Yesterday, I asked what you consider the most important business stories of the past decade. Since then, a question has arisen as to whether the decade ends at the end of 2009 or the end of 2010. It's really a discussion that has been going on since Y2K.
Take our poll. When do you think a decade really starts and ends and why. You an use the "reply" button to add your reasons after you vote.
The Romans did not have a zero in their numbering system [thank heavens for the Arab merchants] so their calendar began with January 1 in the year 1. The decade, therefore, did not end until midnight between December 31,10 and January 1, 11. The addition of a couple of millenia changes nothing so the first decade of the second millenium does not end until December 31, 2010/January 1, 2011.
The calendar (Roman, Christian, whatever you like) began January first. January is a month, not a year. There was no year because it hadn’t been that long yet. By June, it was six months… but still no year… like a baby who is six months old, not a year and six months. By the end of the tenth month, December, a year had been completed and it was January first, the year 1. Too complicated? Study military time and you’ll understand.
The people who think that the end of 2009 is the end of this decade are the same people that think saying “I could care less” conveys that they have absolutely no interest in or empathy for whatever the subject at hand happens to be.
Michael, you’re wrong. The first (sometimes written as ‘1st’) year of the Common Era was year 1, not year 0. Who starts counting with 0? Nobody I know. This is not the same principal you would use for a newborn baby, which doesn’t turn one year old until one year after its birth, but as soon as its born, that’s its 1st year of life. Confusing, I know.
It’s all relative. When would you like it to end?
If it started at Jan1, 01, then I would agree that it ends on Dec 31, 2010. But, that means that the millennium started on Jan 1, 1001 and all those “year 2000″ celebrations were one year too soon. Was the whole world wrong??
Joc: technically, yes, they were: the millennium ended at the end of the year 2000, and the 21st century only kicked on Jan 1 2001.
That said, the switch from 1999 to 2000 carries a lot more symbolic and poetic weight, obviously – no wonder that was the one everyone celebrated.
I doubt that Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clark settled on the title “2001″ because it was the second year of the new millennium. A movie which they consulted with scientists including Carl Sagan to ensure authenticity and accuracy. For the youngsters out there,incidentally, this movie was made in 1968 and contained many visions of the future that are now coming into reality and included special effects that rivaled or surpassed Star Wars – made 8 years later – all prior to the digital age of movie production.
1.The 100th year of the 20th Century and last year of the 2nd Millennium was definitely and indisputably 2000.
2.The 1st year of the first decade of the 21st Century and of the 3rd Millennium was definitely and indisputably 2001 – obviously. The clue is in the number ‘1′.
3.The 10th and last year of the first decade of the 21st century will be 2010 – obviously. The clue is in the number ‘10′.
4.The last day of the first decade of the 21st century and 3rd millennium will definitely and indisputably be December 31st 2010.
There is a concerted effort by the BBC and other major media players to deny these facts for cynical commercial branding and packaging purposes. This is an abuse of their position of information stream control domination.
Clear thinkers will ignore them and respect and express true and honest chronological facts and conventions.
Rage Against The Machine!
Say something long enough, enough times it ‘becomes’ fact.
The media has a vested interest in rounded years, misleading and misinforming the public who unfortunately are less interested in real facts.
I have yet to know of any counting system that starts with anything but 1. 1-10, 101-101, 2001-2010 etc
The fact that there was no year 0 is the key. An easy way to understand time is if you are 20 years old, you are in your 21st year of life, when you complete that year, you will 21. It’s all about time. We go through time on earth 1 second per second. That ratio changes if you were to orbit the earth at 17500 miles per hour. If you stayed up there for a year, when you returned to earth, you would be slighly younger than you would have been if you stayed on earth for that year. Astronauts come back to earth younger because the ratio of one second per second changes the faster you travel. For every second that went by on earth, for them approx..89 of a sec went by. This all may sound non-related, but it is all relative. Time and space are related. The reason we have a leap year every four years is because the earth takes 1 year and 6 hours to orbit the Sun once. We celebrate New Years at 12 Midnight. Actually the the new year doesn’t start till 6AM. To make up for this time just do the math; 6 X 4=24, so we add a day evey four years. I hope this solves the argument.
The observations that the first decade of the millennium ends on Dec 31, 2010, are technically correct. However, when one refers to the 1950s, for example, we’re talking about 1950 to 1959. The culture is only concerned about that third digit – the ten’s spot – and getting through ten of them. For now, the decade of the zeros is almost done. The first decade of the millennium will take another year.
A decade is defined as a group of ten items, as in 10 years. So both groups are technically correct. The Ancient Romans did not have a January or February until Caesar added them, thus December, or tenth month, November ninth month, etc.. Nor did they come up with B.C. or A.D. so they also did not have a year 1. Their dating was based on the founding of the Roman empire. The idea of year 1 was later created by Christian scholars to distinguish history before Christ from that in the year of our lord or Anno Domini. Before the Common Era and Common Era were mor politically correct terms created even later.
A decade consists of any set of 10 consecutive years. The decade of the 2010’s begins on Jan 1, 2010.
If you are counting ordinal decades from the start of time, then its true that the “201st decade” doesn’t begin until Jan 1, 2011.
But the majority of people don’t care about ordinal decades starting at year 1. When we talk about the 1990’s, we are not referring to events in the year 2000. Nor do the 1920’s include everything in 1930. 2000-2009 is a decade (the 2000’s). We are entering the 2010’s. Party!!!
We begin counting with the first year to the 10th year to 100th year, etc. For instance, you live through your first year and at the end of 12 months, you are 1 year old, then 2, and so on until you’re 10 years old. Therefore, the tens/hundreds/thousands are counted at the top of the decade/century/millennia, not at the beginning.
I agree that the media uses the 00s to create a story, and doesn’t care if it is accurate or not, all for the sake of money. Just another dupe we should be careful not to fall for – the media is not always right!
I disagree that the the beginning of a decade is a nominal thing and that erroneous arithmatic can somehow become “techically correct”. A decade begins with a 1 year and ends with a 10 year. The decade of the 50s began in 1951 and finished in 1960. To take the position that it began in 1950 and finished in 1959 is to assume that the year 0 exists. This is mathematically impossible. Proof? 0.5-(-0.5)=1.0 That is, there is one year between 30th June of the years 1BC and 1AD. Therefore there is no year 0. The first decade of the common era was 1 to 10,then 11 to 20 and so on.
Failure to recognize a difference between the ordinal and nominal is simple equivocation.
But wow, won’t they be ever so impressed at the cocktail party!
My sister was born in 1990. She was not born in the ’80’s by any definition of the ’80’s in general use today. Regardless of the non-existence/impossibility of Year 0 oh so many years ago, nowadays most people organize their decades from 0 to 9. Anyone who would not consider 2000 as part of the ’90’s, which I think would be most people, must end this decade at the end of 2009, not 2010.
It’s not mathematically accurate, but I guess you could say it’s a difference between a technical decade and a colloquial decade.
The 90s may be from 1990-1999; however, if you accept that 1 AD was the first year of the first decade and millennium, then you must also accept that 1000 AD was the last year of the first millennium and the last year of the last decade of the first millennium and that the second millennium started with 1001 AD, and therefore the second millennium must end in 2000 AD and the third must start on 2001 AD, and therefore the first decade of the third millennium must be from 2001-2010. You can call the 1990-1999 the 90s, that still doesn’t make it the last decade of the second millennium. Maybe it’s just stupid to refer to the 50s, 60s, 70s as decades (not really, actually, you are the stupid one if you can’t distinguish the difference). By the way, for those of you that can’t, what are you gonna call this first decade, the “zeros”? LMAO. The fact still remains. The first decade of the third millennium ends on Dec 31, 2010. That’s indisputable. Unless you want to say that the first year of the first millennium was 1 BC. But if you maintain that the first year was 1 AD and insist that the first decade of the third millennium ends on Dec 31, 2009, then you are only being inconsistent. Your children will get confused when something is referred to historically as happening in the last decade of the first millennium, and it happened in the year 1000, since your logic teaches to put 1000 in the “new” (the second) millennium.
A decade, by the way, is just a period of ten years.
Something that happened from 1974-1983 happened for a decade.
The first decade of the third millennium, however, ends on Dec 31, 2010. Again, indisputable. So this decade ends on Dec 31, 2010, in case you haven’t gotten it already.
