You are wrong and not man enough to admit it. The current international standard for dates (ISO 8601) has year zero. Since you stated that we are talking about calendar systems that is exactly what I am doing, talking about the currently accepted and used calendar system which has year zero. We are not talking about Anno Domini. There's none so blind as them that won't see...Originally Posted by Marko
Any definitive references to this? Not saying it was one way or the other -- it just makes more sense to me to start on the year 00. Year 1 of the new era (AD), would then be from 00 to 01.
By saying the calender starts on 1-1-01, then the year 1BC would then start on 1-1-00, which seems a bit odd. To base the calender on the birth of Jesus, it seems to be logical to have that date be 00 like any other number line. A year before Jesus' birth would then be 1BC and a year after his birth would be 1AD. Of course, this would be the logical way to do it, but as with things religious, and man in general, the logical is often ignored
It is easy to see how things become so confusing, with the calender being such an arbitrary thing in the first place.
Marko, you are technically correct that world authorities have established 1/1/xxx1 00:00:01 as the start of each new year, decade, centure, etc. The US Navy agrees with you, NASA agrees with you, all the worlds computers agree with you. However, popular culture does not agree with you and if you ask 100 people, 99 of them will tell you that we're on the verge of a new decade, because it how we typically count numbers. Hence, the 80's, 90's etc. The argument is really who gets to decide: Standards bureaus or the populace?
the history of calendar systems is massively complicated and the BC/AD calendar did infact go from 1BC to 1AD without a zero inbetween. But that is not what is now used as the international date standard. It now uses zero but zero is equivalent to what 1BC used to be. So counting from zero, the end of the first decade is equivalent to the old AD 9. But that is totally irrelevant because we are not using the BC/AD calendar for international date systems, we are using the ISO 8601 standard which runs from zero. In his ignorance Marko seems to think the calendar is attached to the Birth of Jesus. It isn't. It is loosely alligned with it but not tightly aligned to be able to claim that the calendar in use runs from year 1. So he is wrong and anyone else who thinks the internationally accepted calendar runs from 1/1/1 is also wrong.
My understanding of ISO 8601 is that it defines year zero as a positive value for computing, but not as a definition in establishing the start of a millenium. Reread the standard, I haven't looked at it in a bit.
Damn the logic! Full speed ahead!
Who else is planning on photographing on the first day of the coming year?
I was going to but after reading this thread I'm confused about what exactly "first day" means. I used to think it was January 1 but now I think maybe it's actually January 0.
Brian Ellis
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you do criticize them you'll be
a mile away and you'll have their shoes.
It's worse than you think: Y2.1KOMG, Y2K all over again.!
Just don't forget to one-out your camera movements!
Jan 1 weather forecast calls for light rain and 11 mph winds, while the next day is just cloudy and 2 mph winds. So by all logical considerations I should wait until the 2nd. But the hell with it, if I can't photograph much on the 1/1, I'll go back up to the redwoods again on 1/2!
Vaughn
I provided a link from a authoritative (enough) source (NASA).
It is both arbitrary (regarding the starting point) and relative (to that point), but once we adopt it, then it starts making sense. The pivotal and determinant event was singular in nature and did not take nowhere near full year to complete, so in that context, it is perfectly logical to to have both year one before it and year one after. Not to mention that year 00 is an abstraction invented much later in the course of history to better organize computer data...
We are, of course, talking about officially and popularly accepted calendar based first on Julian and then Gregorian calendar.
And as far as I know, it is NOT based on Jesus' birth but on vernal equinox and, by extension, the date of Easter. So the year before Jesus' birth would actually be 2 B.C., while 1 B.C. would be the year of his birth and 1 A.D. the year of his alleged resurrection. Or something along those lines, I am not religious enough to bother with those kinds of details.
I do not think of myself as a consumer and never cared much about the oxymoron called "popular culture" so I am quite happy to have the likes of NASA, standards bureaus and the computer science agree with me. The "populace" can have all the sales events they want whenever they want them, for all I'm concerned...
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