1st BOC show of the new century!

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Fri, Jan 21, 2000 at 08:50:38AM -0800, Horse Whisperer wrote:
> >If you can prove to me that Jesus was born exactly 1,999 years ago,
> >I'll believe you.
>
> Can you prove he was born exactly 2,000 years ago?  AFAIK current thought
> has it that accepted ideas of Jesus' birthdate are somewhere between 30 and
> 100 years out, making a bit of a mess of every calendar  system used by
> Christians so far.

        Oh well, since we've started :-) Millennium with an `M' is
nothing to do with the date, it is the name for the 1000-year reign of
Christ which will [adjust to fit your beliefs] follow Armageddon. A
`millennium' with an `m' is a 1000-year period, and since our calendar
looks back not to 0 AD but 1 BC/1 AD, which is the same year, 2001 will
be the 2001st year it marks, making it next year we can celebrate 2000
years of functional calendaring. Except of course it had to be seriously
tweaked to get that far several times, so...

        In conclusion, celebrating the millennium is completely arbitrary
unless you believe something particularly special happened on 31st Dec 1 AD
because the calendar itself has changed since then. On the other hand,
anyone actually celebrating the Millennium knows something I don't.

        What annoys me particularly about this is that the calendrical
stupidity has been governmentally-endorsed. I was also sorry to see Deke
Leonard's hopes for the Millennium Bug (which is a Century Bug as any
fule kno) disappointed (he says heroically throwing a line in the
direction of a list topic).

> >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? ;)
>
> Probably their mothers.  And other physicists.

        I know a physicist or two with whom I should be delighted to,
well, anything I could get away with really >:-> Yours,
                                                        Jon

--
 /______________________________________________________________________\
 |                Jon Jarrett, Pembroke College, Cambridge              |
 |         (01223 741219)        jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk        |
 | =====================================================================|
 |"Find the microwave and you shall find the bison!" Clare Boothby(1997)|
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