Count your fingers

The popular media have been screaming that a new decade is here. As soon as the calendar hit 2010 we entered the new decade, right? Wrong.

The present decade still has a year to go. Rationale? History is divided into two epochs: B.C. and A.D., with no year zero between. The first A.D. decade began with the number 1 and ended with 10. The second decade the same, etc.

A disruption of this progression could have been the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582 A.D., but no disruption took place. This is because the Gregorian mathematicians believed that a decade must begin with 1 and end with zero.

And so it has come down to us. Our current decade began in 2001 and will end in 2010. To corroborate this, count your fingers. The first finger is not zero, but one. When you get to 10, the count is complete. (Don’t stop with nine and call it 10.) Now try your toes. Same result.

Look at your first year of life. It was not zero, but 1. When you lived 10 full years you were 10 years old. Basic stuff.

Welcome to the final year of the first decade of the 21st century.

Jack A. Jennings

Spokane