[P1] YOK definition?

George Slusher gslusher at rio.com
Mon Aug 11 02:15:13 PDT 2003


>I must have blinked or something. I can't recall the definition for 
>"YOK". Please clarify. TIA

It's "Y0K," not "YOK," i.e., "Year Zero." It was part of a running joke 
started with a quotation from Heraclitus about how they knew to count 
backwards from some time in the future and then how "Y0K" would have 
affected record-keeping. Of course, the concept of "BC" and "AD" (or, 
today, "BCE" and "CE") didn't come about for several hundred years "AD." 
The Romans counted years beginning from the supposed date of the founding 
of Rome and/or the years of the reign of a particular emperor. Stephen J. 
Gould's little book, "Rock of Ages," has a great history of calendrics.


George Slusher/Eugene, OR
gslusher at rio.com



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