Math 101

I'm sure all of us have wittnessed the flooding of our television waves, newspapers, etc. with this "Class of 2000, Class of the Millinium" mumbo jumbo as of late. Whether or not you were completely discusted and totally bored by it, or just didn't pay attention to the media milking another sappy human interest story for all its worth; did you notice that they had their dates a little off? The Class of 2000 is NOT the first class of the 21st century. Allow me to elaborate.

Think back, way back, to about, say, Kindergarten. In between naptime and snack time, chances are you picked up the concept of counting. Show us how much you've learned. Go ahead and rattle off the first ten or so numbers. Okay, that's enough. Stop already. Wasn't that fun? Okay, odds are you started with ONE and ended with TEN. Now, let's pretend that you were Gregory or whoever, way back in the day, making the first calendar. Calling on your fine command of kindergarten level math, you start numbering those years. You start with one, count a few, pretty soon you're at 100. So you're thinking (being the fine scholar you are) you'll call this first hundred years a century. When you get to 1000, you're struck with another flash of genius and call the first 1000 years the first millinium. Then (by now you're about 50) starting again with 1001, another thousand years roll by and suddenly, you're at the year 2000. and that's the end of the second millinium. Based on that logic, the next millinium would just happen to begin in the year . Since Greg here was smart enough to figure out that you could not have a year 0, he made the year 1 the beginning of the first millinim, 1001 the beginning of the second, and the begining of the third.

But, in the words of Lavar Burton (star of Reading Rainbow, in case, by some cruel twist of fate,you don't have PBS and don't know that) you don't have to take MY word for it. Ask Hillary Clinton. At the Democratic National Convention a couple of years ago, she said that she was honored that her daughter would graduate from college in the first class of the new millenium, in the year 2001. So, boys and girls, next time you see Dan Rather or whoever up there talking about the Class of 2000 and their "legacy", do me a favor and throw something at your television. Hard. And if you've got a problem now that you're math skills exceed that of the average news anchor, go talk to Hillary.

Enough of this, take me home!