What Decade Is It?
 

I keep hearing, and reading, this is the beginning of a new decade.
How can that be? There was no year zero, so the first decade would be years one through ten, right?
So logically, every decade would start with one (11,21,etc) and end with zero (00,10,20,etc), right? :confused:

It's both the last year and the first year depending on your view.
We had this argument in the new year of 2000 people said the millenium started in 2001.
who cares,

Programmers start counting from zero. Everyone else starts at 1.

So for most people 2010 is the last year of the first decade of the 21st century.

and pregnancy takes 10 months

In History we refer to the seventeen hundreds and the eighteen hundreds (1700s 1800s). I considered it a new millenium when we hit 2000. So, i consider that we are now in a new decade. Bloody hope so; else we'll have all those tv retrospectives to do all over again in 12 months time!

But doesn't the 17th century start with 1601? ;)

Sort of. It varies dependng on the historian. It's something of a moot point. Generally speaking we get by by being vague: blah blah blah the turn of the century blah blah .

Ask the next 100 people you meet to count to 10. See if they start with zero and end with 9, or if they start with 1 and end with 10.

Doesn't quite work that way though radar. Because if you;re just counting then '0' refers to nothing...an absence of whatever it is your counting. But the year '0' is a something. The year up to 1 is still a year.

Centuries are the counting of years. If counting begins at 1 so do centuries.

Assuming Zero is the point at which you begin counting, the number 1 is the passage of the first year, 10 is the passage of the first decade, and 100 is the passage of the first century.

Zero doesn't count. It's zero. It's the starting point. You measure from zero to 1, from 1 to 2, from 2 to 3, etc.

yebbut the year ahead is 2009. We are clearly using the year 2009 to denote the year we're in, not the year just gone.

No, the year is the 2010th, it's just not tallied until the end, when it becomes part of the total.

Fuck off you're confusing me :P

2nd decade of the 2000 millennium.
1. 2000
2. 2001
3. 2002
4. 2003
5. 2004
6. 2005
7. 2006
8. 2007
9. 2008
10. 2009

1. 2010

A child lives year one, but is not one year old, until the end when it's totaled.
During their year two, they are 1 year old, until the end when it's totaled.
See, it's not confusing at all. ;)