However as a party animal, I can entirely sympthasize with people's
natural desire, given the choice of two dates, to take the soonest
one to have a bloody big party. Particularly if there is a possibility
of having a second millenium party a year later.
Eminently sensible, even if technical incorrect. Even the Royal
Observatory Greenwich is participating in the almost-but-not-quite millenium
celebrations.
It's simple. WE MERELY RESCHEDULE ALL PAST MILLENIUM PARTIES
TO HAVING OCCURRED A YEAR EARLIER. We can't help it if all our ancestors
got it wrong and they aren't around to object. It's time we corrected
this calendar design defect anyway.
We will need to inject a YEAR 0 into the calendar and that will have
a minor downward compatability issue as published BC dates will all be
a year out. But what the hell? This will only affect ancient
history and professional historians have long since given up on history
and prefer to dwell upon social issues such as herstory. They probably
wouldn't know what happened in 44 BC anyway.
Even then it is not a problem. We will simply rebadge 44BC (Before
Christ) as 43BZ (Before Zero). So if you see a date as xxBC
you will know that all you need do is to subtract 1 to get it into BZ.
So trivial it is not worth doing so it won't be worth reprinting seldom
purused history books. Downward compatiability problem solved.
The trick is we simply run two parallel conventions (much like we have
GMT and UTC for the same thing).
Sometimes it is necessary for somebody to make a technical decision
so we can get on with partying. Never one to shirk responsibility,
I've decided it's up to me and I've made it.
It's now official. The millenium starts at Year 2000. There
was a Year 0. There is now a BZ calendar that we will quietly ignore.
Done deal.
Have
you fallen for the Millenium 2000 hoax?
Questions? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
There has been a lot of hoopla about "entering
into the next Millennium" and the dawn of the "21st century" and entering
the 3rd millennium. A lot of companies and politicians are making
a great deal of money by promoting this view. Cities
are spending millions of taxpayer dollars to celebrate this event.
The only problem is that according to the Royal Observatory Greenwich (http://www.rog.nmm.ac.uk)
"the New Millennium and the New Century start at zero hours UTC (commonly
known as GMT) on January 1st 2001." (refer also to the US Naval Observatory
http://www.usno.navy.mil).
The sad truth is that most people know the truth, but the financial and
political gain in manipulating people is just to big for many for
businesses and politicians to pass up. Some
are spending thousands of dollars on special trips and hotels and they
don't even know that they are being swindled.
Why is the New Millennium on January 1st
2001?
There are a variety of ways people mark time1.
Our current system is based on the Solar calendar where the day (based
on the rotation of the Earth on its axis), the year (based on the revolution
of the Earth around the Sun), and the month (based on the revolution of
the Moon around the Earth). According to our Gregorian calendar2
we begin counting forward from January 1, 1 Anno Domini ("The Year of our
Lord" or "AD"). The significance here is that there is no such thing as
year zero. Historical time is counted from "December" of 1 BC to "January"
of 1 AD. That is, time is considered to have gone from "New Years Eve"
1 BC to "New Years Day" 1 AD.
Here is an example then of how we would count
time:
year 1 to year 11 is the completion the 10th year.
When year 101 arrived we completed the 100th year.
When the year 1001 arrived we completed the 1000th
year.
Thus when January 1st year 2001 arrives
we will only then complete the 2000th year!
How many days are in a Millennium?
The First Millennium (January 1 - December
1000 AD) consisted of 365,250 days.
Our current millennium (January 1001 -
December 2000 AD) will consist of 365,237 days.
At present, the Third Millennium (January
2001 - December 3000 AD) will consist of 365,242 days.
What is a Century?
Let's look at it from another perspective. Have
you ever noticed that we
now live in the 20th century yet the numerical
date on our calendars start
with the numbers 19xx (for example we are now
in year 1999 AD)? Here we
can see that each century is denoted by a number
one sequence higher than
the actual date number.
Here is why.
The 1st century began with January, 1 AD (not
"0" AD) and finished with December, 100 AD.
The 2nd century began with January, 101 AD and
ended in December, 200 AD.
Thus our nomenclature for the century is numerically
superior to the actual
date.
