We obviously have too much time on our hands if all we need to sort out are niceties such as this. That said, there seems to be the usual pedantry at work in this debate. Numbers and numbering systems adapt to their functions, at least to an extent.
We start at zero, I suppose, but we don't count in whole numbers till we get to one. That's why babies get to be aged nine months. Then we reckon age by the past reckoning of years. If I say I'm 40 that's in the past, of course. I'm really going on 41.
Decades, then, if we start at zero old JC kicked it off way back by being, however miraculously, born. He didn't get round to doing all his founding a religion stuff till year 30. Three years later he was on the cross. You know the rest.
More recently, 2000 started the decade just gone and 2009 marked the end of it when the year of that name (or number) ended. 2010 was just the name we gave to the year of counting 2011, which didn't get its name till it ended and the year of counting 2012 began. And that's where we are now.
It all depends on the idea I've just floated concerning the year of counting. Here we are in March 2011, that is, quarter past 2011. Here it is for me, quarter past eleven. Is this the eleventh hour? Or is it the twelfth that's just not finished yet.
You decide. It's taken me since New Year's in Dallas Texas to work this out and I'm still not sure the debate is settled. Are we one year into the second decade of the twenty-first century or only in the first year of it? Jeez, I don't know.
Am I become 21st Century Schizoid Man? Most likely.
© BH 2011
I rest my case.
No comments:
Post a Comment