Happy New Year 2010 !!!!
 

It HAS to be better than 2009 overall.

Sydney is doing the most AMAZING fireworks we've EVER seen, Stoat and MamaStoat and myself agree.

We raise a glass to all our dear family on the LoT, Welcome to 2010.

We love youse all too !!

Hugs
The LashTrio. :cheers:

Happy New Year! I caught a glimpse of the pyro on the harbor bridge live on Good Morning America. Very cool.

:cheers:

Have fun, see ya next year!

You time travelers, you! What's 2010 like?? I'm still stuck in '09.

Just as in 2001, I had to accept that none of the cool stuff in 2001: A Space Odyssey had come to pass, this year, unlike 2010, (The Year We Make Contact), I will have to live with the fact that there is no Soviet/US joint venture to go visit the derelict Discovery ship, and we aren't getting a second sun by way of an exploding Io.

Happy Everything, folks. I will be ringing in the new year doing my promotional show for Kodak digital crap. See ya in the next!

I hope this is the year America finally puts an astronaut on the moon! First an astronaut and then a Starbucks!

Happy New Year!

so, are we entering the teens then?

Cheers Lashpair, you guys always seem to be ahead of us in these trends
:cheers:

Actually... it was Jupiter imploding that created a second sun. (Yes, I'm a total SciFi geek.)

More like the dreaded tweens. [shudder]

Happy New Year to the Aussie Boys and Mum. We'll catch up one day.

Fixed that for ya.

And I fixed that for you.

I am going to miss the Naughties

Fixed it for you.

But that would imply that I am going to stop. What do you think the chances are of that happening?

Zilch. Thus the humor of the irony.

Milleni-Os.

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

I think I'll make some Cawl Cennin this weekend...

Here, blow your nose, I can't understand a word you're saying. *tissue*

Gesundheit.

On the plus side, our cells do WAY more than those wimpy little communicators did in Star Trek. I still want a Phaser in the worst way, though.

Happy New Year to all my Swanky friends!:cheers:

Until my cell phone telepathically knows who I want to talk to without me indicating in any way, communicators (particularly of the Next Gen variety) win.

Happy New Year everyone. I've baracaded myself in my bedroom. The teens have taken over the rest.

8:30 and I'm seriously contemplating going to bed to read, which means I'd be asleep within an hour.

Happy New Year from the Eastern Time Zone.

Oh yeah - Guess I should re-read or rewatch. For that matter, maybe I'll re-read all the Odyssey novels.

I watched the fireworks of three parks from the roof of Imagination. (Shh ... no one is supposed to be up there.) It was amazing, and the Epcot finale was right above our heads, so close we could easily have been pelted with flaming fallout, but we weren't. It was a grand start.

We should have had our flying cars by now. Darn Sci-Fi writers. But I did see that LG made a phone with a friken movie projector built in! WTF? Are people realy going to project movies and clips from there phones?

Happy 010! ;)

I hope everyone has a very Happy New Year and decade! May all your wishes and dreams come true! :)

Just returned from midnight mass ... Happy New Year!

I lift a slice of bacon in salute to you all.

Happy new year! Yay 2010!

Many people here on O'ahu complain about the fireworks here during New Year's but I love them. The whole island lit up last night. Tons of aerial fireworks (all illegal, of course) lit up the state. Such rebellion... I love it.
:)

Happy entry into the Twenty-Teens, everyone! May they be a better decade than the Aughts.

I'll let you know how Happy a New Year it is when I get my paycheck next week ;)

One of the funniest things that happens every NYE here is that people set off Disneyland style fireworks in the sky but often they don't have the proper launchers for them. So they make it like 30 feet in the air above someone's house and BOOOOM! It sounds like a war zone. My parents' house last night shook every time someone set off something. lol!
:D

My New Years could be summed up in a few pics...

Bonne Année 2010 !!!!!!!!!!! Happy New YEar 2010 to Everyone from the old Continent !

