Any glance on social media, or the dregs of the remaining traditional media, will provide you with hours of clickbait articles on the best/worst/funniest/most outrageous events of the decade. The club has been guilty of it - putting out lists of the best wins/marks/goals of the decade. But there’s still a year to go.
Point this out to people on social media and they will frequently lose their minds. Yes, this is a source of massive pedantry for me, but I’ve been accused of not understanding how numbers work. Most enjoyable.
If you believe that the decade is about to end, let me explain. There was no year 0. So our calendar went from 1 BCE (or BC if you prefer) to 1 CE (AD). So the first year of the first decade was 1, the last was 10. Roll forward 2000 years, and we had a decade start in 2001, ending in 2010. This current decade started in 2011 and will end in 2020. There is a year to go.
This has been my public service announcement. Please join me in correcting the ignorant everywhere you go. This information will make you extremely popular on New Year’s Eve, where an “Ummm, actually…” is the best way to introduce the truth.
You make a lot of assumptions around the way the calendar works was set up? It was obviously backdated at some point, so to say there is no year zero assumes that the counting started in the way that suits you for a super pedantic argument. Prove that they didn’t go with “JC was born 500 years ago, so this is year 500”? Until then no argument that there was no year zero makes any sense.
We had this 20 years ago with people just wanting to be pedants for the sake of sounding smart. Just embrace it, because unless you have categorical proof that AD was 2019 years ago vs 2020 years ago then it’s just an argument about being “right”
I don’t really understand the point of this.
The start of the new thing is when the odometer ticks over to zero.
When people talk about the twenty-tens, they’re not going to be talking about 2020.
The same as every other decade.
I get that you’re right, I just hope that you get that nobody cares and with good reason.
That was such a momentous NYE, everyone was so excited/ terrified.
I spent it in a small beachside town, where there were some bands playing to a big crowd coming into midnight. Everyone was looking at their watches - “ten mins to go, five mins to go, oh my god only two mins to go” etc. Band still playing. Eventually people start to look around and check each other’s watches - “have you got midnight too?” Band still playing. Gets to about 5 past 12 - band still playing and crowd is now massively deflated/confused. Eventually about 10 past 12 someone walked into the stage and had to physically tap the band members on the shoulder, at which point they did a half arsed countdown from 4. Biggest letdown ever.
But now I know it wasn’t really the end of the decade anyway, so swings and roundabouts right?
I just ask people to count to 10. When they get to 9 they release it’s not 10 yet.
10 = a decade… they get it then!
It’s then a simple step to point out the next set of ten goes from 11 - 20…not 19…
Weeeell, it does if you’re using whole numbers and not numbers that are made up of 365 and a quarter parts.
Like you would for a person.
Edit: This only works if there’s no year zero.
Which is fine for a calendar. If you care about what happened 2000 years ago and think we should care about that.
There are ten years in a decade.
And when you count something’s age, you do actually start at zero.
On the second your child turns ten years old, that’s a decade.
You don’t go on and include the whole tenth year as part of that decade, that’s very silly.
