SC - The Y1K Crisis (HUMOR)
Seton1355 at aol.com
Seton1355 at aol.com
Fri Sep 17 11:21:39 PDT 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're 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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<BLOCKQUOTE><TT>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're 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.</TT>
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