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+--- Thread: Hayes & Koetzner (/thread-12832.html)
- David1953 - 01-09-2000
Looks like this forum, particularly since moderated by the Curmudgeon is the place for this "rant."
I have enjoyed reading the wine articles for some time now and have just finished the Christmas 1999 piece by Tim Hayes and John Koetzner entitled "A Christmas Card From the Vine." They start off by saying they realized when they sat down to write this column that it was the last time they would do so this century.
Really? I like your columns guys. I'm really sorry to hear you won't be writing another one for a whole year. Oh - wait a minute. I get it. You guys are just two more of the countless morons this country produces who don't know how to count.
Look in an encyclopedia, check it out with a history teacher or whatever. The 21st Century starts on Jan. 1, 2001. As I write today on Jan. 9th, 2000, it is still the 20th Century.
You could look it up.
- Randy Caparoso - 01-11-2000
David, David, David -- This is not an issue that should trouble us wine revelers. There was a fellow named Jesus, it seems, who enjoyed his wine. In fact, historians who claim to have known him talk about the time he attended a wedding party in a town called Cana, and there was no wine. Horrors! And so, miracle of miracles, wine was magically made to appear -- and this was nearly 2000 years before David Copperfield!
In any case, the Roman/Gregorian calendar by which we mark the millenniums was eventually adjusted to mark the birthday, roughly, of this dude name Jesus. Jesus was in his early 30s when he started multiplying loaves and wowing revelers. And so they refer to the days when he walked around as "anno Domini" -- A.D., or "year of our Lord." This means, oh David of the Rants, that as far as most people in the western world are concerned, that the first millennium was well under way during the weeks when his parents went racing across the desert to escape some lunatic local king. Like most babies, he eventually turned 1 after 12 inexact (since Caesar hadn't yet made adjustments for solar movements) months, and he died before or slightly ahead of his time, depending upon how you look at it.
So anyway you slice it, January 2000 is not much different than January 0. If the first modern millennium started with Jesus's first breath, surely we must be living and breathing in a new millennium ourselves!
- Catch 22 - 01-11-2000
Randy,
As a regular observer and sometime participant on this board, I am well aware that you know your stuff (and then some) with regards to wine. However, David is 100% correct on this matter. There was no year "0" on the calender, it started at 1. Therefore, the new millennium starts at 2001. This of course, gives me a great excuse to celebrate even more this coming New Years Eve than this past one.
- Randy Caparoso - 01-11-2000
Your point being? Everyone's calendar starts at 1; yet when you are born, you're not 1 until after you've lived 365 days. It's not a question of how you mark time, it's a question of living it.
So that's what you should do -- live and celebrate every day in 00 as if it were your first! At least I'm trying.
- Thomas - 01-11-2000
I could say you are all out to lunch on this one, but I won't. In any event, since marking time via the Gregorian calendar is an arbitrary matter, and since the calendar itslef needs adjusting in order to make up for the few seconds it loses (or is it gains) every 365 days, I suspect whatever millennium we are in has to be shifted a few feet here and there anyway.
The beauty of it all, though, is what I suspect Randy tried to say but did not get across: drink wine and stop fiddling with unimportant matters like measuring time. When the reaper comes, it comes in its own time, and if you did not drink enough wine yet, you lose out, big-time!
- Bucko - 01-11-2000
What Foodie is trying to say is..THE PERSON WITH THE MOST CORKS WINS.
The true millennium according to the calendar experts begins this coming January 1, but as others have said, it is only another in an endless chain of excuses to pull some corks on your best wines.....
Bucko
- David1953 - 01-11-2000
The point of the whole rant was that we are here to enjoy wine (and read about it). I've had it up to here with new millenium this and end of the century that. Why couldn't Hayes and Koetzner just say Merry Christmas and let it go at that? Tell us about wine, don't try to make the column seem significant with that sort of drivel.
Regarding the various calendar systems mentioned here by other posters and when Jesus took his first breath, etc. - absolutely none of that is relevant to the original rant.
We are talking western world here, as this is where all the Millenium hoopla is taking place, and in the western world (i.e. Western European world, including America) we use the Gregorian calendar. In that calendar system the first year of our Lord (anno Domini) starts January 1, Year 1. His birth date is Dec 25,of year 1. This is the system we use, regardless of when the actual birth took place, regardless of what calendar other people in the world use. That is how we measure the passage of years here and now in the USA. 1 thru 1999 does not equal two thousand years, only one thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine - fact, historical and mathematical - no room for "opinion".
BTW we celebrated the beginning of the last year of the second Millenium, Jan 1, 2000, with Roederer (Calif.) and Moet et Chandon at a very nice party with a cool jazz band. Just because half the people there couldn't count either, didn't mean I was adverse to having a good time.
We will probably repeat the experience again next year to kick off the first year of the third millenium.
- Thomas - 01-12-2000
David, are you an engineer? This is one you take rather seriously.
I wrote a column recently in which I laid into all those writers before Jan 1 who overused the words "last millennium" and who are likely to overuse the words "the new millennium". Tiring phrases, they are, and the m word is spelled with a double n.
- Winent - 01-15-2000
Just saw this rant. Agree that we all can't count. However, I would propose the whole millennium argument be placed in the "who cares" file. As a whole, I think folks are much more impressed with the calender changing from 1999 to 2000 then when the millenium actually begins. I agree with David's comment. Think about it. First we celebrate the calender changing to 2000. Then we get to celebrate the millennium!
Start stocking up on the good stuff now.
- Herls - 01-20-2000
I agree with Winent. Due to the confusion in the press ect... I am going to celebrate both Jan 1st's (well I already put a serious dent in the wine cellar for the 2000 Jan 1) I suggest everyone do the same.
- winoweenie - 01-22-2000
Foodie and Randy, After reading Davids comments I just HAD to jump in. I don`t think he`s an engineer because he didn`t dissect the authors names into matching pieces and compare them to heirogliphicic scribblings once seen on a study of Egypt. He reminds me more of a professor I had at the UofMo. who, when confronted with a paper from a student whose content confused or enraged him, attacted the poor soul with his considerable vocabulary and energy. Having written all this drivel has made me extremely thirsty. Cheers.