by Robert Frenz

5 January 2000

It is no secret that I do not like Flush Limblow. I understand that he was a draft-dodger and his father's big bucks bought him all sorts of non-working class benefits. Moreover, his coterie of jews reveals why he is peddling a kosher variety of 'political incorrectness' he chooses to call 'conservatism'. He'll never be found wanting of idiots who hang on to his every word. Out of curiosity, I sometimes listen to his radio show but with the same profound attention I have when observing a dog piss on a fire hydrant.

The other day, he mentioned that the year 2000 A.D. was not the beginning of a millennium, but the ending of one. Thus, we are led to believe that whatever big bang is to occur, it is one year into the future. We are accustomed to having morons earn millions of dollars per year by chasing someone's balls around a pasture, and so fat-stuff Flush isn't really out of place. Besides, all the flap about the Y2K bug was one whereby two 9's changed to two 0's. When your car's odometer turns over from 99,999 to 00,000 no one expects the dash board to vaporize or UFOs to land on your hood. (You can tell that I own an older car.)

A millennium is a time period of 1000 years. A century encloses 100 years. A decade is a period of 10 years. A week is a period of 7 days and any given day belongs to some week and it is also the beginning, or ending, of any sequential batch of 7 days which suits your fancy.

I'll drop my discussion to the decade level for the argument holds true when we embrace a century or a millennium. THE millennium is that period of time when Christ will rule on earth. After that, who knows? If THE millennium is always mañana, then what difference does it make anyway?

The calendar we use is the Gregorian modification of the old Roman calendar -- the Julian. Most of the hocus pocus over calendars was done by the priesthood since they worried a lot about which day to feast and which day to butcher innocent life-forms in their sacrificial rituals. (Heck, if someone were REALLY sincere in his 'offering' of blood and guts, then he should offer HIMSELF, but the religious simply do not operate that way. The other fellow always pays.)

In A.D. (Anno Domini - a specified year of the Lord.) 463, Victorius of Aquitaine devised the Great Pashal (Passover) period. Later, Dionysius Exiguus took the year now called A.D. 532 and designated it at the first year of a new Great Pashal period. This then set the date of Christ's birth as 1 B.C. (before Christ). The Romans did not use a symbol for zero. The "X" we are familiar with represented what we call "10" where the zero is OUR convention and not one of the Romans'. Hasn't anyone ever noticed that when we were taught Roman numerals in the 4th grade, that there was no symbol to represent "nothing"? If zeroes were in use, then the year 1 BC would be equivalent to 0 AD -- the beginning! Christ effectively was born in 0 AD. Thus, the first decade of the Christian era, that is AD -- which MUST contain the year of the Christ birth or it wouldn't be called Christian -- began with year 0 and ended with year 9. BC 1 to AD 9, inclusive, is the 1st decade of the Christian era. BC 1 to AD 99, for a similar reason, is the 1st century of our era. As one's mind begins to grasp these facts, we can see why the years 1900-1999 are called the 20th century. The first 1000 years (millennium) were dated 1 BC to 999 AD; the second millennium, 1000 AD to 1999 AD and the third millennium, 2000 AD to 2999 AD.

Notice how this all fits into common convention. The 10's decades all have as the first of two numerals, a 1. Also keep in mind, that before the invention of the zero, a date such as 0 AD or 0 BC would be non-existent. The sequence was ..., 2 BC, 1 BC, 1 AD, 2 AD, ..., etc.

Who was responsible for the invention of the zero, and when? No one really knows but some theorize that it may have come from mud India where they believed that 'nothing' was a part of a real something, and hence, may have had a symbol for it. Around the 9th and 10th centuries, the expansion of mathematics in Europe forced the adoption of such a symbol for the sake of continuity and structure. The original Arabic symbol for the zero was a single dot -- a 'place holder' so to speak. A small circle was used to represent our present-day 5. 'One' has always been represented by a single vertical line and together with the 9, that's is all that remains of the original Arabic numerals. The Arabic "4" resembles a backward 3. The old symbol for 6 was 7. As so it goes.

Without being jump-started with his father's money, his ability to dodge inconvenient things such as an obligation to his country and his massive kosher connections, plus a willingness to observe the "party line", flatus face Flush would have remained on a bar stool of the local pub. Then again, a car salesman could have been his future.