A Date With Tim Peters...

[Ivan Van Laningham]

Hi All--

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> 
> Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> [2000 vs 2001 as the start of the new millenium]
> > Doesn't matter about the base; to celebrate 2000 years you have to have
> > them. As there's no zero A.D. even C programmers will find it difficult
> > to dig up the extra year.  Year 2000 bi-milleniallists should celebrate
> > the start of the 2000'th year next January; then they can celebrate the
> > beginning of the new millenium in 2001. Mere digit preferentialists can
> > do as they please, personally I'm going to try and wait for 2222.
> 
> I propose to retroactively introduce a year 0 AD. Just use the currently
> 1 BC for it and substract 1 from all BC numbers. Besides, we should be
> using negatives for BC anyway.
> 

Actually, since there were no Gregorian years before the Gregorian
calendar was introduced in 1582, and since the practice of dating from
the incarnation was begun by Dionysus Exiguus in or around 532 AD (or
754+532 = 1286 AUC), _all_ dates that refer to 1BC, 1AD, 0 CE, -1CE or
pretty much _anything_ before 532 are _proleptic_, that is, applied
retroactively to times before the calendars they refer to existed.

In such a case, there is no reason whatsoever to throw out the
retroactive application of a year 0 when you're already  using a
proleptic calendar anyway.  It's just pettifoggery; "I know better than
you."  Humbug.

> After all as far as I understand nobody knows when Christ was born exactly
> anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Historians will just have to adapt,
> their fault for coming up with such a bizarre system in the first place. :)
> 

Yah, yah, blame the victims.  ;-)

> Proposal-has-been-sent-to-the-W3C-ly yours,
> 
> Martijn
> --
> History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
> No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?
>

<hey,-what-about-ww0-and-ww-minus-1????>-ly y'rs,
Ivan;-)
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
Author:  Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours
----------------------------------------------