Why is now called a NEW decade, instead of the last year of the old one?
dph

Also, 2000 was not the beginning of the 21st century, but the LAST year of the 20th!
dph

Ask Schrodingers cat..   Or the egg that came before the chicken..!!

Quote - Also, 2000 was not the beginning of the 21st century, but the LAST year of the 20th!
dph

Well, it was the first year of the twenty-hundreds, which is not quite the same as the 21st century, but close. :laugh:

Quote - > Quote - Also, 2000 was not the beginning of the 21st century, but the LAST year of the 20th!

dph

Well, it was the first year of the twenty-hundreds, which is not quite the same as the 21st century, but close. :laugh:

Yes, but unless you have a year zero, 9 years does not make a decade, 99 years does not make Century, 999 years does not make a millennium, and 1999 does not make two  millennium.
dph

Yea, and they decide to change the hour to spring forward and fall back and everyone just goes along with it.  Does anyone really know what year it is? Does anyone really care?

-R

Since the people living in what we call 1 AD didn't know they were living
in 1 AD, the whole system is a "retrofit" anyway ... so we can decide to
start the decades and centuries anywhere we want.  Most folks didn't use
calendars at all, and the Romans, Jews, Chinese, and other civilizations each
had a separate calendar that was way over 1 at that time.

The notion that years need to be synchronized or consistent in any way
is quite recent.  For instance, England (and the American colonies)
started the year on March 25 until 1752, and they seemed to
handle this "inconsistency" without any trouble.

I think the US was one of the last hold outs against the last big switch in the calendar system.  I'll have to go look though some links.  Happened during Jefferson's time I think.  Kind of the same way we hold out against the metric system.

I re-read your post, Ockham, and I think that may have been the date I was thinking of.  1752 sounds about right.

EDIT: 1752 is the year when the British Emprire, including the US, adopted the Gregorian calendar.  I was surprised to learn this was so recent.  Great article on Wikipedia.

-R

Even the Gregorian calendar is anachronistic.

"An anachronism—from the Greek ανά (ana: against, anti-) and χρόνος (chronos: time)—is an error in chronology, especially a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other. The item is often an object, but may be a verbal expression, a technology, a philosophical idea, a musical style, a material, a custom, or anything else so closely associated with a particular period in time that it would be incorrect to place it outside its proper domain."

A year to year start/stop 'should' start on Dec. 22.

Consider that the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, is on Dec 21st. The next day is the date that the functional days start to grow longer.

Oh, and the Roman calendar was short by 5 days, they knew it but just declared it the national holiday Saturnalia. 5 days of eat drink and be merry. One of the sub holidays within was Juvinalia(sic?). the only Roman holiday for children.

Attached Link: http://www.ranquist.net/CNE/CNE.htm

On the evening of November 1st it is neither this year nor next, and the walls between the worlds is thin.  That's why we dress in costumes to confound the dead.

I love the old holidays and calendar dates.

Quote - Why is now called a NEW decade, instead of the last year of the old one?
dph

Indeed.  People understood this in 1901, if you look at newspapers of that time, which heralded the dawn of a new Century. 

Back when I worked in a supervisory capacity, I used to ask what the first day of the 21century was as an interview question-you can gain interesting insights into how a person's mind works by asking them to justify their answer....

Happy New Year!

it still starts with 100 bottles of beer on the wall; take one down, pass it around, 99 ...

0¿0
  O

The Mayan Calander ends in 2012. The end of the world occurs at that same time (sorry)

By starting the new decade NOW you get an extra year of happiness (*not guarenteed) before everything breaks up and crashes into the sun. 

 Hold on, I thought this was a Poser forum. Shouldn't we be talking about the current version of Poser instead?.

There was a version call PoserPro Back between 4 and 5 was there not? So in reality using my toes while I type with my fingers, I count 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 versions of Poser have been officially released not 8, discounting the version of PoserPro released between the erroneously named Poser 7 and 8. The newest version Poser is really Poser 9 not Poser 8. 

Then there is all this buzz of how to say 2010 (two thousand and ten, vs twenty ten)
So how do you officially pronounce the new PoserPro Beta?
PoserPro Two thousand and ten? Or PoserPro Twenty Ten?

yes there was a Year Zero.

it was started by Event Zero (big bang, god coughing, whatever you think started it all off)

a year later, Year 1 started.

It started as an OT, grichter, and in OTs you can write about any OT you want, but I do see where your're going.  I thought the same thing about Microsoft's Windows 7.  No matter how I counted the versions I couldn't  come up with seven versions of Windows.