The first year of the Common Era was the year 0001 C.E. and not the year 0000 C.E. which has been left undefined for various reasons.
The Common Era is assumed to begin with the day 1/1/1.
01/01/0001 = 1/1/1 = first day of the 1st month, the 1st year, the 1st century, the 1st millennium CE.
Add one hundred years to 1/1/1:
01/01/0101 = first day of the 2nd century CE.
Add one thousand years to 1/1/1:
01/01/1001 = first day of the 2nd millennium CE.
Add two thousand years to 1/1/1:
01/01/2001 = first day of the 3rd millennium CE.
Add 10 more years to the present millennium (which began 1/1/2001):
01/01/2011 = first day of the new decade.
In conclusion : 2010 is only the last year of the 1st decade of the new millennium and the 21st century.
The sixties ran from 1961 – 1970, not from 1960 – 1969. The seventies ran from 1971 – 1980, not 1970 – 1979. 1990 was the last year of the 80s and Y2K was only the last year of the 90s. Weird, but true!
There is never a Year Zero. Zero marks a place or position or origin it is never a measure of a length of time. Thus the first year was Year One (CE). Thus the end of Year 10 would have been the end of the first decade and the end of Year 100 the end of the first century and so on. The significance is that the year number is the count of the years gone by at the end of it. Yes we got the millenium wrong and so most peaople think that this is the end of the first decade now because they got it wrong. The symbolic niceness if you like would be the fact that at the end of 2000 we completed 2000 years a success of making it rather than what did happen.
So I guess that my Time Life music of the 70’s screwed me out of a year. I have music form 1970 to 1979 which is 10 years including the year 1970. If I go from 1970 to 1980 that’s 11 years.
The confusion is this. Jan 1, 2000 to December 31, 2000 is one year. Yes the number ends in zero but it is ONE YEAR COMPLETED. So on Jan 1, 2001 we started our second year and Jan 1, 2002 our 3rd year, etc, etc
Some body that god that we us the arabic way of time measurement because they have no zeros. I guesss that why gas is always 259.9/10?
Are you guys completely sure that the year 1800 was in the 17th Century?
No… Jackie (post#26) the year 1800 was the last year of the 18th century. 1801 was the first year of the 19th century. The Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, MA in the 17th century in the year 1620 A.D. And while I’m at it… when I went to college in the 1960’s we used A.D. or Anno Domini (Year of our Lord)and B.C. (before Christ). It has only been in the last few decades that the politically correct nitwits that teach our children in the public schools and colleges have changed the terms to C.E.(common era) and B.C.E. (before the common era). Wouldn’t want to offend anyone..LOL
Think there was no year 0, Start with year 2000 and count backwards to the begining and tell me what the 12 months were before 1 was called.
This discussion reminds me of a mean-but-good-spirited birthday card for a 39th birthday that read, “Don’t think of it as turning 39, think of it as entering your 40th year.”
Happy New Year! (Even if you’re not convinced that it’s a new decade.)
@Domenick, the confusion is that you don’t understand that the 3rd millennium started on Jan 1, 2001, and therefore the first decade of the 21st century is 2001-2010.
@(28) dave, the 12 months before 1 AD were the year 1 BC. The first millennium did not begin on 1 BC, however. It began on 1 AD.
@(29) Exactly, but you’re wrong. You’re confusing yourself. Don’t thing of it as 2009. Think of it as STARTING/ENTERING the TENTH YEAR. The decade doesn’t pass until the full 10 years don’t pass. The first year was labeled Year One, or 1 AD. The first decade passed at the end of Year Ten, 10 AD. Decades for the purpose of centuries end in “zero” years.
1 AD – 1000 AD = 1000 years = First Millennium
The First Millennium ended at the end of 1000 AD and the second started at the beginning of 1001 AD.
1001 AD – 2000 AD = 1000 years = Second Millennium
1001 AD – 1999 AD = 999 years = Not a Millennium
The Second Millennium did not end at the end of 1999. It ended at the end of 2000, and the Third Millennium started at the beginning of 2001.
2001 is the first year of the Third Millennium and the 21st century.
2001-2010 is the first decade of the Third Millennium and the 21st century. The first decade will end at the end of 2010.
Yeah….. WE KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everyone knows the first year of a decade/century/millenium is ***1. We all know how to count. You all don’t need to prove it. WE KNOW. 2000 just sounded too cool, that’s all. We like numbers that sound cool. So what if it was a year early. Did you boffins really miss out on all the fun on December 31st 1999??? No, you were there … pretending, but you were there, weren’t you! So it’s OK, see. Just go along with it, because we all really do know!
Ummm, I like Bob’s answer.
By the way, who are the 10 people that voted “Other” in the poll above…???
Happy New Year Earth…
IMHO the millennium (and the 20th century) ended December 31, 2000 and the first decade of the 21st century will end on December 31st 2010.
I like the explanation provided previously that when your born, you are immediately in the first year of life.
Also, just try paying a twenty dollar bet by counting (1 by 1) and handing over nineteen dollars.
@Bob
No. Not everyone knows. There are truly people that don’t understand it and are confused about it and even people that in their hearts believe that they’re right when they say that the new millennium began in 2000. It’s just as bad as any other deception, and you’re supporting their ignorance. BTW, 2001 sounds just as cool to me as 2000, so I don’t know what you’re talking about. If people truly understood the concept, they would have actually thought that the passage from 2000 to 2001 would have been much cooler to celebrate, as it marked the end of 2000 years and the beginning of a new 1000. They celebrated the right year (2000), just at the wrong time. They celebrate the beginning of the last year of the millennium as opposed to the end of it, and therefore the passage between two millennia, the end of a millennium and the beginning of another.
My head hurts. And it’s not from drinking. I didn’t. But I’m glad to read all the comments regarding the decade. And I can tell my husband he’s right and pump his ego. I feel so much better.
Here’s a solution.
Instead of using the labels 70s, 80s, 90s etc. that erroneously lead people to believe that the new millennium started at the beginning of 2000, why don’t we use better labels for this century.
The 1s for 2001-2010
Reasoning? The 1s contains all the years in the decade that begins with 2001. And so forth…
The 11s for 2011-2020
The 21s for 2021-2030
The 31s for 2031-2040
…
The 91s for 2091-2100
And thus, CORRECTLY marking the beginning of the 22nd century at the beginning of 2101, and a new decade of the 1s.
Blame it all on Prince and his “Party like it’s 1999″
Post 13…The romans didn’t add January and February. You are correct that December was the 10th month, but wouldn’t it be a conincidence if they didn’t add July and August, for Julius and Augustus??
They added July and August and made both 31 days, since neither were to be considered more important than the other…
TThe third millennium of the Gregorian calendar began on 1 January 2001, rather than the popularly-celebrated 1 January 2000. This is a direct consequence of the absence of a year zero in the anno Domini era. Had there been a year zero, which might be considered part of the first millennium, then 1 January 2000 would indeed mark 2000 years since the year numbering datum and be the start of the 2nd millennium.
This also applies to centuries and decades. Thus, the 19th century began on 1 January 1901; and the 20st century began on 1 January 2001.
correct: 1 BCE-0-1 CE
What we currently have: 1 BCE-1 CE
The romans attempted to correct this by moving dates up by one century. Hence, 3rd millenium = 2000. 21st century = 2000. If we corrected everything. The 3rd millenium, the one we currently live in, would be 3010 NOT 2010. The 20th century = 2000 not 1900, etc.
@Bella Coola
There is nothing to be corrected. Everything is logical as it is. The only problem is with the idiots who decided to call the 60s, 70s, 80s, etc. decades, who didn’t forsee that other idiots were gonna get confused and call 2000-2009 the first decade of the 21st century, ’cause they don’t know how to think straight. The first year SHOULD be labelled Year One or 1 AD, NOT 0. The idea of a year 0 is stupid. The tenth year, should be called 10 AD, thus logically ending the decade at the end of the TENTH year.
Oh, and no one moved up anything.
It seems like you also want to have a zeroeth millennium and a zeroeth century.
