Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for December 31, 2019

A difference without distinction.

either way, we’re screwballed.

The world will end in decadence.

NASA engineers figured that they could land a man on the moon by 1967. Then they told Kennedy “No, No, No, you can’t put that in a speech. You have to leave yourself wiggle room in case something goes wrong. Say end of decade.”

I was reading comments on an article about the best of the decade & the annoying pedants that were complaining that the decade isn’t over for another year were out of control. Give it up already!

It’s reassuring to know that World’s End is in Berkshire England.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_End,_Berkshire

Guy’s, the world will end when you 2 will meet.

As true as it is, not enough people give a crap – put a 0 on the end, and it’s new, period.

It seems to be a matter of common consent that the twentieth century consisted of only ninety-nine years. If we accept that, then the decade ends tonight. I’m an engineer, so I don’t accept it.

In this corner we have the Vernacular Viper! In the other corner it’s the Professor of Pain! Are you ready to rumble?

Not even the so-called experts agree on when a decade ends. Some say it starts on Jan. 1, 2020, but some say it starts on Jan. 1, 2021 because there was no year zero.

Wow, don’t know which pedants you meant #strictures but you sure did release the math nerds among us. Happy New Year.

Let’s put it this easy way – start counting on your fingers. Where’s the finger that’s counted and ends with a zero? It isn’t the one you start with is it? If you don’t get that I’ll bet people show you another finger fairly often.

The decade of the 20’s begins in 2020. Period.

The beginning of a decade really depends on when you think the century began: either 2000 or 2001. If 2000, then the next decade begins on 2010, otherwise, 2011. The same for the next decades.

Environmentalists at arms.

The world does not end this year. A new era begins. The 20s!! Woo Hoo!!!!

Decade just means 10 years, it isn’t tied to history. “The decade” for me is the ten years where the number in the tens column is constant. I’m much younger than many of the other commenters, so I wasn’t around for year 1.

The teen decade does not end until 31 December 2020. However, since the masses has been ignoring the decade rule for over half a century, it’s time to redefine.

I’ve come to believe…only intelligent people enjoy the funny papers. For the most part anyway.

A bunch of vocal people are wrong. Therefore we must chance reality!

The beat goes on.The beat goes on ;)

The good news is only the nutbag religious zealots believe the end is nigh, and of course they have been wrong thousands of times.

The use of computers made the year ending in “o” the start of a new century, as those of us that had a computer in 2000 should remember.

(believes the last years of decades for a certain calendar system often referenced as the “Gregorian calendar” ought to end with the number “9”)

There is no such thing as time. There are only events.

The CW ARROWVERSE “Crisis on Infinite Earths” has a really funny scene where a guy holding a “The End is Near” sign stares in horror as the wave of antimatter destruction destroys everything around him, then he goes to powder, too.

Allow me to recommend “Questioning the Millennium” by Stephen Jay Gould, subtitled “A Rationalist’s Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown”; written for the occasion of the start of the third millennium. Allow me also to point out that during what is known as the year one, precisely no one considered that year to be “the year one”. The calendar system in which that year is defined was developed a few hundred years later. Gould’s “resolution” of the millennial dispute, based on his autistic son’s day/date computing algorithm (which Gould deduced with much study) is an intriguing solution to a completely artificial dilemma.

The century starts on the one. The decade starts on the zero. as in the 20’s, the 30’s etc.

The 40s, the 50s, the 60s; now those were decades. The idea that current decades have distinct identities went out with the idea of daily news cycles tied to newspaper printing schedules. Give or take a year, it doesn’t matter much.

How old are we when born?

It’s the end of the decade known as the 2010s just like 1999 was the end of the century known as the 1900s. It is not the end of the 202 decade of the Common Era until the end of 2020 (just like the 20th century ended in 2000), but who counts those? Anyone?

Having read all of the above comments, I have only one (1) thing to say about this subject – January 1, 2020 is the start of the new decade; and hopefully, the clowns in Congress will regain their sanity; but I am not going to hold my breath waiting; ALL 535 OF THEM SHOULD BE PRIMARIED!!!!!!

Year zero? That didn’t use “0” back then…

Sure, as soon as there’s a calendar that starts with Year Zero. And we’re more like pendants, always hanging around.

Did it ever occur to the people with those signs that some people might actually be happy if the world would just end already?

so the 2020’s will NOT be the 3rd decade of this century but one year in the 2nd decade and 9 in the 3rd… Life’s complicated enough. If it starts with 202x, it’s in the decade.

A major source of confusion here is the different ways we number the years, and our ages. We number the year by the year we are in, aka this is the 2019th year we are in. The first 2020 years will not be complete until the end of the year 2020. How-so-whom-ever, we number our age by the number of years we have already completed. So if you were born in the year one, you would be zero years old. And in 2019, you would be 2018 years old, plus change. And you would be in your 2019th year. Perfectly simple, and perfectly annoying!

SERIOUS REQUEST

If anyone reading here has any input at NASA or SpaceX, ask them not to begin a Martian colony’s calendar with year 1 beginning on the date of landing.

Instead, make the Martian years go from northern winter solstice to winter solstice and make landing day happen sometime in YEAR ZERO.

(Don’t make Martians suffer the way we do.)

Oh, come one. Didn’t we just fight this out in the Agnes comments a couple of days ago? Here we go again.

Happy New Year! Hoping 2020 is a year of clear vision filled with insight!

20 years ago, there was a controversy as to whether the 21st century would begin after the last stroke of midnight of 1999 or 2000. Artur c. Clarke was a leading proponent of the latter, for obvious reasons.

As a programmer, I know that the counting numbers start with 0. I bet nobody thinks this century started in 2001. Intervals start as soon as the next larger wheel on the odometer clicks over. (and how many of y’all have to dredge through an old memory to picture that?).

It all depends on whether you believe Haysus was born in Year Zero or Year One.

Good one.I always start with when my kids were young there were a month six months… Not a year and x months. BUT year 0 has been moved around, who cares about the calendar on the wall

I’m with, and I don’t want to politicize this, the profit on the right. Ugh.

I’m ok with not teaching math or science in high school. Best way I know to get them to vote Republican.

“The year zero does not exist in the Anno Domini (AD) system commonly used to number years in the Gregorian calendar and in its predecessor, the Julian calendar. In this system, [determined by Bede in 731] the year 1 BC is followed by AD 1.However, there is a year zero in astronomical year numbering (where it coincides with the Julian year 1 BC) and in ISO 8601:2004 (where it coincides with the Gregorian year 1 BC), as well as in all Buddhist and Hindu calendars.”

Correct. Bede was wrong in 731, and his error has been propagated by absolutists who can not (or refuse to) understand how the base-ten numeric system works. That does not make it right, or a valid argument. Besides, Bede was guessing about the dating system. He subscribed to the same error that says that 10 is the tenth count in the decimal system. It’s not, it’s the eleventh, because counting starts with zero, not 1. Enumerating starts with 1, and is not the same thing. Just because he was a cleric, everyone assumed he was infallible, which was stupid because he was Human.

Can I put this “date” thing into perspective: When a child is born is it one year or is it in it’s 1st year, by weeks or months?BC to AD had no mid point and AD started at one plus days, weeks and months.Don’t forget the missing days when the Pope Gregory calender started…