Leaping lizards! MM merely alphabet soup

 

 

 

Aug. 12, 1998

 

Bernie Karsko Predictions that a computer crash will turn the world into a blank screen Jan. 1, 2000, no longer dominate newspaper and television reports, and I was starting to feel like no news was good news.

 

Maybe science was gaining on the possible double zero fiasco. But there are other threats as we leave the teen centuries, Rep. John LaFalce, D-N.Y, of the House Banking Committee, testified.

 

I must have been playing hookey in grade school when we were supposed to be learning about leap year.

 

It had never been a problem for me determining a leap year. Divide the year by four. Come up with a whole number and it's a leap year. They occur every four years.

 

So that Easter would not come in July, when Pope Gregory XIII devised his Gregorian calendar in 1582, he added a couple of twists I'd never heard about until I read about the congressman's testimony.

 

Pope Gregory was 80 when he issued a decree changing the calendar. He added an obscure quirk. He specified the four-year formula does not apply for end of century years unless the year is divisible by 400.

 

Don't worry too much about memorizing the rule. It's only an issue very 100 years. The year 1600 was a leap year. The year 2000 will be but 1900 was not.

 

What's the big deal over losing three leap-year days in 400 years? Ask a computer technician.

 

LaFalce said one company had a new computer in stores and ordered a recall recently when it learned it will be proper for women to propose to men in the year 2000 -- a baffling comment unless you're old enough to own a Golden Buckeye card and recall when women proposed to men during leap years.

 

As we approach the millennia in 2001, another change is becoming more and more common. When was the last time you saw A.D. or B.C. after a year?

 

The initials are being changed because of their explicit Christian connotation. A.D. (for anno Domini, "in the year of the Lord") and B.C. (before Christ) date back to 525. They will become C.E. (common or Christian era) and B.C.E. (before the Christian or common era).

 

Today's weather will be pretty common: partly cloudy.

 

 

Weather columnist John Switzer is on leave. Bernie Karsko is a Dispatch reporter.