The Science of Leap Year

What do the years 2020, 2024, 2028, 2032, 2036, 2040, and 2044 have in common? They’re Presidential election years in the U.S., the summer Olympics are scheduled to occur, and they’re Leap Years, when February gets an extra day and is 29 days long.

But why? The reasoning behind it is a little complicated. For example, most people believe that leap year occurs once every four years, but that’s not always the case.

Why do we have leap year? 

A calendar year is typically 365 days long. These so called “common years” loosely define the number of days it takes the Earth to complete one orbit around the Sun. But 365 is actually a rounded number. It takes Earth 365.242190 days to orbit the Sun, or 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 56 seconds. This “sidereal” year is slightly longer than the calendar year, and that extra 5 hours 48 minutes and 56 seconds needs to be accounted for somehow. If we didn’t account for this extra time, the seasons would begin to drift. This would be annoying if not devasting, because over a period of about 700 years our summers, which we’ve come to expect in June in the northern hemisphere, would begin to occur in December! 

By adding an extra day every four years, our calendar years stay adjusted to the sidereal year, but that’s not quite right either.

Why aren’t leap years always every four years?

Some simple math will show that over four years the difference between the calendar years and the sidereal year is not exactly 24 hours. Instead, it’s 23.262222 hours. Rounding strikes again! By adding a leap day every four years, we actually make the calendar longer by over 44 minutes. Over time, these extra 44+ minutes would also cause the seasons to drift in our calendar. For this reason, not every four years is a leap year.  The rule is that if the year is divisible by 100 and not divisible by 400, leap year is skipped. The year 2000 was a leap year, for example, but the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not.  The next time a leap year will be skipped is the year 2100.

Why is it called “leap year”?

Well, a common year is 52 weeks and 1 day long.  That means that if your birthday were to occur on a Monday one year, the next year it should occur on a Tuesday. However, the addition of an extra day during a leap year means that your birthday now “leaps” over a day.  Instead of your birthday occurring on a Tuesday as it would following a common year, during a leap year, your birthday “leaps” over Tuesday and will now occur on a Wednesday.  

And if you happen to be born on leap day February 29, that doesn’t mean you only celebrate a birthday every four years. On years without leap days, you get to celebrate your birthday on March 1 and continue to grow old like the rest of us.

Thanks to leap year, our seasons will always occur when we expect them to occur, and our calendar year will match the Earth’s sidereal year.  

Original posting by Bob Craddock for the National Air and Space Museum https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/science-leap-year.

History of Mardi Gras

When Is Mardi Gras? 

Mardi Gras is traditionally celebrated on “Fat Tuesday,” the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent.  In many areas, however, Mardi Gras has evolved into a week-long festival. 

Mardi Gras 2024 will fall on Tuesday, February 13.

What Is Mardi Gras?

Mardi Gras is a tradition that dates back thousands of years to pagan celebrations of spring and fertility, including the raucous Roman festivals of Saturnalia and Lupercalia.

When Christianity arrived in Rome, religious leaders decided to incorporate these popular local traditions into the new faith, an easier task than abolishing them altogether. As a result, the excess and debauchery of the Mardi Gras season became a prelude to Lent, the 40 days of fasting and penance between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday.

Along with Christianity, Mardi Gras spread from Rome to other European countries, including France, Germany, Spain and England.

What Does Mardi Gras Mean?

Mardi is the French word for Tuesday, and gras means “fat.” In France, the day before Ash Wednesday came to be known as Mardi Gras, or “Fat Tuesday.”

Traditionally, in the days leading up to Lent, merrymakers would binge on all the rich, fatty foods—meat, eggs, milk, lard and cheese—that remained in their homes, in anticipation of several weeks of eating only fish and different types of fasting.

The word carnival, another common name for the pre-Lenten festivities, also derives from this feasting tradition: in Medieval Latin, carnelevarium means to take away or remove meat, from the Latin carnem for meat.