This is why the 20th century began with January,
1901 AD and will end on New Years Eve of the year 2000, and the 21st century
will then begin on New Years day 2001.
If January 1st 2000 is not the new
millennium, then why do politicians and the media still say publicize it
that way?
The conclusion of the Royal Observatory Greenwich
(http://www.rog.nmm.ac.uk) "The
year AD 2000 will certainly be celebrated, as is natural for a year with
such a round number but, accurately speaking, we will be celebrating the
2000th year or the last year of the millennium, not the start of the new
millennium. Whether this will be an excuse for more celebrations in the
following year will have to be seen!"
Their last statement is most instructive. Politicians
and the like are using this common misunderstanding to gain political and
financial advantage. They are selling all their millennium products now
in hopes of being able to sell even more next year. Don�t be fooled or
let others fall into this trap.
Does this information impact any possible computer
Y2K problems?
In short, no. This does not change any of the
potential problems with computers because their possible failure is based
on the year 00 and what we call year 00 does not matter in computer language.
Why is the celebration of human birthdays different
than historical celebrations?
Some may wonder then why for human birthdays the
10th birthday is actually
the tenth year the 20th birthday is the 20th year,
etc...
The answer is that for chronological tracking
of human age, we generally regard birth as age "0" then each birthday does
mark the accurate year of life. The 1st birthday is a full year
of life, the 10 birthday is a full 10th year of life and so
on�
The big difference then between human birthdays
and historical dates is that we do not date the age of history the same
as we date the age of individuals because history does not have a year
"0"
Questions? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Other Resources:
Center for Millennial Studies - http://www.mille.org/indexA.html
See also Millennium
321 which is a bit more camercialized, but eventually gets to the truth.
----------------------------------------------
1 There are an infinite number of ways people
have tried to mark time. The 3 major systems are as follows. "A solar
calendar, of which the Gregorian calendar in its civil usage is an
example, is designed to maintain synchrony with the tropical year. To do
so, days are intercalated (forming leap years) to increase the average
length of the calendar year. A lunar calendar, such as the Islamic
calendar, follows the lunar phase cycle without regard for the tropical
year. Thus the months of the Islamic calendar systematically shift with
respect to the months of the Gregorian calendar. The third type of calendar,
the lunisolar calendar, has a sequence of months based on the lunar
phase cycle; but every few years a whole month is intercalated to bring
the calendar back in phase with the tropical year. The Hebrew and Chinese
calendars are examples of this type of calendar."
The Explanatory Supplement to
the Astronomical Almanac, P. Kenneth Seidelmann, editor from University
Science Books, Sausalito, CA 94965
10/7/99 http://astro.nmsu.edu/~lhuber/leaphist.html
Questions? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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2 "Early in the 6th century AD, Dionysius Exiguus
(Denys the Little), a monk and astronomer from Scythia now SW Russia, compiled
a table of dates for Easter in terms of the Diocletion calendar. He decided
to reset the system of counting years to honour the birth of Christ so
that the year 248 Anno Diocletiani became the year 532 Anni Domini
Nostri Jesu Christi, known as 532 AD for short. In his scheme he believed
that Christ was born on the 25th of December of the year preceding the
start of the year 1 AD. From our modern point of view, Dionysius Exiguus
made two errors. Firstly and quite understandably, he left out the year
zero, because the number zero had not yet been `discovered' in the West.
His second error was in thinking that Christ was born at the end of the
year 1BC. Modern research indicates that Christ was probably born in 6BC
and certainly by 4BC when Herod died.
The idea of naming years BC was introduced by
Bede in the 8th century. Naming years in the Christian Era came into common
use in ecclesiastical circles in the Middle Ages but was not adopted for
civil use until later."
Royal Observatory Greenwich http://www.rog.nmm.ac.uk/leaflets/new_mill.html
The Gegorian system was proposed by Aloysius Lilius,
a physician from Naples, and adopted by Pope Gregory XIII in accordance
with instructions from the Council of Trent (1545-1563) to correct for
errors in the older Julian Calendar. It was decreed by Pope Gregory XIII
in a papal bull in February 1582 that 10 days should be dropped from October
1582 so that 15 October should follow immediately after 4 October. This
change was to adjust for the errors of the Julian calendar but maintains
the same year of origin at 1 AD.
