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AD vs. BC: I prefer using CE with negative numbers, as suggested by ISO 8601. E.g., year -30 CE is year 31 BC.

Too many people would get confused, forgetting to substract 1 from the BC-tagged number, or unsure whether to add or substract 1, or wondering if the other person remembered to subtract 1.

I suggest adding 7000 to all dates, as well as using negatives. So...

2010AD -> 9010

1AD -> 7001

1BC -> 7000

31BC -> 6970

5000BC -> 2001 (except people talk about year ranges, not years, when refering to events that far back, so there'd be no confusion with our current AD references)

Or we can just adopt the Discordian Calendar and, by increasing confusion, reduce disharmony.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordian_calendar

Hail Eris!

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