Our Modern calendarSupposedly based upon the birth of poor old Jesus himself, the modern calendar is known to be either four or seven years behind the actual date of His birth. The only two accounts of Jesus' birth to appear in the Christian Bible place the event "At the time of the census of Augustus Ceasar." The Romans, meticulous record-keepers that they were, leave us documentation that only two such censuses were taken during Augustus' reign. One was in the year 4 B.C.E. and the other in the year 7 B.C.E. Curiously, both were taken in the month of August. Religious fanatics and zealots who are convinced that the world will end 2000 years after their savior's birth have missed the blessed event; it took place in either 1993 or 1997! THIS nonsense is from Ted Turner, whose advertising geniuses don't seem to know the difference between one year and a thousand. We're entering the THIRD millennium, Ted! There are another 1,997,000 years until millennium 2000! The Millennium Doesn't Begin Until the Year 2001The modern calendar didn't begin at the year one, it began at the year zero. It's like saying that a couple isn't married at their wedding and that the marriage isn't valid until their first anniversary, or that a child's life doesn't begin when they're born, but when a single candle is lit on their little cupcake, at their first birthday. The third millennium of the common era begins at midnight of December 31st of 1999, which is 12:00 A.M. of January 1st, 2000.
* addendum to addendum: Even if the folks who are perpettrating this semantic nonsense were right, they'd still be wrong! Following their convoluted logic and pretending that poor little baby you-know-whom was born one year old, the first millennium would have been from 1 - 1000, the second from 1001 - 2001 and the third wouldn't begin until 2002! Furthermore, the twenty-first century wouldn't begin until 2022! The Y2k "Bug"In the first place, our society's infrastructures are not nearly so dependent upon computers as some geeks would like to beileve. In the second place, even if we were so computer dependent, a vast majority of the planet's human population can remember a time when there were no computers and would be able to figure out how to get things done with pencils, paper and clipboards! Th main thing to remember, though, is that when a computer rolls over to zeroes because that's the way it was programmed, it isn't a 'bug' at all! Sure, it's true that the contract between IBM and Microsoft that requires IBM to use MS DOS as the operating system in all IBM computers expires at midnight of December 31st of 1999, but DOS has already been dead since Apple introduced the GUI (graphical user interface) in 1985. The only real change will be that the deceased and obsolete operating system can now be burried! It is true that for many years all Microsoft software was written with two digit date codes in order for their software to expire simultainiouslly with the contract. Since the update of their Mac emulation Windows'95, though, Microsoft has gone to a four digit date code. As Bill Gates himself said when he introduced Windows'95, "Now your PC will run more like a Mac than ever before!" The obsolescence of DOS isn't news to anyone in the computer industry. It's common knowledge and IBM owns the very PowerPC chip that Apple uses in their Macintosh computers. Apple gets to use the chip because IBM can't, due to the contract mentioned above. The main drawback to the computer industry has been that Apple cannot license any other companies to build Mac clones as part of the agreement that allows them to use the PowerPC chip. In a few days, though, all of that changes. If you play the stock market, buy some stock in Motorola, who manufactures IBM's PowerPC chip for Apple! The REAL DangerAt any rate, millions of people are hoping that some sort of computer glitch will wipe out their bad credit, or even their traffic tickets. Doomsday freaks and religious nuts who want very desperatly for their particular god to rescue them from the mundane world around us are all hoping and praying for an end to their everyday lives. A very real danger exists that these people will freak out and run amok among the general populace when their imagined disasters fail to take place. That, however, isn't the worst-case-scenario... FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, is the only agency of the Federaal government with the power, granted by Presidential Decree, to suspend the Constitution of the United States. Whether any of the above conditions come to pass or not, it is entirely possible, some say "probable," that this agency will declare Martial Law and seize control. This could lead to a full-scale civil war... The worst case scenario that I can imagine for the first few days of the twenty-first century is for a knock to come at the front door and to hear someone say, "We're from the Government and we're here to help you."
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