Speaking of computers, this Reading Eagle issue also has an editorial on a certain founder of Amazon.com whose name rhymes with “bozos.” 
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I can’t figure out who speak of 
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Las Vegas resort reservations low for New Year’s
A combination of factors causes officials to slash estimates of visitors for millennial celebrations
LAS VEGAS (Las Vegas Sun) – Las Vegas tourist counts for New Year’s Eve could be the lowest in years, as a confluence of events has blasted into oblivion rosy projections of record turnouts for millennium weekend celebrations.
The Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority this week slashed its estimate of visitor volume for the New Year’s weekend to 240,000 people, a far cry from the 750,000 some analysts had predicted.
The new projection compares with last year’s 250,000 New Year’s visitors, who traveled here before the openings of resorts such as Mandalay Bay, the Venetian, Paris Las Vegas, the Resort at Summerlin and the Hyatt Regency Lake Las Vegas added 10,700 rooms to the market.
And the latest LVCVA prediction was also made before government warnings of terrorists’ threats to Americans caused some potential travelers to consider canceling plans for New Year’s travel.
Those threats, along with sky-high early room prices, Y2K fears and the simple desire of many Americans to spend the historic weekend at home with family and friends, constitute a quadruple whammy that has hotel-casino executives desperately trying to boost demand.
“Obviously this isn’t good news,” Credit Suisse First Boston leisure and gaming analyst David Anders said Sunday.
“What’s of further concern is how aggressively people who’ve already booked rooms attempt to renegotiate their rates,” he said.
Some Strip hotels have slashed room rates for the New Year’s weekend as much as 80 percent and are giving rebates to customers who booked early at higher prices.
Anders doesn’t expect any short-term impact on casino stock prices from the LVCVA forecast.
Right now, though, the LVCVA is predicting a New Year’s Eve occupancy rate for the area’s 120,444 hotel and motel rooms of 85 percent – 14 percentage points below initial projections and nine points lower than last year’s number.
To be sure, room inventory has jumped 9.8 percent since last year, which means more visitors are required to maintain a steady occupancy rate. But the LVCVA projection is even three points below that of the 88 percent occupancy average for the past 12 months.
Some people who haven’t planned New Year’s Eve travel yet may change their minds and book rooms here today, Tuesday and Wednesday to capitalize on the relative bargains afforded by plunging room rates.
But such hopes weren’t helped by widely publicized comments this week from a former FBI chief in New York City, where tourism officials hope to attract 1.5 million visitors to the Times Square millennium bash.
“If there is a (terrorist) strike, it will be in a large gathering,” he said. “The prudent thing is to celebrate by yourself or with your family.”
Fears of computer chaos as 1999 clicks over to the double zeros of 2000 have taken their toll. While fully half of all Americans expect no problems, the Y2K scare has many wondering whether they’ll be able to fill their cars up at fuel pumps, board aircraft on time or get cash from ATM machines as easily on January 1 as they can today.
And in a tourist destination that relies so heavily on planes, cars and cash machines, that’s a worrisome prospect.
Finally, some fallout may occur due to delays stemming from the heightened security at U.S. airports the Federal Aviation Administration instituted after the State Department issued its second warning of terrorist threats in 11 days late Tuesday.
Don’t expect a boom from 2000 baby race
Hospital officials say demand for maternity services at the dawn of the millennium will be no different from any other New Year’s Eve
(Associated Press) – Radio stations held contests. Hospitals offered glitzy prizes. Bookmakers gave odds.
But the allure of giving birth at the dawn of the new millennium has failed to spark much of a baby boom.
Around the world, many large hospitals say they are seeing no significant increase in women scheduled to go into labor early January 1.
“It’s an ordinary New Year’s Eve,” said Dr. Anders Berg, head of gynecology at Danderyds Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. Doctors in much of the United States and Europe echo his words.
In many hospitals, officials are relieved to know they won’t have extra births to deal with when New Year’s Eve passes and the Y2K computer bug may or may not wreak havoc on computers and power supplies.
Two hospitals in Leicester, England, have advised would-be millennium mothers to bring a flashlight just in case. The hospitals have emergency generators to keep their equipment running, but patient room lights would be low priority in a power failure.
