Comment by pohl

Only if by "technically" you mean "equally arbitrary". (Unless you have a good reason why we should take Gregory XII's 1582 papal fiat that gave us our baroque calendaring system to be less arbitrary than demarcating decades by years that end in zero.) While your at it, I'm curious why we should consider the years 2 through 1581 to be more "real" than the year 0: that is, if he could retroactively name them by decree, why can't we just establish a convention that the year 0 === 1 B.C? It's not like doing so would destroy any elegance the system might have.