Give me a sec

We've all heard of leap years.
But have you heard of a leap second?

It turns out that every few years or so, time needs to be adjusted by adding one second to our clocks, either in summer or at the start of the New Year.

These leap seconds are added to adjust for Earth's spin slowing down because of the tides, the moon, the mantle is sloshing about (who knew it was so sloshy?) and Lahoud is still president (not thoroughly substantiated... yet).

This month's issue of Scientific American reports on the ongoing debate over leap seconds, with some views arguing that we shouldn't think of time in terms of light & day on Earth anymore (in case we offend some alien race).

Reason why this is even interesting to me?
The debate has been going on for 5 years!