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The Last Known Person Born in the 19th Century Dies in Japan at 117 (kottke.org)

Jason Kottke: As of 2015, only two women born in the 1800s and two others born in 1900 (the last year of the 19th century) were still alive. In the next two years, three of those women passed away, including Jamaican Violet Brown, the last living subject of Queen Victoria, who reigned over the British Empire starting in 1837. Last week Nabi Tajima, the last known survivor of the 19th century, died in Japan at age 117.

96 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by iggymanz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wrong, mr. russian goat hole. 1900 was the last year of the 19th century. The first century went from 1 to 100 A.D., and so the 19th goes from 1801 to 1900.

  2. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by sgtsquid · · Score: 1

    Please be patient, GP has autism.

  3. No witnesses anymore, so there! by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Funny

    19th century didn't happen, totally fake news by the Fake News Media and overpaid WRONG government scientists. so sad.

    1. Re:No witnesses anymore, so there! by WoodstockJeff · · Score: 1

      You're forgetting that there HAS to have been a 19th century, or else it's harder to prove that man is responsible for climate change!

    2. Re:No witnesses anymore, so there! by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      The sweet joy of English verb tenses.

    3. Re:No witnesses anymore, so there! by sg_oneill · · Score: 1

      Well technically without the 1800s, we'd have no discovery of absorbsion and emission spectra, and thus we would never have proved climate change was being caused by humans. And for that matter the discovery of the greenhouse effect itself in the late 1800s

      --
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    4. Re:No witnesses anymore, so there! by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

      You have no proof anyhow with respect to CO2. You can certainly show it's a symptom. Of course, as things warm up we get more activity and more co2. It always follows warmth, it never occurs before warming.

      Cracks me up when they try to say science is a consensus. It's never by consensus. It's either true or it's not.

  4. Learn from history by monkeyxpress · · Score: 2

    Great. With them gone we will be free to repeat the mistake of history with abandon.

    Great Depression 2.0 is already underway, a good dose of nationalism is bedding itself into many countries, and sweeping waves of technological change are on the way. I guess we don't have the monarchy anymore so that's a plus.

    1. Re:Learn from history by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      2008 Was Great Depression 2.0

      We actually solved the problem of depressions by calling them recessions.

      My expectation is this sense of global nationalism is it may put us in a recession, enough to make people realize that we live in a global world, and we cant put the screw on an other country without it coming back to us. Just as long as we can get over the bead and circus that is going on.
       

      --
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    2. Re:Learn from history by Nidi62 · · Score: 1

      At the very least we need to make sure some minor noble doesn't get killed touring around Europe.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    3. Re: Learn from history by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If only there were some sort of middle ground, but no, everything is black and white.

    4. Re:Learn from history by cayenne8 · · Score: 1

      A recession is due regardless of nationalism. Look back at history: they tend to come roughly every 10 years or so. Meaning one is due. We might be lucky due to Mr Trump's tax cuts and squeeze by a couple years but we probably won't last 15 years without a recession.

      Yeah, was watching CNBC last week, and they were talking about how the bond yield curve was flattening....and usually when it starts that, a recession is about 2x years off.

      Apparently the situation gets more dire if the bond yield curve gets inverted...

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    5. Re:Learn from history by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yeah, republics are so much better than monarchies. Think of the great strides made in the 20th century by such powerhouses as Germany, Russia, Spain and Iran, just as soon as they got rid of their monarchs.

    6. Re:Learn from history by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      Ireland

  5. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    There's no such thing as year zero. The first year is year 1.

  6. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Correct. In the same way that there is no day zero or month zero, there is no year zero. The first year was 1, and exactly 2000 years later was 1/1/2001.

    Thus 1900 was the last year of the 19th century, with 1/1/1901 being exactly 1900 years after the start of the calendar.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  7. Re:Japan? Take it with a pinch of umami. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's actually a flaw in the way the system works when someone dies. You can get a funeral and intern their ashes at your family grave site without the national government necessarily getting wind of it. It's an "easy" crime because it only requires the child to do nothing, to make no effort to inform the government of their parent's death.

    I forget what changes they made to stop it happening now, but checks were put in place.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  8. Re:Call me when the last memory of WW2 finally pas by theM_xl · · Score: 1

    Remembering the Armenian one is politically inconvenient because referring to it as one offends the Turks, and the dictator currently securing his position there is a convenient 'friend' so we'll just keep our mouths shut.

