You can clearly see by this table that the FINAL year in any sequence is always the one ending with 0. However, let’s do the centuries since you can probably relate to them better. We’ll list all of the centuries provided by our AD calendar thus far so that we can help Whoopi see that someone gave her bad information.

As you can clearly see the 20th century will not end until AFTER the year 2000 which is its final year. The 21st century does not begin until the year 2001. But let’s do the easiest of them all (and yet the most misunderstood) -- The Millenniums.

SEE!!!

The next Millennium clearly doesn’t begin until the year 2001.

Please don’t try to argue that a millennium is a period of 1,000 years and so a new millennium could actually start in the year 2000 AD. Well, by that logic a new millennium could start every single day. Why not celebrate the start of a new millennium right now? WOOHOO!

The reason that many people are so willing to believe that it begins in the year 2000 is either do to the fact that the year will begin with a 2 instead of a 1 for the first time since the year 200 AD OR they have confused the Y2K issue to somehow mean a new millennium is going to begin. It could also be that the media is not doing simple mathmatics justice. But it is certainly the media that is announcing next year will begin the new millennium.

I am sure that those who have come to believe this hype to be true will not want to change their manner of thinking. Once most people get an idea in their head they will defend it with great effort even if they can plainly see it to be incorrect. And certainly there are those who think people who try to show the correct information (as I am here) are just being anal. However, the trend of intentionally mispelling words in product names or incorrectly identifying data is quickly becoming an issue that I think imposes serious repercussions on the way our children are learning as they grow up. If we continue about our business with a lackadaisical attitude toward our responsibility in this trend then how can we expect our children’s attitudes to do anything but worsen as they age? There has to come a point when you say for the good of my fellow man this is the correct method by which a process is accomplished.

Only the show Seinfeld seemed to get it right when Jerry explained to Newman that the next millennium didn’t start until the year 2001 and so Newman’s Millennium party scheduled for December 31st, 1999 was going to be a year early and therefore lame.

Please don’t try justifying the issue by saying that some president made an honorary declaration that would make the year 2000 the start of the new millennium...blah blah blah!. BOLOGNA! No human being has the power to adjust the years nor simple math nor the manner in which the earth orbits the sun!!!

I am not saying the year 2000 will not be special. If that is what you are looking for then listed below are some reasons why it is going to be special...However, it is clearly NOT going to be the beginning of the next millennium.

What is Special about the year 2000?

• It will be the last year of both the 2nd Millennium and 20th Century. (It will also be the last year of the 200th decade but that seems irrelevant).

• It will be the first time since the year 200 AD that the year will begin with a 2.

• It will be the first time since the year 2000 BC that a 4 digit year has began with a 2. (That’s 4000 years!!)

• It will be the first time since the year 1000 AD that there have been 3 zeros in a year number.

• Many computers will melt down and fail to work because the people who originally programmed them didn’t realize the world would still exist in the year 2000. Actually they forgot that a computer might think 01/01/00 was January 1st, 1900 instead of January 1st, 2000. Since computers are so smart and they know computers didn’t exist in the year 1900 they will stop working. (That last sentence was blatantly Not True!!)

• It will be the beginning of the 2000’s.
  I hope that doesn’t sound confusing. Here is a brief explanation of what I mean by that:

  The 20th century was the year 1901 to 2000. However, the 1900’s were the years 1900 to 1999.

  This is because you are defining the selected years by matching the definition of their selection term.

  By saying the 1900’s you have defined any year that was part of the the 1900s. This would be 1900 to 1999.

  However, the 20th century is not 1900 to 1999. This is because the year 1900 is the last year of the 19th century. The 20th century is 1901 to 2000. This is, again, because the year ending with a 0 is and MUST be the final calendar year in the sequence of years due to the simple fact that there was no year 0 AD.