You'd think that in an age of 600 MHz, 358 cable channels, and 99 billion served, a simple number like 2,000 would hardly cause confusion. Ahh, 2,000 — so symmetrical, so easily divisible. Still, so devious in its twisted ability to cause the complete and utter collapse of humankind's pretense to reason, it must be the true number of the beast.

For here is the real nightmare of the year-2000 bug: The formerly petty annoyance caused by society's stubborn refusal to allow the millennium to arrive in due time — namely, January 1, 2001. This juggernaut of ignorance has so overwhelmingly shadowed all pretense of collective intelligence, it has become a frightening reminder of our herd mentality and our disdain for knowledge.

It all started simply enough. For those of you who slept through second grade math (and there seem to be quite a few of you these days), a quick recap. There is no year 0 in the Christian calendar, thus making the first post-B.C. year 1 A.D. Working our way up, we find the tenth and final year of that first decade to be ... 10 A.D. Our first millennium lasted one-thousand years, from 1 A.D. through the end of the year 1000. It really couldn't be any simpler. One millennium equals 1,000 years. One-thousand years comes to a close at the end of year 1000. Makes perfect sense.

Yet when considering this inarguably simple notion, humanity has lost all sense of rationality. It all boils down to ignorance. It's obviously the symbolic changing of the numeric guard that has folks in a tizzy. People assume that when those calendric digits roll over, there must be a century and millennium change. It's like easily excitable drivers who, racing down the highway, crick their necks to catch a glimpse of that ever-elusive odometer rollover — all while barreling into the fender of some hapless commuter. What is this fascination with numbers coming up eggs? They're just dates on a calendar, folks — and it's just one calendar of many. No cataclysmic events decimated humanity in the Hebrew year 2000 (not at least as I can tell, anyway). Nor did we reach an age of overpowering enlightenment when the Chinese date books hit the big two-thou. So what's the big deal?

Still, it's an easy enough mistake to make, I suppose, similar to assuming that the decade known as the 90s started in 1990 and not 1991. But the problem is that so many people have made that mistake — we've had it drilled into our heads over and over again — that it's hard to remember a time when this century didn't end in 1999. As we have been formally notified time after time that we have just seen or are about to witness the final Olympics, elections, World Series, or Academy Awards of this century, logic tells us that 1999 must teeter on the brink of the 21st century. For who could believe that these internationally recognized organizations, figures, and media outlets could make such a heinous mistake? It would be easier to ask us to believe that all of these events are being cancelled next year.

There are so many supposedly intelligent people who continue to propagate this myth, the truth (which is out there) doesn't stand a chance. Not when you have entertainment moguls like James Cameron and Chris Carter adding fuel to the fool's fire with their respective projects, "Strange Days" (and a 1999 New Year's Eve that heralds the new millennium certainly qualifies as such) and a cancelled show with the cringe-inducing moniker "Millennium," in which the titular group's members paged each other with the number 2,000.

On a daily basis, we are subjected to countless buffoons in the realms of politics, media, and various institutions of higher learning blowing out hot air about this millennium-that-really-isn't. Hell, at this point even the Pope hasn't been able to keep his own Christian calendar straight. So few educated minds bother to take up this battle that the ignorant have won, and the falsehood has become an accepted fact. Pity poor Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He didn't pull that date out of a hat, you know. This acknowledged visionary is now witness to a global conspiracy of supreme ignorance that undermines a basic premise of his most famous work. From his Sri Lankan hideaway, when Mr. Clarke publicly chastises officials around the world for furthering this belief, he is dismissed as an aged iconoclast who's trying to ruin everyone's grand plans for a global celebration. That's just wrong.

A year or two ago, it was still possible to convince people that what they thought they knew was a simple error. Now, with cities, nations, and major corporations all getting behind this year 2000-equals-the-new-millennium concept, there's no possible way to convince people that it's all a farce.

And why should they believe it? M&Ms, the official candy of the new millennium, features two of their "M"-emblazoned candies in ads that equate the Roman MM with the start of our third 1,000 years. The ubiquitous Y2K nightmare will soon be crippling machines near you under the alias "the Millennium Bug." What's more, most celebrations of the year 2000 around the world are being promoted as Millennium parties, such as the one being held in London's new monstrosity, The Millennium Dome, a bastion to ignorance if ever one existed.

Because it has now become accepted fact, most historians have begun considering January 1, 2000, to be the dawn of the new millennium (with but a mere footnote to placate the anal do-gooders like myself)! If we all become delusional and believe the moon is made of cheese or that the Earth is flat, will this, too, eventually become accepted fact? We're behaving as though we still live in the Dark Ages, before scientific reason and the beacons of education and knowledge bettered our species and taught us about the workings of the world around us. It's high time for a new age of Enlightenment, because we're on a steep and slippery slope into the dark void of ignorance, with our esteemed leaders and cultural paragons blindly leading the way.

Me, I won't be celebrating the new millenium in 2000. I'll be scratching my head over the mass hysteria I'll be seeing all around me. Part of me hopes that after the hoopla dies down, someone will remind the world that the real turns of both the century and millennium are still to come. Perhaps a desire for another massive party will cause humankind to come to its senses, if for no other reason than to start the planning all over again and to celebrate the true dawn of the new millennium. But somehow, I doubt it.

— Richard