Luc says:

Father is right. If this decade was counted from 2000 to 2009 and the previous decade was counted from 1990 to 1999, then the very first decade AD would have to have been counted from 0 to 9. Which doesn’t make any sense, because there has never been a “zero” year. Our current calendar has been counting from 1, i.e. the first year after the birth of Christ. The previous year is 1 BC.

By Skeptic’s faulty logic, the first decade would have had 9 years: from 1 to 9. The year 10 would belong in the second decade, from 10 to 19. Nine years a decade does not make. The first decade is counted from 1 to 10, the second decade from 11 to 20 and so on, until the current decade is counted from 2001 to 2010.

Skeptic has become attached to the same stupid notion that permeates computer programming, that we must count things from zero, with basically two goals:

1) Be pedantic about Math just because you studied Computer Science and you’re very proud of it, like a teenager wearing their Uni’s jersey;

2) Increase the likelihood of off-by-one errors in array handling; OR making array iteration or element picking all the more annoying by forcing programmers to write constant adjustments such as {while/for (size_of_array – 1)}…

Counting from zero, save in Math theory and mental masturbation, is an astonishingly bad idea. It just gets in the way, it doesn’t make anything easier or more accurate.

The general public isn’t usually familiar with Math or computer programming. The general public usually figures “the 80s” must be the years that begin with an 8 just because it’s what it sounds like. You probably may refer to those years that way, that’s fine and usually irrelevant, but let it be clear that that particular decade began in January 1981 and finished in December 1990. The general public doesn’t get that right out of laziness in their thinking. It’s another kind of “off-by-one” error.

Luc says:

No, by my logic that was the first year, hence year number 1. The previous year is 1 BC, equivalent to “minus 1,” but there is no “year zero” in History.

Skeptic says:

Luc, logic doesn’t make a year disappear. A mistake does. Now adjust your toga and bow to Imperator Caesar Augustus.

Regardless of your illogical hold on ancient mistakes, you are now a minority. Check any major newspaper.

Skeptic says:

Thomas, good one. I would take that even further. Every year since the beginning of the universe, has been the beginning of a decade.

Uncle Patso says:

#1 Todd Peterson:
“What is crappy about the decade? It has been one of the best in recorded history.”

I’ll have some of what he‘s having!

Goodbye and good riddance to the Aughts!

Maybe it’s just rose-colored glasses (or Hope), but I expect things to continue to slowly improve this year.

Best wishes for a good 2010, everyone!

FRAGaLOT says:

You know what? It’s always been shitty.

I’m tired of hearing people, being all nostalgic, about how good things were in the “good old days.” I submit to you all that there never were “good old days…”

We have been in a perpetual turmoil, epidemics, crisis after crisis, and always hearing the phrase “In these troubled times…” all the time for millennia. Yet trying to make it seem as if that phrase was invented just recently?

If the past was really all that great, then the bible would read like a child’s fairy tail, and would end with “happily ever after” but it didn’t! The world has been fucked up since the dawn of time. Pull your head out of the past (or your ass) and DEAL WITH today, Please! thank you.

Sesame Terrace Poop Scoop says:

Why doesn’t your photo have a Cr to replace the H?

Fik says:

@ Uncle Dave.
And as usual everywhere, there is someone complaining and not proposing solutions. You may start by trying to steer this discussion toward solving the world’s problems, if you think that would help even a little.
ps. This was a crappy decade indeed.