CKNW Editorial
for December 29, 1999

Shall we try it just one more time? I hesitate to do it because most letters to the editor lately have talked about when the end of the millennium is and I suspect most people are simply excited at the change of the calendar from 19 something to 2000. I think I must try again because if nothing else, it makes those who can't count real angry. I lose my own cool a bit in frustration.

The case for the millennium ending on Friday was put most succinctly by one Terry Stellar in the Vancouver Province yesterday. Would that Mr Stellar's mathematics were as stellar as his name. He says this "Just as with all measuring devices the very first calendar must have been year 0 so, at the end of 1999 we will have completed 2000 calendar years."

Sounds great ... why of course all measuring devices start with zero, right?

The problem is, Terry, they don't. None of them do. Not a one.

Let me tell you where you go wrong and then you can look for yourself and see that I'm right.

Thermometers start with a line called 0 dividing plus from minus. Yardsticks start from a line called zero – there is no zero millimeter. Gas tanks and odometers have a line called zero - all measuringdevices do that. The trouble is, Terry, that 0 is not a number but an arithmetical device to show where the starting line is. That’s all.

Now Terry, go back and look at those measuring devices and you’ll see what I mean. The moment you put your foot on the accelerator your car moves from the line called 0 into Kilometer #1. Look closely at that thermometer of yours, Terry, and you will see that there is no degree called 0. Move one way and it is the first degree above zero or degree #1 or the first one below. Look closely at that odometer again. There is no 0 Kilometer, just a line to show where speed starts to be measured. Look at your yardstick - there is no zero millimeter - just a line then the commencement of millimeter #1.

Thus it is with time. Suppose, Terry, you and I were all powerful and were to decree that time were to start when we fired a gun. Until that gun was fired, that is to say until there was some time to record, we would be at the line called 0. But the moment that gun was fired we would be in the first second of the first minute of the first day of Year #1.

You have to understand, Terry, that 0 standing by itself indicates no quantity whatever. It is only the artificial starting point like the line runners start from in a race. In fact, that’s a good analogy for those runners don’t pass through 0 meter but the moment the gun goes off start into meter #1 and they don’t stop until they have completed meter 2000 in a 2000 meter race. Are you beginning to see Terry? The runner who, starting at point zero, thought that the first meter was meter 0 and quit after running 1999 meters would lose for stopping too soon. You simply must get it through your head, Terry, that you cannot have a zero meter, degree, or year. Zero is merely the name we give to the starting line.

Calendars work just like starting lines in races. At the start of the first millennium the first nano second took us into Year #1. If you accept, Terry – and accept you must - that there can no more be a year 0 than a 0 kilometer and that the first year was year #1, then it follows that at this moment we are in our 1999th year just ending, that we must complete the year 2000 and that the millennium therefore ends on December 31, 2000.

Think of it as a 2000 page book. You do not finish the book at the bottom of page 1999 but the bottom of page 2000.

Just one more thing, Terry. Back to your measuring devices. If there was a 0 kilometer you could run your car into a wall yet not be moving. You could warm the meat without any heat. And, if you were a grocer, you could sell eggs 11 to the dozen. Terry – there was not and could not be a year 0 any more than, when counting out my eggs you would go 0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11 and try to convince me I had a dozen eggs. Just as there is no egg 0 there is no year 0 for the simple reason 0 connotes no quantity at all.

No Terry, you are wrong not just by my say so but by the say so of every scientist in the world and by everyone who can count. But take heart, old chap, you've got lots of company. And have a Happy New Year but save a bottle of that bubbly so you can celebrate the real Millennium, along with my birthday, incidentally, on December 31, 2000 as the clock takes us into January 1, 2001 and the beginning of the third millennium.