New Orleans Mardi Gras

The first American Mardi Gras took place on March 3, 1699, when French explorers Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville and Sieur de Bienville landed near present-day New Orleans, Louisiana. They held a small celebration and dubbed their landing spot Point du Mardi Gras. (Some argue the port city of Mobile, Alabama was actually the first to observe the event.)

In the decades that followed, New Orleans and other French settlements began marking the holiday with street parties, masked balls and lavish dinners. When the Spanish took control of New Orleans, however, they abolished these rowdy rituals, and the bans remained in force until Louisiana became a U.S. state in 1812.

On Mardi Gras in 1827, a group of students donned colorful costumes and danced through the streets of New Orleans, emulating the revelry they’d observed while visiting Paris. Ten years later, the first recorded New Orleans Mardi Gras parade took place, a tradition that continues to this day.

In 1857, a secret society of New Orleans businessmen called the Mistick Krewe of Comus organized a torch-lit Mardi Gras procession with marching bands and rolling floats, setting the tone for future public celebrations in the city.

Since then, krewes have remained a fixture of the Carnival scene throughout Louisiana. Other lasting customs include throwing beads and other trinkets, wearing masks, decorating floats and eating King Cake.

Did you know? Rex, one of the oldest Mardi Gras krewes, has been participating in parades since 1872 and established purple, gold and green as the iconic Mardi Gras colors.

Louisiana is the only state in which Mardi Gras is a legal holiday. However, elaborate carnival festivities draw crowds in other parts of the United States during the Mardi Gras season as well, including Alabama and Mississippi. Each region has its own events and traditions.

Mardi Gras Around the World

Across the globe, pre-Lenten festivals continue to take place in many countries with significant Roman Catholic populations.

Brazil’s weeklong Carnival festivities feature a vibrant amalgam of European, African and native traditions. In Canada, Quebec City hosts the giant Quebec Winter Carnival. In Italy, tourists flock to Venice’s Carnevale, which dates back to the 13th century and is famous for its masquerade balls.

Known as Karneval, Fastnacht or Fasching, the German celebration includes parades, costume balls and a tradition that empowers women to cut off men’s ties. For Denmark’s Fastevlan, children dress up and gather candy in a similar manner to Halloween—although the parallel ends when they ritually flog their parents on Easter Sunday morning.

Article provided by History.com https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/mardi-gras.

February Newsletter

As this newsletter is being delivered, the ADS leadership team will be at NADA in Las Vegas. This year’s show is sure to be jammed packed with great meetings, time with some of our valued dealer clients, as well as meeting many new dealers interested in improving their F&I sales process and results.

It was two years ago when NADA was last in Las Vegas. During that show, EV’s were ALL the rage! There was so much talk and hype about EV’s and the demise of the ICE vehicles. It was the FUTURE, or that is what they wanted you to believe.

At that time, we published an article on our skepticism of the prognosticators certainty around the adoption rate of the BEV’s. This was met with some negativity when it came out, but we must remember that two years ago there were months’ worth of backorders for anything electric, so it was only fair to receive some criticism over our cautionary approach.

Now here we are entering another industry event and another manufacturer (Volvo) just pulled back funding on their EV program – much to the pleasure of Wall Street, as their stock surged 20% on the news.

So how did we go from all the rage to a mere footnote in just two years? Is it because the demand was artificial, the talking head CEOs were making statements to appease their investor base, or have we now had two years of real world experience to prove out a lot of the concerns we pointed out. Most likely, it is a combination of all the above.

Let’s be clear, there is a place for EV’s and there is some demand for them, but it is not NEAR what we were being led to believe. The EV market will continue to grow and may even see some significant growth (due to its relatively small market share currently), but the ICE based vehicles that have powered this country for over a century, may just be around for another century…

We hope everyone has a tremendous NADA show.

Events we will be attending:

NADA 2024 – https://www.nada.org/nada-show
Cleveland Auto Show – https://www.clevelandautoshow.com/

Good luck and Good Selling!

Sincerely, 
Bob and Ryan

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