The 21st century ENDS logically where it should end AFTER THE YEAR 2100, and the 3 millennium ends logically where it should end AFTER THE YEAR 3000. I feel sorry for you if you cannot understand these simple concepts.
you must count the year 2000 because we used that year so it would be 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 that is ten you cant act like 200 never happend
This isn’t hard to work out people…you have to forget about age, which is what most people use to get the year wrong; when you became 10 it was after existing for 10 years right? Yes, but the calendar is completely the opposite in how it reckons time – imagine if time started on the day you were born; you’d be 1 day old on 1/1/01 but you would be in calendar year one already. 365 days later on your birthday you would be aged one but the date would be 1/1/02. This is because, in effect, in our 10th year we are regarded as 9 and so many days while the calendar, in its 10th year, is called 10 from the 1st day of its 9-years-and-something-days. You would be 10 on 1/1/11 but only 9 on 1/1/10, quite plainly NOT the first year of a new decade but the last. Its just that the year turns 10 on the 1st day of its 10th year while people turn 10 on the last day of their 10th year (actually the day before your birthday of course, which would be the 366th day). In the same way that “20th century” for dates in the 1900s confuses stupid people, a year ending in 10 covers the period 9 years and 1 day to 9 years and 365 days of the decade
This is an okay topic to be divided upon as it really does not matter (although I believe its 2010). No doubt that Prince did influence western culture’s perspective on the 1999 to 2000 tick as did the Y2K – but speaking of cool, remember Kubrick chose “2001: A Space Odyssey” and HAL’s real-time clock worked flawlessly despite the inherent cognitive dissidence in HAL’s program…
From 1 BC to 1 AD is one year, because the bean counters didn’t have zero yet. Soooo..1 AD was really zero in disquise. Unless 2 years passed between the beginning of 1 BC and the end of 1 AD, which it didn’t (I don’t think). Therefor, in RealTime ALL the years are off by 1. Subtract 1 and it is still (secretly) 2009 for another year. Decision = one more year of Decade. Signed; the 70s.
If a calendar records the passage of time, how many years, months and days have we completed so far, according to the Romans vs. the practical method of calculated time? If they started counting at “1″, what do they do with the 365 days preceeding “1″?
Logical thinking places “0″ at the starting point of the first second of the first minute, of the first hour, of the first day, of the first week, of the first month, of the first year and “1 year” as the completion of the 1st year’s worth of time passage. Same reasoning as why we say a child is “One year old” –because he has completed one year of life. We can but don’t always add the additional months and days that the child has completed as well. practically, we cannot count it as “1″ until one has been completed. Lets say the child is 9 months and seven days since birth. It is appropriate to say “The child is ‘in’ his first year of life” but he is not “1″ until he completes the first year. If we went by the Roman’s counting, a child would be “1″ as soon as he was born. Tell me how that makes sense? Maybe that is also why we no longer count by Roman numerals.
Now, lets look specifically at the decade issue. The new decade logically started at the first second, of the first minute, of the first hour, of the first day, of the first week, of the first month, of the first year of the new decade– 01:01:01: 01 January 2010; its first year will end at the end of the last minute of December 31, 2010 and we will say, “We have completed the first year of this decade”, Otherwise, known as “1″. The last year of the decade will begin 01:01:01 01 January 2019 and will be completed at 23:59:59 December 31, 2019. Once it become January 1, 2020, we can say that we completed this decade. For now, we say that we are “In the first year” of this decade, but it CANNOT be counted as “1″ until it is complete.
Just throw out the Romans altogether. We may still be technically using their calendar system, it doesn’t mean they perfected the correct way of counting. Zero doesn’t exist, but it is the beginning and “1″ should be, by all practical applications of counting time, applied to the “completion of a period of time, not the beginning of it. It cannot be “1″ until “1″ has been completed in time.
In counting years, “1″ simply means that a unit of time has been completed. Until you complete the full unit of measurement, you can only complete a fraction of that unit and therefore you can only count the fractions of that unit for which you have completed.
Mr Common
All those fractions of the 1st year are components of and sit within the unit that is the 1st year.
‘0′ contains nothing, no thing, zero, zilch.
‘0′ never contains anything.
The year 2000 was not a ‘0′ year – it was the 100th year of the 20th Century ( i.e. 20 x 100 complete years) and the 2000th year of the 2nd Millennium (i.e. 2 x 1000 complete years)
The 1st Decade of the 21st Century began on the 1st day of the 1st month of the 1st year – 01.01.2001 (see all those 1’s?) and the 10th and last year of the 1st Decade of the 21st Century will be completed on the last day of the 10th whole year of the 21st Century which is 2010.
It is very simple.
However, the issues raised by these matters go deeper than the merely chronological.
Here is an example of the extent to which an allegedly PUBLIC SERVICE Broadcaster – The British Broadcasting Corporation – will go to to protect commercially motivated lying in order to continue extracting money from gullible people on the back of their year early ‘1st’ decade end declaration and then censoring comments that point that out:
( This draconian censorship occurred at the – BBC Radio Five Live Greatest Sporting Achievement of The Decade – comment page – just Google that. This About.com page doesn’t appear to accept links in comments )
The comment below which has been deleted above by ‘BBC moderator’ more than once without explanation is in the PUBLIC INTEREST and is in full accord with the principles and guidelines of the BBC Royal Charter regarding fairness, openness and straight dealing. Please therefore, as our publicly funded broadcaster, do not censor it again.(If it is removed again the content and additional information will be referred to the appropriate regulatory body and other parties).
Comment censored by the BBC earlier above:
“This poll (which created significant mobile phone income for the BBC) was based on a false proposition – that the first decade of the 21st Century could somehow incorrectly be declared by the BBC to end with the end of the year 2009.
This is clearly not the case as the 1st year of the 21st Century was 2001 (the clue is in the number ‘1′) and the 10th and last year of the first decade of the 21st Century is 2010(the clue is in the number ‘10′) and it will end on December 31st 2010
It is no good the BBC arguing that a ‘decade’ is merely a period of 10 years. It is clear that the BBC has been trying to pass off the specific ten years of 2000-2009 as being the 1st decade of the 21st Century which it clearly isn’t (other than perhaps to the seriously innumerate). That specific ‘1st decade of the 21st Century’ labelling of the period 2000-2009 intention is made clearer by the fact that no similar poll was organised for the periods 1998-2007 or 1999-2008 – also 10 year periods of time that can be generically described as ‘decades’.
By falsely and dishonestly declaring that the period 2000-2009 is the 1st decade of the 21st Century ending with the last day of 2009 and persuading people on the basis of those false grounds to incur costs by voting via mobile phones which have generated significant partner split profit income for the BBC, the BBC has been trading fraudulently on the back of a clear chronological lie.”
Definitely an interesting discussion, and clearly “The Harsh Truth” knows the facts about what “IS” or “ISN’T” the decade or millenium. I am happy to live in my ignorance that being born in 1970 did not make me a child of the 60’s, no matter how incorrect I am. When I talk about what happened in the 80’s, I will definitely include Star Wars-Empire Strikes Back(1980), and when I think of the 90’s “Ice Ice Baby” will definitely be a part of it. Thanks to the media I have a wonderful story to tell about the end of the millenium when I hiked to the top of a mountain and snowboarded down under the stars and fireworks in Switzerland. So, thank you for educating me on the facts. I choose to live under the incorrectness that the media of the world has forced upon us unwittingly.
Finally, I hope that 49 does not imply that there is a lawsuit pending because that would just be wrong.
And someone better tell the federal government they are all screwed up too, because we were checking out popular baby names and they have their decades all wrong. ssa.gov
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/decades/names1990s.html
‘Appreciator of the facts, but willing to accept the lie says’
‘Decade’ can be used in a variety of valid ways that APPEAR to interweave and overlap.
It is simply wrong and mathematically perverse to describe the year 2000 – the 100th and last year of the 20th century and 1000th year of the 2nd Millennium – as the ‘First’ year of the ‘First’ decade of the 21st Century. That is an affront to the most basic arithmetic and misleading to our children who rely on adults to offer reliable chronological orientation. As is clear from this discussion which has largely arisen from a delusion fabricated, fostered and promoted by corporate and other agencies and interests for commercial reasons we take great interest and pride in applying and seeking to apply our prevailing cultural time frames accurately.
We have a duty to portray the year 2010 accurately – it is the 10th and last year of the 1st decade of the 21st Century.
I simply said that I accept what much of society does in that decades that we have defined in modern times (through media or common use) include the 1970 year and end at 1979 etc. I do not dispute the FACT that this is an incorrect use of the proper decades from the beginning of the calendar. Yet I have lived almost 40 years and completed 2 Bachelor degrees (one in mathematics) and one masters degree, and never once have I had the discussion about how we all name the decades wrong in our “best songs of the decade”, “best athletes of the decade”, etc etc and didn’t have any problem living in oblivion about what I “thought” was the last night of the millenium. Historians will be pissed, but most of the world did look at it that way and celebrated in 1999 not 2000 as if it was the end of the millenium.