Questions? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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-------------------------------------------------------------
Related News Stories
N
E W Y O R K, Oct. 7 �Along
with heated exchanges about whether Y2K will bring apocalyptic doom or
merely global economic chaos on Jan. 1, the Internet is buzzing these days
with a more mundane but no less passionate debate.
Is it really the start of a
new millennium?
Actually, no, based on the Gregorian
calendar, which is why the constant barrage of the word �millennium� in
advertising and the media seems to be bugging a growing number of critics.
�We kept hearing from people
who were everything from a little miffed to downright angry about all the
media hype about the new millennium,� said Larry Smith, co-founder of the
Millennium 321 Web site, which bills itself as The Official Web site of
the New Millennium.
�We were getting teachers from
schools saying, �How do we get the word out because we�re teaching our
children wrong,�� Smith said. He and Web site co-founder James Iacobucci
conducted a global online survey that suggests most people�at least those
logging on at their site�are aware that the millennium actually begins
on Jan. 1, 2001, they said.
At last count, 84 percent of
the more than 8,700 people who responded pegged 2001 correctly as the start
of the third millennium despite all the hype to the contrary. �Underneath
this surface of marketing there is a population of people that are not
buying into it,� Smith said.
Questions? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Ringing
in the New Year Early
Boston Will Celebrate
on Greenwich Mean Time
The Associated Press
B
O S T O N, Sept. 22 � Cities across
the country are jockeying for the best, the earliest, or the priciest millennial
New Year celebrations.
Boston, for example, is poised
to beat everyone in the United States to the New Year by celebrating with
fireworks five hours early � at midnight Greenwich Mean Time.
In Maine, they�re fighting for
the distinction of which town will be the first to see the sunrise of the
new millennium.
�There are all sorts of little
controversies over who is first and who deserves the title of first,� said
David Kessler, executive administrator of the Center for Millennial Studies.
�Part of it is just the intuitive idea that the millennium is too perfect
of a marketing ploy to pass up.�
Boston officials say they orchestrated
their 7 p.m. fireworks for the first time this year so children might participate
in revels usually well past their bedtimes. (There will still be midnight
pyrotechnics here for the purists.)
The evening fireworks also give
people who are fearful of a Y2K cataclysm, such as computer meltdowns and
electric surges, a chance to party and return home by midnight, organizers
said Wednesday � 100 days before the big night.
Boston�s early bird celebration
will coincide with midnight in Greenwich, England, which is the universally
accepted standard of world time, Mayor Thomas Menino said.
In truth, New Year�s Day actually
first begins at the international dateline in the Pacific Ocean, 12 hours
before it reaches Greenwich. But fireworks at 7 a.m. over Boston Harbor
just wouldn�t have the same panache.
Los Angeles is making no pretenses
about the 4 p.m., Pacific time, start of its taxpayer-funded $1 million
New Year�s Eve party. It�s an effort to get national attention.
�It�s complicated, because at
12 midnight, it�s 3 a.m. in New York, so who�s going to be watching our
celebration?� Mayor Richard Riordan said.
In Maine, the tiny town of Lubec
believed it had the lock on the first place in America to see the sun rise
each day. Then the U.S. Naval Observatory declared that the summit of Cadillac
Mountain, just outside Bar Harbor, would be the first place in the country
to see the dawn on Jan. 1.
After enough Lubec complaints,
the Naval observatory recalculated to find that sunlight on Jan. 1 will
hit both Cadillac Mountain and Lubec�s Porcupine Mountain at precisely
the same time: 7:04 a.m.
In Las Vegas, some 750,000 partygoers
are expected to come to town for New Year�s Eve. Problem is, the city only
has 120,000 hotel rooms, and many of those are going for thousands of dollars
a night, rates unimaginable other times of the year.
Caesars Palace will be charging
$2,000 a night, with a four-night minimum, or $3,500 a night with a three-night
minimum. Rooms usually are between $125 and $500. Bellagio, one of the
newer hotels, will charge $2,000 a night, with a three-night minimum �
up from the $129 a night some rooms go for on less festive nights. 
