MilesBuzz! - Anyone flying at 11:59pm on 12/31?

Anyone here plan to be airborne to welcome the new century?

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My plans are still "up in the air"!

Sorry, but this is "pet peve" of mine.

The "Century" begin in 20 day and 1 YEAR from now on Jan 1, 2001.

I know you meant year 2000 but everyone is "intermixing" the beginning of year 2000 and the beginning of the century (Jan 1 2001).

Why? Do you think there was a year 1? We can define it any way that pleases us.

Cool concept QL. This is my year 1456789E+12

It is my understanding that a CENTURY runs from years 00 to 99 and a MILLENNIUM starts from year 1.

So....2000 is the start of the new century and 2001 is the start of the new millennium.

My take on the whole thing is who cares...it means I'm getting older either way!

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arturo kno thes--evrytheng start en yeer one. ther was no yeer zero. so thet make centry of 100 yeers, yeer 1 thru yeer 100, es 100 yeers. milinimum es 1,000 yeers, sew ef evrythen start en yeer 1, thin ferst milinimum es yeer 1 thru yeer 1,000. sew knew milinimum start en yeer 1,001. pleese knot cornfuse centry, milinimum, an why2k problms. knew centry strt en 2,001, knew milinimum strt en 2,001. knuthin strt en 2,000 cept why2k problms.

The answer to the main question: HELL NO, even if I were offered 1 million FF miles. It's just not worth the risk.

On the issue of the millenium/century thing, both the millenium and century begin in 2000, not 2001. The century thing is straightforward: ex. 1800 to 1899. Keep in mind that centuries and milleniums do not necessarily have to begin and end in the wonderful calendar of ours.

With the millenium, it DOES begin on Jan. 1st, 2000. While it is true that there was no year 0, there didn't have to be. After 1 B.C. came the First Year of our Lord, 1 A.D. Before his arrival on Earth is marked by B.C. I just don't get the confusion on this!!!

Not even for a million miles Avek00??? LOL

Didn't some 13th Century (1200's) monk mess it up or something?

Why fly on fright(Friday)day? We can all take a break, right? By the way is the new year of 2000 starting on 0001 GMT or local. If so those flying in the states at 1600 are right in the middle of the X-FILES zone of cross-over of an abstract notion---time.

If you really want to get the long answer on 2000 vs 2001 being the start of the milleninum, check out: http://www.countdown2000.com/body_a_moment_in_time.html

The short answer is: It depends on who you ask. I stick with conventional wisdom and believe it starts in 2001. 2001: A Space Odyssey is my favorite movie so I'm biased <g>

Some answers I saw listed on a linked page:

When does the millenium arrive?

1. The year 2000 only (and especially: Midnight, January 1, 2000)
2. The year 2001 only (and especially: Midnight, January 1, 2001)
3. The years 2000 and 2001 (or as much as the entire two years)
4. As long and as much and as soon as possibly justifiable
5. Beginning approximately or precisely March 13, 1997
6. Beginning approximately or precisely December 25, 1996
7. All the years 1996 to 2003 (or as much as eight full years)
8. The years 1996-1997 most especially (palindromic corroboration)
9. The years 1996-1997 most especially (traditional corroboration)
10. The third, seventh and first sabbatical Millennium all together
11. Proposed calendrical reform to acknowledge all three new Millenniums
12. The years 1990-3004 (or as much as 1015 years of continuous Christmas)


[This message has been edited by dg1 (edited 12-11-1999).]

Thinking when the new Millenium starts has IMO nothing to do with math, but with "emotions" and "feelings" and "common sense".

Let those math geniouses argue what ever they want, no one with at least "some" common sense would tell that the year 1000 did belong to the first Millenium ... but the second ..... why then should 2000 be regarded as the last year of the second ???? !!!!