Dr. Sabastian Faro, chairman of obstetrics at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago, said the lack of extra births shows the inherent difficulty in trying to get pregnant on demand.
Those hoping to have a millennium baby won’t necessarily get special assistance from their doctors.
The American College of Obstetrics/Gynecology said it would be unethical for doctors to induce pregnancy for the purpose of giving birth on New Year’s Day unless it is medically necessary. Using drugs to induce pregnancy can increase the risk that the woman will need a Cesarean section.
“It’s not a great idea to bring a child into the world just because you think it would be special to do it on the millennium,” said Dr. John Gianopolous, chairman of obstetrics-gynecology at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago.
Letter: Millennium ends Dec. 31, 2000
Editor: Contributions to our newspaper and especially to Betty Debnam for the Mini Page in which she reveals the accurate date of the new millennium, 2001, and its non-relation to Y2K.
At least our youngest generation may understand that dollars don’t expire at 99 cents, centuries don’t expire at 99 years and millenniums don’t expire until the last year, 2000, expires.
CARL E. RITNER
Wyomissing
The New York Times (December 28, 1999)
New Year’s Eve 999: Oh, what a difference a millennium makes
By Curt Suplee, International Herald Tribune
‘Life Was Unimaginably Mean, Dirty, Unhealthy and Short – Even at the Pinnacle of Society’
If you had been alive in Europe in the year 999 – on the eve of the last millennium – you would have inhabited a world only barely recognizable today.
The grand, sophisticated cultures and large urban centers were elsewhere: China, which boasted perhaps the greatest city in the world, the imperial capital of Kaifeng; the Byzantine Empire and the vast extent of Islam, the most widely dispersed civilization on Earth at the time.
Since the fall of the Roman Empire five centuries earlier, Europe had become a comparatively poor, backward and intensely rural place. Although there may have been 70 million people from Scandinavia to Greece – far fewer than present-day Germany alone – more than 90 percent of them lived on the land, and a really big city had 10,000 or 20,000 inhabitants. Much of Europe’s population was clustered from what now is the Netherlands, down through France and into Italy, and most people lived near the coast.
Without the vanished Roman legions – powered by slave labor – to maintain roads, cities and fortifications, travel had become extremely difficult. Maps were practically unknown, and once-dependable routes had fallen into ruin. Some lords maintained the roads across their holdings and charged a toll to use them. But there were so few travelers that it was not cost-effective.
One intrepid French monk of the period, on what would earlier have been a quite uneventful short trip from Reims to Chartres, “lost his way on several occasions.”
“His pack-horse was unable to withstand the hardships and soon collapsed,” writes the historian Hans-Werner Goetz. “In the dark, the monk hardly dared set foot on the bridge across the Marne leading to Meaux, because of the many holes. On top of all this, he was in constant fear of robbers.” The monk finally made it after three days and felt lucky to have arrived.
MOST FOLKS never left home or had any reason to do so. Except, of course, the chronically underfed Vikings, who had spent three centuries looting Northern Europe and would reach what now is Canada in 1000.
The European nations that we know today did not exist, and the region was a political patchwork of monarchies and fiefdoms, held together – barely – by the influence of organized Christianity.
Indeed, virtually every educated person in Europe was either a cleric or a monk.
Some powerful monarchs, notably including Otto the Great (912-973), king of Germany and emperor of what still was called the Roman Empire, were barely literate if they could read at all.
To be sure, things were about to improve quickly. Population was on the verge of a spectacular expansion that would last until the Black Plague of the 14th century.
But for most Europeans in 999, and for many decades to come, says William McCarthy of the Catholic University of America in Washington, “life was, by our standards, almost unimaginably mean, dirty, unhealthy and short – even for those at the pinnacle of society.”
In the late 10th century, average life expectancy was about 30 and the rate of infant mortality was 40 percent.
A male who survived his teens might live to a ripe old 47 or so; women died at about 44.
This pattern agreed with Aristotle’s pronouncement that men, being the more perfect representation of human beings, should naturally live longer. Things began to change in the later Middle Ages, and by the Renaissance, women were outliving men, as they do today.
Nonetheless, life was dismayingly short by the standards of today. In 999, even the average age of kings at death was well below 50. Most children would not have known their grandparents.
