I’m not one to watch movies for deep spiritual or humanitarian significance.  It takes me a long time (sometimes days, weeks) to process input, especially when it comes at me in the blitz of a two-hour motion picture zooming (relatively) by on the screen.  For example, I saw Defiance recently, which has a lot of good stuff in it to comment about, but I’m not going to take the time to crunch through it right now.

Speaking of Daniel Craig…
Once a year-span or so, sometime between the end of one baseball season in October (or, more recently, November) and the beginning of the next in April, I watch all the James Bond movies.  Yes, all of them.  In order.  It’s a way to turn off my brain for a couple hours and just be entertained every few days. I obtained a collection of VHS tapes from a friend a few years ago — every one from Dr. No through Tomorrow Never Dies, minus The Man with the Golden Gun. I have since added Golden Gun, plus the VHS version of The World Is Not Enough and the DVD versions of Die Another Day and Casino Royale.

So, since there’s a break in the UEFA Champions League season and thus there’s nothing good on TV, I’m beginning my Bond Marathon with Dr. No now.  I’m not promising (you or myself) anything, but my plans are to comment on each one as I watch them.  Not an official review, not as a film critic by any stretch because I’m too shallow and inexperienced for that, but just as a fly-by commenter.  Some of the good-bad-ugly, some trivia, some quotes, some general or specific observations.  Just for fun.

Happy new Decade!

Wait, not so fast.

I’m not convinced that this is the beginning of a new decade.  I think Jan 1, 2011 will be the start of a new decade, the current one ending on Dec 31, 2010.  My reasoning is manifold:

• We count from 1 to 10, not from 0 to 9; so the decade should go from 2001 – 2010, not 2000 – 2009.
• There is no year 0.  Not that Wikipedia is the final authority for all things, but the Gregorian Calendar entry asserts what we all know: “AD 1 immediately follows 1 BC”.
• Because there is no year 0, the first decade is 1-10; the second decade is 11-20, the third is 21-30, etc.  By extension, the current decade is from 2001-2010, and the next one will be from 2011-2020.
• We have precedent for numbering periods starting with 1 and ending with a multiple of 10.  The 1st Century was from 1-100; the 2nd Century was from 101-200; and so on.

Interestingly, Wikipedia makes mention of a disconnect between the cultural notion and mathematical/scientific notion of when the 21st Century began.  Even Wikipedia concludes that according to math and logic, the current century runs from 2001-2100, but gives mention of some other “cultural” notion of the current century having begun in 2000, basically declaring this cultural notion incorrect (as I do). Elsewhere Wikipedia affirms that the 21st century runs from 2001-2100; furthermore the 20th Century ran from 1901-2000, and the 19th Century ran from 1801-1900, etc.  If we are going to redefine the 21st century as having begun on January 1, 2000, then we have shorted a previous century by one year, making it not a century at all but rather a “99 year period”.

More authoritative is the U.S. Naval Observatory, stating the same thing, that “the 21st century began with 1 January 2001 and will continue through 31 December 2100.”  Furthermore, it defines millennia as well:

Similarly, the 1st millennium comprised the years AD 1-1000. The 2nd millennium comprises the years AD 1001-2000. The 3rd millennium began with AD 2001 and will continue through AD 3000.

Why all this talk about Centuries if the discussion is supposed to be about Decades?  My fourth bullet point above is supported by these definitions: the precedent is that we group millennia and centuries in groups of 1000 or 100 years, beginning with the year 1:

• Millennia: 1-1000, 1001-2000, 2001-3000, …
• Centuries: 1-100, 101-200, 201-300, … ,1801-1900, 1901-2000, 2001-2100, …

By extension, then, a decade should be a grouping of 10 years beginning with the year 1: 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, … , 1991-2000, 2001-2010, 2011-2020, …

So, I remain unconvinced by the popular cultural notion of us having just begun a new decade.  In my mind, we’ll have to wait another year.