Here we go again. Not content with starting an entire millennium a year early, the newspapers, sportscasters, and some other public figures have started touting the beginning of a “new decade.” One of the announcers of the first bowl game of the year said it was the first football game of the new decade. A newspaper in Florida just announced that identical twins were born in different decades.
What is it with people who keep compounding errors until almost everyone believes that the wrong thing is right? The year thing started when Bill Clinton insisted on being the “New Millennium President,” even though his reign in the twenty-first century lasted only a bit more than nineteen days.
Years work just like any other set of objects that can be divided into decades. Rosary beads are an excellent example. A set consists of five decades, separated by a single bead between each decade. Ignoring the separator beads, the first decade begins with the first bead and ends with the tenth. The second decade begins with the eleventh bead. That’s right, count them if you’re not sure. Ergo, the second decade of the second millennium (which started on January 1, 2001, after 2000 years were completed) begins on January 1, 2011. This isn’t something that’s debatable, because facts aren’t fodder for argument.
People often confuse facts with theories. It’s okay to be skeptical of theories, unless those theories are proven. Then they become facts. I’ve known individuals who look at me funny when I tell them that gold is considerably heavier than lead, and that platinum is heavier than gold. This isn’t a theory I worked out, and it’s not an opinion, but a fact. One person looked up the atomic weight of each and declared me wrong, although the atomic weight has nothing to do with the density, or actual mass of the material.
Man-made global warming, or climate change, is a theory; and even though it can’t be proven, supporters don ski masks and shout that it’s true to the shivering masses gathered on the frozen town squares. Right now, with the wind chill at fifteen degrees, I’d be more inclined to believe the ice age sycophants from the 1970s. Sadly, we’re going to pay a heavy financial price based solely on opinions concerning climate change.
Evolution is another theory, but supporters have succeeded in having it taught as an exclusive truth in schools in many states. No one has successfully explained why cave men evolved as humans, while the many species of monkeys remained as the apes they have always been.
Nor has anyone shown how a cross in the Mojave Desert, or The Ten Commandments in a courthouse, or a Nativity scene on a city-owned property means that congress has passed a law respecting the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free practice thereof. Show me the law and I’ll shut up. Someday maybe we’ll get all this right, but right now, many of us are nothing more than voices in the wilderness.