As a result of the young ages of the Indignant Children, I have to tutor them on certain things, onw of them being mathematics. The wife and I are working with them on their letters and numbers. And I am reminded that when one starts counting, you begin with the number 1. You don’t start with 0, a fact verified by the Indignant Wife, an actuary and, as a prerequisite, a mathematician. So, why is the mainstream media doing these retrospectives about the “’naught” decade from 2000-2009?
This may be just a minor complaint, but, just like the “end of the last century,” people are coming up one year short. I’m willing to excuse people for 2000 because of the Y2K scare that was supposed to technological world to a standstill (now it’s the year 2012 that is to be the end based on a flawed reading of the Mayan calendar and a film by the talented, yet still a hack director Roland Emmerich). But the people who publish, edit, write for the media are supposed to be smart people; who know that when counting to 10, you don’t stop at nine because you counted “0,” which of course is nothing, nada, zilch. It’s a placeholder.
But you can’t tell that to the people who publish Sports Illustrated; or the Chicago Tribune; or Billboard Magazine. All of these publications and many others have been running articles, online and published looking back on the past 10 years as a “decade.”
Now, I know that an old adage in publishing and the media is “give the people what they want,” especially the stupid ones and as a result, we have “American Idol,” Fox News, “Survivor” Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. But, when it comes to simple mathematics, the media is going along with the 9+0 =10 thought process, instead of waiting just ONE year.
If these people don’t know simple math, how can we expect our kids to do the same? And how can we bitch when our kids’ math scores are deficient? You’ll forgive me if I wait until the end of next year to count the decade over, thank you!
Idiotic!