Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2000 16:39:56 -0600 From: "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@futuresouth.com> To: Jesse Tilly <jtilly@gw.total-web.net> Cc: "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: I will never trust NBC news again! Message-ID: <20000101163956.E3800@futuresouth.com> In-Reply-To: <001f01bf54bc$5f0c7520$0301a8c0@lothlorien.com> References: <3.0.6.32.20000101101332.0080ceb0@mail85.pair.com> <20000101154420.A3800@futuresouth.com> <001f01bf54bc$5f0c7520$0301a8c0@lothlorien.com>
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On Sat, Jan 01, 2000 at 04:57:08PM -0800, a little birdie told me that Jesse Tilly remarked > > As much as I like to be "right", let's not forget that the calendar > is a relative thing...it's not measuring *anything* accurately. > Jesus' birthday is up for debate, the calendar has been changed for > political reasons numerous times. Heck, some countries/cultures > don't even use this calendar and have been in different year sets > for, well, years...Two followed by three zeroes is neat. It's a > story. Yes, people forget that they never count like programmers > (starting with 1, not 0), but it's what the media latched on to, it's > where the parties were, it's where the bug existed...it just is. If > we're really going to nitpick, let's all start bitching about why the > SI decided upon a time structure that only measures things in seconds > and resorts back to European time scales for everything else...so > much for divisible by 10. Indeed, and an argument I've heard before. HOWEVER: By convention we measure time in days, months, years, etc. By convention, most of the world uses the Gregorian calendar. By convention, said calendar starts at a year 1 which supposedly (tho by general agreement not actually) is the year of the birth of Jesus, the messiah figure considered to be the 'Son of (or Incarnation of) God' by the Christian religion(s). As a result of these conventions, it logically follows that 2001 is the 'new millenium', regarless of how cute three 0's look. All these measurements of time are to some extent a human invention (what the hell is a 'week' anyway?), since the most obvious timescale would be 'years since the planet coalesced' or 'years since life began', both of which are impossible dates to pin down to within a few million 'years'. So we make conventions to dictate 'When It Is' (tm), and by the general convention It Is still a year until the 3rd millenium and the 21st century. -- Matthew Fuller (MF4839) | fullermd@over-yonder.net Unix Systems Administrator | fullermd@futuresouth.com Specializing in FreeBSD | http://www.over-yonder.net/ "The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is because I haven't figured out how to light the middle yet" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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