Re: Replacing Passenger Stock (WAS Re: Bluebird Railcars for Gippsland)

["Jack" <bd107@tsn.cc>]

Talking of counting  and starting at 1........ how old were u all when u
were born,,,,, isn't that a start?


Yuri J Sos wrote in message <363691a4.1513458@news.enternet.com.au>...
>markbau1@aol.comnospam (MarkBau1) wrote, and I selectively quote:
>
>>Can this be true??
>>
>>I find myself both agreeing with and defending David Bromage???
>
>Mark, I'm sorry to have forced you to blot your copybook <g!>
>
>>You don't need to be a mathematician to know that when you start
>>counting things,loco's, beers, years, whatever, you start at one as
in.....1
>
>It must be different "up over" in the States, but celebrations* for
>the end of the decade and the end of the millennium down here in
>Australia are all planned around the 31.12.1999/1.1.2000 changeover
>(or should that be 12/31/1999-1/1/2000?  how USAified are you?), not
>the 2000/2001 changeover.  I understand the mathematics involved, but
>the media and the population in general seem to not want to wait
>another year for the celebrations to begin.  Added to that, the
>"millennium bug" or Y2K bug that everyone seems to be talking about
>will cause problems (?) on 1/1/20000, not 1/1/2001.   Maybe in
>2.1.2000, everyone will get all geed up about a "real" end of
>millennium celebration on the proper date, I don't know.
>
>The reference I made to John Howard was that about 9 months ago he
>deigned to suggest that millennium celebrations would be more
>appropriate on 1/1/2001: he was howled down and pooh poohed by the
>media as being a spoilsport and wowser and generally wanting to get in
>the way of a good time.
>
>So I was merely following the popular convention that the decade ends
>in 14 months' time.
>
>This argument is a bit like the number billion, which is a million
>million everywhere except in the US where it's a thousand million.
>However most of the general population (and the media) have now
>adopted the convention that one thousand million is one billion: you
>can nit pick, but the change has the weight of numbers.  The dynamics
>of language, I suppose.
>
>(* celebrations include parties and balls to be held by every major
>hotel and casino in the land, "events" such as being over the South
>Pole at exactly midnight, going to Tonga or American Samoa to be the
>first to see the first rays of sunlight of the new decade/millennium).
>Regards
>
>Yuri
>--
>==================================
>Yuri J Sos
>Melbourne VIC AUS
>
>Reply to: steam4me@enternet.com.au
>
>Web site at http://people.enternet.com.au/~steam4me
>(last updated 22 October 1998 2300h approx.)
>First photos of R711 in steam!
>==================================