OFF: Re: what new century?!

[K Henderson]

Theo suggested...

>On 21 Jan 00, at 11:34, DASLUD at AOL.COM wrote:
>
>> In a message dated 1/21/00 10:57:44 AM, nick at THECAMPUS.COM writes:
>>
>> If you can prove to me that Jesus was born exactly 1,999 years ago,
>> I'll believe you. Besides, most people partied this year. I'd
>> celebrate the new millennium next year, but who wants to party with a
>> bunch of physicists and mathematicians? ;)
>>  ====
>> not that i particularly wanna go here, but i thought that the 'jesus'
>> entity turned out to have been born 2,003 years ago...
>
>The academic world no longer uses BC or AD to denote periods in
>time, using, instead, CE [common era] and BCE, avoiding any silly
>ethnocentricity...

Never heard of this...sounds silly.  :)

Anyway, in 'my' academic world, we denote time in BP, years before present.
Of course, with the 'present' held constant at A.D. 1950.  Which I think is
the year that radiocarbon dating was first established by the folks at U.
Chicago.  Libby et al.  So this year would then be A.L. 50, I guess.  Of
course, this doesn't get away from the problem that a radiocarbon year and a
'real' calendar year aren't the same.  Like 10,000 BP 14C is really 11,700
BP 14Ccal (calibrated to calendar years).

And as I mentioned before, the issue of significance (or insignificance) in
the millennium date is silly anyway, since it first and foremost depends
upon your choice of 'fold' value (well, after the choice of zero date
anyway, excuse me...year 1 date).  There is a culture somewhere that decided
to base their numbering system on (what we know as) 20 (I guess they went
around barefoot), and so according to them (and assuming that they were
Christian for some silly reason), this would be the year 500.  Personally, I
would've chosen (if it were up to me) a numbering system with a fold value
of two less than what we currently use, and so this would be the year 3720.
60 more years until the next millennium (4000!), i.e., 48 more years to any
thumb-counter.  :)  So, let's party with the bloody mathematicians!!  They
can give us more opportunities to party with all these different
possibilities in counting!  :)

And if you want to continue this bit of fun, here are all the choices you
can have (within the first 'ten' only, as we lack any single characters for
higher numbers)
Base
'2'     11111010000
'3'     2202002
'4'     133100
'5'     31000
'6'     13132
'7'     5555
'8'     3720
'9'     2662
'10'    2000

So I guess to a computer, a 'millennium' really happens every 8 years...big
deal.

Keith H. (FAA)