    The Darfur one we'll occasionally mention as Sudan isn't a 'friend' directly, but Sudan's far away and hey, they're useful to China and Russia both. We don't really want to piss those off so we'll just ignore it and hope people will stop mentioning it.

  9. Nefarious Plot by CRB9000 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've noticed a disturbing bit of a trend, I think it indicates a global conspiracy: Someone is killing off the world's oldest people. Watch, I bet this will happen. They will identify who the next oldest person in the world is and shortly after that, that person will die. And they all seem to be dying of "natural causes" a statistical improbability. Someone is out there killing off the oldest people in the world. Mark my words.

    1. Re:Nefarious Plot by Narcocide · · Score: 1

      This sounds so stupid that I'm now certain it's going to turn out to be true.

    2. Re:Nefarious Plot by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

      That would make a great mockumentary.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    3. Re:Nefarious Plot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No, you've got it all wrong.

      This clearly demonstrates the fatal long term effects of dihydrogen monoxide.

      That stuff was probably all over the place in her house.

      She never had a chance.

    4. Re:Nefarious Plot by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Extra bonus points if you can get John Cleese to be the narrator.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    5. Re:Nefarious Plot by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      I have an alternate theory: the older and wiser you are, the more likely you are to eventually give up - from sheer disgust if nothing else (apparently there was a huge wave of annoyed centenarians who said "enough is enough" when flat-brimmed hats came into vogue).

    6. Re:Nefarious Plot by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

      What's worse, they found her house WAS poisoned as nitrogen composed nearly 80% of what she was breathing! Poor dear never had a chance...

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    7. Re:Nefarious Plot by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      those plant farts will be the end of us all.

    8. Re:Nefarious Plot by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      Whatever it is it seems to have a preference for males, who are usually targeted decades earlier for elimination.

    9. Re:Nefarious Plot by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Extra bonus points if you can get John Cleese to be the narrator.

      Too late, he died.

    10. Re:Nefarious Plot by JackieBrown · · Score: 1

      Are we talking about Foster?

    11. Re:Nefarious Plot by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      I'd bet that a significant quantity of dihydrogen monoxide could be found in her body tissues!

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  10. Re:Japan? Take it with a pinch of umami. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's an "easy" crime because it only requires the child to do nothing

    that sounds dishonabru

  11. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Why can there be no year zero?

    For the same reason there's no March 0.

  12. Re:older by VanGarrett · · Score: 1

    While possible, it's unlikely, due to the conditions that lend themselves to extreme longevity. People tend to die relatively young in undeveloped cultures, because they lack the medical care that enables long life. It's those developed countries that have the advanced medical care, that also provide public records, which can be used to identify the super-old. The only other possibility, is that there could be a developed country (India or South Korea, perhaps) that didn't have very good public records at the end of the 19th century.

  13. Predictive power by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    No lifespans over 120 (two significant digits) years.

    Still holding for 2500+ years of history.

    Genesis 6:3

    1. Re:Predictive power by DaveyJJ · · Score: 2

      No lifespans over 120 (two significant digits) years.

      Jeanne Clement. 122 years, 164 days.

      --
      DaveyJJ
    2. Re:Predictive power by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The parent post indicated two significant digits. The trailing zero is ambiguous.

    3. Re:Predictive power by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 1

      We are talking real life, not fairy tales.

    4. Re:Predictive power by vux984 · · Score: 1

      You ascribe more to what is in the bible verse says than what is actually there.

      Its your decision to claim the bible only gave 2 significant digits. And that decision raises a lot of issues, given the timing. Genesis predates the decimal system, predates the decimal point, predates the invention and use of zero as a placeholder. The notion of '2 significant' digits doesn't even make sense when numbers aren't represented by 'digits'.

      Second, its pretty controversial to even claim that the passage is about the lifespan. It's largely believed that passage prophecies the coming flood 120 years later. As in 120 years from now, mankind will be wiped out in the flood.

    5. Re:Predictive power by vux984 · · Score: 1

      No. Significant digits require *digits*.

      Your 'by defnition' argument depends on the interpretation of leading and trailing zeroes -- which depends on there being leading or trailing zeroes in the numerical system. That's not possible when the passage predates the use of zero as placeholders.

