The Right Ten

After a peculiarly cool summer so far, we've been visited the past few days by some proper internal organ boiling weather. You start to feel nauseous if you stand outside for three minutes around noon. I'm not used to it--I guess I've been doing the daytime schedule for about a month now and it's almost like living in another city. It's hotter and everywhere I go is more crowded now. It occurred to me I slept through most of the 00s. I think I remember hearing about the planes hitting the World Trade Centre on 9/11 at around 10am, just after I got up. Still, hard to believe I got up at 6am in high school.

I wonder if people who are anal about acknowledging the proper ends and beginnings of decades mean to include 1980 when they say, "the seventies". Because if you say, "seventies", wouldn't you be specifically talking about the years with a seven for the tens digit? So therefore if people who are anal about the exact meaning of the word "decade" say nineties, eighties, seventies, sixties, and so on, they're referring to something different than proper decades.

Ah, I see Wikipedia has something to say about this;

Although any period of ten years is a decade, a convenient and frequently referenced interval is based on the tens digit of the calendar year, as in using "1960s" to represent the decade from 1960 to 1969. Often, for brevity, only the tens part is mentioned (60s or sixties), although this may leave it uncertain which century is meant. These references are frequently used to encapsulate popular culture or other widespread phenomena that dominated such a decade, as in The Great Depression of the 1930s.

Some writers like to point out that since the common calendar starts from the year 1, its first full decade contained the years from 1 to 10, the second decade from 11 to 20, and so on. So while the "1960s" comprises the years 1960 to 1969, the "197th decade" spans 1961 to 1970.

In addition to the interpretations noted above, a decade may refer to an arbitrary span of 10 years. For example, the statement "during his last decade, Mozart explored chromatic harmony to a degree rare at the time," merely refers to the last 10 years of Mozart's life without regard to which calendar years are encompassed.

Thus, an unqualified reference to, for example, "the decade" or "this decade" may have multiple interpretations depending on the context.

The animals were certainly acting nutty outside to-day. I only went out briefly to pick up something from the store, figured I didn't need my camera, and as always happens when I don't bring my camera, I saw something cool--in this case a bright orange and grey moth that seemed to be trying to attack me the moment I went outside. It flew circles around me and made as if to ram me a few times before settling on the door.

I did get some pictures of the ducks I fed yesterday, but I think I've milked those ducks for all the photos I can. Yet still they want bread!