🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <MPG.e0cd640d...@news.mindspring.com>, John Vann
<i.love...@mindspring.com> writes
>On 14 Jun 97 19:08:18 GMT, the skies darkened, thunder struck, and the 
>words of splatter echoed in our minds:
>
>:A mistaken observation is that our calendar started with year 1, so the new
>:century and millenium will actually start on Jan 1, 2001. While it is
>:correct that there was no year zero, there was also no year 1 or year 100
>:or even 300. The gregorian calendar as we know it is just an arbitrary set
>:of years, so the new millenium can start whenever we want it to, whether
>:it's the first day of 2000, or 2001, or 1998 for that matter. General
>:consensus is that the new centuries always start in the zero year, i.e.
>:600, 1200, 1900, 2000, etc. There is no correct or incorrect start to the
>:new century and millenium. I choose 2000 to begin my next century. Not
>:literally; I'll only be 35.
>
>It isn't a set of arbitrary years.  It is based on what was then believed 
>to be the first year of Jesus' birth.  As it turns out, historians have 
>accepted Jesus' birth being really around 4 b.c. or earlier by our 
>calender, but it nonetheless wasn't a random year picked out way back when.
>
>True, a millennium is any group of 1,000 consecutive years, but why would 
>you just "decide" to start YOUR countdown with the year 1 b.c.?  The 
>"general consensus" that millenniums start in a zero year is a testament to 
>the public's general ignorance.
There is a non-arbitrary series of a thousand years - those of the form
1xxx. The next series is 2xxx, and so on. That is what the 'ignorant
public' has seized on, and it does make sense to talk about the change
of millennium in that context. The problem, of course, for those of us
of a pedantic mathematical background, is that the missing year 0 which
deprives us of neat accurate terms like 'the third millennium'. There is
no doubt that, strictly speaking, the third millennium starts on 1st Jan
2001, but the number of people celebrating then will be very small, so
if we want to have a good time we might as well accept the majority
view.
-- 
John Secker