      Indeed, in hebrew texts the passage is written using the word 100 and the word 20. Hebrew also has symbols for each numeral up to 20, as well as for each of the first several hundreds. So in hebrew it could be written in 2 numerals {hebrew character 100, hebrew character 20}, with no 'trailing zeroes'. But that doesn't really matter, because genesis predates the system of hebrew numerals too.

      Babylonians and Sumerians had separate names for 60 numerals; 120 would have been written as 60 & 60; indeed the origin of 120 could simply have been twice the maximum numeral at the time. And a reasonable error bound might well be +/- 60 for something like that.

      To state with any sort of authority that 120 shall be interpreted as the decimal representation of 2 leading information carrying decimal digits followed by a trailing placeholder zero, with therefore "two significant digits" is totally idiotic.

      So no, this is not a debate between theists and atheists.

    6. Re:Predictive power by vux984 · · Score: 1

      Again, you are conflating 2 separate issues.

      I have no objection to the notion that 120 years shall be taken an imprecise value.

      I have substantial objection to the notion that it should be taken as a very specific imprecision, that being '2 significant digits in the decimal system'.

      It matters because it brings into question how much deviation from 120 is 'allowed' before 120 becomes 'wrong'.

      Frankly, I'm willing to allow it quite a bit more variance than 2 sig digits decimal would allow for.

      Of course, I'm also in the camp that think 120 has nothing to do with the longevity of man, and that it instead is prophecy for the flood.

    7. Re:Predictive power by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      Jeanne CALMENT

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  14. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

    Century dates start at the 1.

    Says who? Is it codified anywhere?

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  15. Re:Women Privelege by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I demand equal lifespans for all people.

    Do you know why husbands die before their wives?

    Because they want to.

  16. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by msnash · · Score: 3, Funny

    First day of April = April 2
    Second day of April = April 3
    Third day of April = April 4
    Fourth day of April = April 5
    Fifth day of April = April 6
    Sixth day of April = April 7
    Seventh day of April = April 7
    Eighth day of April = April 8
    Ninth day of April = April 9
    Tenth day of April = April 10

  17. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by Spacelem · · Score: 1

    I'm not really interested in the labelling of centuries relative to some arbitrary event that was not marked at the time. I'm far more interested in when the most significant digits change.

    It seems therefore sad that the last human who was born in a year beginning with 18 passed seemingly without note.

  18. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by tonique · · Score: 1

    Two things: The notion of zero wasn't well known. And people counted eg. years or days, they didn't measure them. That's the reason the Bible tells Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, even though from Friday evening to Sunday morning it isn't three full days. Friday 1, Saturday 2, Sunday 3, ergo on the third day.

  19. Y1900 by GbrDead · · Score: 2

    Finally, the Y1900 problem solved itself!

  20. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why can there be no year zero?

    Because the "AD/BC" numbering system was established in the sixth century, when Europe still used Roman numbers. Although Latin has a word ("nulla") for nothing, it wasn't a mathematical concept, nor were negative numbers. So the "AD" years and "BC" years were both given positive sequences with no "year zero" in between.

    Arabic numbers and mathematical zeros were not commonly used until the 1200s. They were popularized by Fibonacci, who is more famous for his sequences.

  21. Re:Call me when the last memory of WW2 finally pas by jellomizer · · Score: 1

    Group A doesn't like Group B. An extreme wing of group A gains power and tries to kill off Group B.

    This isn't about any particular set of values or beliefs. It is just an aspect where Extremists parts of these groups get in control
    Normally we get this when such groups will look into themselves and say that members of the groups are not enough aspect of such group to be considered members.

    Eg.
    Not Conservative Enough, Not Progressive Enough, Not Pius enough, Not scientific enough.... Extremists find ways to draw strict lines, with for us and against us. Once such lines are drawn it is easy to begin dehumanizing such group, to a point where killing them seems like a rational step.

    This isn't survival of the fittest. Because such Groups if win, rarely hold onto their power, because with strict definitions of a code, the complexity of the world soon weighs that system down to failure. Then during this failure time, if they had killed off enough moderates would make it much more difficult to rebuild, and get taken over or be absorbed into the larger moderate group. Some will live their lives in hiding, others would had learned their lesson and moderate...