Isn't our continent just as old as yours??

Happy New Year!

New Year is just an arbitrary imaginary line in our lives.

So, let's focus on something real. Happy Perihelion.

We are now 3 million miles closer to the sun than we were six months ago. I know it makes a huge difference in my life. Please share your favorite perihelion stories.

How can we call this decade the "teens" when we don't hit any teen years for another 3 years?

How can we call canned meat spam when it doesn't contain any unwanted commercial email?

It just is.

Assuming we are planning to use the twenties thirties forties fifties sixties seventies eighties and nineties would it not make sense to just call these the tens?
The Tenties sounds a little off.

Re: CoasterMatt's pics.

One of my favorite things to do on HM is to wait until everyone is gone and turn around at that point in the attraction and observe the empty house. It's cool and creepy all at the same time. (It's even more so when it's not HMH.)

We're still in the first decade of the 21st century. The second decade doesn't start until 1/1/2011.

Happy new year, everybody.

I'm still trying to figure out what the heck "Potted Meat" is??!!??

That's true. But we're now in the second decade of the 2000s. Apparently people care more about that one than about the other one. I assume nobody is going to claim that 1990 was part of the '80s.

Happy New'ish Year LoT! Disneyland was AMAZING at midnight.

Yes, from a mathematical standpoint I do consider 1990 to have been the last year of the 9th decade of the 20th century. Just as I consider 2009 to be the 9th year of the 21st century, and thus the 9th year of the 1st decade of that century.

"The 80's" (like any such designation) is a cultural designation, not a calendar one.

If you give the calendar a theoretical year zero (and why not), then you can consider it mathematically a new decade. By way of analogy, we humans have a year zero, our first year of life, and on our tenth birthday, we have indeed entered our second decade. I see no reason not to extend this way of reckoning to the calendar, and thereby end years of tiresome debate about it.

That was my point. And celebrating the end of any particular 10 year period is also a cultural designation. We aren't commenting on the end of the first decade of the 21st century, we're commenting on the end of the 10-year period consisting of years that start with 200x. We're culturally excited by an extra number on the odometer changing, not by oddities introduced into the system by a monk a millennium ago.

Of course, the fact that there was no year zero is just a cultural designation and not an inherent calendrical one either. This whole thing could go away by designating 1BCE as Year 0 (it doesn't matter since they got the year of Jesus's birth wrong anyway) and if we had kept the Babylonian sexigesimal counting system we'd not care a damn about decades, we'd have to wait 60 years for an onslaught of "decadal" recaps and 3600 years for an end of the "century" party.

They did get the year of Jesus' putative birth laughably wrong, indeed. But let's pretend that the decision to remake the calendar in his honor happened while he was still alive. I would think they would want the year to match up with his age, and wouldn't want to pester him by having a year in his honor that is always irritatingly off by one. (I know you're thirty-three, but it's the year thirty-two, m'Lord.) In any case, I declared a year zero back at the 1999-2000 turnover and haven't looked back since.

That's always the difference between cardinal and ordinal counting of age.

Currently I'm 35, but I'm in my 36th year. The cultural decision to be "1 year old from birth to first anniversary" is just as valid as the decision to be "1 year old from first anniversary to birth".

We could just move Year 1 back to the actual year of Jesus's birth (probably 4BCE) and then this last year change would be completely meaningless.

By that logic it makes just as much sense to celebrate NYE on 11/30. The numbers change after all!

Celebrate the change in digits, if that's you want. Don't say it's a new century (or decade) when it's not.

Which year would you replace by "year zero"? 1AD or 1BC? Either way, you screw up the count of years, and every history book in existence would need to be rewritten to change all the dates.

I've never heard people call infants under 1 as "1 year old". It's always "He's 6 months old" or "She's 9 months" etc. I've never heard that designation as "1 year old" used until after the 1st birthday.

