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Rather churlish
I am really tired of this 2000 vs. 2001 thing ... or, as I have taken to calling it, the False Millennium Rant.
Before you get your back up, Shmuel, I am not just talking about you. Nonelvis is actually the primary offender. She gets annoyed by this about once an hour these days.
Several people sent me the line from the recent X-Files episode, where Scully goes off on the Rant and Mulder says, "Nobody likes a math geek, Scully."
Indeed.
Look, all you 2001 purists: You win. Okay? No, no, that's not just a sop to you. I believe you have achieved a moral and intellectual victory. There have been so many disclaimers inserted into so many articles and stories by now ("We feel obligated at this point to note that the new millennium does not really begin until 2001") that I don't think there's a single person over the age of fifteen in this country who doesn't know the truth.
(Or maybe I'm having another Allegory of the Cave moment, expecting people to know something they don't. Oh, well.)
Let me try it again, then, more judiciously: I think that most reasonably aware people do know, in the back of their heads if nowhere else, that the millennium actually starts in 2001. Okay? Your message-unit has been successfully conveyed to the masses.
Now hush up.
As I said way back when, despite when the millennium actually begins, the obvious time to have a party is when the first digit in the odometer rolls over - and that's the way it's going to be. Just sit back and calm down.
After all, as Smithsonian noted this month, even the Royal Observatory in Greenwich - the people who know time better than anyone - is going with the flow. "When the zeros come," chief horologist Jonathan Betts is quoted as saying, "we're going to be celebrating ahead of schedule along with everyone else. It would be rather churlish not to, wouldn't it?"
Indeed again.
© Columbine
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