Leaping Burst of Blogginess, Part 1

It's a Leap Day burst of blogginess today.

First a round-up of MSM style 'let's find an angle on Leap Day that hasn't quite been beaten into the ground just yet' articles.

This BBC article attempts to convince readers that Leap Day should be a paid holiday in the workforce as employees are getting shafted, and employers are getting extra work hours. But that only makes sense if you are paid yearly/monthly, if you are paid by the week, or hour, then a week is a week, and an hour is an hour, regardless of whether the calendar reads March 1st or February 29th on a certain day. I would reckon that far fewer people are paid annually, than otherwise, so if those few people who are on annual wages want to play hooky today, then go for it.

The NYT is far too serious of a paper and institution to waste their time on petty trivialities like Leap Day.

The NYPost has no such qualms, and they have a rather prescient piece by John Crudele warning investors to beware of February 29th. Don't know if he expected a 300+ point downturn in the Dow today, but if you sold your entire portfolio on Thursday just before the closing bell, and then re-bought all the same stocks at closing bell today, you'd probably have made a pretty decent profit (not that you should ever use the market in such a short term way, anyway).

The LA Times opinion section digs through its own archives to highlight past attitudes regarding an old semi-tradition of Leap Day being the one time it was permissible for women to propose to men. In 1908 they were against it, but by the time it rolled around again in 1912, they were for it.

Washington Post assigns Monica Hesse the job of coming up with something to write about the particulars of Leap Day. She digs up Dick Henry for a blurb about calendar reform, and then quickly dismisses his heresy. I won't do that, instead I'll link to his heresy. Judging from his web pages, I'll suggest that Prof. Henry is probably what many would describe as 'a character'.