    Now having a political stance, religion or lack of one. Isn't a bad thing. And grouping with like minded people helps offer a sense of protection, and be able to offer resistance to ideas that you may feel as wrong. But Evil happens when stop using your heart and try to one up the next guy on being the most pure in the cause.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  22. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by Rolgar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But does it matter? Year 1 on the calendar wasn't determined until 5 centuries later by Dionysius Exiguus. Since they didn't start talking about decades and a meaningful way until modern journalism and history probably in the later half of the last century, it's not like we are tracking 200+ decades of information.

    The whole point is to classify and organize things for telling stories. But largely, referring to the 80's, you are providing generalities (ie, cultural trends, politics, generational changes, etc) about a significant chunk of time. If that's the case, does it really matter to say 'we must begin at year 1, and include the next year that ends in a 0 in each decade. Because if I'm talking about the 1980s, I'm talking about the 10 years that begin 198, meaning 1980-1989. 1990 is not a year where the 3rd digit is 8 and the last three digits are in the 80s mathematically.

    So on a decade level, it's much easier and more convenient to refer to decades as short hand by 80's instead of being pedantic and forcing everybody to say 1981-1990 since I will protest as loud as you if somebody demands including 1990 in the decade referred to as the 80's.

    And if we are going to talk about decades and centuries, which is done primarily by historians and journalists, I don't mind them using a little short hand and making a slightly inaccurate convention that says decades are a period that have first 3 digits of the years the same, and centuries are all the years that have first two digits the same. It's convenient, and who cares if the first decade and century are short by one year. Nobody really discusses the first century and worries about whether year 100 was first century or second.

    So, give it a rest, let the historians and journalists do their job, and don't worry, because there is no rule that says decades or centuries must start with year 1 or a probe will be thrown off course because of poor measurement, and we don't need everything counted like we are measuring something like an engineer or scientist. The whole point is classifying the messiness that is human existence and interaction, and who cares if the classification of decades and centuries if off by 1?

  23. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by tomhath · · Score: 1

    Or more likely, because the guy who invented the Anno Domini counting of years was a monk (Dionysius Exiguus), not a mathematician.

  24. Re:Call me when the last memory of WW2 finally pas by Nidi62 · · Score: 1

    I'm tired of the pandering that this great "war" and its genocide gets. I get it, wars bad mmkay and killing people is bad.

    Remind me why that genocide deserves all of the attention versus Armenian, Darfur, etc genocides?

    It doesn't. That's what made that generation great. They saw an evil in this world and were willing to put a stop to it. Remember, they didn't even know about the Holocaust until deep in the war. Millions signed up to fight and possibly die to put a stop to a regime that was trying to take over Europe and Asia. Meanwhile we just let things go on and on like Sudan, Syria, Palestine, the Rohingya, the "drug war" in the Philippines, the drug war in Mexico, Kashmir, Yemen, North Korea, the militarization of police in the US. We're too busy instagramming and following the latest celebrity pregnancy while ignoring the rise of the same type of nationalistic, authoritarian, cult of personality sentiments that the greatest generation fought to begin with.

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  25. Re:Japan? Take it with a pinch of umami. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Isn't just Japan. Children and other relatives have been collecting dead pensioner checks for ages. Here are some recent examples...

    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-sco...

    https://www.thelocal.it/201609...

    https://www.independent.co.uk/...

  26. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by Jason+Levine · · Score: 4, Informative

    So on a decade level, it's much easier and more convenient to refer to decades as short hand by 80's instead of being pedantic and forcing everybody to say 1981-1990 since I will protest as loud as you if somebody demands including 1990 in the decade referred to as the 80's.

    Just to add to this, you can refer to the period from 1900 - 1999 as "the 1900's" if you want to group them like that, just like 1990 - 1999 is referred to as "the 90's." However, the grouping of "1901 - 2000" is referred to as "the 20th Century."

    --
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  27. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1
    Here you go. Specifically the section on on the Proleptic Gregorian Calendar which states:

    For dates before the year 1, unlike the proleptic Gregorian calendar used in the international standard ISO 8601, the traditional proleptic Gregorian calendar (like the Julian calendar) does not have a year 0 and instead uses the ordinal numbers 1, 2, both for years AD and BC. Thus the traditional time line is 2 BC, 1 BC, AD 1, and AD 2. ISO 8601 uses astronomical year numbering which includes a year 0 and negative numbers before it. Thus the ISO 8601 time line is 0001, 0000, 0001, and 0002.

