many-ever minutes/seconds it is in a real day.  Think of all the =
> problems we could get rid of with no more leap years.

The basic problem is that the earth doesn't rotate an integral
number of times as it revolves around the sun.  Thus, if you want a
year to be the time between moving from logical spot "A", around the
sun, and back to "A" ... that's 365.25 (approx) rotations of the earth.

If you disregard that extra 0.25 day, you'll find the calendar
slipping versus the winter/summer cycle ... and that's precisely why
leap day was invented.

You also said "why can't we get rid of the leap year?".  Of course,
we can.  Some societies did in the past.  For example, we
could choose to say: a year is 365 days, period.  Every fourth year,
we'd have a special day (perhaps put it between Dec 31 and Jan 1), called
"DAY OFF" (or something).  That wouldn't be a leap year, but would have
the same calendar-correcting effect.

Stan (Please, don't tell Larry about the leap seconds :) Sieler