Let's all remember that our calendar conventions are arbitrary. The Millenium commemorates absolutely nothing. Every few hundred years a monk, or the Pope, or, God forbid (if you'll pardon the expression) a scientist, discovered an error, or at least a lack of precision, in the previous formula, and promulgated a revision. In the eighteenth century people rioted because they believed they were going to lose 10 days out of their lives due to a calendar revision, just in case anyone believes that this subject has anything to do with a rational approach.

The current calendar (the Gregorian Calendar, subsequently revised by UTC leap seconds and other adjustments) is dated from the putative birth of Christ, but most current-day scientists and historians believe that that event happened three or four years later. Therefore it's completely absurd to argue about which year is the start of the "Millenium". Most people will find it convenient and comfortable to commemorate the onset of having to write dates beginning with "20-", rather than "19-", and I will be among them, to the appallingly minimal extent that I celebrate at all. If someone else wants to celebrate another, more mathematically rigorous date, a year later, they are perfectly free to do so, and as an added benefit their catering bill will be much lower.

I hope to be flying in a different way at 11:59pm!! After all it's my birthday and I plan to partake of Bubbily.

On a personal note, can we all skip the alleged Millenium stuff and just wish each other HAPPY NEW CENTURY???

I'm waiting for the Hallmark cards for that.

Didn't some 13th Century (1200's) monk mess it up or something?

Derek, since you're relatively new here, I'm re-posting this for your benefit. To all who may have read it before, you may ignore it... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif


The hype and nonsense around January 1st, 2000 AD is a bit crazy as the first day of the new millennium is completely arbitrary. Our original calendar was known as the
Julian calendar because it was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. That calendar
allotted 365 days for the year with every fourth year a leap year of 366 days.

The problem with the Julian calendar was that it was too long by about 11 minutes. This amounts to a total of about one day every 128 years.

This bothered the Christian church because they needed to compute an accurate date for the death and ascension of Jesus for their Easter festivals. Pope Gregory 8th remedied this problem by coming up with a new modified calendar which became known as the Gregorian Calendar. In 1582, he decreed that the day after October 4th should be reckoned to be October 15th. So, in effect he wiped out 10 days, making up for all the extra 11 minutes per year that had gone past since the time of Julius Caesar.

Pope Gregory must have been quite a complicated fellow because he also decreed that future years that had a number ending in two cyphers should not be a leap year unless
the number was divisible by 400. Nobody could quite understand what the hell Pope Gregory was talking about, so things muddled along much the same with every fourth year a leap year.

In England and Scotland, things were further complicated by the fact that the legal year began on March 25th not January 1st. During the reign of King George II in 1751 the English and Scottish Parliament decided to adopt the Gregorian Calendar and they passed a law saying in future the legal year would begin on January 1st. So the Gregorian
calendar became adopted around the English speaking world.

The English Parliament decided that the day after December 2nd, 1752 should be reckoned December 14th. They then knocked 11 days off and nobody bothered with Pope Gregory's complicated system of dividing things by 400.

The other thing which is fun to think about is this: There are 24 hours in a day, 60
minutes in an hour & 60 seconds in a minute. But how long is a second? In olden days, they attempted to work it out astronomically. Since the invention of atomic clocks in the 1950's we have more accurately been able to determine how long a second is. In 1967, there was a general conference on weights and measures and it was agreed to base the definition of a second on atomic time.

According to the Natural Physics Laboratory in Great Britain, a second is the duration of
9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two
hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom. In plain English, it is this: cesium atoms can be made to flick between two possible energies by illuminating them with microwaves tuned to a specific frequency. In a cesium clock, atoms with one energy are sent through a chamber containing
microwaves. The frequency of the microwaves is tuned until the maximum number of atoms flip from one energy to the other, showing it is equal to the value that defines it as 9,192,631,770 vibrations to one second.

The problem is even that isn't quite accurate enough. By international agreement in 1972, it was decided to use occasional leap seconds so that we could have a world-wide co-ordinated Universal Time. In fact, there have been 21 leap seconds added to the calendar in the last 25 years or so.

