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#11686 12/06/00 09:58 AM
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by whom, pray tell?
The new president of the United States, who else?




#11687 12/06/00 12:41 PM
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settled by fiat, given the variables involved.

Yeah, whose fiat? And, there aren't any "variables", other than time zone differences which will only be of significance in this matter from 12-31-00 to 01-01-01. (Hey! I never realized till just now that the first day of the 21st century will be written like that! Cool!)
There was not a year zero, C.K.


#11688 12/06/00 12:47 PM
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>12-31-00 to 01-01-01

Unusually, we will agree on 01-01-01 (but not on 31-12-00)!


#11689 12/06/00 01:41 PM
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There was not a year zero, C.K.

[rant]
Unfortunately, there was not a year 1 either. Or 2, or....

Dionysus Exiguus (Dennis the Short) literally invented the year 1, around the year 500! And he got it wrong, because the internal evidence from the New Testament (Herod Antipas and the slaying of the children), coupled with political records (death of Herod) show that Jesus, if born in the reign of Herod, must have been born by 4 'BC'.

The notion, therefore, that there 'was no year zero' yet there was a year one, is inconsistent. Stephen Jay Gould has written a wonderful book about the millennium (title escapes me right now, and in any case, it might be different in the States), in which he points out that claiming the millennium for 1 January 2001 is no more logical or precise than celebrating it on 1 Jan 2000 (as I did). Pedants, in the 1800/1801 and 1900/1901 New Years', managed to dominate the press and government (having no wish to pander to the needs of hoi polloi) and generally won the argument in favour of year 1 in both cases (though 1900 v. 1901 was a close run thing). I believe that vox populi in the case of 'the millennium' has certainly proven vox dei and the new millennium began on the first of January 2000.

Arthur C Clarke to the contrary, I am more than happy with that state of affairs. [/rant]

Of course, even this New Year, I hope to party like it's 1999...


#11690 12/06/00 01:59 PM
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You are " a paid-up member of the Cynic Circle"?

They have a branch of the White Dog Gym in NZ?


#11691 12/06/00 02:07 PM
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And was it only our local "custom" to announce any events to happen at the end of the year 1999 as of "New Year's Eve 2000?" I was looking forward then to see what the phrase this year would be and - guess, what - it is "New Year's Eve 2000", too!

I might be making a terrible mistake here: we call NYE a "Sylwester" as Dec 31 is Sylwester's Name Day. Thus, it was actually "Sylwester 2000" last time and again, this year. Do you by chance celebrate "New Year's Eve NN" BEFORE the year NN?

Bound to spend his Sylwester 2000 at work (I know, I already mentioned but still it hurts),

Lukasz



#11692 12/06/00 02:11 PM
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And was it only our local "custom" to announce any events to happen at the end of the year 1999 as of "New Year's Eve 2000?"

I suspect not. New Year's Eve being (teaching grandma to suck eggs) a conventional contraction referring to the 'evening before' any event (like All Hallow's Eve), it seems to fit. I haven't seen it being used for the entire period leading up to the New Year, though, only for the day before.


#11693 12/06/00 04:11 PM
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now class (to use the invaluable phraseology introduced by Bingley), this whole argument about centuries and millennia is sooo easy to resolve if you reduce it to (and think about) decades. to wit, what are the dates of the decade known as the "nineties"? 1990 to 1999, or 1991 to 2000? now, what do you think the years of the 20th century are (were) 1900 to 1999, or 1901 to 2000? QED, the lack of the year zero (0) or not (or naught) not withstanding.


#11694 12/06/00 09:14 PM
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In reply to:


Unfortunately, there was not a year 1 either. Or 2, or....

Dionysus Exiguus (Dennis the Short) literally invented the year 1, around the year 500!

The notion, therefore, that there 'was no year zero' yet there was a year one, is inconsistent.


Your rant reminded me of a very amusing two page as for Saudi Air I saw once - a photo of a 747 and the words, "We've been flying since 1345" While I may have the exact year wrong, I was impressed that the ad made no mention of the fact that date given was A.H. rather A.D. - a nice slap in the face for infidel Western pig-dogs and their cultural imperialism.

[counterrant]
On a more serious note, I found tsuwm's "decade" argument more compelling than yours. Any epochal dating system is arbitrary. A.H. is a good example of this. There was no year zero in the A.H. system either, but there was a year one. Taking as inevitable the artifice and arbitrary retrogression implicit in the creation of a starting point for a dating system, said system must still have a "year one." The alternative strikes me as similar to mandating the removal of the last carriage from all trains - if there is no year one, then there can be no year two, etc. I am quite happy to accept vox populi, vox dei, although you are as selective in accepting that as any of us. All of us here have points on which we say "the people have spoken", and other points on which we say "the people are wrong". I don't make a fuss about the millennium, except in jest. I do believe that there was a starting point to the dating system currently in use. It matters not when that start was, it matters only that there was a start. Without an accepted starting point, however arbitrary, the system is worthless. By Gould's argument, I could assert that, like Humpty Dumpty, the millennium means exactly what I want it to mean, nothing more, nothing less. You and he(Gould, that is, not Humpty) have accepted the dating system in use, therefore when you say that it is the year 2000, you are acknowledging that almost 2000 full years have passsed since the point chosen as the start of the epoch.[/counterrant]


#11695 12/06/00 09:19 PM
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In reply to:

what are the dates of the decade known as the "nineties"? 1990 to 1999, or 1991 to 2000? now, what
do you think the years of the 20th century are (were) 1900 to 1999, or 1901 to 2000?


By this reasoning this should be the 20th century we just entered and 1999 was the last year of the 19th. ¿Qué no?


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