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>By this reasoning this should be the 20th century we just entered and 1999 was the last year of the 19th.
ah, but the 1st 'century' *was 01 to 99, wasn't it; or, to put it another way, there was no 0th century! (as opposed to the decade of the "naughties" ;-)
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old hand
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Ok, I'm going to solve this once and for all with the (in)famous Pifflic logic that you all know and love.
Let's say that I have a fish. I take this fish and cut it into 1000 pieces. Now, I'm going to give you one piece of this fish every year. Despite the fact that the fish has become intolerably rotten by this point, after I give you the 1000th piece of fish on the 1000th year, I have to begin a new fish.
Even if we start in the middle of the fish, we're saying that I would have given that first piece of fish in the first year. Before that year, the fish was still cycling around aimlessly, serving no purpose.
This year we are finishing the second fish, and next year, we will begin the 3rd fish.
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>Poster: Jazzoctopus Subject: Re: Unweaving the Millennium
Ok, I'm going to solve this once and for all with the (in)famous Pifflic logic that you all know and love.
Let's say that I have a fish. I take this fish and cut it into 1000 pieces. Now, I'm going to give you one piece of this fish every year. Despite the fact that the fish has become intolerably rotten by this point, after I give you the 1000th piece of fish on the 1000th year, I have to begin a new fish.
Even if we start in the middle of the fish, we're saying that I would have given that first piece of fish in the first year. Before that year, the fish was still cycling around aimlessly, serving no purpose.
This year we are finishing the second fish, and next year, we will begin the 3rd fish.
Jazz:
This has really NOTHING to do with your post, with which I agree a hundred percent, but with Shona around, it does give a WHOLE new meaning to fin de siecle. I suspect I have misspelled that, but I don't have at hand my dictionary with foreign phrases in it.
TEd
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... wasn't supposed to be like this. What happened to the horsemen of the apolocalype, the devil's henchmen slaying everyone right left and centre? Fire, brimstone, saltpetre, blood, sickness and all that jazz? I didn't expect to get nibbled to death by ducks!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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In reply to:
You are the only person I have ever heard from who shares my physical aversion to beer! Is your reaction specific to beer, or, like mine, to all alcohol?
I started off just not liking beer, but with repeated exposure to the smell of it in pubs and bars I've found I react to the smell more and more, feeling queasier each time. I don't particularly like wine, but will drink it to be sociable, usually watering it down as I go to make one glass last the whole meal/evening. I'm quite fond of gin in very moderate quantities and like liqueurs and suchlike, but offer me the choice between a bar of chocolate and a bottle of alcohol in any form and I'll go for the chocolate every time.
Bingley
Bingley
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Pooh-Bah
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>This year we are finishing the second fish, and next year, we will begin the 3rd fish.
So would we need to allocate a bicycle to each fish or each part of a fish. Would the nature of the bicycle change with age. Is there any significance in the colour of the bicycle?
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old hand
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In reply to:
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.
Well, here's my [reiterant] If any dating system is arbitrary, and we therefore accept that we, post hoc, assign a 'start' date, then it seems obvious to me that there is no problem in decreeing a start with a zero in it. The year zero is simply the year before the year one. It isn't as if the Romans are going to complain that Julius Caesar has suddenly invaded Britian in 42BCE instead of 43BCE, or whatever. Most history books, in any case, cannot be that accurate about years going further back than 100BCE. It's a small enough change to avoid the aesthetic ugliness of ending a century a year after the the numbers themselves have ticked over.[/reiterant]
I suppose we could justify all these arguments here on the grounds that it is about using the language, but I suspect that might be a piece of sophistry...
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veteran
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a WHOLE new meaning to fin de siecle. I suspect I have misspelled that..Yes, TEd - it should be fin de cycle of course. I don't know, I come back from a little swim to find that I no longer serve any purpose, other than to be cut into 1000 pieces to (somehow) help identify what year it is. It's nice to feel wanted. Oh, did the Gregorian calendar result in a reallocation of fishy bits? Or did that just affect months?
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did the Gregorian calendar result in a reallocation of fishy bits?No, fisk - but I think the French revolutionary system tried to do this - under Bone-apart
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shanks sez: "I suppose we could justify all these arguments here on the grounds that it is about using the language, but I suspect that might be a piece of sophistry..."
Personally, I just like arguing about inconsequential nonsense, but then I am a Fool. If y'all hurry up and get it over with types had just waited a year instead of needing your BIG CELEBRATION OF THE MILLENNIUM AS SOON AS POSSIBLE then we could have had the ONE BIG ONE with out its being watered down by fears of the hundred's digit rollover (AKA Y2K) bug.
PS
I celebrate the New Year on the new moon before the first full moon after the vernal equinox. The largest cycle I recognize is the cycle that goes from one occurrence of the new moon and the vernal equinox during the same evening/day period to the next occurrence of the new moon and the vernal equinox during the same evening/day period.
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