Well, no, that doesn't make any sense, unless you're celebrating the change in month. People get more excited when more digits change. But if we did decide to celebrate the new decade then, it still wouldn't be wrong.


But yes, it is the end of a decade, just not one that anybody considers worth mentioning. And 12/31/2009 was the end of a decade. It happens to be one people feel like commenting on. 12/31/2010 will also be the end of a decade, but it also will not be one that very many people feel is worth commenting on. I'm sorry you don't like the cultural decision your society has made. I also am frequently in that boat. In this case, I don't care. But it isn't wrong, either way.

I said which I would change to zero, and it would not screw up every history book in existence (only those giving BCE dates). And even if it did, they've all been screwed up many times through history. Somehow societies fail to crumble.

But hell, since it is all social convention anyway, you can do it this way and not even have to change dates in any history book:

Rule 1: For purposes of dating CE dates, Year 0 is what was 1BCE.
Rule 2: For purposes of dating BCE dates, Year 0 is what was 1CE.

All dates currently written down remain correct. You get to party with everybody else instead of getting grumpy that they aren't waiting quietly another year with you, and the only people bothered are those calculating down specific spans of time that cross the BCE/CE line and they just have to remember to add 1.


None of that, of course, is a serious suggestion. It is just intended to highlight that absolutely everything about our calendar and calendar celebrations is a social convention so picking some social conventions as more irritating is kidn of pointless. It's kind of like still being pissed off at the conversion to the Gregorian calendar from the Julian calendar. Or arguing that the Chinese are a couple months off on when the year ends and what a bunch of fools they are.

Again, my larger point is not that you're wrong, you are correct that the first decade of the 21st century ends in 363 days. But for the most part, nobody cares and that's ok.

You're absolutely correct. In fact, that's pretty much what I said. My point was that we could do it the other way and it wouldn't be any more right or wrong.

The social convention to answering "how old are you" is "how many anniversaries of your birth have you had" (currently, I've experience 35 anniversaries of my birth). It could be the ordinal "in which year of life are you?" (currently, I'm in the 36th year of my life).

Neither is more right or wrong. One is just what was settled on. The fact that years uses the other convention is somewhat lost by modern linguistic usage but it used to be clearer in such constructions as "in the year of our lord one-thousand seven-hundred and eighty-seven" (to use the U.S. Constitution as an example). We could easily use the same convention for people and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that, in a time before common use of calendars that was the norm (I know some cultures increased age not on the occasion of a birth anniversary but on the occasion of specific hoilday, as if everybody got one year older on the 4th of July).

So You are saying that a decade means anything you want it to mean? A decade is any grouping of 10 consecutive years? Then we can celebrate the end of a decade every year! :rolleyes:

Hey! You just gave the exact definition of a decade. You should write dictionaries. Yes, a decade is any period of time ten years long. Just as a year (in our definition, other cultures have other definitions) is any period of time 365 (with some exceptions) days long.

Culturally, we decide which specific years we want to celebrate, out of all the infinite ones we could celebrate. For years we celebrate at 12:00am January 1 the previous 365 days. For decades we celebrate at the end of years ending in 9.

So, despite your eye rolling, I'm glad you finally have come around.

Let's go to the Random House Dictionary for those meanings of the word decade involving years:

1. a period of ten years: the three decades from 1776 to 1806.
2. a period of ten years beginning with a year whose last digit is zero: the decade of the 1980s.

Mirriam-Webster help out your argument at all? Nope:

1a: a period of ten years.

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:

1: a period of ten years.

From that bastion of all things truthy, Wikipedia:

"Although any period of ten years is a decade, a convenient and frequently referenced interval is based on the tens digit of the calendar year, as in using 1960s to represent the decade from 1960 to 1969."

Let's go to linguistic usage:

If on October 23, 2006 I had said "In the last decade the Oakland Athletics won 912 games." Would you assume I meant they won 912 games between January 1, 1991 and December 31, 2000 (which was the last decade using your definition)? No, you'd correctly interpret that to mean they won 912 games between October 24, 1996 and October 23, 2006. Because a "decade" is any consecutive ten year period.

