CONTENTS FEATURE: What year is this? REACTIONS: Responses from our readers NET NOTES: Captivating web sites FEATURE: What year is this? The answer depends upon who's talking      Three years ago, the arrival of the new year was viewed with apprehension amid worries that the "Y2K bug" would cause devastating worldwide computer problems. While the bite of the Y2K bug did not afflict computer networks as feared, it has continued to infest communication—verbal communication, that is.      As we enter the fourth post-1999 year, most people still struggle with enunciation of dates. Some are welcoming "two thousand three." To others, the year is "two thousand and three." For a seeming minority, the new year is "twenty oh-three." And it may be "twenty aught-three" or "twenty hundred three" for a stable of curmudgeons and traditionalists.      The two latter approaches are modeled after a practice commonly used to identify the initial years of the 20th century, as in "nineteen aught four" for 1904. Despite the objections of purists, people since then generally have substituted the letter "0" for "aught" to represent the zero, calling that year "nineteen oh-four." Regardless, those two variations shared the approach of naming years by breaking the date into two numerical clusters—"nineteen," followed by the two-digit year designation "oh-four." The abandonment of that convention for designating years since 1999 is curious, but may have an explanation rooted in a 35-year-old motion picture.      Before the release of the 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey," producer Stanley Kubrick conferred with Arthur C. Clarke, the author of the novel that inspired the film. They deliberated how to enunciate the title in promotional announcements. After considering "twenty oh-one," they chose "two thousand one," embedding it as an inexorable part of pop culture.      That may be compounded by the beguiling notion that Earth has completed 2,000 spins around the sun under our calendar system. In truth, our Gregorian calendar is quite arbitrary—and, to a small degree, inaccurate.      The Gregorian calendar, developed by physician Aloysius Lilius of Naples, was sanctioned in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. Based upon a "tropical year" of approximately 365.2425 days, the Gregorian calendar was authorized to correct a miscalculation in the previous Julian calendar that had been in effect since 45 B.C. To rectify a 10-day "slippage" induced by the imprecise Julian calendar, the Pope pronounced the day following Oct. 4, 1582, as Oct. 15. The Julian calendar had replaced an even more inaccurate Roman calendar.      Astronomers define a "tropical year" as the time required for the vernal equinox to recur as the Earth rotates once around the sun. (The term "tropical" is derived from the Greek word for a pivot or turn, "tropos.") Over time, tropical years vary in length as a result of gravitational interference from other planets. A tropical year was 365.242196 days long in 1900; it's now 365.242190 days; and astronomers calculate that by 2100 it will consist of 365.242184 days.      The Gregorian calendar, unfortunately, incorporates errors by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus (translated as Dennis the Little), who in AD 523 or so was asked by papal chancellor Bonifatius to develop a method to compute the dates of Easter in different years. Dionysius based his calculations on the birth of Jesus, which he said had occurred on Dec. 25, 753 AUC (ab urbe condita—following the founding of Rome). Calendars back in those ancient days were based upon the date on which monarchs began their reign, and were often reset as new rulers ascended to the throne. Dionysis discarded that practice and determined that the new year should begin on the date of the Feast of the Circumcision, seven days following the birth of Jesus. So Jan. 1, 753 AUC, was redesignated Jan. 1 of the year 1 A.D.      Dennis proved to be somewhat of a menace to chronologers because Christ was likely born at least four years earlier than he had calculated, and also because he began his calendar with the numeral one, whereas we normally begin counting from zero. (For example, a child is not one year old until a year after birth.) But the Roman numerical system does not have a symbol for zero, so the year 1 B.C. is immediately followed by the year 1 A.D. As a result, the time span between 5 B.C. and 5 A.D. is nine years, not 10.      Both the Gregorian and Julian calendars are considered "Christian" calendars, but they're not the only means to mark time.      Under the Hebrew calendar, this is the year 5763. That represents the number of years since the creation of the world, which took place in 3761 B.C. according to Judaic belief. On the Hebrew calendar, which is based on the phases of the moon, a year can contain as few as 353 or as many as 385 days.      