... in this situation, Bob.

Unlike the issue of whether something is "rare" <g>, this is not a matter of opinion (or perception, either, for that matter). It's simple math. If you were taking a test in school and an exam question asked, "How many years are there in a millennium?", the answer 999 would be WRONG.

Would I be "right" or "wrong" if I said Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1940? Or JFK was assassinated November 22, 1962? Or that the Declaration of Independence was promulgated on July 4, 1775? Each would be just as logical as saying that the new mellennium occurred on January 1, 2000. And just as wrong.

Situational ethics, which allows people to escape personal responsibility for virtually any "wrong", cannot be applied to the hard sciences, of which math is one.

>> Call it the beginning of the new millennium, call it the beginning of the end of the last, it really doesn't matter, because it can be seen as both. It is arbitrary Larry. <<

The calendar we now use was only arbitrary at the moment it was created by Dionysius; once he fixed the starting point as 1-1-1 (which we know he did since there was no zero then), arbitrariness was eliminated. Everything else follows with precise mathematical certainty. Some people may not like it and it may be more "fun" to think of the rolling over of the zeros as an event of some mystical significance (it's not); but the fact of the matter is, it IS wrong to call this the start of the new millennium of the Christian calendar.

Now, whether or not the subject is worth arguing over IS a matter of opinion, about which it would be possible to disagree! <g>

BTW, see some of my early posts on this subject, in which I pointed out with some specificity just how arbitrary this particular calendar is (I listed as many of the other calendar years as I could find).

Also, see my January 1999 ChipBox on Chequers Magazine to see just how long I've been railing against this error. Ah, never mind, I'll just reproduce the excerpt here -- this was in my column of "RunTy Awards" for 1998:

>> "Pointless Chip Set of the Year"

The Award goes to:

The Lodge, Black Hawk, CO , and

Four Queens, Las Vegas, NV

jointly, for their 13 chip sets of "Countdown to the Millenium" Chips. Although these chips were not actually issued in 1998, plans for them were announced during the year and I can't wait until next year to hand out this award (though I may give them another one next year, too).

Each of these sets will consist of one chip per month for January 1999
through January 2000. The sets are pointless because they purport to
"countdown to the millenium", BUT the millenium doesn't start until January
2001, so they are actually "Counting Down to the Year Before the Millenium"!
[Nevertheless, the first of the Four Queens chips is quite attractive and I
intend to buy a set.] <<

P.S. I did buy the Four Queens set, though the quality of the chips deteriorated for several months in the middle of the year.

----- jim o\-S