Questions? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Pay
Up for New Year�s
Hotels are Charging
Big Bucks for End-of-Year Guests
By Angie Wagner
The Associated Press
L
A S V E G A S, Sept. 24 �
Talk about no room at the inn.
Some 750,000
partygoers are expected to pour into Las Vegas this New Year�s Eve to ring
in the new millennium. Problem is, the city only has 120,000 hotel rooms,
and many of those are going for thousands of dollars a night � rates unimaginable
other times of the year.
In fact, nearly everything in
Vegas that night � from concerts to air fare � might require a lot of luck
at the gambling tables.
�It�s all accelerated because
of the demand. That�s kind of the American way,� said Mark Paris, president
of the Fremont Street Experience, a downtown attraction.
Caesars Palace will be charging
$2,000 a night, with a four-night minimum, or $3,500 a night with a three-night
minimum. Rooms there usually are between $125 and $500. Bellagio, one of
the newer hotels, will charge $2,000 a night, with a three-night minimum
� up from the $129 a night some rooms go for on less festive nights.
Even the family-oriented, usually
affordable Circus Circus is bumping its room rates from about $39 a night
to $450 with a four-night minimum.
Concert
Tickets Included?
Many hotels are already sold out for New Year�s Eve,
but that isn�t likely to deter tourists from spending the holiday in this
gambling mecca. This year�s crowd estimate is almost double the number
of people who came here to ring in 1999.
Those who don�t get a hotel
room probably won�t sleep at all.
Las Vegas isn�t alone in its
outrageous prices. Hotels in other millennial hot spots such as New York,
Los Angeles, New Orleans and Honolulu are also upping their rates.
At the New York Hilton and Towers,
on Sixth Avenue, a standard room for Dec. 31 is $550 per night, with a
three-night minimum stay. A standard room is usually half that. At the
Plaza 50 on 50th Street, a studio suite that normally rents for $299 a
night is $448 on New Year�s Eve, with a four-night minimum stay required.
�The large urban hotels are
offering New Year�s Eve revelers packages that are commensurable with the
kind of entertainment that is being offered,� said Jim Gallagher, spokesman
for Starwood Hotels and Resorts, which operates the Sheraton and Westin
chains. �We certainly think that any of Starwood�s properties are giving
their guests real value for their money.�
The prices for rooms in major
cities usually include tickets to a concert or some other type of entertainment
for New Year�s Eve, he said.
�Going
Fast�
Marc Grossman, spokesman for Hilton Hotels, said demand
for lodging in prime locales is driving prices higher.
�Rooms are going fast,� he said.
�The places that you would imagine that are New Year�s headquarters are
going to get premium pricing.�
Back in Las Vegas, just about
every concert, party and even the airlines are following the hotels� lead.
The price tag to party downtown
under the canopy of the Fremont Street Experience block party is $100 �
10 times what it cost last year.
�New Year�s can get a little
bit rowdy. The thinking is that the cover charge would keep out some people
that may be a little bit more rowdy and try to make it a little bit more
controllable,� said Dawn Christensen, a city spokeswoman.
Bally�s Las Vegas is offering
a �Time Tunnel� party for a mere $300 ($250 for hotel guests). Pricey yes,
but it does include a buffet, party hat and a horn.
Too
Ritzy for Some
Tickets to New Year�s Eve concerts with the likes of
Elton John, Tina Turner, Bette Midler and Rod Stewart cost upwards of $100
and most of those shows are already sold out.
Just getting to the party is
costing travelers from the East Coast big bucks. They are paying $2,500
to $3,000 for airfare and a four-night stay at less ritzy hotels, said
Mary Baltodano, a travel agent with Creative Travel in Las Vegas. These
package trips normally cost only several hundred dollars a person.
Baltodano books them � with
a hint of disgust.
�This is outrageous. I can�t
believe people are purchasing them,� Baltodano said.
While clearly some don�t mind
paying inflated prices to revel in happening places, to others it seems
a bit frivolous.
�I don�t make enough money to
blow it like that,� Janis Anderson, 43, of San Antonio, Texas, said as
she dropped quarters into a slot machine at the Las Vegas Hilton. 
