From mitchell@tartarus.uchicago.edu Tue Dec 19 21:57:04 1989
From: mitchell@tartarus.uchicago.edu (Mitchell Marks)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: An answer to WHICH QUESTION? (was Re: An answer to what is the first year of the next century.)
Date: 19 Dec 89 19:10:29 GMT
Organization: University of Chicago Computer Science
In-reply-to: scott@stl.stc.co.uk's message of 19 Dec 89 10:00:07 GMT

You realize we're going to have to live through ten years of this
argument?  Oy, veh is mihr!  (Or eleven?)

There are TWO different questions:

1) What years are the last/first of the old/new century (and this
   time, millenium)?  Which New Year is also a new century?

2) What year-change is a Big Deal that we should get excited about and
   celebrate wildly?  Which one will/should people care about?


The debate has been about question (1), but there's really no basis
for debate, apart from a hiidden agenda about (2).  The answer to (1)
is simply and plainly that 2000 is the last year of this century and
2001 is the first year of the next.  New Year's Day 1 Jan 2001 is the
first day of the new century/millenium.  The reasons for this have
already been thoroughly rehearsed in this group.  They don't depend in
any way on the historicity of Jesus, let alone his exact birthdate.
The only historical point that (1) turns on is that the conventional
numbering for the A.D. (or C.E.) era begins with 1.

But the more interesting question -- at least the more practical one
-- is (2).  And I think it's pretty widely the case that what people
want to celebrate is the transition from New Year's Eve 1999 to New
Year's Day 2000.

This is not a contradiction, or ignorance about (1).  It's just that
what people celebrate is not the New Century but the New Number.  The
ol' odometer rolling over -- didn't you get excited about this
(literally odometers on cars) as a kid?  It's not the end of the
Twentieth Century we care about, but the end of the Nineteen Hundreds.
And whether you agree or disagree about question (1), which asks when
the Twentieth Century ends, it seems indisputable that the Nineteen
Hundreds end at the moment of transition between 1999 and 2000.

The "mismatch" that others have written of is, if anything, a
reflection of the dual naming system.  We have two different sets of
names for the slightly-noncoinciding hundred year periods:

     The Nineteenth Century 1801-1900   The Eighteen Hundreds 1800-1899
     The Twentieth Century  1901-2000   The Ninteen Hundreds  1900-1999
     The Twenty-First Century 2001-2100 The Twenty Hundreds (?)
                                        or The Two Thousands  2000-2099


So I say we yield point (1) to the nit-pickers and agree that the next
Century begins 1 January 2001, but that we separate out question (2)
and insist that what we're interested in is not Centuries but Hundreds.

Though I also endorse Bob Devine's suggestion that we should have a
big bash both years.

--
Mitch Marks    mitchell@cs.UChicago.EDU
  A mind's reach should exceed its grasp,
  Else what's a meta for?