h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

'Kay

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It's Pigasus!

You can't have big steps when using roman numerals. In fact, roman numerals are based strongly on the decimal system. 2382 will become MM CCC LXXX II [2000+300+80+2]. So 1999 is M CM XC IX

When did you last write the nineties on a cheque? Surely you write 5-May-1999 or something!

This conversation may be ending soon.

No one has suggested the Double-Oughts. In case you haven't shot, tracked, gutted and/or eaten any venison lately, "double-ought" refers to a size of shot used in killing Bambis. Perfect name for whatever decade follows the '90s. The only way to make it a more accurate reflection of the times would be to incorporate money into it somehow.

Yeah, but we get the joy of talking like old timers, looking down on anyone foolish enough to be born after teh millenium. Just as we treat anyone born after Michael Jackson's "Thriller" with some degree of contempt.

Yeeesss. I think that the conversation will end fairly soon and still no concrete name for the decade after this. I suppose that's what you get for having a comittee. What we should do is just appoint someone that will decide the term to be used and everyone just says 'Oh, okay'. At least for the name-giver, the pride in having named a whole decade will be some compensation for the ridicule they are bound to get.

Or just auction the name off to the highest bidder like I said before. I'll only take 5% because it was my idea. Luxury yacht here I come.

How About we just skip the next ___ years until we come to a decade we can give a name 2. It would be a lot easier to say. Doesn.t it make sence?

I think that's a very good idea - why don't we get the whole human human race to get into a time machine and zip forward to the year 2020, because then we'd be in the Twenties again, and there'd be no problem.

(Also, please join the Forum on Time Travel)

You know, Asimov wrote a dirty limerick about the first decade if the third millenia.

...and Asimov's estate won't sue you for posting his dirty limerick on a message board. So how does this limerick go?

If 2010 to 2019 are going to be the teens, then surely 2000-2009 must be the pre-teens?

Or, you could use hex and call it the seven-d's, but that might confuse any of us who were around in the seventies...

I know of a couple of (annoying) Man Utd fans who insist on calling this year 1AT (after treble) and since they seem to be in the majority I can see that catching on too.

Do, please tell...

since we're talking about the future here, let me come round full circle and go back to the 80's. it's PIGS IN
SPACE!!! i'm not sure what the next first decade of the millennium will be called, but it will probably be some-
thing way beyond my understanding. i mean, heck, that's a whole new millennium! the people that live it are
going to be much more advanced than i am. they'll be smarter, faster, less hungry, less prone to violence, i
can't wait. well, maybe i can, i'll only be 24 at the change in 4 months. maybe i'm not too old to adapt to the
brave new world that will be created by the simple passage of time!!!

the sarcasm is purely in jest. the opinions expressed by this personality do not necessarily reflect the overall
opinion of this life-form, if such an opinion were to actually exist! 8)

actually, it is true! this is how the majority of us can post on h2g2 while at work! i love my life!

I'm afraid I shall have to agree with Bluebottle's earlier comments that, despite all our original thought and amusing suggestions, it will be the twenty hundreds (although, I have been thinking about this and although when I think if the nineteen hundreds I think of 1900-1910, when I go a bit further back and think of the seventeen hundreds or the fifteen hundreds, that brings to mind the whole century....)

But I'm sure Bluebottle is correct that 2000 - 2010 is the twenty hundreds. A little dull but better than the Microsoft Decade or the Coca Cola decade. I vaguely remember hearing somewhere or reading some article or essay or something about what would happen if days of the week and years etc. were named after their corporate sponsor. Can anybody tell me what this was likely to be?

How about the pre-adolescents

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I did. Next week.

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Having read thus far in this thread, I fear you're all getting it mixed up. Decade names generally come towards the end of the decade, or even after...

"The Gay Nineties"
"The Roarin' Twenties"

And not all have them... they've been lost! *Sob*