I think if the ornithologist believes a duck is posting on the Lords blog, he should listen to what he has to say and ignore the fact he maybe a duck. After all duckism is probably covered in the law somewhere.

The ornithologist being wiser and seeing fault in the ducks argument will obviously educate said duck without lowering himself to duckism. Of course if the debate is only opinion, then all sides are valid are they not ?

Do you believe, Mr Holbrough, that such ornithologists should stick to a null hypothesis that quacking sounds and webbed footprints can be created ex nihilo from bushes and pond mud without any ducks being present?

Technically and factually Mr.Hughes is correct about the Millennium and the start of the decade. There is nothing at all pompous about stating that 1999 does not at all equal 2000.

I actually agree with your sentiment but not your aggressive tone which has been prevelent in a lot of your posts.

If Dates are meaningless as you stated it makes history worthless. If one can prove in a Court of Law that at the time of an offence no law existed to try someone it makes law inapplicable. If you read the article you`d note the last line reads:

“Done at Paris the tenth day of Floreal in the eleventh year of the French Republic; and the 30th of April 1803″.

Which includes a date other than 10th Floreal. Besides which when have you ever known a Government to stick to a Treaty when it`s not in their interest ?

Mr.Hughes may well have gone a little too far in the generalisation of attacking our education system in such circunstances. However attacking Mr. Hughes in such a personal way seems far more suited to the House of Commons than here.

We call the years 1960 to 1969 “The decade of the Sixties”, or “The decade of the nineteen sixties”. The years 2010 to 2019 will be called the “Twenty Tens”, the years 2020 to 2029 are “The Twenty Twenties” etc. This is not debatable! You cannot refer to the years 2021 to 2030 as “The Twenty Twenties”, in the same way that you cannot refer to someone’s life between 21 and 30 as their “Twenties”, the correct spans are the years 2020 to 2029, and ages 20 to 29.

This is by far the most common and implicitly understood usage of the word ‘decade’. There doesn’t need to be any reference to ‘the start of time’ or whatever, each of these decades stands on it’s own.

Further, there isn’t that much that is simple about the Gregorian calendars start date, and certainly not logical. It’s not even correct when it comes to the birth of Christ!

The Gregorian calendar is superseded by ISO 8601, which is a modern, logical, and scientific approach to dates and times, and also happens to be the one that tallies with “the man on the street’s common sense”. This has year 0AD (same year as 1BC), so there isn’t even any argument regarding centuries or decades either, they all turn when the significant digit changes. This is the system I use, and it seems to be the system that everyone else has “voted” (with their feet) to use as well (even if they don’t realise it) (witness the 2000 celebrations versus the year 2001 celebrations).

I have seen this ‘not the turn of the decade’ argument quite a bit on the internet, but I find it strange that the people arguing that decades run from x1 to 11 haven’t either qualified their statement, nor researched obvious patterns of use and dictionary definitions.

Finally, I believe we must turn our backs on pedantic complications whenever possible, and certainty when such complications fly in the face of both modern international standards, and common understanding.

The Gregorian calender is dead, long live ISO 8601!

Absolutely. Which is why I found the opinion that not only should everyone agree that the decade should begin on 1/1/2011, but that failure of the general public to agree this is the case must be traced to a “woeful public education system” to be, indeed, pretty damned pompous.

One can celebrate the new decade now, or next year, or indeed both, should one desire. If you hark from East Asia you might well be celebrating a new decade on January 15 on 2014. The point being that it doesn’t matter, and that people with a wide and broad education would, indeed, be well aware of the arbitrary nature of the calendar, and would take its little quirks and idiosyncrasies as idle diversions and intellectual curiosities – as I understand Lord Norton to be doing here – rather than a damning indictment of the educational system or, indeed, some method by which all history and law is rendered undone.

I mean, really sir. All history meaningless and law inapplicable? I refer you to Michael Berube’s satirical post in which he argues that the Louisiana Purchase be rendered void because it was signed in Paris on the tenth day of Floreal. The law is remarkably resilient when it comes to anachronistic calendars, which is why France has not recently come into possession of 40% of the North American mainland. And history, of course, remains steadfastly in the state of having happened.

People do take such umbrage, don’t they?

If dates are meaningless and arbitrary, history is worthless and law inapplicable. Of course one could take the philosophy further to state all life and numbers are meaningless except to individual humans who actually count for little in this great Universe, et al.

Of Course the year 2000 was also 4637 or 4698 depending whose counting system you used. Now you give me 240 pennies and I`ll give you a pound.

Being pompous, is surely, stating no one else`s view is correct except yours and doubting the others educational status based on solitary opinion.

Counting the calendar from 1 rather than 0 is a bit of esoterica which is of principle concern to historians, pedants and those who wish to do well at pub quizzes. Given as most of the public were not alive when the calendar rolled over from BC to BCE, to us what seems significant is the rolling over from one column to the next, of changing from 200X to 201X.

This also makes sense given our preferred way of referring to historical decades. One suspects that some pedants would insist that the year 1970 is part of the sixties – this is just confusing and would not be considered a reasonable use of the language by anyone who believes language exists to convey meaning rather than as a system of codes to declare status.

I have rather more concern with the educational status of people who choose to be pompous about arbitrary and meaningless dates than those who use the most obvious meaning as an excuse to have a good time. You are aware, Mr Hughes, aren’t you, that the turning over of the new decade is not a real event, and that the calendar is simply a convenient standard fiction? We could declare the new year on the 78th of Migglesworth if we wanted to. I would consider roundly educated people to be aware of this.