Not sure WHO we have a DUTY to, but it is one “DUTY” I won’t be performing.
Sorry and enjoy your last year of the first decade in the 21st century, while I enjoy looking back at the last 10 years and celebrating what a great decade it was.
Such meek compliance with corporate contortions of chronology for profit is bovine in the extreme, ‘Appreciator of the facts, but willing to accept the lie’.
Hearteningly many people object to having their established cultural chronological framework and understanding of basic arithmetic distorted by imposed lies for profit. Try this – keep telling someone again and again that their age is a year less or a year more than what they know – how long would they tolerate that?
Keep snoozing if you wish in 2010, 10th and last year of the 1st Decade of the 21st Century.
Others choose to wake up to what is going on here.
It’s called ‘Training The Masses In Obedience And Acceptance Of Lies And Manipulation’.
OK, I’ll try again in even simpler terms to point out where you ‘Year Zeroes’ are going wrong. If you are age 12 you can say this in two ways: “I am 12 years of age” or “I am in my 13th year”. Both are correct. This millenium is 9 years of age or is in its 10th year. Both these are correct. We just usually use past tense to describe our age (12) and present tense to describe the year (13th)
The first day of the first month of the first year would be 1/1/01. If you argue that it should be 1/1/00 because a year hasnt passed then you must also argue that the 1st day must be day zero as a full day hasnt passed and month 1 must be month zero because a full month hasnt passed. In other words, the first second in time must have been on day 0/0/00. Using your logic of allowing a zero, today wouldnt be January as January is not yet complete. It wouldnt be January until 1st February but of course it wouldnt be the 1st until the 2nd so the 1st February becomes the 0th of January. Todays date (5th January) would be 4th December. This is the only way to make 2010 a zero year rather than a 10th year
Correct M Frost.
Have a Happy, Prosperous and Accurate 10th and Last Year Of The 21st Century in 2010.
Ooops! That should read and be read as:
Have a Happy, Prosperous and Accurate 10th and Last Year Of The 1st Decade Of The 21st Century in 2010.
To me this decade commenced as from 2000.And from 2000 – 2001 is a year, if we go by that ,by the 31st December 2010 it will be exactly 10 years and end of a decade.
Where did you learn arithmetic Sonola?
You should go back for either a refund or a refresher course.
The FIRST year and FIRST decade of the 21st Century began with the 1st instant of the 1st year – 2001 – indicated by the ‘1′.
The TENTH year of the First decade of the 21st Century and therefore of the whole FIRST decade of the 21st Century will be completed at the end of the 10th year of that FIRST decade – 2010 – indicated by the ‘10′.
Any other decade (period of 10 years) that you care to describe will of course, by definition, be a ‘decade’ period of 10 years but it will NOT be the FIRST DECADE OF THE 21st Century.
It is astonishing that this discussion actually needs to happen – this is simply testimony to the bamboozlingly powerful effect profit motivated commerce and marketing can have when profiteers see commercial benefit in chopping time into marketable slices and then compete to maximise market share by accelerating sales by bringing forward and mis-defining and obfuscating long established chronological conventions.
The fact that there is even a poll just shows how ignorant and self-absorbed we as a nation have become. Since when is a mathematical reality “subject to interpretation”? Is it really “let’s make the decade whatever [9/10 years] we want it to be”?
It amazes me to see the media refer to twins born on either side of midnight as “being born in different decades”. IMO, this usage differs from the colloquial references such as those used in cultural comparisons (eg, “songs of the 70s”). One is a(n alleged) statement of fact while the other is a relational reference. Realistically, music does not suddenly change simply because we turn another page of the calendar thus we usually refer to trends over a period of time. Yet, you cannot count decades by starting the “first” decade AD as only nine years.
As several folks have alluded to in this thread, we are trying to reconcile two distinct definitions of a decade that will never be reconciled because they represent different spans of 10-years.
1. A “Calendar Decade” begins in a “one” year and ends with the “ten” year, e.g. 2001 – 2010.
2. A “Cultural Decade” by popular and media convention, begins in a “zero” year and ends in a “nine” year, e.g. 2000 – 2009. This further aligns with how popular culture views the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s etc.
In each case, a 10-yr period or “decade” is involved. The question to be asked is not “When does the decade end?” but “Which decade are you referring to, calendar or cultural?” Context is key!
Andy
The media tried, through repetitive assault – to persuade us all that, impossibly, 1999 was the 2000th year of the 2nd millennium and that the year 2000 was, impossibly, the start of the ‘new millennium’ when, in arithmetical fact, the new and 3rd millennium began on January 1st 2001. Some were taken in – others were not. It was a always a conceptually bankrupt notion.
The media are now trying – through repetitive assault – to persuade us all that, impossibly, 2009 is the last year of the 1st decade of the 21st Century and we are now in the 2nd decade of the 21st Century. Also a conceptually bankrupt notion.
This is about catchy names e.g. ‘noughties’ nonsense – dependent on the contrived and false notion that ‘0′ on its own can have substance – and commercial branding of inaccurate chronological references . A part of the 1st decade of the 21st Century can’t possibly also be in the 20th Century.
The motivation for propagating these false chronological references is purely commercial. People can be made to more readily relate to decades for commercial purposes than centuries or millennia as most of us live for less than 100 years.
It’s all about branding time for profit.
Have a Happy, Prosperous and Accurate 10th and Last Year Of The 1st Decade Of The 21st Century in 2010.
I am struggling to decide whether the self styled time lords on this and many other hijacked forums are serious, or whether it is just a campaign to fill people’s lives with spam.
If someone is 20 years old (having passed their 20th birthday, as is conventional) then they will say they are in their 20s. This is how we count years and decades when we have a real starting point. Why on earth would you want to say that decades of time measured from an arbitrary, estimated starting point can’t be grouped into the conventional decade – measured in tens, with the digit indicating the number of tens being the common factor?
The count of years that we use derives from guesswork 500 years after the events which they attempt to pinpoint in time. I am not saying this is right or wrong, but this link (http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/calendar/sean.txt) tries to argue that even if you are pedantic enough to insist upon basing your righteous indignation on the arbitrary starting point, it might still work out that there is space in our paradigm for a year 0.
If you still wish to bang on about the mathematics involved, how far down do you drill before you stop? I am not going to argue that a millenium should or should not start with 1 and end with 1000, but you attack centuries and decades too. Why are you not attacking years? When we switched 500 or so years ago from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, we lost something like a month. Doesn’t this mean you have to celebrate the new year in February? There are so many variables in play that this angry insistence on inflexibility is bordering on plain silly.
Just to throw this one in – are you aware that the days are getting longer? Left to its own devices for a few billion years (possibly after the theoretical end of the universe) the earth will slow its spin until eventually one earth day lasts for an entire year. This can be seen on the moon as its rotation (day) lasts for its orbit around the earth – remember the dark side of the moon. This is mainly due to gravity causing tidal forces which slow the moon’s rotation. The same is happening to the earth – due to the sun and the moon. So when the system of leap years has to be revised will the time lords starting screaming that the year is not over until the 2nd of January?
I expect many will take exception to this as you have any other scepticism. However, those who insist on trying to recategorise time from convention to an assumed state of mathematical perfection will thankfully not bother the real world for another decade (or should I say 10 years?) until some poor sap somewhere thinks that 2020 should be the start of the 2020’s.
Fergal
It’s about being awake to and highlighting and resisting an orchestrated commercially driven affront to elementary arithmetic.
Have a Happy, Prosperous and Accurate 10th and Last Year Of The 1st Decade Of The 21st Century in 2010.
Fergal
If you want to address ‘whether it is just a campaign to fill people’s lives with spam’ you would be better to tackle all those corporations and other commercial interests who have saturated the internet and other media with false chronology that stating or implying that the year 2009 can, impossibly, be described as the 10th and last year of the 1st decade of the 21st Century and the year 2010, impossibly, as the 1st year of the 2nd decade of the 21st Century. That is the ’spam’ that is an affront to basic intelligence and arithmetic.
Have a Happy, Prosperous and Accurate 10th and Last Year Of The 1st Decade Of The 21st Century in 2010.