    Not that also includes ISO 8601 - a recognized standard. So there you go. No year zero, we start with year 1.

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  28. Re:Call me when the last memory of WW2 finally pas by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

    Perhaps because - as terrible as the Armenian genocide was, and the number of victims in the Darfur war - an order of magnitude (or more) died from genocide and war during WWII. Close to 80 million civilians died during WW2 - most of those at the hands of soldiers intent on genocide.

    --
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  29. I blame Fortran by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 4, Funny

    Why can there be no year zero?

    For the same reason, that ancient programming languages like Fortran have arrays that start with 1. Zero was a reasonably new concept that far back having only been invented around 4-5th century BC in India and using it would probably have confused most people.

  30. So tragic by tripleevenfall · · Score: 3, Funny

    This poor woman was still hanging on waiting to see The Year of Linux on the Desktop (tm)

  31. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by Merk42 · · Score: 1

    Navi's birth date is August 4, 1900. She was born in the 19th century.

    Hey! Listen!

    It's Nabi

  32. Re:Call me when the last memory of WW2 finally pas by slew · · Score: 1

    The "europe" situation wasn't the only genocide in WW2. In addition to the Rape of Nanking that predated the war, the so-called "The Burn to Ash Strategy" policy of the Japanese during WW2 created a nearly equivalent "holocaust" in asia. A few examples below...

    Unit 731 (Japan's Josef Mengele equivalent)
    Batu Lin Tang intern camp
    The Sook Ching in Singapore/Malaysia
    Bataan Death March
    The Manila massacre
    + many others...

  33. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 1

    It is not that there can't - it is that there isn't. It was long ago decided to count that way, probably because the concept of 0 was not yet well understood at the time.

  34. An interesting tidbit. by jellomizer · · Score: 1

    Before her death she was the oldest person alive.
    This satire would be lost on many who do not think about mathematics.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  35. Re:Japan? Take it with a pinch of umami. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

    Children collecting pension checks dont report the death of the pensioners for years.

    You are only looking at half of the problem. When parents die in Japan, the children often inherit worthless plots of land in distant rural villages. There is no way to legally abandon these plots or forfeit ownership, and no one wants to buy them, yet taxes are due on the land every year.

    So the kid cashes Mom's pension check from the government, and then sends the money back to the government to pay a stupid and unavoidable tax. Unsurprisingly, many Japanese people don't see that as "wrong".

    It is impossible to reform this system, because political power in Japan is actually directly tied to these stupid little worthless plots. Even if your family has lived in Tokyo for three generations, political apportionment of the Diet is still based on the fiction that your "real" home is the plot of land in the countryside. So the representatives from these nearly empty rural districts have huge political power and can block any reform.

  36. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by jbengt · · Score: 1

    Sooo, the first day of the year is January 0?

    No, January 0 is obviously the same day as December 31, that is, the last day of the year.

  37. Re:All due respect, but by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    Living for a long time or even immortality is a trope in sci fi.

    Lazarus Long was born in 1912. So he is now 106.

  38. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    There is no meter zero or dm zero or cm zero or mm zero either.
    On any scale there usually is only a single point marked as zero.

    That is the main reason why Pascal and Modula by default use arrays where the index starts with 1.

    Doing date math in Java etc. is only that complicated because some "morons" thought it would be funny that the first day of the week (or month) starts with '0', luckily this is fixed since Java 8.

    --
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  39. Ok... by orlanz · · Score: 1

    Can we NOW stop using FAX machines?!?

  40. Re:Japan? Take it with a pinch of umami. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    Very similar in Greece.
    But at some point the "government" realizes that you cashed in the health insurance pay out for the funeral but/and still cash in the pension ...

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  41. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by fred6666 · · Score: 1

    Exactly. And Jesus is born in the year 1 before himself (December 25, year 1 BC). A few days later was January 1 AD, the beginning of year 1.
    That is according to Christian mythology, of course.

  42. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    Take a thermometer.

    Look at it carefully: now point out the temperature span "zero".

    There is none. There is a point zero.

    For the exact same reason there is no year zero.

    What is the difference between -2 Celsius and +2 Celsius? Answer: 4 degrees.

    What is the difference between 2 BC and 2 AD? Answer: 3 years.

    So, no, not the same.

