Re: The Millennium Conundrum.

Joachim Feise (jfeise@XeNT.ics.UCI.edu)
Thu, 07 Jan 1999 13:27:14 -0800


I Find Karma wrote:
>
> I can't believe anyone would ask me to confirm when the new millennium
> begins. Surely this must be one of the signs of Apocalypse now...
>
> By the way, RobH is right: watch the news about Y2K fizzle at the
> beginning of next year the way all of the worries about the Euro went
> away a few days ago.

I still find it amazing that the whole world uses the Christian calender, which
is arbitrary anyway (historians think that Jesus was born some years BC).
Anyway, I recently got this piece about the Y0K problem, which puts a nice spin
on the problem:

Dear Cassius,

Are you still working on the Y zero K problem? This change from BC
to AD is giving us a lot of headaches and we haven't much time left. I
don't know how people will cope with working the wrong way around.
Having been working happily downwards forever, now we have to
start thinking upwards. You would think that someone would have
thought of it earlier and not left it to us to sort it all out at this last
minute. I spoke to Caesar the other evening. He was livid that Julius
hadn't done something about it when he was sorting out the calendar.
He said he could see why Brutus turned nasty.

We called in the consulting astrologers, but they simply said that
continuing downwards using minus BC won't work. As usual, the
consultants charged a fortune for doing nothing useful. As for myself,
I just can't see the sand in an hour glass flowing upwards. We have
heard that there are three wise men in the East who have been
working on the problem, but unfortunately they won't arrive until it's
all over.

Some say the world will cease to exist at the moment of transition.
Anyway we are still continuing to work on this blasted Y zero K
problem and I will send you a parchment if anything further develops.

Vale. Plutoniu