On the Islamic (Hijri) calendar, which also follows lunar cycles, years are 11 days shorter than on the Gregorian calendar. This is the year 1423 on the Islamic calendar, which is based on the date of Muhammad's emigration to Medina in 622 A.D. Numerous other calendar systems exist as well.      All of those variable interpretations clearly show that our emergence into the third millennium on Jan. 1, 2001, was not particularly monumental. It rather was incidental, marking only an approximation of the 2000th anniversary of some arbitrary date miscalculated nearly 16 centuries later.      To test the theory that people are unreasonably conditioned to call the new year "two thousand three," ask a friend to read aloud the following addresses: 85 Main Street 1508 Elm Place 3014 Kingswood Circle 4519 Bellamy Drive 1009 Nordic Avenue 719 Brown Court 2007 Collins Road      Note how your test subject pronounced "3014," "1009" and "2007." If the first two were enunciated as "thirty fourteen and "ten-oh-nine" but the latter as "two thousand seven," blame Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke.      Now consider another bit of pop culture. Imagine if singers Zager and Evans had recorded "In the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred Twenty Five." Thankfully, in their 1969 hit record, they sang the far more lyrical "In the Year Twenty-Five Twenty Five." The genius of Clarke and Kubrick notwithstanding, let's get beyond "two thousand one" and start living in "twenty oh-three." REACTIONS: Responses from our readers      Thanks for attacking one of my pet peeves with current usage of "I" and "me" [EditPros News, December 2002]. Presidents, sports figures, movie stars, announcers, national news anchors and such are using the malformed grammar—perhaps even those who write their scripts also.      A few thoughts: you are right on the over-compensation aspect, caused by over-zealous English teachers that I remember well. The problem seemed to begin with the tendency for kids to use "me" in the subjective case, like in "Me going to play"—that one sent the teachers into a frenzy of "I'm going to play." The "I" correction of "me" got so bad that the correct forms of "me" in compound usage deteriorated to its current sad state.      No one would say "between I and you" and yet they say "between you and I." They always seem to only misuse the pronoun when it's the second one in the compound phrase, like this: They never say "Leave that here for I and Charlie," but "Leave that here for Charlie and I" seems acceptable to them. "Me and Charlie" or "Charlie and me" seems okay either way, but not if "I" replaces "me". It's one way that folks might use to undo their confusion. Simply reverse the order of compound pronoun phrases using "I" and see if it sounds strange. If it does, switch to "me." warm regards, Bobby Matherne New Orleans, La.      Very handy. Because I grew up in an educated family I use these correctly; but I never knew the rules. Dan Chandler Trinidad, Calif. Net Notes: Captivating Internet resources How Far Is It? http://www.indo.com/distance/      This service uses data from the US Census and a supplementary list of cities around the world to find the latitude and longitude of two places, and then calculates the distance between them (as the crow flies). It also provides a map showing the two places, using the Xerox PARC Map Server. E-mail utilities http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/browse/0,cat,1471,sortIdx,1,00.asp      This portion of PC World's "downloads" Web index offers numerous free and shareware applications to help you manage e-mail more efficiently. The downloads encompass e-mail applications, filtering utilities, security patches and text management software, including E-cleaner, suggested by Lynn Narlesky of Davis for easily removing angle brackets from e-mail messages that you wish to forward or save as text. A "Disappearing E-mail" application for use with Microsoft Outlook lets you predetermine a date on which your sent messages will be deleted after a specified time—even your messages residing on the recipient's computer. Multilingual translation dictionary http://www.majstro.com/Web/Majstro/frames.php?gebrTaal=eng      This site enables users to enter words for translation among 36 languages, including Finnish, Catalan, modern Greek, Hungarian, modern English, old English, Italian, German and Latin. YOUR TURN: Ask the "grammar coach" or subscribe      We invite you to submit your questions to the "grammar coach," and we welcome you to subscribe to this monthly newsletter—which we'll send to your e-mail address at no charge. We respond to all "grammar coach" questions personally, but delays may occur because we must place top priority on assignments from our clients. We appreciate your patience and your interest.      You also can change your e-mail subscription address. For an address change, please indicate your existing AND your new e-mail address. Thank you. 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