Y zero K

["Michael Clinch" <clinchm@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>> SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE 
>> While browsing through material in the recesses of the Roman 
>> Section of the British Museum, a researcher recently came 
>> across a tattered bit of parchment.
>> After some effort he translated it and found it was a letter 
>> from a man called Plutonius with the title of "magister 
>> factorium," or keeper of the calendar, to one Cassius. It was 
>> dated, strangely enough, 2 BC, December 3 --about 2,000 years 
>> ago. The text of the message follows:
>> Dear Cassius:
>> Are you still working on the Y zero K problem? The change 
>> from BC to AD is giving us a lot of headaches and we haven't 
>> much time left. I don't know how people will cope with 
>> working the wrong way around. Having been working happily 
>> downward forever, now we have to start thinking upward. You 
>> would think that someone would have thought of it earlier and 
>> not left it to us to sort it all out at the last minute. I 
>> spoke to Caesar the other evening. He was livid that Julius 
>> hadn't done something about it when he was sorting out the 
>> calendar. He said he could see why Brutus had turned nasty. 
>> We called in the consulting astrologers, but they simply said 
>> that continuing downwards using minus BC won't work. As 
>> usual, the consultants charged a fortune for doing nothing 
>> useful. As for myself, I just can't see the sand in an 
>> hourglass flowing upward. We have heard that there are three 
>> wise men in the East who have been working on the problem, 
>> but unfortunately they won't arrive until it's all over. Some 
>> say the world will cease to exist at the moment of 
>> transition. We're continuing to work on the Y zero K problem 
>> and I'll send you a parchment if anything develops.
>> Best regards, Plutonius
>> 
>> Michael J. Clinch
>> Programmer/Analyst
>> BIT State Of South Dakota, USA 


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