ES - OOP a funny for computer buffs (who like the Middle Ages)

Karen tyrca at yahoo.com
Thu Feb 18 11:15:51 PST 1999


THE Y1K CRISIS
                                Canterbury, England. A.D. 999.
                                An atmosphere close to panic
prevails today
throughout Europe as the millennial year 1000 approaches, bringing
with it
the so-called "Y1K Bug," a menace which, until recently, hardly
anyone had
ever heard of.  Prophets of doom are warning that the entire fabric
of
Western Civilization, based as it now is upon monastic computations,
could
collapse, and that there is simply not enough time left to fix the
problem.
Just how did this disaster-in-the-making ever arise?
                                Why did no one anticipate that a
change from
a three-digit to a four-digit year would throw into total disarray
all
liturgical chants and all metrical verse in which any date is
mentioned?
Every formulaic hymn, prayer, ceremony and incantation dealing with
dated
events will have to be re written to accommodate three extra
syllables.
                                All tabular chronologies with
three-space
year columns, maintained for generations by scribes using carefully
hand-ruled lines on vellum sheets, will now have to be converted to
four-space columns, at enormous cost. In the meantime, the validity
of every
official event, from baptisms to burials, from confirmations to
coronations,
may be called into question.
                                "We should have seen it coming,"
says
Brother Cedric of St. Michael Abbey, here in Canterbury. "What
worries me
most is that THOUSAND contains the word THOU, which occurs in nearly
all our
prayers, and of course always refers to God.  Using it now in the
name of
the year will seem almost blasphemous, and is bound to cause
terrible
confusion.  Of course, we could always use Latin, but that might be
even
worse - The Latin word for thousand is Mille, which is the same as
the Latin
for mile.  We won't know whether we are talking about time or
distance!"
                                Stonemasons are already reported
threatening
to demand a proportional pay increase for having to carve an extra
numeral
in all dates on tombstones, cornerstones and monuments. Together
with its
inevitable ripple effects, this alone could plunge the
hitherto-stable
medieval economy into chaos.
                                A conference of clerics has been
called at
Winchester to discuss the entire issue, but doomsayers are convinced
that
the matter is now one of personal survival.  Many families, in
expectation
of the worst, are stocking up on holy water and indulgences.






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