BioCode

[Doug Yanega]

Paul Dessart wrote:

>the starting point
>of the Code: 1st January 2000. Why choosing such a banal, trivial date?
>Waiting one year more - namely 1st January 2001, the starting point
>would be simultaneously the 1st day of the 3rd millennium and the 1st
>day of the XXIst century. Not more exciting?

I think that as much as we would like and expect people to recognize 1/1/01
as the first day of the new Millenium, our complaints about the
technicalities involved are being and will be ignored in the end. I've
noticed a few lively little debates elsewhere on the Net that indicate that
people who insist on being correct are generally shouted down as being
"nitpickers" and "intellectual elitists", among other things. I expect that
most everyone on the planet will end up celebrating the turn of the
millenium one year early, on "a banal, trivial date", like it or not. Hard
to fight the tide.

Just my perspective, of course...

Doug Yanega    Depto. de Biologia Geral, Instituto de Ciencias Biologicas,
Univ. Fed. de Minas Gerais, Cx.P. 486, 30.161-970 Belo Horizonte, MG   BRAZIL
phone: 031-449-2579, fax: 031-441-5481  (from U.S., prefix 011-55)
                  http://www.icb.ufmg.br/~dyanega/
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82