I am still not sure what exactly you are complaining about, although I think I can narrow it down to three things.
1. Mathematics. The whole 1-1000 rather than 0-999 argument relies on various things, including but not limited to:
You assume that the guy who came up with the AD scale used cardinal numbers – in real life we use ordinal numbers to say how old we are in years. Whether they knew about zero or not, I am not sure that Romans would have said that a newborn baby was 1 year old
You assume that year 1AD was the first year in the scale
You assume that 1BC is the year prior to 1AD and that it is part of the same scale – it isn’t, and has no relevance whatsoever to the AD scale
(46) Zacco says “From 1 BC to 1 AD is one year, because the bean counters didn’t have zero yet. Soooo..1 AD was really zero in disquise” – why not say that 1BC is really year 0 is disguise? It seems to me that the real problem is not that 1AD is the first named AD year, but rather that some fool made the previous year be 1BC.
You assume that you start counting at 1, not zero. In fact zero is as easily used as an arbitrary starting point as any other number. If I start with no apples I have zero apples, and if I add an apple I have one apple. So I have started counting and added one, and I do not have two apples yet.
You assume that time is real. You will struggle to find anyone other than a religious (funda)mentalist who could argue convincingly against Einstein’s general relativity – time is very much an abstract.
2. Clumping together of units of time. Are you against discussions/lists/general categories based on things that have happened in one, or ten, or 100 years? People count in units of 10 (probably because that’s how many manual digits we have), so it is logical that we group things based on the decimal system too.
3. Commercial interest. Would it be OK if the World Corporation stole all our money next year instead?
And if I confuse cardinal and ordinal numbers, then I apologise. I mean simply that we are 1 year old in our second year. You could extrapolate this personal ageing system to world ageing and say the world was 1AD old in its second year.
Fergal
‘0′ on its own cannot,by definition, contain anything nor part of anything.
‘1′ also contains parts of 1.
As far as personal chronology is concerned (which does not coincide with our overall chronological frame of reference) when you are over 1 year old you are in your 2nd year. No-one has a ‘0′th birthday and no-one lives, for obvious reasons, for any part of a ‘0′th year.
2000 was 2000 x 1 and therefore the last year of the 2nd millennium.
2001 – from its first minute of its first day on January 1st 2001 – was therefore the first year of the 1st decade of the 21st Century and the first year of the 3rd millennium.
2010 – from its first minute of its first day on January 1st 2010 – is therefore the 10th year of the 21st Century and last year of the 1st Decade of the 21st Century.
It’s not that difficult – it’s basic arithmetic.
Fergal
My opposition is very simple. I have an opposition to ignorance. The labelling of decades as 70s, 80s, 90s etc. caused the majority to incorrectly assume that the beginning of the the new millennium was on Jan 1, 2000. It was not. I care about consistency and accuracy. The system that we have now starts counting years from 1 AD. 1 AD was the first year, therefore 2009 is the 2009th year, NOT THE 2010th. It matters because when a history book refers to the last year of the 17th century that is 1700, NOT 1699. Consistency matters. I don’t like confusion.
If you want to change the system, I don’t have a problem with that, just as long as it consistent, and in my opinion that requires labelling the year 1 BC “O AD” and adjusting the BC years (2 BC becomes 1 BCA (BC “adjusted”), 3 BC becomes 2 BCA, etc.) to avoid confusion. Then 0-999 becomes the first millennium, 1000-1999 the second and so forth.
Personally, I lean slightly in favor of the current system, but I could go either way. What I’m not for is telling lies about the current system. I can see benefits to either system, though what puts me slightly in favor of the current system is the fact that neither our months, nor our years start with Day 0 nor Month 0 respectively. You don’t become 1 day old until you reach Day 2. If it’s January 7, the year is only 6 days old as you have not completed the 7th day, so why should it be any different with years?
Almost everything said here is nonsense; it doesnt matter whether Jesus existed or didnt, whether he was born in 6BC or 4AD, whether you can include a zero or not, or what mathematical relevance zero has or hasnt….its all irrelevant. The simple truth is that here in the west we have based our calender on the number of years since Jesus was born and we say he was born in year one. Until fairly recently if you asked what year it was, the answer “1886″ would have been rude; you would have been told that “we are in the year of our lord eighteen hundred and eighty six” Note that “in” as it is crucial…I am in my 48th year but I am aged 47. Today “we are in the two thousandth and tenth year of our lord, who was born 2009 years ago”. This is how we count years, you cant just up and change in the middle because 1970 being the last year of the Sixties offends your sensibilities; like it or lump it a year with a zero in it is a ten. And whether you think that ‘culturally” decades should be 0 to 9 or not, our calendar clock is only 2009 years old so, MATHEMATICALLY, 2011 is the 1st year of the second decade of the second millennium. Just deciding to “add” a year that never existed so that 2010 also becomes the 2010th year is the same fuzzy thinking that made the 1896 legislature of Indiana think it should simplify maths by decreeing the value of Pi should be fixed at 3.14
See? Even I’m getting confused now. I meant 2nd decade of the THIRD millennium of course
here is a more eloquent skewering of your drooling argument than I could muster, quoted from forbes.com:
“The bozos insisting that the decade does not end until December 31, 2010 usually base this on the observation that “there was no year 0″. True, the calendar begins in 1 AD (though it was adopted some 16 centuries later). But all that the start date of the calendar means is that it would be technically incorrect to refer to 2000-2009 as “the 201st Decade”. But, when we talk about “the decade” it’s clear that we’re not talking about ordinal decades, because nobody ever talks about ordinal decades. I cannot think of a single instance where someone referred to the 1990s as the “200th Decade.”
It ought to be blindingly obvious, to even the most slathering of idiots, that the 1920s refers to 1920-29. The year 1930? It is not part of the 1920s. The Twenty-Twenties? They will begin on 2020. Obviously. 2030? It will not be part of the Twenty-Twenties. (Nor will anyone ever call this decade “the 203rd Decade”).
When we say the decade, we are not referring to the period of time that would correspond with some ordinal decade numbering system. Nobody uses an ordinal numbering system when talking about decades. People are talking about the digit in the tens column.
Insisting that the decade ends on December 31, 2010 is not pedantic. It is dumb. And wrong. Spare yourself the embarrassment and don’t do it.”
My decades (10s), centuries(100s) and millennia(1000s) all end in a ‘0′ – that is when the 10th, 100th or 1,000th year is complete – a bit like cricket scores! The first run is incomplete until it is complete – a century is incomplete until the 100th run is complete.
My history books tell me that any event that occurred in the 100th year of a century occurred in the last year of that Century – the one ending in ‘00′. That is, an event that occurred in the year 2000 occurred in the 20th Century as the 20th Century ONLY completed when 20×100 years were completed at the end of the year 2000.
Any event that occurred in the 10th year of a historical decade segment of a Century – ie in the previous 9years + the 10th indicated by the ’10’s integer in 1910,1920,1930,1940,1950,1960,1970,1980,1990 – occurred within the decade indicated by the 10s integer
of the 10th and last year of the decade in question
i.e.
1901-1910 (inclusive) – the 1st decade
1911-1920 (inclusive) – the 2nd decade
and so on.
It’s really very simple – show me two normal hands with no digits!
The so-called ‘cultural decades’ obsessed with ‘0′ as an( impossible) unit of time and that contrive to begin segments of time impossibly with ‘0′ are a sly corporate scam to chop up and brand 10 year time spans with catchy names in order to part people from their money as swiftly as possible within their short lives of generally less than 100 whole years.
Sly corporate scams? Jesus christ, people are wackos. Ordinal centuries are one thing, but ordinal decades? NO ONE EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER uses those terms. The only time it’s an issue is once every 10 years when internet wackos latch onto this misguided and fallacious argument.
Look, 10 years is a decade. ANY ten years comprise a decade. 1995-2005 is a decade. So if we want to chop things up into tens (since THAT IS THE BASIS OF OUR NUMERIC SYSTEM), and it is, in essence, arbitrary, why not choose something that makes sense and is easy to remember?
The people that insist on these pedantic and tortured analogies all to prove something that is essentially meaningless, you have to wonder if they also think we faked the moon landing, or that Loch Ness is a plesiosaur and is alive and well. Some people just can’t accept that sometimes the common consensus is right. Not always, but sometimes.