Anyway, it was Poser 4 ProPack and now it's just ProPack (or is it Poser7 ProPack?).  And what did we decide?   Is this the last year of the previous decade or the first year of the new decade?  And is this the first day of the rest of our lives?

Happy New Year,
Rªnce

Quote - yes there was a Year Zero.
it was started by Event Zero (big bang, god coughing, whatever you think started it all off)

And before Year Zero, years were negative.
Never mind, if we think on Relativity, Bing Bang theories, etc, then time is imaginary (ict), so time only exists in your mind as an abstraction....

Year zero was just before God created the heavens and the earth and separated the light from the darkness  which began the first day count.

Pappy

Blame it on Darwin..  
Or the dinosaur that laid the chicken egg..

Quote - Why is now called a NEW decade, instead of the last year of the old one?

Dunno.  To my knowledge there was no 0 AD, it was 1 BC then 1 AD.  You see AD stands for Anno Domini (or something like that) which means the year of our lord... year 1 was the year of Jesus' birth.  Thu this should be last year of of the aughts decade.

Chalk it up to our idiot educational system and general lack of common sense.  For example, I know a female who thinks that the milennium began in 2001 (correct) but decades begin on 0 years.  Her reasoning is that the first decade was only 9 years.

Idiocracy, here we come.

I perfer BCE and ACE

Well, at the time 'ol Yehsua bar Joseph popped in, years in some places were measured by reigns. Rome measured in the time from the city's founding (AUC, or, uh...my Latin's not that good, but something like Anno Urbanis Civitas...Latin types, please correct...;) By the Dark Ages, no one was seriously measuring dates at all...;)

Actually, it was the Russians that were the last holdouts on the current calendar system; we started with the current one in 1776, and the Russians in 1917...;) People were fit to be tied; they 'lost' 23 days...;)  The current calendar system makes every 4 centuries' last year a leap year (so unless you're alive some time after Star Trek Voyager, you won't see the next one...;)

The Christian calendar didn't officially 'cement' until the 6th Century or so (not long before the Muslim Year of the Hejira..) There were knock-down dragouts about when to celebrate Easter (this was a real thorn to the Venable Bede...whomever he was...;) They just sort of 'lined up' the last date that Easter was celebrated on the same date, loosely checked to see if it fit the Gospels, and according to modern calculations, Jesus was born about 4BC...;) talk about ahead of your time...;)

Much better is measure time in Moons, I am 730 moon old and some are older than Matusalem.
Is perfect, each month has 28 days, a year has 12 or 13 moons and every 28 years all returns exactly to the same position as when God created it all.
Today we are in the 24,886 moon A.D.

The problem is that the synodic period of the Moon is 29.53 days and not 28 days...........

Calendars are a measure of time the way a foot or meter is an measure of length.  2001 was the first year if the 21 century.  That's why Arthur Clarke’s book was 2001 and not 2000.

How wrong was that guy though?  Taken any shuttle rides to any of the moons of Jupiter recently?

0  0
  ¿
 -O-

Quote - How wrong was that guy though?  Taken any shuttle rides to any of the moons of Jupiter recently?

0  0
  ¿
 -O-

A.C.Clarke  published a paper in 1947 describing the satellite communications system that We have today..  If the Cold War had not happened,  his dream could have been reallity..

Quote - Yea, and they decide to change the hour to spring forward and fall back and everyone just goes along with it.  Does anyone really know what year it is? Does anyone really care?

-R

Unless you live in Arizona. Then you don't have to mess with that nonsense.
The only downside is some of the cable shows start at a different time,
so if you forget to compensate, you miss it.

Heh.

• nope, there was never a year "zero". When Denis the Short first came up with the current BC/AD year thing, the Romans at the time had no real concept of a mathematical zero (that wouldn't show up at all until the 11th century in Damascus, and not in the Roman/European empires until the 13th century or so, when nobles and traveling scholars had brought it back home from the Crusades). So, no "Year 0". Note that there is a difference between the number zero and a mathematical one... "0" (or "null") was what had been missing all that time, not the digit itself (which sits just fine at the tail end of "10" and such, though the Romans always had their particular numbering system - we're using the Arabic-built version these days, though few used it to mark years until roughly the 16th or 17th centuries - forget which).

