A Date With Tim Peters...

[Ivan Van Laningham]

Hi All--

"David N. Welton" wrote:
> 
> Guido van Rossum <guido at CNRI.Reston.VA.US> writes:
> 
> > Come and join us at the Key Bridge Marriott in Rosslyn (across the
> > bridge from Georgetown), January 24-27 in 2000.  Make the Python
> > conference the first conference you attend in the new millennium!
> 
> Doesn't the new millenium actually start in 2001?
> 

Oooh, let's open the can of worms of the century!

I belong to the CALNDR-L mailing list, and even on that list, which has
150 of the world's most opinionated calendar experts, their is wide
disagreement on the start of the millennium (note that there are two
n's, by the way).  And I do mean *wide*.

The consensus (if there can be such a thing on CALNDR-L), seems to be
that _if_ you are looking at our calendar as the traditional,
Catholic-instigated, Gregorian calendar of AD & BC fame, the third
millennium indeed begins 1/1/2001, since 0 did not exist when Dionysus
Exiguus ("Dennis the Little," as S.J. Gould has translated it) proposed
and used the AD dating in or around 532 AD.  Since we call the current
century the "20th" century, it would seem that most people are using the
traditional AD/BC Gregorian calendar.  The venerable Bede (English, ~800
AD) added and used the BC notation for the first time, in his "History
of the English-Speaking Peoples."

However, if you're an astronomer, a calendar freak, or a logician, you
might find yourself working in what has lately become known as the
Common Era calendar, simply because the math is far easier when there's
a year 0, and you don't have to "special case the snot out of
everything."  The timeline then becomes:

BCE--------0---------CE

BCE = Before the Common Era; years negative, i.e., -1 on back
CE  = Common Era; years positive, 1 forward

Thus, years 0-99 form the "first century CE"; year 0 through -99 form
the "first century BCE"; and so on.  0-999 is the first millennium,
1000-1999 the second, 2000-2999 the third.

This of course begs the question "where the hell is century zero"?  ;-)

I think the argument will go on for at least another millennium. ...

I happen to go with the second view, myself, but that's just my own
preference.  S.J. Gould says you should party on both 12/31/1999 and
12/31/2000;-)

<proleptic-partying>-ly y'rs,
Ivan
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Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
Author:  Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours
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