Being contrary just for its own sake is just a way to try to set yourself apart from everyone else and try to feel superior. 2010 is a new decade. Accept it and move the hell on.
Will Branden
You are correct to say that any period of 10 whole years is generally defined as a decade.
However, to claim that any other decade than the period 2001-2010 (inclusive) can be the 1st decade of the 21st Century is an affront to basic intelligence and elementary arithmetic.
The 2nd chronological decade of the 21st Century will simply and clearly begin on the 1st instant of the 1st day of 2011.
Carry on being corporate myth making fodder if you wish – it’s your choice, whether in ignorance or not.
I’ve learned log ago that arguing logically with internet conspiracy theorists is a losing game.
Luckily, most people don’t need to latch onto these pedantic and MEANINGLESS arguments in order to feel superior. I’m sorry that you do. But as I said before, I’ve wasted way too much time arguing points like this with people online, only to have them hide behind the age-old conspiracy nut straw man argument of “Well, you just go on being a sheep and believing what they WANT you to believe! I know the truth!”
Not going to get dragged into that again. So good luck, and adios.
One last thing:
You mention “The first decade of the 21st century” as if that’s generally how people think of it? people didn’t even treat 2001 as the first year of the century, though technically it was.
The point is, centuries can be traced back, and we refer to them in an ordinal manner. Decade, on the other hand, we refer to inclusively, like “the 60’s”. Obviously “the 60’s” only includes years 1960-1969. 1970 cannot be in “the 60’s”, can it?
So your argument is just pedantic and unrealistic.
Will Branden
SOME people were rendered unaware that the year 2000 was the 2000th and last year of the 2nd millennium and 100th year of the 20th Century (naturally 20×100 = 2000) by a wave of orchestrated commercially driven spin to the contrary driven by the urge to part people from their money in as short a time as possible coupled with the fact it was the first time in most people’s lifetimes that that arithmetical issue arose for them by direct experience.
In reliable historical references all centuries are defined by the cardinal and accurate chronological and authentic arithmetical framework – i.e the 20th Century includes all the years IN the 20th Century starting with 1901 ( 1 more than 1900) and including the 100th which was the year 2000).
Similarly the 19th Century included all the years IN the 19th Century starting with 1801 ( 1 more than 1800) and including the 100th which was the year 1900)
It’s a standard conceptual challenge that most children are helped to figure out early on in their history studies –
‘Please miss, why is the year 1832 in the 19th Century?’
Anyway, Will Branden, how much is your viewpoint worth when you don’t even apply your understanding of the word ‘adios’ successfully?
I understand the word adios, I just added one more thought after saying it. seeing as how you can’t read and reproduce my last name properly, even after two attempts, I wouldn’t get too high and mighty.
I’m glad that you understand the ordinal centuries. congratulations. unfortunately, the disconnect between that information, and the general, inclusive way we refer to certain decades, is what I was trying to explain. I’m sorry that seems to consistently elude you.I notice you didn’t even attempt to MENTION decades in your last post. so are we still even discussing the same thing?
a final question: by your tortured logic, you would have to concede that the year 1970 was in “the 60’s”. would you HONESTLY consider that to be the case?
or perhaps you think “the 60’s” were part of some corporate conspiracy as well…I mean, there was that faked moon landing, right?
Will Braden
Sorry for that slip, Will – this is a bit of a prematurely done and dusted format, isn’t it, with no post post edit capability. No disrespect intended. Hello!
The things is, Will, as the 20th Century can only have ended on the last day of its last year – December 31st 2000 – the 1st day of the 21st Century can ONLY be January 1st 2001. The last day of the 10th year of the 21st Century and of the 1st decade of the 21st Century therefore can ONLY be December 31st 2010.
The key words here are ‘1st Decade Of The 21st Century’.
That is the one we are still living through.
Any other decade – i.e. period of 10 whole – years cannot be described as that.
To use ‘decade’ as a correct chronological segment of a century we need to start with a ‘1′ and end with a ‘10′ in all cases. The simplest way of doing that is to refer to the ‘1st’, ‘2nd’, ‘3rd’ …etc decade.
Commercially driven terms like ‘nougthies’ or ‘aughties’ incorrectly based on ‘0′ as their starting point – which by definition has no substance or content – and other ridiculous catchy branding attempts are not actually compatible with accurate chronology. Part of the key to understanding this may also be hidden in the meaning of punctuation as in the use of ‘ ’s ‘ after the years in question e.g. 30’s 40’s 50’s. What does that ‘ ’s ‘ really mean? Including ‘0′? More than ‘0′ ? ‘1′ onwards? Plural? Or merely any number – including ‘0′ which means no thing – preceded by the nominal number in the tens space which actually represented the completion of the previous chronological decade. So the last ACTUAL year of the previous chronological decade gets sucked forward into becoming something else and serving a different and non-chronological function entirely.
The years 2020 – 2029 will NOT be the 3RD DECADE of the 21st Century as 2020 will be the last year of the 2nd decade and the 3RD DECADE of the 21st Century can only be completed on completion of the 30th year ( 3 x 10 whole years) on December 31st 2030. The 4th decade can only begin at the beginning of 2031 and end on the last day of 2040.
And so it will proceed through the century.
2060 (6×10)will by the 10th and last year of the 6th decade indicated by the 6 in the whole tens space.
2070 (7×10)will by the 10th and last year of the 7th decade indicated by the 7 in the whole tens space.
Will Braden
Facts are facts. If you can’t deal with them, tough.
No, the 1970 isn’t a part of the 60s.
The 60s are ten years, therefore a decade, but in relation to our calendar they are no more significant then the decade of 1964-1973.
True, in pop culture, they are significant, but pop culture and the reality of our calendar are two different things.
You cannot split centuries into decades by splitting decades from 0-9. That’s indisputable.
The beginning of the century is indisputable.
All we are doing is putting out the truth.
If you don’t want to hear it don’t come here. Don’t look for these debates.
I recognize your argument about the 60s, 70s, 80s etc. However, your argument is of no importance to me because it is inconsistent with the way in which our calendar is split up into centuries and millenias and it’s not going to get me to say that the end of the decade was on Dec 31, 2009. You’re just gonna have to deal with the fact that not everyone is going to recognize that and face the facts that we use to support our position.
Labeling decades 60s, 70s, 80s etc. was just a stupid thing to do because it was inconsistent with our calendar. Someone didn’t understand the concept properly and made a mistake that’s all there is to it. I, however, am not going to support ignorance.
It’s fine to refer to the 80s as a decade. It is NOT fine to refer to 2000-2009 as the first decade. The first decade of what? In people’s heads, that usually ends up meaning the 1st decade of the 21st century, which it is not, and there are people that have an honest confusion about it and then there are those that like it so badly that they refuse to acknowledge the truth even though they know it, and of course it is DEFINITELY not okay to refer to 2000 as the first year of the millennium or the century.
Now, Braden, this is not just argument for argument’s sake. There are reasons why I stand strongly for my position.
1. Consistency. If you teach a kid that 2000 was the first year of the millennium, he’ll think 1400 was the first year of the 15th century. You’re supporting confusion.
2. We have no zeroeth month of the year or zeroeth day of the month. Those who argue that we should have started with Year 0 don’t understand that the number of the year we are in is only a label to tell you what YEAR YOU ARE IN. It’s not supposed to be a number like age that tells you how much time has passed. You can simply deduct that from the year you are in. If you are in year 2009, you have only completed 2008 years, therefore you are only “2008 years old”, or only 2008 years have been completed since the origin.
3. Will we refer to Year 0 as the “zeroeth” year or the first year? What does “zeroeth” mean? I know what first means, I know what second means. First means you are in position #1, second means you come after 1st. Will “zeroeth” change the meaning of first? As we become more accustomed to “zeroeth”, will people start viewing the first person in line as the “zeroeth” person? How do you accomodate the paradox created by the term “zeroeth”, as it is possible to refer to one thing as both “zeroeth” and first, and therefore 1st and 2nd, and so on. Example: 12:00:00 is the first second of the day, but you could also refer to it as the “zeroeth” to match up with the “00″ since that would “make more sense” but that would mean that logically 12:00:01 should be referred to as the “first” second but technically it is also the second second of the day.