Your turn. I assume this time you'll just have a rolly-eyes and a frowny face and maybe a fez hat left in your arsenal.

Yes, exactly what I was saying also. So, the first year of our calendar (a theoretical supposition anyway) started on 1/1/00, and didn't get to be called year one until it was in fact a one year old.

Oh, I guess I said I wasn't arguing this anymore as of the year 2000. Count it up any way you like. I'm through with the aughts, and I've got a lovely numeral 1 in front of a zero on my calendar that seems to agree with that.

Like I said... You can celebrate the end of a decade every single year. Thus celebrating 2009 as "the end of the decade" is meaningless by your definition. 2008 was the end of a decade; so was 2007, 2006, 2005, etc.

It doesn't change the fact that we are now in the last year of the first decade of the 21st century.

Nobody has claimed otherwise. The trick is finding someone who cares.

There was no year 0. Inventing one to support your argument is meaningless.

When you are counting a group of objects do you start with 0 or do you start with 1? If you answer "1", then why would you count years any different?

Probably because a year is not a physical object

Just because they're not physical doesn't mean we don't count them.

Yes but they don't have physical boundaries making them complete countable units - the boundaries are arbitrary, you can start or end your count at any temporal point of reference. There is no breaking point in time where one time ends and another begins, we're dividing a single infinite continuum.

I don't count any different than you do, but if I'm counting how many years have passed, then it seems logical to wait until 365 days have actually gone by before I count the first "object' (a year).

I'm not being entirely arbitrary. In the Julian scheme of things, there was no historical year zero - 1 BC was followed immediately by 1 AD (but then the current calendar wasn't instituted until freakin' 325). Astronomers decided they needed a year zero to keep the BC to AD line consistent with the mathematical number line when measuring the universe, so BC1 is scientifically year zero. Yay! I have scientifically valid reason to insist on a year zero! (It is concurrent with historical 1BC, admittedly) Anyway, the calendar got adjusted and modified by Gregory in the 15th century, rendering any accurate start date to the current common era kind of wonky.
(And then there are those 11 missing days somewhere in the 1700s, but who has time?)

Calendars are a social convention no matter how you slice it. Psychologically, the "x0 through x9" where x equals the current integer seems like a sound, psychologically pleasing and reasonably logical way to group these objects we call decades. I have no objection to you or anyone reckoning it otherwise, but, really, it's not arbitrary and I'm not stupid.

Calendar years have no zero (as we've decided to count them) because they are ordinals. When you count physical objects you're using cardinals. I had a first kiss, I never had a zeroth kiss. There was a time when I had had zero kisses then I had had one kiss.

We could easily have had a year zero if we wanted one. All we had to do was decide to count years as cardinals rather than ordinals. Doing so would violate no physical laws (in fact computers generally start counting at zero -- such as the first character in a string occupies position 0 in that string -- and it works just find) of counting.

And in fact, we do have a year zero when talking about years. We use them for ages. You get your birthday cake on the first anniversary of your birth. However, when your mom got her "baby's first year" scrapbook she didn't wait until you were one to start using it. Your entire first year of life you were 0 years old (and that's why in this period when small fractions of time are significant we break it down, nobody now cares that I am 4 months past my last birthday).

All of which is irrelevant to the question of the decade just celebrated other than the fact that having a year zero would avoid this silly conversation every time it comes up.

You're correct that there is almost another full year to go in the first decade of the 21st century. Good for you. Almost nobody cares, you'll be all alone at your "end of the decade" party next year.

It is also correct that the first decade of the 2000s just ended. For the most part, people inclined to reflect on the passage of a decade choose to do it then.

Neither of these landmark dates are inherently any more significant than the other. The universe is indifferent.

And it is worth noting that not once did I see a reference to the just ended decade as "the end of the first decade of the 21st century." So nobody's been wrong.

