Leap-Day Paradox
#29 /112 - "Leap Day" - for my ongoing photochallenge: 112 pictures in 2012 .
Those born on February 29th will always be somewhat paradoxical ...
"For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I've no desire to be disloyal,
Some person in authority, I don't know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal,
Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as
a rule are plenty,
One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty.
Through some singular coincidence I shouldn't be surprised if it were owing to the
agency of an ill-natured fairy
You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year, on the
twenty-ninth of February;
And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you'll easily discover,
That though you've lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays, you're only five
and a little bit over!
A paradox? A paradox!
A most ingenious paradox!
We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks,
But none to beat this paradox!"
From Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance".
Leap-Day Paradox
#29 /112 - "Leap Day" - for my ongoing photochallenge: 112 pictures in 2012 .
Those born on February 29th will always be somewhat paradoxical ...
"For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I've no desire to be disloyal,
Some person in authority, I don't know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal,
Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as
a rule are plenty,
One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty.
Through some singular coincidence I shouldn't be surprised if it were owing to the
agency of an ill-natured fairy
You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year, on the
twenty-ninth of February;
And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you'll easily discover,
That though you've lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays, you're only five
and a little bit over!
A paradox? A paradox!
A most ingenious paradox!
We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks,
But none to beat this paradox!"
From Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance".