A good friend, who is Catholic and keeps his ear to the Vatican intrigue, informed me recently (after a couple of beers) that the Vatican will control the world post Y2K! Why? Because while the rest of the world has been writing code containing the infamous y2k bug, which will undoubtedly destroy most of the world's computers, the Vatican has secretly been doing all its programming in Roman Numerals!! When MM hits, the vatican will have the only functioning computer left on earth! That coupled with an 8 baud mechanical modem, and the use of the famous pidgeons of Rome for 'telecommunications' will result in the Vatican achieving the kind of world domination that could not be imagined by St. Paul.

Diogenes Pedon

-- John A. Shaffer (jas11@psu.edu), September 17, 1999

Answers

Don't feed the trolls--please.

-- Don't feed (the@trolls.--please), September 17, 1999.

I guess if fuzzy logic and the string theory is acceptable than why not roman numerals. A+ in imagination.

-- Carol (glear@usa.net), September 17, 1999.

Carol--A+? Does that stand for Y2K in Roman numerals?

-- Mara Wayne (MaraWayne@aol.com), September 18, 1999.

If you blur up the A with some grey paint and tie three coins to the + with a bit of pulsating string, it could spell y2k!

-- Carol (glear@usa.net), September 18, 1999.

I understand that the original post on this thread was not intended to be serious, but the question of how the Vatican will deal with Y2K is as valid as how any other entity will handle it.

FWIW, and IMO, I believe that of all the organizations on the planet, the Roman Catholic Church will handle Y2K with the least damage to itself. The concept of "revert to manual" is far from foreign to them and they've got the qualified talent to carry it out.

Their organization is also constructed in such a way that individual units can and have functioned quite well when cut off from "headquarters" and such units have historically continued to fulfill their mission under such circumstances.

If we should "go Infomagic", look for a repeat of their performance after the Fall of Rome.

-- Hardliner (searcher@internet.com), September 18, 1999.

No problem with Roman numerals! Great solution!

No way to denote 'zero,' of course, and multiplication and division (without Arabic numerals) become tedious exercises indeed. And how to deal with trigonometry and the calculus? Orbital calculations?

My head hurts already.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), September 18, 1999.

yeah. and the next pope was going to be Italy's Bishop Ciccola until they decided that he would be too commercial to be a viable candidate. oh well. they say he had lots of pep. too bad.

-- coprolith (coprolith@rocketship.com), September 18, 1999.

John,

LOL!

Andy may want to add this to his collection of conspiracies (if he hasn't already) :-)

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), September 18, 1999.