  43. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by iggymanz · · Score: 1

    sorry pal, but the year before 1 AD was 1 BC. thanks for making up shit

  44. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by iggymanz · · Score: 1

    nothing dumb about it, the year before 1 A.D. was 1 B.C., by definition

  45. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by iggymanz · · Score: 1

    No, the birthday is only celebrated on Dec 25. The meaning of the latin for A.D. is containing the year of Jesus' birth, by definition. If he was born on Dec 25, it would be the year Dec 25, 1 A.D. by definition.

  46. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by Kjella · · Score: 1

    Just to add to this, you can refer to the period from 1900 - 1999 as "the 1900's" if you want to group them like that, just like 1990 - 1999 is referred to as "the 90's." However, the grouping of "1901 - 2000" is referred to as "the 20th Century."

    I think it works if you're talking about less than a century, like the Christmas tree became popular in Europe in the early 1800s sounds just as good to me as early 19th century and for all practical purposes means the same. It sounds really odd to me if you say Macro Polo was a 1200s explorer instead of 13th century explorer though. So for consistency I'd rather count centuries one way and decades the other rather than flip-flop at some point, it's the 21st century and we're in the 2010's. I imagine i'll be dead by the next off-by-one error anyway...

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  47. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by Spacelem · · Score: 1

    What's the one thing that a new year changes? The numbers you write when you write the date. The one it takes 3 months to get used to. 1999 -> 2000, when all the digits changed, made a far bigger difference than 2000 -> 2001, when only 1 changed.

    When 2000 approached, we didn't say "no, hold on, nothing interesting about this date, let's wait until 2001 to celebrate the _real_ millennium"? Well, some people did, but the rest of us were busy celebrating the change of the (arbitrary) year's most significant digit a year early, and getting used to writing the new date.

    And when people say "the 1980s", they mean 1980 to 1989, not 1981 to 1990. People who smugly claim that 1990 is part of the 1980s can sit in the corner and be technically right all by themselves while no one else cares.

  48. Re: Call me when the last memory of WW2 finally pa by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

    False. Approximately 30 million - minimum - attributed to military action and crimes against humanity. Disease and famine were "only" 20 million or so... Military deaths were around 21 million.

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  49. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    No, 4 years. With what math skill do you come to 3?

    Let's LEARN TO COUNT!!!!

    Let's start with temperature:
    -2 C - The starting point
    -1 C - The next temp, one degree warmer
    0 C - The next temp, Two degrees warmer
    1 C - The next temp, Three degrees warmer
    2 C - The final temp, FOUR (4) degrees warmer that the starting point

    Now let's count years:
    2 BC - The starting point
    1 BC - The next year, one year later
    1 AD - The year after 1 BC, two years later
    2 AD - The final year, THREE (3) years from the starting point

    Let me know if you are still having problems with this. Maybe a chart or diagram would help you visualize it.

  50. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by Carrot007 · · Score: 1

    > just like 1990 - 1999 is referred to as "the 90's.

    Maybe by the insane.

    --
    +----------------- | What is the question!
  51. for those who care about the 1800s by iggymanz · · Score: 1

    Emma Morano who died last year was the last person who was born in the 1800s to die . ( 29 November 1899 â" 15 April 2017)

  52. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

    Not that also includes ISO 8601 - a recognized standard. So there you go. No year zero, we start with year 1.

    Err, what? Doesn't what you quoted from the Wikipedia page contradict what you just said?

    For dates before the year 1, unlike the proleptic Gregorian calendar used in the international standard ISO 8601, the traditional proleptic Gregorian calendar (like the Julian calendar) does not have a year 0

    ISO 8601 uses astronomical year numbering which includes a year 0

    ---

    It doesn't matter whether the first calendar year recognised as 1, or 43, or 729. What I'm getting is: who or what, if anyone, defines when a century or millennium officially starts and ends?

    According to this, ISO 8601 says that millenia are x000-x9999, and according to this the same goes for centuries.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  53. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

    International standard ISO 8601 would seem to disagree. It has a year 0, and according to this and this, centuries are xx00-xx99 and millennia are x000-x999.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  54. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

    The meaning of the latin for A.D. is containing the year of Jesus' birth, by definition.

    Historians, on the other hand, seem to be largely of the consensus that Jesus was born around 6 B.C. - 4 B.C.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  55. Re:Women Privelege by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    all these people are female. This to me smack of matriarchism. I demand equal lifespans for all people.