On the other hand, they would have grown about as tall as Europeans of today. Many historians now believe that it was not until the rise of urban crowding and poor diet late in the medieval period – continuing through the Industrial Revolution – that the general European stature was shortened.
Status symbols
In 999, society had three grand divisions: the clergy and its associated minions, the feudal nobility and the peasantry, or as one bishop put it, “those who pray, those who fight and those who labor.”
The overwhelming majority of people in Europe were peasants living in villages of 75 to 250 people. The class of merchants and craftsmen that eventually would become city dwellers – burghers or bourgeoisie – was just beginning to form.
You might be either a free farmer, who worked the nobleman’s fields, or a serf bound to the local manorial lord, most likely a knight or midlevel aristocrat.
Either way, you lived in a “nucleated" gaggle of huts centered on the manor’s fields. The village may have had its own church maintained by the local monastery through tithes, or the lord may have had his own, private church whose priest he paid. If your village was fairly large, there might be an open area where markets were held every two weeks in season.
Slavery of the sort typical during antiquity had changed somewhat, and in many places serfs had acquired a variety of property rights as early as the eighth century. But the institution remained an essential part of society and by no means disappeared with the fall of the Roman Empire. The Germanic peoples who destroyed the Roman Empire were avid slave traders and owners. Our word “slave” originates from the practice of making servants of Slavic captives.
So some fraction of the population was “owned” by lords or monasteries. Moreover, a free peasant who went broke could voluntarily enslave himself and his family to the manor to ensure survival.
Free or not, workers had to produce at least a small surplus of food for the nonworking manor lord and his retinue. In exchange for being allowed to farm a few hectares, free peasants were required to perform specific services amounting to as much as 100 days of labor a year and to give up a percentage of their yield. In addition, mandatory tithes to the local church were common.
If you were a peasant, you probably would have lived in a single room containing a hearth, work area and sleeping space for between four and a dozen people. Examination of medieval skeletons shows that the average woman had 4.2 children, about three of whom would have lived past early childhood, and that homes occasionally were occupied by all members of a family, meaning blood relations.
Except in general terms, no one knew what time it was. Church bells provided the only standard, and they were necessarily inaccurate because mechanical clocks would not arrive for another 300 years.
Monastic life, however, demanded strict adherence to a schedule, so monasteries and churches kept time with candles that burned at a known rate, as well as with sundials and water clocks when weather permitted. The church bells would have been the only artificial sound most people ever heard.
Food, glorious food
Your diet, if you could have gotten enough of it, would have contained little meat, which was reserved for special occasions. In some respects, it would have been close to what health experts recommend today: high-fiber, low-fat grains and vegetables.
On the other hand, it probably would have been short on protein and fats and deficient in vitamins A, C and D, according to the historians Francis and Joseph Gies.
The staple crops were grains – chiefly used in bread but also made into beer – including wheat, barley, oats and rye. Common vegetables, depending on location, included squash, beets, cabbage, pumpkins and celery. Berries, fruits, nuts and cheese rounded out the menu. Sugar was nonexistent in Europe until much later, and the only way to sweeten a dish was with honey.
Meat – chiefly pork and poultry for the lower orders – often was not fresh. It could be prohibitively expensive to feed animals over the winter, so most were slaughtered in the autumn and the meat cured as well as possible. Nonetheless, a fair amount was highly likely to rot.
Spices were in great demand because, the historian Robert Hoyt notes, they “smothered the taste of the semiputrefied food served up from the typical medieval kitchen.”
Dishes were wood or, rarely, ceramic. Even in the manor house, the single common utensil was a knife, and each person used his own wooden spoon. The fork, a high-toned innovation from Byzantine society, would not make its way into even polite society for a century or more. Cups usually were wooden.
Ale was the universal drink and preferable in the many areas where water was unsafe. Wine was comparatively hard to make but increasingly popular and often sanctioned even by the most rigorous monastic orders. “We think that one pint of wine a day is sufficient" for each monk, Saint Benedict wrote.
Personal hygiene: Spotty
The most visible difference among social classes was in clothing, a practice that would be formalized in the 12th century in the form of dress codes for different groups. “Peasants are not allowed to wear any colors other than black or gray,” intoned one Germanic edict about 1150, and “seven yards of linen for shirts and pants are adequate.”
