I was trying to respond to Cecil’s statement (and others who agree) that 2001 and NOT 2000 starts the next millennium. I disagree for one very logical reason. The big event is made with the changing of the FIRST number of the year, not the last. The last number changes every year. When this calendar was first “set up”, I believe by Pope Julius in the 4th century (or whoever, whenever), there was no reason to go back and put a 0 on a year. In this respect, should we have skipped year 1000 and year 2000 to remain consistent? No. But just because there was no 0 year, does not make 2000 any less the start of a new millennium. What it means is that the first millennium 1-999 was shorted by a year. That’s all. I’m afraid making 2001 the start of a new millennium will have as great an effect as the y2k bug did at midnight this year, a big fizzle. What it WILL do is give religious fanatics and other paranoids another year to be paranoid. Who needs that? Let’s put it behind us and get on with humankind’s new enlightenment!
Considering that the definition of “millennium” is “a period of 1000 years”, it is impossible for 1-999 (a period of 999 years) to be a millennium. 1-1000 is a millenium. 2-1001 is a millennium. 1900-1999 is a millenium, also, just not “the 2nd millenium from the year set as the beginning of the Christian era/current era.” And 4 B.C.-A.D. 1996 is a millennium also.
Your Official Cat Goddess since 10/20/99.
“We are here! You are saved!” --R. & F.
We’ve hashed this out in the BBQ Pit.
Here’s an example to set it straight:
[ul][li]A year has 12 months. You don’t celebrate its passing at the beginning of the 12[sup]th[/sup] month, but at the end of the 12[sup]th[/sup] month.[/li][li]A year has 1000 years. You don’t celebrate its passing at the beginning of the 1000[sup]th[/sup] year, but at the end of the 1000[sup]th[/sup] year.[/ul][/li]
I looked in the mirror today/My eyes just didn’t seem so bright
I’ve lost a few more hairs/I think I’m going bald - Rush
I think a basic point is missed. Sorry I didn’t go to BBQ - it’s hard to know where to find these things when you’re a newcomer. But I had to make this comment. Who cares about the change of the last number of the year? I don’t. When the first number from 1 to 2 changes, that’s a big deal. That only happens once every 1000 years. And my point that the first 1000 years got gyped a year is a valid one. Blame it on the guy who thought up the calendar. It’s all just a bunch of numbers anyway. We’ve had our fun, the millennium has changed, let’s get on with life.
From the only cartoonist to get the millennium issue right: Wiley Miller!
I looked in the mirror today/My eyes just didn’t seem so bright
I’ve lost a few more hairs/I think I’m going bald - Rush
There was Cecil’s explination. Then there was AWB’s explination. Both were right.
Here’s the same thing from Johathan Betts, Greenwich Observatory’s curator of horology (which you can read in the December issue of Smithsonian):
“Say I owe you twenty dollars and pay you back a dollar at a time. You don’t consider the debt settled until I’ve given you the last penny of the twentieth dollar. By the same token, we won’t have completed the millennium until we’ve finished the 2,000th year–and that doesn’t happen until December 31, 2000.”
I look at it this way, unorthodox as it is:
We are in the zeroth year of the new millenium, not the first year of the new millenium. Thus, we are not in the new millenium at all. It’s unorthodox because “zeroth” isn’t a legitimate concept; nobody calls your wedding day “your zeroth wedding anniversary” because it’s sort of an oxymoron. I just use the term zeroth for mathematical reasons (y’know, like raising something to the power of 0 and getting 1.)
I just thought of tangent; your date of birth can be called your zeroth birthday, because it is a birthday, it’s just never added into to determine your age. I mean, you turn 10 on your tenth birthday celebration, which will be the eleventh time you have had a birthday. But this is only an anomoly caused by people using the term “birthday” to mean “anniversary of date of birth”. Anyway.
- Boris B, Hellacious Ornithologist
Well, I agree with Cecil. The new millenium began 01/01/2000. A careful read of the question as reposted on the main page will get to the important point: the way we set up time measurement is PRETTY ARBITRARY. When the teeming billions agreed to start the last decade on 01/01/1990, the last century on 01/01/1900, and, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts, the last millenium on 01/01/1000 that settled it. the only way to make the millenium begin on 01/01/2001 is to get a majority of the system users to agree to make it so. Good luck.
Wait a minute. Two posters here claim to agree with Cecil, yet they are saying opposite things. Hmmm.
I like Boris’s point. When we are born we are at ‘0’ yet we exist. As each day ticks by, we get another day older, another day smarter. WHen the millennium was born, same thing. It is now 4 days old. It will be 1 in 2001. (And I apologize if this was someone else’s idea, not Boris. I suffer from short term memory.)
Hey, thanks everyone for responding. I thought I had come up with a new concept(but nothing’s ever new) and wanted to put it out there to see how it would float. There will always be people to agree and to disagree. I wanted to see if anyone could convince me my belief was wrong. Happy New Millennium, everyone!
Basically Cecil said that the calendar is NOT a linear thing like dots in a straight line on a piece of paper.
For those who still think that its year 2000 [what a great commercial success that is & next year, they are going to do it again], remember there is NO zero month, No zero day, No zero week, etc.
Stephen Jay Gould said that until very recently, there was a wide separation between the official and the popular. The last century (20th) began officially in New York in 1901. The 21st century begins this year.
The 20th century only had 99 years. All the other centuries have 100 years.
Virtually yours,
DrMatrix
Disagree again. The year that got shorted was 1-999 because the guy who invented the calendar believed there was no year 0. However, 1000 is not the same as 0 - it has 1000 units. 2000 is also not 0. This millennium was not shorted. I like to go back to the birth of a baby. This year is the birth of the millennium.
If you’re going back to the birth of the baby I think you are…it happened between 4 and 8 BCE.