Not a New Decade

In politics, sports and other arenas, people are talking about the past decade and trying to characterize it one way or another. The bad news for them is that the last decade is not over. Decades run from the years ending in 1 until and through the years ending in 0. In other words, the current decade started on January 1, 2001 and will end on December 31, 2010. January 1, 2011 starts the next decade, not January 1, 2010. This is apparent when one considers that we started counting years in year 1, not year 0; therefore, the first decade was from year 1 to year 10. The same continues to be true as we count above year 2000. While we may be in a hurry to end the past ten years with two recessions and other horrible events, unfortunately, we are stuck with it for another year no matter how much wishing or fuzzy math we want to apply to it.