Hey, I'm not making this stuff up, you know. Mathematics has been around a lot longer than me. It's been around longer than the calendar we're abusing. If you're going to count the FIRST decade, it just seems logical you would start counting with the FIRST year. The only question is, what was the number assigned to the first year of the calendar in current popular use in the USA? (OK, we could also ask if they ever skipped any years, or repeated any, but that question is just as silly.) If the first year was numbered 1, just like the first day or the first of anything else man has ever numbered, then we are right, and we will reach the "New Millennium" (and THE 21st century) on 2001.

Frankly, I don't mind so much people CALLING next year the new millennium, as I do that they actually BELIEVE it. For all the gains in public education over the last 100 years, we seem to have a very mathematically challenged society today.