Now here's the fun part. Most historians conclusively put the birth of Christ at 4 BC, not at zero AD! If that is correct, you would have to subtract four years from our current
calendar. And as approx 250 years have passed since the act of Parliament in 1751 which fixed English and Scottish dates and thus Americas and the rest of the English speaking world, it would seem to me that our calendar is now approximately four years behind (Jesus' Birthday), plus two days ahead of itself (the 11 minutes per year over 250 years).

Then because on January 1st, 2000 we'll be three quarters of the way through a four-year span prior to the next leap year (2001), our calendar on that great day will be 3/4 of a day behind the correct date as the leap year will not have been added as yet.

I guess you have to subtract four years to adjust for the correct birth of Christ, then
deduct two days because the calendar is going too fast by 11 minutes per year and then add a further 3/4 of a day for our position in the leap year cycle, as of midnight 1999, then knock off a few seconds for your atomic leap second adjustment, whatever that might be. At the end of these calculations, we realize that January 1st, 2000 AD took place just before the end of 1996. In fact, 1-1/4 days (minus a few as yet not added leap seconds) before the end of 1996.

In other words, the great moment - the beginning of the next millennium really took
place at about 3 seconds before 6am on Dec. 30th, 1996. So it looks like we all missed
the party. Shame, isn't it.

As to the Mayan calendar, they were very accurate in their calculations. Their fifth sun ends in the year December 23rd, 2010 AD, at which point the Mayan's predicted the world is going to end. The problem with the Mayan's is their civilization ended first, so none of them will be there to say I told you so.

They may be right…I'll let you know on Dec. 24th, 2010 give or take a few leap seconds.

Derek, aren't you glad you asked?

What a Can of Worms I opened.

I did not meant to start a discussed of our calendar system.

In the USA and Canada, the government have adopted the current calendar. Under this calendar I believe that CURRENT century runs from Jan 1, 1901 to Dec. 31, 2000. And therefore the new century started on Jan. 1, 2001.

I am just getting sick of the "Sale of the Century" "Person of the Cenetury" etc.

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"Free" without charge or cost, having no obligation.

Depending on how long it will take to reach the International Date Line after departing Sydney, I may be in flight at 11:59 PM, GMT-11, over the Pacific Ocean.

shadow: Thank you for the dissertation. I have a book on the subject, which you have apparently already read. I will check back in on the subject after I have read it myself.

One thing though: The current calendar is not off by 11 minutes per year. In fact, Pope Gregory's adjustment of missing three leap years out of every 400 years was adopted. (I.e. there would otherwise be 100 leap years in every 400 years, but there are in fact 97. 2000 is a leap year, 1900 and 1800 were not, and 2100 will not be.)

The "leap seconds" are added and subtracted to conform our clocks with the variations in the rotation of the earth. If this were not done, in several hundred years, the sun would rise and set, on average, several minutes earlier than it does now. If we still defined the second in astronomical terms, rather than atomic terms, the definition would have to be adjusted from time to time in order to be scientifically useful (as the earth, on average, very, very, slightly slows down.)

You think the century/millenium controversy is bad? Just wait 'till someone makes a statement about REAL chili never/always has beans in it!

hnechets,

Or...does the toilet paper go over or under the roll in the dispenser?

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Oh, yeah. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif Oh, yeah. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Another good one, MileageAddict.

But BTW, it goes OVER THE ROLL!!!

OVER THE ROLL!!!

Let me toss in a computer guy's perspective. I would prefer not to be in the air on that date and time. The Y2K problem is a rather nasty one that too many people waited way too long to deal with. There are too many loose ends, for my taste, to be in an airplane, or participating in the Airline Experience, around the critical date.

And this is for the US case. Outside the US, forget about it. You'd have to march me on the plane at gunpoint.

As for the Next Millenium, it begins on 1 Jan 2001. However that won't keep me from missing the festivities on what I personally call "Odometer Day."

