<ahem>  AAARRRGGGHHH!!!! </ahem>

OK, that out of the way, let's consider a few items...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wirt Atmar [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>
> Tom [not me, another Tom] writes:
>
> > A quote from my Millennium Countdown calendar, yesterday's
> entry, says
> "Time
> > Again - Researchers at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Cambridge,
> England,
> > say the new millennium starts January 1, 2001, not 2000.
>
> Personally, I take my standards regarding when the millennium
> starts from the
> Mars Candy Company (http://www.mars.com) -- although it took
> me a long time
> to figure out what they meant when they kept saying that
> M&M's were the
> "official" candy of the millennium.
>
> The secret is right there in the word, "millennium", literally meaning
> thousand years in Latin (mille + annum). The symbol for a
> thousand in Latin

Agreed -- "millennium" can mean ANY arbitrary 1000 year span.

> is "M", and the year 1000, one thousand years ago, was marked
> as "M", thus
> the little "MM" that's written on every M&M's piece can (and
> should be) quite
> readily be interpreted as 2000.
>
> I consider that sufficiently good enough evidence for anyone.

OK then, consider this simple test:

q1: what is the first day of the 21st century?
q2: what is the first day of the 20th century?
q3: the 19th?
q4: the 18th?
q5: the 17th?
q6: the 16th?
q7: the 15th?
q8: the 14th?
...
q18: the 4th?
q19: the 3th?
q20: the 2nd?
q21: the 1st?

AHA! If you answered "Jan 1, 2000" to the first question (as "everyone"
seems to be purporting), you run into the conundrum of NOT being able to
answer the last question -- there was NO YEAR ZERO!

At the time the current western European calendar was invented [early
800's], there was no concept of "zero" -- at least, certainly not a DIGIT
for a zero, they were still using ROMAN NUMERALS at the time -- so the first
"year" is "I A.D." (then came II, III, IV, and so on...)

Now, applying the same logic to millenniums, we see that the FIRST day of
the FIRST millennium was Jan 1, 1; the first day of the SECOND millennium
was Jan 1, 1001, and the first day of the THIRD (i.e., "next") millennium
would indeed be Jan 1, 2001.

Tom Emerson
Sr. Systems Analyst
NDC | e COMMERCE
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