Is this the "Math Help" thread?

I don't know - are you making salsa?

Indeed.

Especially since this calendar is supposedly based on Jesus.

My take is to celebrate the passage of time when other people do so. It's more fun that way.

Though some do enjoy a semantics argument, I guess, even if they aren't big fans of Jesus.

Pity the poor man who works a Friday through Tuesday schedule where most work Monday through Friday. Most of the people respond to the question, "How's it going?" by saying "Friday!" Will anyone understand him if he simply says "Friday."

Nice of you to be so rude and dismissive. Fvck you too.

BTW... I don't celebrate the "end of the decade". What a silly thing to do.

Also, just because some misconceptions are popular doesn't make them any more true.

You're too much man for me, being with one so unworthy as me would leave you feeling cheapened and soulless. Besides, you're the one who started the eye rolling and telling other people they were doing it wrong.

Good for you. I don't celebrate new years or birthdays, either (though some years I do take advantage of the fact that friends are gathering and I like to spend time with them; but I don't care about the calendar year ending). Attaching great significance to odometer rolls holds no great interest for me either. I was asleep around 11pm, usually remember my birthday when someone else tells me, and roll my eyes at the "significance" given to anniversary dates of significant events (will SF TV stations please shut up about the 1906 earthquake and I'll probably crawl into a hole around 9/11/2011 and just wish everybody's shut up).

Do I win the pissing contest over who is more disinterested in the subject being vociferously debated?

That is true. And I hardly think anybody around here would believe I'm one to let a technical inaccuracy lie just because it makes people feel fuzzy. For example, I was all in favor of making sure people realized that celebrations on 12/31/2000 were a year early for noting the completion of the second millennium. That, though, had nothing to do with people preferring to party about the end of the 1000s and 1900s and 1990s and 1999. Just so long as they didn't tell me it was the end of the second millennium. Party hearty.

You, however, have yet to point out anybody suffering from a misconception. You have also failed to show any reason your preferred significant decade is better than other people's preferred significant decade, instead claiming that yours is the only significant decade despite the obvious fact that you're wrong.

But insofar as you state strongly positions with which nobody disagrees, you get that glow from being right.

Nice of you to be so rude and dismissive.

Seriously - how can those sentences be in the same post?

Your bitchy sarcasm is isn't doing your position any good, Alex: and frankly, I'm surprised to hear it from you.. If it makes you feel the bigger man to insult and demean me, more power to you.

I don't have a "preferred decade". If people want to celebrate the ending of the 9th year of the century, fine. More power to them.

This all started when I posted this:

An innocuous statement that you agreed with, but still have attacked me for saying.

I'm done with this discussion

If bitchy sarcasm from me surprises you then you haven't been paying attention.

And the response to your initial comment was from the fact that nobody has claimed we're in the second decade of the 21st century. Therefore the only reason I can think that you'd say such a thing out of the blue is that you wanted to point out that the people noting the end of a decade last Friday were wrong to do so. Which isn't so.

If, rather, you were just wandering around spouting non sequiters then please accept my abject apologies for misinterpreting your initial post. Though your follow ups are still full of wrong.

But let's just be clear on one very important thing. It was in no way bitchy sarcasm when I said you're too much man for me. That was sincere truth. My inadequacy would be humiliating for you. To state this is purely a statement of humble self-reflection on my part and is in no way meant to insult or demean you.

Two of the preceding paragraphs contain bitchy sarcasm. But only two. This paragraph contains none.

VAM.

Well, if this thread is any indication, we're screwed

Nah, it's just LoTers being LoTers. Can't say this place is ever dull. My non-ironic love to everyone and have a great year.

Well, on the bright side it's less than two more years left until Dec 21, 2012- the end of the world!



:evil:

I just hope they get DCA done in time for us to enjoy it before then!

If anyone cares I posted Video of the NYE countdown and Fantasy in the Sky fireworks on my Facebook. :)