    Simple solution: cut your nuts off. Unix, I mean eunuchs lived longer. Testosterone increases metabolism, which ages one faster.

  56. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by Quirkz · · Score: 1

    Considering most of the people on this site lived through the turn of the millennium on January 1, 2001, I'm really surprised this still confuses anyone.

  57. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by JackieBrown · · Score: 1

    At least they acknowledge he was real. They can have whatever year they want

  58. Re:Thanks for All The Fish by JackieBrown · · Score: 1

    Hopefully the afterlife doesn't involve worrying about what goes on your tombstone.

  59. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Wrong question. Of course there can be a year zero. The correct question is why there isn't one, and that's answered in detail.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  60. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    Why don't you simply take a thermometer and look on it?
    Why do we have this stupid discussion?

    A thermometer works exactly like year.

    There is no one centimeter long 0 degrees stripe on the termometer. There is a point which is marked with zero.
    The same for years. There is no one cm long stripe on a calendar for a year zero, but a point market zero.

    What is 0.5 - (-) 0.5? That is a one unit long distance. Does not matter if it is temperature, time or space.
    If you would introduce a "zero year", you had an aditional year in the middle and the distance from -0.5 to +0.5 would be two. That makes no sense. In other words a child born 1st of July in the year -1 (-0.5) is at 30ths of June in the year +1 (+0.5) exactly 365 days old, which is exactly one year, as you would expect.

    No idea what is wrong in your mind :)

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  61. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by AutodidactLabrat · · Score: 1

    ...Yhe first century was from 0 to 99 AD. It's a purely arbitrary cut-off, so why not be accurate about it being a CENTury?

    Oh, by all means SHOW US YEAR ZERO on the Gregorian calendar (where AD was finally embedded).
    There WAS no year zero
    Thus 2001 was the first year of the 21st Century.

  62. Re: Hey Miss Mash... by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

    The first day is one. It's like filling up a beaker. 1ml, 2ml... 1 liter. The first year is simply nothing. Romans had a zero, it was simply nothing. So 1999 was the last year of the 20th century.

    All this hand wringing over nothing. People think they're smart by saying the Romans had no zero. It matters - none.

    Went through this crap with some really smart people back in 1999. They all agreed after I told them they were wrong, the last year was 1999. 2000 is the first year of the 21st century because January 1, 2000 is the very first day. Clearly it doesn't make ANY sense to say January 1, 2001 is the very first day. You've already done a year! Same thing with year zero, or as the Romans said year nothing. Never mind the other problems with the calendar not being what it is today and so on.

  63. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

    At least they acknowledge he was real.

    Almost certainly real, because there's evidence for his existence. Not a very controversial position to take, even among historians.

    He probably wasn't magic, though.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  64. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by iggymanz · · Score: 1

    not true, it was noted . https://slashdot.org/comments....

  65. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by iggymanz · · Score: 1

    point is, if year known and calendar corrected, the year of birth would then be 1 A.D, even if day was December 31. the year before would be 1 B.C.

    if Jesus even existed at all, many historians without the poisonous influence of religion have doubts.

  66. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by toddestan · · Score: 1

    ISO 8601 is kind of weird if you go back too far. It specifies a 4 digit date, which is fine, but has no way to denote a "negative" year. So year 0, which per your own link is 1BC, is the earliest possible date you can express in ISO 8601. This is actually fine because technically you aren't supposed to use ISO 8601 for any date before 1583. The reason for that is 1582 is the year that many areas, per the Catholic church, adopted the Gregorian calender (from the Julian calender) and thus skipped 10 days to correct for a accumulating error in the Julian calender from not handling leap years quite right.

    Which of course brings up the point that once you've really started digging into the peculiarities of the how we've recorded dates throughout history and many uncertainties about details. For example, we know that initially the Julian calender had leap years every 3 years. They realized the error after a decade or so, and to correct it they had period with no leap years until things were brought back in line. What we don't know for certain is exactly which years included the leap years and which ones did not.

    So basically in the end, Jan 1, 2001 (or whatever you want to celebrate) is completely arbitrary.

  67. Re:Hey Miss Mash... by sdinfoserv · · Score: 1

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    The Wiki godz state: " began on January 1, 2000 and will end on December 31, 2099".