4. Being from 1-0, the ends of decades always coincide with elections and the beginning of a decade always coincides with a CHANGE in administration, presidential midterms, or a change in Congress. It’s the beginning of terms for a lot of members of government. I happen to like that. There’s change in government from 2010-2011. No change from 2009-2010. In 2020, last year of second decade, we have elections. 2021 starts the NEW decade with a NEW president. In addition, the census also happens to coincide with the end of the decade.
The Harsh Truth,
You are absolutely nuts.
Sincerely,
Will Braden (Branden)
p.s. I will not respond to this thread any more. I refer you to my previous comments re: crazy conspiracy theorists.
p.p.s. Good luck to you, sir.
An excellent analysis there Harsh Truth (if a little local!)
Apart from your description of 12:00:00 as a ‘first second’.
The same principles apply to hourly time as year/decade/century/millennium time.
12:00:00 announces completion of the last minute of the 12th or 24th hour.
The first second of the morning/afternoon starts with the first micro-unit of time within the 1st second which is indicated by 12:01:00 and all earlier occurring micro units within it indicated by ‘1′ placed even further to the right as far as you wish to go.
As you correctly argue elsewhere in your piece, in time measurement, ‘0′ on its own has no use or value because, by definition it means nothing, no thing, zero zilch. Therefore it is logically, philosophically and arithmetically impossible to label any unit of time, that must obviously contain lesser units of time within it, with ‘0′. As soon as any 1st unit of time commences we are within that 1st of that unit of time and no other – sounds tautological but it’s the truth.
Better to reword the 5th paragraph above for greater precision ( 12:01:00 should have been described as the ‘first minute’ or it should have been 12:00:01 and described as the ‘first second). Here we go (officially corrected version!):
The first second of the morning/afternoon starts with the first micro-unit of time within the 1st second which is indicated by 12:00:01 on its completion – all earlier occurring micro units within it indicated by ‘1′ placed even further to the right of 12:00:00 as far as you wish to go as that second moves progressively towards its completion at 12:00:01.
Will Braden
Your difficulty arises from what is called in psychology:
‘Cognitive Dissonance’.
Under pressure of corporate connivance your thinking has been rewired to deny chronological fact in order for you to become an obedient consumer. When confronted with the facts you experience frustration and annoyance because in order to accept the truth you have to deny a fiction which has been incorporated into your self concept by external forces but which you now feel you own as part of your self concept. Study ‘Cognitive Dissonance’.
By the way, it may be worth pointing out – to assist with grasping this simple arithmetical fact that ‘0′ on its own has no value whatsoever and cannot be used on its own to indicate value – that the poll attached to this discussion clearly illustrates that the completed thousands of voting figures are indicated by ?000 and the beginning of the next thousand will be indicated by ?001.
@Braden First of all, I’m not a conspiracy theorist. Didn’t mention anything about conspiracies. It has nothing to do with conspiracy with me, just accuracy. Secondly, I’m nuts because I tell the truth? LOL, sure… I’m SO nuts…
@ The Tenth and Last Year…
I understand the first second runs from 0:00:00 (24:00:00, 12:00:00 am) to 0:00:01 (24:00:01, 12:00:01 am).
Once the clock hits 12:00:01 am you have completed your first second and are now in your second, which is what I was getting at. The border between the two is unimportant because it is instantaneous (of infinitely small duration). What’s important is which contains the first second and which contains the second. 00:00:00 contains the first second, unlike years (1 AD contains the first year), 00:00:01 contains the second second. If your clock says 00:00:01, you’re in your second second. If your calendar says 2 C.E., you’re in the second year of the common era. See the difference? We have two different formats for years/months/days and hours/minutes/seconds, and I don’t think we should change either of them. There are good reasons for both.
If you are still not convinced, look at this pattern:
12 am = 1st hour
contains 12:00 am = first minute to 12:59 am last minute (meaning 60th, NOT 59th, OF THE HOUR. 1:00 am is not a part of 12 am).
1 am = 2nd hour (not 1st hour. Imagine if we used the same pattern you wanted to use for minutes with hours… that would mean 12 am would belong to the previous day).
2am = 3rd hour
…
10 am = 11th hour
11 am = final hour of the first half of the day (in other words, 12th hour).
If you wanted to do hours like years, a day would be like this:
A day would start on would start on 1:01:01 am – 1:60:60 am
from 1:60:60 am we would go to 2:01:01 am – 2:60:60 am
Noon would start at 1:01:01 pm
The last hour would start at 12:01:01 pm and the very last second of the day would be 12:60:60 pm.
There is a reason we don’t do this. From 7pm to the end of the day is 5 hours. You simply subtract from 12 (the beginning of the next day) The equivalent of 7pm in “ordinal” notation would be 8:01:01 pm since 7 pm is the 8th hour. To find out how many hours to the end of the day you subtract from 13:01:01 am (1:01:01 am, the beginning of the next day). As you can see, it is clearly easier to subtract from 12 than 13:01:01.
Hope I got my point across.
“The Harsh Truth”
One more thing. Look at when any millennium, century and decade starts.
1/1/xxx1 0:00:00
Couldn’t be any clearer, in my opinion. Clearly two different formats. However, they’re consistent within each other.
Harsh Truth
Could you run that by us again using the simpler 24hr clock.
The 10th And Last Year Of The First Decade Of The 21st Century Is 2010 is having difficulty seeing any difference between annual time and clock time.
viz:
‘0′ on its own always means zero – nothing – no thing – no substance – no content.
‘00′ at the end of an hour means that, say, the 1st hour – 01:00:00 – is complete and the next hour – the 2nd – is about to commence and will complete when the clock goes boing at 02:00:00 and so on until the day ends at 24:00:00
N’est-ce pas?
First Year Ends When We Reach: 2 AD
Calendar Displays 1 AD During the Year
First Hour Ends When We Reach: 1h
Clock Displays 0h During the Hour
1st hour: 0 hr and contains 0:00-0:59
2nd hour: 1 hr and contains 1:00-1:59
…
23rd hour: 22 hr and contains 22:00-22:59
24th hour: 23 hr and contains 23:00-23:59
24:00 is the same as 0:00
23:59 PM, emphasis on “PM” is the very last minute of the day. 0:00 AM, emphasis on “AM” is the very first minute of the next day. 0:00:00 is the first second, 0:00:01 is the second second, 0:00:59 is the 60th second of minute 0:00 AM.
The display 1 AD appears during the first year.
The display 1hr, on the other hand, does not appear during the first hour. It appears during the SECOND hour.
The year display tells you what year you’re in
(first, second, third, etc.), not how many years has passed.
The hour display tells you how many hours have passed, not what hour you’re in (first, second, third, etc.)
That’s much clearer Harsh Truth – it’s not so harsh really – it’s just simple elementary arithmetic!
One point though – the digital clock display of, say, 00:43:29 does not nullify the fact we are in the 1st hour of the day.
So there is a difference between digital clock display and chronological reality. Perhaps simpler to visualise with an analogue timepiece than a digital one.
Another point.
Surely at the completion of 23:59 there is another whole minute to run to complete the 60th minute of the 24th hour of the day which will be signalled 60 seconds after the completion of the 59th minute on completion of the 60th minute when the clock chimes at precisely midnight.
Watch it on your watch!
Regarding your first point. I agree. But to the simple mind it might seem easier to refer to those hours as the 0th to the 23rd hour rather than the 1st to the 24th since it would match up with the hour display, creating the paradox I was referring to above. The format in which we record hours/minutes/seconds has convinced some that years must be the same, therefore assuming a year 0, even though there never was one. There is one particular benefit to having the 0-23 hour format as opposed to the 1-24 hour format. The 0-23 hour format allows us to divide half days into quarters that are multiples of 3. Hence the 3, 6, 9, 12 on the E, S, W, and N points of the clock. With the 1-24 hour format, the 1 would have to be at the top of the clock because of the way that we view the clock. We view the top of the clock as the beginning of the day/hour/minute (origin), and to indicate that it is the first hour/minute second we would label it 1, meaning 1, 4, 7 and 10 would become those points. The points are no longer multiples of 3. Consequentially, multiplying the number by 5 no longer gives you the minute nor the second. As to how important that is is up for judgement. Adding and subtracting hours in the 1-24 hr format is not much different nor more difficult, as I stated in one of the previous comments. You just have to remember to subtract from the end of the day, you subtract from 13 (the boundary between the end of the day and the beginning of the next).
*The problem has to do with the way we view time vs. length on a line graph.
Take as examples inches and years.
For an inch we view 0.56 as a part of the first inch.