* The funny part is, the true counting of AD ("Anno Domini", or "In the year of Our Lord") was goofed anyway, since Denis forgot that Augustus Caesar (long name: Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus) had ruled under a different name before becoming the emperor named at the time of Christ's birth, which sort of threw off the calculations by four years (Denis was counting up roman years by counting 'nth years of the reign of {insert emperor here}'. )

• Because of that last two points, IIRC this would properly be called 2005 AD (or so) if we were to go back and correct all the big messes. Even then, calendars weren't all that accurate until the 16th century, so give or take a week or so if you want anything more accurate than what year we're in. Even then, thanks to the whole Julian vs. Gregorian calendar thing, odds are good that we may even still have to give or take a year.

* Because everything is noted and timed (calendar-wise) fairly accurately for about 500+ years now, if we did correct for the goofs, historians would find it too messy to keep up, so don't expect any fixes any time soon.

• The Hebrew calendar says we're in the year 5770 - you'll have to ask Mr. Hoadley where they based their first year. I think it's a pure Lunar cycle, but I'm not 100% sure.

* The Islamic calendar says we're in the year 1431 - the number of years since Mohamet moved from Medina to Mecca for good - a move called the Hijra. Thing here is, the Islamic calendar runs off a strict Lunar cycle... so it's always a few days shorter than our current Gregorian calendar. 

* All existing (and used) calendars are based on some event, almost always religious. Even the atheist/agnostic BCE/CE is still based on a presumption of when the birth of Jesus Christ occurred. The standard global civil calendar is known as the Gregorian Calendar, which was established by a Pope.

• The 21st century began on January 1st, 2001. They had a fairly big fight about this back in 1900, too.

I have told You all before,   and now I will tell You all again...   Ask Schrodingers cat..

(He / She / It)   ( May /  or May Not)  have been there..!!!   ;o)

there is no year zero.  linear time is one way in which humans misinterpret their place in the universe.  I reckon the biggest fallacy in this regard is the "big bang theory", which poseurs with creationist tendencies dreamt up in a desperate attempt to ascribe some order to things.

*"Even the atheist/agnostic BCE/CE is still based on a presumption of when the birth of Jesus Christ occurred"

*No- we use that zero point for political expediency only (ATM)
We do not assume anything inherently special about that date. It is nothing but the baggage of history we all carry.

I don't get the need for the BCE/CE calender.  There are already several other calenders in place and this new one doesn't fix any of the old ones.  More still, since time is relative it seems unlikely that you could have a one size fits all calender, particularly once there is space travel and year lengths vary from planet to planet.  Basically it seems counter productive to change how time is kept because you don't care about religion and frankly whichever date you choose as a starting point will be completely arbitrary anyways.

"I don't get the need for the BCE/CE calender."

That's simply because that some of us, while making use of the Gregorian Calender for civic convenience, refuse to acknowledge that G-d was ever actually 'Born', or that he ever actually assumed a corporeal corruptible form.
In Israel, many Jewish religious schools and institutions don't use the Gregorian Calender at all in dating their document, but rely solely on the Hebrew calender.
As for the Hebrew year 5770, the Hebrew calender dates itself from the supposed moment of Creation, when G-d said: "Let there be light...'
While I don't want to get into a debate as to the truth or non-truth of when Creation actually took place (and remember that G-d NEVER intended that the Torah be considered as a Scientific Textbook, [and therefore one in which no generation before Charles Darwin could have possibly understood].  Rather, the Torah, as handed down to Moses, was and is a Holy Constitution, set before a nation, a body politic, so that that nation might live as a Holy Nation, and that every act of human endeavor would be a sanctification of His Name).
I DO believe though that it is interesting that the Hebrew Calender seems to date from the beginning of Recorded History.
dph

Why should that fact be interesting? That the Hebrew Calendar seems to date from the beginning of recorded history? That's about the time that alphabets were invented and adopted throughout the known world. Before the invention of the true alphabet one would have to learn tens - in not hundreds - of symbols to write things down. Very few people could actually read and write in pictographs. That was the domain of priests and scribes. Once the use the alphabets became widespread anyone with a fancy could write creations myths and lengthy histories wherein their uncle/grandfather/chosen people were g-d’s front runners.

Actually, recorded history begins much earlier in Ancient Egypt and Sumer. Writing just wasn’t widespread.

-R

Quote - in not hundreds - of symbols to write things down. Very few people could actually read and write in pictographs.

Well, two or three billions do it today.

Sorry, I stand - er, sit at the computer - corrected.  Our lifestyles, and abilities to survive  have greatly improved since ancient times.  The education systems we have today are depended upon not having to spend most of the hours of our day trying to meet our immediate needs to survive.  Now we have the luxury of spending hours and hours learning material nodes and posing figures to make pretty pictures.