Questions? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Chasing
the Year 2000
When One New Year�s
Eve Isn�t Enough
By Bill Brewster
ABCNEWS.com
For some people, one New Year�s Eve isn�t good enough.
They have to go for two.
A whole class of millennium-maniacal
travelers is springing up, and its members want to be among both the first
and the last to welcome in the year 2000. Folks are planning different
trips, but all involve traveling over the international date line bisecting
the Pacific Ocean.
These faux time travelers
are bent (some very bent) on rigging up a flight from the western
(Asian) side of the date line to the eastern (North American) side. If
they depart in the early hours of Jan. 1, they�ll land sometime on Dec.
31 and get to see the year 2000 dawn a second time.
(Click on the image above for
the dateline-hopping plans of four ABCNEWS.com readers.)
It�s not easy. Major airlines don�t
play the time-travel game; commercial flights from Asia and the South Pacific
generally take off in the evening and land in the morning of the same day.
That isn�t stopping the time
trackers. Neither do they worry about the Y2K computer bug, even though
developing island nations seem like probable candidates for any problems
with air traffic computers rolling into 2000.
Will they be shattered if their
Jan. 1 flight to Samoa or wherever doesn�t take off? More importantly,
why go to all that effort and expense?
Catching
the First Sunrise
Katharina Lang, a 29-year-old from Virginia Beach, isn�t
planning to go for two New Year�s Eves, but she feels the allure of being
among the first to greet the new
millennium.
She plans to take a vacation
from her job at a behavioral medicine clinic and head for a beach in Tonga
to watch the sun rise on Jan. 1. Why Tonga? It�s later there than almost
anywhere else on Earth, at 13 hours after Greenwich Mean Time.
�I want to go for the natural
beauty, but also because it�s such a momentous time,� explains Lang. �It�s
a milestone not just in my life, but in our generation�s life and for many
generations to come. I think it�ll be a cleansing time to be there � it�s
a time for looking ahead.�
Of course, tourism officials
in Pacific island nations have long realized that many travelers will throw
huge amounts of money in a quest to greet the New Year before anyone else.
They�ve been promoting the hell out of �first midnights� or �first dawns�
for years now.
The
Politics of Datelines
Until 1995, Tonga was going to be the first nation where
the clocks struck midnight, and the Chatham Islands off the eastern coast
of New Zealand would have been the first inhabited place to see the sun
rise in 2000. (Though the clock is behind Tonga, the Chathams are farther
south and get much longer days during the Southern Hemisphere summer).
But then the insignificant island
nation of Kiribati � which sprawls across 2 million square miles of the
Pacific Ocean � decided to put all its atolls on the same side of the international
date line, which now means that a small island called Caroline will be
first on both counts. It�s one of several Kiribati islands in a time zone
an hour ahead of Tonga, and it will catch the sun�s rays about 20 minutes
before the Chathams.
Some folks cried foul (with
some reason: Caroline Island is actually east of Hawaii but a whole day
ahead), but as the Royal Greenwich Observatory decreed, �There seems to
be no legal reason why any country cannot declare itself to be in whatever
time zone it likes.� Especially since the line is not governed by international
treaties or formal agreements.
The truly compulsive (deranged,
obscenely wealthy �) can actually beat Kiribati to first light by more
than two hours. Way south of New Zealand, the Balleny Islands lie right
around the Antarctic Circle, and on Dec. 31, the sun sinks below the horizon
for only about an hour a day. All you have to do to get to these windswept
rocks is pilot an icebreaker through unrelenting pack ice, avoid harming
any penguins under penalty of massive fines, and hope that you don�t get
an earthquake like the magnitude 7.9 one that emanated from the area in
March 1998. Sounds fun, huh?
Or you could go to the South
Pole and watch the sun come up around Sept. 23 if you�re that obsessed.
It won�t set again until March.
Then there are those who say
you have to go Greenwich where midnight signals the arrival of the planet
Earth as a whole into the year 2000 in �universal time� � but we crossed
from the sublime to the ridiculous long ago.
A trip to the South Pacific
next December sounds sweet, but rather than scrambling for a second New
Year�s Eve you should probably just concentrate on doing the first one
right.
Questions? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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