And so 2009 begins, as 2008 slinks away to die. Best part about 2009: No elections! Worst part about 2009: All those politicians that were elected in 2008 take office, or in the case of the many incumbents who infest the body politic like lice, remain in office. It should be entertaining, especially Blagofest '09.
Question: Are you reading and saying 2009 as "two-thousand-nine" or "twenty-oh-nine"? Some of the radio people are using the latter formulation. 2000 was definitely "two-thousand." Nobody called it "twenty-hundred." Kind of odd when you think about it, because 1900 was "nineteen-hundred" and 2100 will definitely be "twenty-one-hundred", even if most of us are unlikely to be around to say it. And for most of this decade, most of us have been using the "two-thousand-" phrase rather than the "twenty-oh-" phrase. From next year on, it's almost certain that everyone will just be saying "twenty-ten," "twenty-eleven," etc. But this decade has been an odd aberration in the way we refer to our years.
