Sonic Youth Gossip - View Single Post - Does it annoy anyone else that everyone thinks a decade ends in the 9th year?

!@#$%! · 10.08.2019, 07:15 PM

rob would have been right if talking about centuries.

the series of years is composed of natural numbers. there is no year zero, and at the middle of year 1 a whole year has not passed yet. the first century runs from the beginning of year 1 to the end of 100.

and so yes, if you’re calling centuries by their ordinal number, y2k was the end of the 20th not the beginning of the 21st. arthur c. clarke got this.

but the mathematical refutations given to rob don’t apply.

because decades in the context he addresses are not named by their order. the 80s are not “the 8th decade” of anything. the 80s are just the 10 years that start with 8. a decade can fall any place you wanna pick it, really.

but anyway. this board had some good fucking times a decade or so ago. reading this shit still makes me laugh.

10.08.2019, 07:15 PM	#90
!@#$%! invito al cielo Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: mars attacks Posts: 42,468	rob would have been right if talking about centuries. the series of years is composed of natural numbers. there is no year zero, and at the middle of year 1 a whole year has not passed yet. the first century runs from the beginning of year 1 to the end of 100. and so yes, if you’re calling centuries by their ordinal number, y2k was the end of the 20th not the beginning of the 21st. arthur c. clarke got this. but the mathematical refutations given to rob don’t apply. because decades in the context he addresses are not named by their order. the 80s are not “the 8th decade” of anything. the 80s are just the 10 years that start with 8. a decade can fall any place you wanna pick it, really. but anyway. this board had some good fucking times a decade or so ago. reading this shit still makes me laugh.
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