Leap at the chance

It happens every four years. Not the election (although that can't get here soon enough), not the summer Olympics and not the World Cup. What am I talking about (a question I get all the time)? I'm talking about Leap Year.

Why is this year different than the three years before it? Because as you probably know, during leap year February has an additional day. So instead of 365 days, in leap years there are 366. Thank you Captain Obvious.

Since it's such an infrequent occurrence—like me exercising or Scarlett Johansson returning my calls, there are a few interesting facts about a leap year:

What do you call them? People born on February 29th call themselves Leaplings. Or Leapsters. Or Leapers.

Never tell me the odds. The odds of being born on February 29th are 1 in 1,461, or .068 per cent.

Happy birthday to you. Leap year babies actually get to have birthdays the other years. As a rule, they usually celebrate it March 1st.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's his birthday! Superman was born on February 29th.

I was curious why we even have leap years—who isn't, amirite? So here's a little explanation I grabbed off the interwebs:

Leap days keep our modern-day Gregorian calendar in alignment with Earth's revolutions around the Sun. It takes Earth approximately 365.242189 days, or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds, to circle once around the Sun. This is called a tropical year, and it starts on the March equinox. However, the Gregorian calendar has only 365 days in a year. If we didn't add a leap day on February 29 almost every four years, each calendar year would begin about 6 hours before the Earth completes its revolution around the Sun. As a consequence, our time reckoning would slowly drift apart from the tropical year and get increasingly out of sync with the seasons. With a deviation of approximately 6 hours per year, the seasons would shift by about 24 calendar days within 100 years. Allow this to happen for a while, and Northern Hemisphere dwellers will be celebrating Christmas in the middle of summer in a matter of a few centuries. Leap days fix that error by giving Earth the additional time it needs to complete a full circle around the Sun.

So not only is this blog wildly entertaining to read, it's also educational. You're welcome.

Leap years are like daylight saving, except instead of springing forward an hour you get to do it for a whole day. Ok, so analogies may not be my strong suit, but you see where I'm going.

My point is you have an extra day to do something you like, be nice to someone, forget all about pandemic diseases that may wipe out the entirety of mankind with a sneeze, and not listen to news about the unstable genius and his incoherent orange ramblings.

As everyone says to the bride, this is your day.

So do with it what you will, and make it one to remember.

Because no matter how you decide to celebrate your extra 24 hours, you'll only have four years to think of a way to top it.

Zuckerbot 3000 goes to Washington

As expected, the Zuckerbot 3000 performed admirably at the senate hearings on internet privacy today.

The emotion protocol was clearly disabled, rendering the 3000 calm and collected under questioning that no doubt would've crashed last year's model. Clearly the Phase II testing, preparation and recently improved controller module integration paid off.

Far less composed and knowledgable were many of the senators questioning the 3000. They were throwing around terms they thought would make them sound tech savvy, like banner ads, personal information, instant messaging, apps and so on. It's a good thing the humor architecture build isn't too nuanced, otherwise the 3000 might've broken into a human-sounding chuckle.

Setting Zuckerbot chat in sleep mode for a bit, here's the thing: I rarely have any sympathy for Zuckerberg. While I understand and appreciate his monumental accomplishment, to me he's alway seemed like a Steve Jobs wanna-be, trading black turtlenecks for gray t-shirts, hoodies and a monotone. But watching these unfocused senators asking questions that were all over the board, from Cambridge Analytica to Russian election tampering to privacy protection, revealed how little they actually know about the very technology they're conducting hearings on.

And Zuckerberg, by contrast, knows everything. Certainly about Facebook, maybe even technology. He was far more articulate, knowledgable and impressive than the self-serving senators posturing while they made their five-minute speeches and interrupted him.

Granted being more impressive than the current crop of senators isn't exactly hard work, but still.

There was a lot of speculation about how these hearings would go, but the most dead on description was the one Bob Hoffman wrote for his blog, the Ad Contrarian. You'll find it here.

At the end of the day (yes, I said it), I'm not sure how to feel about it all. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a strong, long-time advocate of personal privacy. It took me years to use online banking. I fiercely guard my social security number. I rarely post pictures of myself or my family. And I even wear a wig and disguise when I go out in public.

No I don't. But if I did, I'd have one that used a lot of black and was very slimming.

If I seem uncharacteristically ambivalent here, it's because I understand Facebook isn't using some techno-hypnotizing-whammy-jammy to extract any information from me I don't want to give them. Everything Facebook knows about me has been volunteered. It's how they use and who they share the information with that's the issue. But again, in the name of personal responsibility and reading the small print, once I've surrendered it, it's out there.

I think the lesson for us all is if you don't want information about yourself out in the world, don't post it online. That's why I never post about my breakup with Scarlett Johansson.

It's nobody's business.

Tired

A lot of people would say it's manipulative of me to post a picture of a cute puppy, who's obviously so tired it can't keep its eyes open.

I agree. It would be if the picture had nothing to do with my post, which fortunately it does.

Because that's how tired (and cute) I feel tonight.

For whatever reason, I haven't slept well the past week. A couple hours at a time at most, up for an hour, then a couple more. That kind of interrupted sleep pattern, together with Friends reruns at 3:30 in the morning takes a toll. And tonight I'm paying it.

So I'm going to do something I haven't done in a very long time ("Put up an interesting post!" I heard that). I'm going to bed early.

I start a new gig tomorrow, and I want to be refreshed and ready to tackle a couple things: the assignments waiting for me, and scoping out new sushi places for lunch. Not necessarily in that order.

Anyway, as this Sunday night winds down - at least for me - let me wish you what I wish for myself: A great nights' sleep, sweet dreams and a cool breeze to carry you away on.

I'll save Scarlett Johansson and the winning lottery ticket for another post.