...is absolutely irrelevant, as are all the other hogwash excuses for believing in the mass pre-millennium stupidity.

1) With or without a concept of zero, we always start counting with one. The first item of any series is item #1. My first point here is numbered point #1, not point #0. The first day is day 1. The first month is month 1. How could any sane person believe the first year would be something other than year 1?

2) It doesn't matter if year 1 REALLY ever existed. Dates are not "flexible." You don't write something on your check plus or minus 531 years. Today is 1/7/2001, period. The 531 year argument says we never celebrate anything because we never know when anything is. Buckets and buckets of hogwash. The number 2001 is a very specific number, whether it's accurate or not. The world celebrated the start of the third millennium at a very specific time. Specifically, at the beginning of the 2000th year, the last year of the second millennium according to the calendar we all use.

3) Christ wasn't born at the stroke of midnight 01/01/01 either. So what? See point #2.

4) I haven't made my 4th point yet. It hasn't been made when I put the "4)" in the list. It's made when I put the last period after the last sentence in the 4th point. That's my 4th point. I can't move on to my 5th point until I FINISH making my 4th point. OK, I'm done now.

5) I have no 5th point. This was all beat to death a year ago, when multitudes of educators, philosophers, reporters, and outright idiots couldn't tell the difference between an odometer roll, when all the digits change, and the simple act of counting the 2000th year. People the world over blew an opportunity to celebrate two different significant events two years in a row. They wadded it up into one over-hyped event, and did a damn poor job of it because the Y2K sky was falling.

7) Welcome to the new world order, where counting is subjective. I spent months beating my keyboard until my fingers bled, and the fools still won. I vowed on 0/0/2000 to never put two words in sequence on the subject of millenniums, and I haven't broken that vow since. I'm damned sure not going to start now!