In other words 0.56 is a part of 1
If we have 1.56, the extra 0.56 is a PART OF 2
For an hour, on a time line, we think that the value of a part of an hour must be GREATER THAN, INSTEAD OF LESS THAN THE HOUR LABEL, because we of the labels as the INCEPTION of the hours rather than the COMPLETION of the hour. For example, when we think of 11 pm we think of the beginning of an hour as opposed to the ending of an hour and we think of 11:00 pm – 11:59 pm as parts of 11 pm instead of 10:00 – 11:00 pm as parts of 11 pm.
*On a time line, if we start with 0 to indicate years we view anything from 0-1 as happening in “Year 0″ as opposed to being a part of Year 1, and we see anything from 1-2 as happening in Year 1 instead of Year 2 because we see the marker “1″ as the inception as opposed to the completion of Year 1. THIS IS OUR PROBLEM, and it’s the same thing that happened mentally Dec 31, 1999. The marker “1999″ means it would be 1999 years from the origin at the END of the year NOT THE BEGINNING. Feb 1, 2009 should be around 2008.08333 on the timeline, NOT 2009.08333, since we have NOT completed 2009 yet. Otherwise, we have to start the timeline on 1. Right now, with the origin at 0 we were on 2009.04658 at the beginning of today. With the origin at 1 we were on 2010.04658. The thing is, since the origin was at 1, you have to subtract 1 from our current position to calculate how many years has passed. Hence, 2009.04658 years had passed, theoretically since Jan 1, 0001 at the beginning of today.
Harsh Truth
You may be of the view that most people perceive clock time that way but personally, I have always seen, for example, 00:45:00 as being within the 1st hr (’quarter to 1′). And, for example, ‘half past 1′, i.e. 01:30:00, as the abbreviated colloquial form of ‘half an hour past 1 o’clock’.
Anyway, the BBC have got in such a mess over ‘1st decade of the 21st Century’ issue (having corrupted around £500M of turn of the millennium publicly funded programming with a chronological lie) following it being pointed out to them that their whole chronology has been completely wrong since around 1998 when they started hyping up the ‘new’ millenium inaccurately.
This is an abridged edition of what Jonathan Betts of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, an authoritative person on the subject, has to say in a short essay following a BBC programme called ‘More Or Less’ :
“Paul Lewis and I agree that a decade is any period of 10 years, and anyone is free to call any such period ‘a decade’, whenever it begins or ends.
Thus, for example, the term “1980s” suggests a decade including all the years with the number eight as its third digit (i.e. the years 1980 to 1989 inclusive) and one is perfectly entitled to call that “…the decade that was the 1980s”.
However, that was not the issue under discussion on More or Less.
The question concerned Paul Lewis’ remark on Money Box, that the first decade of the 21st Century ended at close of play on 31 December, 2009.
The remark was questioned by some listeners and I was asked for the ‘official’ answer which is that, mathematically and logically, his statement was simply not true.
Setting aside the pedantry and the irritating logic, then of course people can go with what makes them feel more comfortable, and what they see as significant.
There is no law against considering the beginning of the numerically-attractive year 2000 as being the start of a new millennium.
Similarly, we can refuse to accept that the ‘1980s’ were in fact the ninth decade of the 20th century, or that that decade officially ends at the end of the year 1990 (both literally correct).
All this we can do, and most people are happy to agree or disagree with such generalities.
But, if one is asked whether, strictly speaking, those statements are mathematically correct, there is only one answer: NO.
One must also set aside the question of whether the retrospective calculations were correct for the birth of Christ, when the calendar was created in the first place.
This is an entirely separate question.
It may well be that the moment chosen was incorrect, and that the birth of Christ was some years earlier, but that does not alter the logic of the numbering sequence which we use to reckon when the end of 10 years, a century or a millennium or two has elapsed in the series of years we are using.
The misunderstanding seems to have arisen by people confusing numbering with counting.
Numbering in the Julian/Gregorian calendar allocates a number to whole years, beginning with year one.
We tend to mark the year’s number when it arrives, i.e. at the beginning of the year, and use that number during the whole period of 12 months.
Counting, as for example we do when we mark our birthdays, occurs at the moment when a given year is completed.
It seems it would satisfy many people if we were to adopt that means of marking the calendar year, and note the number at the completion of a year rather than at its beginning, but currently that is simply not the way it is.”
Full text here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/more_or_less/8399955.stm
Have a Happy, Prosperous and Accurate 10th and Last Year of The 1st Decade Of The 21st Century in 2010 !
Hello – me again…
Who said the AD count starts at 1? Who said that the guy (who said in the 6th century that it is now year whatever) did not have it in his head that 1AD should denote the end of the first year as with other measures of accumulated annual time? A whole argument is based on the indisputable fact that 0 means nothing. This does not make the argument correct. To make it (0 means nothing) a sensible basis for argument you have to make a year last for no time at all. Otherwise 0 is simply a truncated form of “no years, two months, four days, etc, etc”. So a single significant figure is unlikely to tell the whole story. This is particularly true as we have seen in the digital vs. analog debate – time is not divisible into units. It flows in a perfect analog stream, so to argue anything based on a 0 is nothing argument is entirely meaningless. All counts of everything must necessarily have a starting point, and if that starting point is where you were just before you started counting, then that can be zero.
Fergal
1. The numeric label of a year denotes ALL of the time within that year.
2.’0′ ON ITS OWN may indeed be a starting point but as soon as you enter any unit of time BEYOND it you enter the zone of the 1st units of any labelled units of time thereafter.
3.That doesn’t suddenly transform, say, the year 2000 – 2000 whole years – into a ‘0′ reference point for subsequent units because the ‘0′ reference was back at the original ‘0′ which was ‘0′ on its own. Every labelled unit of time thereafter, whether or not it happened to end in ‘0′ as part of its labelling, was a whole numbered quantity of whole units of time. Therefore the year 2000 can ONLY be either the 100th year of the 20th Century ( 20×100 ) or the 2000th year of the 2nd Millennium ( 2 x 1000 ). It can NEVER be the 1st year of the 21st Century/ 3rd Millennium nor can it ever be the 1st year of the 1st Decade of the 21st Century/3rd Millennium.
This is all about simple arithmetic and the numbering of things that have substance/quantity/volume/content.
The same arithmetic logic would apply if we used a more ‘inclusive’ time scale referencing back to, say, the beginning of plantetary time, currently understood to be around 14BN years ago. In that case, if it were precisely that, our current year would be 14,000,000,002,010.
Simply put, ‘0′ on its own is a starting point which, by definition, is without quantity or content. Any part of anything thereafter is the 1st of any unit to come into measurable existence.
thanks should not go to arab merchants as the zero that they had was from India (zero was invented by Aryabhatta, an Indian scholar). From borth when you complete one year, everyone celebrates first year and so the counting continues, at the end of ten years you complete ten years, the same thoery applies here too and thus the decade ends on 31st December 2010 and not on 31st December 2009
A Happy New and 2nd Decade of the 21st Century commencing on January 1st 2011 to all!
2010 did not say 200-something, just as the year 2000 did not say 199-something. It would be stupid to consider those years as part of the previous decade. A decade consists of the years containing the same first three digits of year, like 1990-1999 was the 1990s, 2000-2009 was the 2000s, 2010-2019 is the 2010s. Now as far as when the new century and millennium actually began, that is something you can argue.
Just because there was no year 0, how does that automatically make 2000 a part of the 20th century and 2nd millennium?? Or any year ending in 0 as part of the previous decade?? If 0 means nothing, then no millennium, century or decade can claim it. Sounds to me like there are a lot of know-it-alls on here who insist on being right about everything.
Harsh Truth and The 10th And Last Year Of The First Decade Of The 21st Century Is 2010, where do you guys get off telling people what to accept and crap?? Since when did you guys become God with all of the answers?? The new millennium wasn’t made up by the media. Regardless if 2000 or 2001 was the first year of the 21st century and 3rd millennium, the media had been talking about the coming new millennium since the start of the 1990s. That is because the 1990s was the last decade of the 20th century and 2nd millennium regardless if it ended in 2000 or 2001. They started talking about it non-stop around 1998 because that year was in the late 1990s and only a few years away from the start of the new millennium and 21st century, and that is also regardless of whether it started in 2000 or 2001. Don’t forget the Y2K bug was a concern for the year 2000, not 2001. Take a pill!!