The proverbial journey that begins with a single step lasts 1,000 miles, not 999. Just try giving the bank 99 cents in exchange for a dollar. Time doesn't hurry either, unless you're having fun. But with virtually the entire world quivering with impatience, no point remains to insisting that midnight Dec. 31 will mark not the end of a millennium, or even of a century, but only the passing of another month and another year. Ignore mathematics, history and logic, which agree that the next century and millennium actually begin with the year 2001.
Perception has overwhelmed reality.
We'll have millennium madness a year early. It was perhaps the only time in human history when absolutely nothing happened for contemporaries and posterity to deplore. A special Pulitzer Prize should be awarded to any newspaper that demonstrates by omission that it has better things to do. To recall history is good. To misinterpret it is foolish.