I'm certain it would be pretty tough to teach me pictographic writing.  I can barely manage the twenty-six letter alphabet I'm working with here ;(.

I recenly caught a show about cracking the Mayan code.  Pictographs and ancient writing forms ARE very interesting and VERY beautiful.

Best Wishes,
Rªnce

PS: cool thread, thanks dphoadley

Yeah it is a cool thread :)

I guess it boils down to do you see measuring systems like calendars as a historical record  or as a Scientific tool.

I prefer the scientific tool.

Quote - *"Even the atheist/agnostic BCE/CE is still based on a presumption of when the birth of Jesus Christ occurred"

*No- we use that zero point for political expediency only (ATM)
We do not assume anything inherently special about that date. It is nothing but the baggage of history we all carry.

Actually, I looked it up: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_era

Turns out they were using the designation (also called the "Vulgar Era") for centuries now. I honestly didn't know that before yesterday...

==

Quote - More still, since time is relative it seems unlikely that you could have a one size fits all calender, particularly once there is space travel and year lengths vary from planet to planet.

A-yep. This is part of why you see the whole "stardate" thing in Star Trek. You'll have to ask a hardcore fan how it works and what it's based on, though.

==

Quote - and remember that G-d NEVER intended that the Torah be considered as a Scientific Textbook, [and therefore one in which no generation before Charles Darwin could have possibly understood

This I can agree with (probably because I'm Catholic and not a fundamentalist, eh?)

Quote - I DO believe though that it is interesting that the Hebrew Calender seems to date from the beginning of Recorded History.

It sounds about right... though if one bases a year on a true Solar orbital circuit and not just the lunar cycles, it's liable to be off by quite a bit by now. I take it the Hebrew calendar doesn't correct for anything outside of a strict lunar cycle, yes?

==

Quote - Quote - " in not hundreds - of symbols to write things down. Very few people could actually read and write in pictographs."

Well, two or three billions do it today.

...I think he meant back during a time when literacy rates were crap, even among the Chinese. :)

==

Quote - I'm certain it would be pretty tough to teach me pictographic writing.

It's not that hard... just depends on how long you study it and at what age you start. A gent that I work with is fluent in three languages - Mandarin (and a local Shanghai dialect), French, and English... he's shooting for number four (German, as our global headquarters is in Germany). I'm good with just 1-1/2 (English, and the Swiss dialect of German that I grew up with. The latter drives my colleagues overseas nuts at times, especially on the phone, where I usually forget that I have to forcibly ditch my normal Southern US accent first. :) ).

One thing I've noticed about my colleague is that as he piles on the languages (remember, English is his third, after French), things tend to get slurred down a bit - seems the human tongue has a muscle memory of sorts. In speech, his Chinese is fluid, and in French he has to stop once in awhile - not to think, but to work over certain syllables. His English is definitely accented heavily and takes a lot of time. His German speech is worse than mine, but improving. Gotta give him props for doing it, though - and his command of literacy in all of those languages is second to none, IMHO.

"It sounds about right... though if one bases a year on a true Solar orbital circuit and not just the lunar cycles, it's liable to be off by quite a bit by now. I take it the Hebrew calendar doesn't correct for anything outside of a strict lunar cycle, yes?"

dphoadley@Penguinisto**
d Actually the Hebrew calender is both a lunar and a solar calender rolled into one.  Its months are divided up using the lunar cycles as a means of demarcation, each new moon indicates the beginning of a new month, but every few years, an extra month of Adar (which is always in late Winter) is added before the month of Nisan (which marks the beginning of Spring). ** This is important because Passover is on the 15th of Nisan, and must always occur at the beginning of Spring.
dph

As I said, I still don't see the need for the BCE/CE calender.  As I said before dates chosen for starting points, particularly within an atheistic/agnostic frame will be arbitrary at best.  I mean what makes one year zero (or 1) better than the next?  I mean at least the Christians and Jews and other religions have something signifigant to their fundemental beliefs to base it on.  

From a big bang theory, we can't even specify the exact date of the universe's creation so we'll never have a kelven scale until we do.  Years based on earth cycles will be scientifically meaningless (but not historically or religiously meaningless) once we start living on other planets and Earth stops being the political center of humanity. 

To put it simply for the BCE/CE proponents: your reference point sucks to everyone who doesn't agree with you.  I mean why should a few scientists who are stuck in a lab or a few politicans who should be stuck in jail get to decide that sort of thing?