In 999, the average peasant would have worn a knee-length tunic or smock with a shirt beneath and cloth wrapped around the legs in lieu of trousers. The better classes wore pants, but underpants were extremely rare in any social class before the 13th century.
Shoes were made from a single piece of leather stitched together at the top. Except for special occasions, nobles wore a more costly and colorful variation on these same themes.
The standard of personal cleanliness for ordinary people is not known. Knights and other gentry had combs and such dainty tools as ear-wax picks. For the most fastidious of these, washing may have been fairly common. Danes were said to bathe once a week, but the European average undoubtedly was far less frequent.
For ascetic reasons, many monasteries limited bathing to five times a year – and some to Christmas and Pentecost only. So frequency among lay people probably was somewhat higher.
When public bathhouses became increasingly available in the 12th century, they were a huge hit. In fact, their success prompted church and government crackdowns in the early 14th century, intended to stop the sexually inflammatory practice of coed bathing.
“Hygiene thus disappeared from Western society," the historian Jean Gimpel wrote, a bit archly, “not to reappear for half a millennium.”
Marriage vows: Widespread
In most parts of Europe in 999, one became a legal adult at 12. If you lived in an area still following old German customs, you only had one name – a practice that has made it difficult for historians to trace family lines in many places.
Marriage, widespread even among serfs, was allowed as early as 14 for boys and 12 for girls but averaged about 20 to 24 for men and 14 to 16 or later for women. A restricted or fat-poor diet delays the onset of menstruation, which probably arrived about age 15 for peasant girls in many 10th century cultures. So it is not surprising that average age at marriage was considerably older than the official ecclesiastical minimum.
The wedding ceremony, though usually blessed by a priest, would have been local and secular. The church did not have formal marriage rites until the 12th century. Divorce was correspondingly uncomplicated in 999.
You might have loved your spouse, though probably not in anything like the current sense of the word. “Romantic" love, with its emphasis on enthrallment and devotion, would not arrive even among nobles until the 12th century. In 999, the same words used for love of spouse also were applied to describe love of God or charity to one’s neighbors.
But then, you might have had very little choice. Arranged marriage, once a common practice for allocating property and binding families into alliances, was becoming less frequent by the 10th century. Living in a village of 100 people, however, many of whom were relatives and thus off-limits according to church rules of the time, would have severely limited the number of potential spouses.
On the other hand, fidelity was demanded, and the rules were particularly tough on women. Gregory of Tours, a celebrated historian, relates that when a woman was found to be having a sexual relationship with a priest, she was burned alive by her family. The priest was obliged to pay a fine.
Not that women were not in demand. Several surveys from different parts of Europe at the time show about 110 to 125 men for every 100 women.
Some historians have argued that the imbalance may have reflected – at least in part – the earlier practice in some cultures of killing unwanted children, particularly girls.
More likely, it is an indication of how many females were left at the abbey door as infants or put into service at the manor house in early childhood.
Whatever the cause, the comparatively rare women were valued highly. In most places, their vergeld – literally, “person money," the price you had to pay to the heirs if you killed somebody – was as high as that for men, if not higher, the historian David Herlihy says.
Moreover, 10th century bridegrooms often paid a substantial dowry. That was a complete reversal of the classic pattern, in which the dowry was offered by the bride’s family.
Refunds were possible. In most cultures, virginity was expected at marriage. In England in 999, for example, a groom could take back the traditional “morning gift" paid to the bride after the wedding night if the situation proved unsatisfactory.
Manual labor: Much to do
Work was incessant and hard, and crop production per hectare was approximately a 10th of the current average.
According to one estimate, a peasant family produced about 700 liters (20 bushels) of grain each year. Of that, about one-third was kept for seed, 15 percent sent to the manor lord and 10 percent tithed to the church. The remainder was enough for about 550 grams (1.2 pounds) of bread per day year-round for each member of a family of five.
Although peasants could grind their own grain, it may not have been necessary. Water mills were fairly common. Windmills, however, would not arrive until the 12th or 13th century.
But in the 10th century, an ingenious horse collar had begun to transform agriculture. Traditional Roman harnesses for draft animals tended to strangle horses, compressing the windpipe and blood vessels of the neck.