TP rolls should feed from the top, but I am agnostic on the chili and beans schism.

If your TP comes over the top, and you have young kids who are anything like my 3-year old son, and Y2K is as bad as the alarmists would have us fear, then you'll probably run out of toilet paper very early in the post-Y2K world -- and you won't be able to buy any more.

But (to provide a travel link to all of this) the suction in the toilets on the 737-800s may be strong enough to make toilet paper obsolete.

I won't be airborne, but I am heading down to South America for some festivities. Look for me on CNN being chased down the street by the locals as the entire continent goes dark!

My favorite response to the argument that the millenium ends on Dec. 31, 2000 rather than Dec. 31, 1999 is thusly:

"Nobody likes a math geek, Scully." http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

We suffer for our Correctness http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

kokonutz: Love the reference! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

Of course I won't be flying - I've already made my "quota" for 1999, and wouldn't want to waste the miles!

As for the when does the century/milennium end question, we Jews know that the current year is 5760, so there are still 239 years to go until 6000!

johna: It is incumbent upon me to point out that the current year in the Chinese Calendar (also a lunar calendar) is 4697, leading one to wonder what our ancestors did for the first 1063 years, without Chinese food?

I have a TG (Thai) flight that afternoon, BKK-HKT, but I am confident that all will be fine. 12:00 Midnight in most time zones is rather quiet for air traffic anyway.

My thoughts:

Clocks and calanders are really just a frame of reference. It really doesn't matter what day it is or what time it is, what matters is that we all agree on the same date and time.

We should completely change our clocks and calanders anyway. Different cultures use different calanders and we should adopt a new one that is not bias towards a particular culture. We should also change our clocks to all be set to GMT or Zulu time so that we have no more time zones (so what if I eat my breakfast at 1400 and the sun sets at 0200, as long as it is the same time everyday)

Maybe we should also go to "celcius" time ? *L*

There is no bad luck of Friday 13th; earthquakes, storms, and other natural disasters have no concept of the date, so there will be no doomsday in year 2000.

As far as I am concerned, when the year goes from a '1***' to a '2***' it is a new millennium....lets celebrate. For all you who wait until 2001, you're going to miss it all!

One thing is certain...for the next millennia, it will be 2000 and something, and for the past millennia(assuming someone didn't change our calanders without telling us) we have been using a 1000 and something. So I am going to celebrate a millennia of 1000 and something going out and a millennia of 2000 and something coming in.

In 2001, you will not be able to celebrate a millennia of 1000 and something because the year 2000 will already have pasted and as for the next millennia, there will only be 999 years of 2000 and something left!

I think people are confusing the intention of the celebrations. For the literal christians of the world, I think they want to celebrate a literal period of 2000 years since a person in their history was born. But the majority of the world is not christian, so that means we are celebrating the year itself - 2000. I assume that even non-christian governments will have year 2000 celebrations.

[This message has been edited by Aubie (edited 12-17-1999).]

Ufff ... I'm confused and need a beer http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

I'm booked for a January 1, 2000 return flight. (U.S. domestic only, so I feel reasonably comfortable about the safety. And if need be, the destination, Seattle, is close enough that I could just take a bus back to San Jose, provided that buses are running, of course, which I expect they will....)

Star Date: 14259.7, Captain's personal log.

Might have to do a mileasge run (Will cost me $1,200 but it worth 55,000 miles) from YVR to HNL 31 Dec,

Flight leaves YVR 1900 and arrives into HNL just before 2400 but that is after if turns to 00 GMT. Does that count? A/c witll be either a DC-10-30 or a 747-400

All this Calendar mess had me post this .. Do we consider the Hindu Calendar or the Chinese Calendar, probably the oldest ? Or the Muslim Calendar, later than the Christian one ? It is because of the status English, the language enjoys, that this Calendar / Millenium thing comes into play, right ? Whichever way, cheers .......
Happy New Year everybody !! [Hick] http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif
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KFlyer