As I said before, time is all relative and we are going to end up using a "trade time" anyways.  Since we have one and it is possible to be tweaked creating a new one for the point of having a new one with a new reference point is imprudent and a waste of time and energy.

2010 ends the last decade, which started in 2001.
2011 will start the next decade, which ends in 2020... and so on.
You start counting with 1, not 0. Count to 10; the next lot of 10s starts with 11.

But not many people give tuppence for for all that; they celebrate the millenium start at 2000, when it is in fact the last year of the 20th century. The 21st century started with 2001.

And while we're on about the illogical use of numbers ... what about those damn small billions the Americans use (which our beloved Government in GB has also saddled us with) - their billion is only a thousand million, not the real billion which is a million million. Trillion = million million million (three lots, tri = three); the US trillion is 1,000,000,000,000 (thousand thousand million) i.e. our British billion.

Maybe no-one else cares, but it gets right up my nose.

Well, I'm not sure about the million million question, I thought everyone agreed on that (?), but BCE and CE are designations, not new calendars.  From the articles I've read (after the start of his great thread), there have been a number of different designations for the roughly same starting point in time.  We're not talking about changing anything about what year or month or day it is.

I enjoy the informative posts and thank the lot of you.

Best Wishes,
Rªnce

Quote -
And while we're on about the illogical use of numbers ... what about those damn small billions the Americans use (which our beloved Government in GB has also saddled us with) - their billion is only a thousand million, not the real billion which is a million million.

{...}

Maybe no-one else cares, but it gets right up my nose.

Ah - that I think I can explain. You see, we (at least in the US) have always counted up by every three digits (because it's handy to stick in a comma once every three digits, unless you're in Europe, where they count as decimals, and stuff :) ). Each new fourth digit we tack on gets a name.

Makes logical sense when seen from that angle - and requires very little math to figure down how many trailing zeros go behind a given number. :) 

==

Back to the time thing, I'm guessing that once space travel (hopefully) becomes commonplace, and we start living on other planets, that someone sits down and figures out some sort of universal calendar. It'll have to be based on, well, something... I'm sure the flamewars will be fantastic.

I remember that someone once proposed (brace for it) Metric Time.

Actually like the idea of metric time.  And what about a 100 degree circle?  The old base six math is as old as civilization.  Maybe it's time for an upgrade.

-R

Quote -

Ah - that I think I can explain. You see, we (at least in the US) have always counted up by every three digits (because it's handy to stick in a comma once every three digits, unless you're in Europe, where they count as decimals, and stuff :) ). Each new fourth digit we tack on gets a name.

A new name, not an -illion type, would do. Using the -illion is illogical - after all, if you call 1,000,000,000 a billion where bi means two, what's it two of?

Anyway, apart from that, if you want to go in threes then why not use the metric prefixes - e.g. $1,000 = 1K$, $1,000,000 = 1M$, $1,000,000,000 = 1G$; saves writing all those noughts and avoids the fact that we are divided in our interpretation of the word billion (etc).

It's that durn CAT.. 

The Egyptians had it right when cats were Deified..    And  what about the Chinese calendar..?

Worst with Mayans that have three calendars, none of them based on the Sun or Moon.
To know a specific date you must give the date from two calendars. Unless you live too long the combination from the two dates is unique for your whole life.
The third calendar is long term calendar used for political or historical events, it has a cycle something like 4000 years. At the end of the cycle the calendar is reset and starts counting again from zero, in the same way as the other two very short cycle calendars.
The world will not end in 2012, only the long term calendar will be reset and begin counting again from zero.
2012 means nothing for the Mayans!

Quote  "2012 means nothing for the Mayans!"..  Quote..

Only because they aren't here any more..

I still think we should ask the cat...  ;o)

Quote - Only because they aren't here any more..

Wrong, Yes they are still there and trying to do a revolution in Mejico, pehaps in 2010?? following a long tradition: 1810, 1910 ,  2010??

Significant Dates on Their calendars I suppose..?

Quote - Actually like the idea of metric time.  And what about a 100 degree circle?  The old base six math is as old as civilization. 

Base sixty, not six.
OK, so 100 degrees to the circle; how many degrees in each angle of an equilateral triangle?
There's a decimal clock - or was (I was there in 1962) - in Dusseldorf; three faces normal and one decimal. And wasn't the clock in "Metropolis" decimal, or was it in a Chaplin film?

Never did like decimals; counting in twelves is a far more elegant and sensible system. (If you're interested, Google "dozenal".)