With the advent of a stiff, padded collar that fit around the shoulder bones, horses could be used for plowing. The result was dramatic. Although a horse or ox pulls with about 54 kilograms (120 pounds) of force, the horse does so at about 110 centimeters (3.6 feet) a second, compared with the ox’s 73 centimeters a second – a whopping 50 percent increase.
Add to that the fact that horses usually can work two hours a day longer than oxen, and it is easy to see why agricultural productivity began to climb.
The women of a household generally were responsible for all domestic chores, including maintaining the livestock, shearing sheep and making fabric for clothing. They also helped with farm labor, although it was widely regarded as perverse.
“When Gerald of Aurillac noticed a woman plowing because her husband was sick," one account says, “he gave her money so that she would pay other peasants to do it for her."
“God detests everything which is against nature," he said.
Regardless of one’s sex, there was so much work to do that clerics constantly had to repeat the prohibition by Charlemagne, the nearly mythic 8th century emperor, against work on Sunday.
Church and state: Intertwined
Standing firm in the uncertainty of life in 999 was an institution that gave life meaning and imposed order – the Christian church, the most influential force in Europe.
From birth to death, the church permeated almost every aspect of life. With spiritual and temporal powers closely intertwined, it offered sustenance for the soul and served as a powerful civic authority.
There’s a good chance that you would have worked for it in some way, perhaps farming the extensive lands of a bishop or producing goods for one of hundreds of monasteries rapidly establishing themselves after years of Viking plunder.
As Europe’s wealthiest organization and the receptacle for all of its knowledge and learning, the church was in a unique position to fulfill its multiple roles.
Its nominal head was the Pope in Rome. The Eastern, or Orthodox Christian, Church had been drifting from the West for centuries, with the split finalized in 1054.
The Pope’s partner, at least in theory, was the Christian emperor who ruled over the large collection of German and Italian states later known as the Holy Roman Empire.
The relationship between papacy and empire had been strained for centuries, each side claiming ultimate authority. The tenuous partnership was rooted in an ideal first propagated by Charlemagne. Under that, the Christian empire of the West upheld and defended the Roman church for the greater glory of God.
Pope Sylvester II and Emperor Otto III brought some semblance of the ideal to their partnership as the millennium turned. While Emperor Otto possessed the real power and guarded it jealously, he was devoted to Rome, upholding the rights of the papacy and showering the church with gifts.
In a practical sense, though, the papacy was almost irrelevant. Popes were accorded honor and respect, especially in England, but the power of the church was locally based. That’s where the money was and where the bishops ruled.
Owning vast tracts of land and collaborating closely with the kings who often appointed them, bishops were pillars of the establishment. They, not Rome, decided matters of faith and morals.
The turn of the millennium was a period of enhanced piety, from the emperor on down, says Uta-Renate Blumenthal of the Catholic University of America. People were extremely reliant on and trusting of the clergy, and faith was heavily emphasized.
Great reverence was accorded saints, and many legends grew. People, not the Pope, determined who merited saintly status. “You were a saint if you were considered a saint," Mrs. Blumenthal says, and every local church had a precious and revered relic of its own blessed personage.
When Viking raiders were about to plunder churches and monasteries, the fleeing clergy carried off the relics for safekeeping.
With new trade routes opened by the Vikings, pilgrimages to holy sites became more common for ordinary people. In addition to places such as Rome and Jerusalem, pilgrims visited sites renowned for their legendary saints and brought with them offerings that benefited the local church or monastery.
So lucrative were these pilgrimages that one Adhemar of Chabannes brought great fame and wealth to his abbey when he claimed that it held the bones of St. Martial, the 13th apostle of Christ, whom Adhemar had conveniently invented.
Elsewhere: The Vikings
Aside from the Christian church, Vikings were one of the most dynamic forces affecting Europe in 999. These fierce pirates and warriors from what now is Denmark, Norway and Sweden had terrorized Southern Europe for centuries in search of loot. By the turn of the millennium, however, many Vikings had settled in areas they once menaced, establishing trading routes and opening Europe to the rest of the world.
A long period of rapid population growth in Scandinavia had reduced the amount of available farmland and forced many Vikings to seek new ways of living. They spread throughout Europe and beyond. Many of the Normans who participated in the famous invasion of England in 1066 were of Viking stock, having earlier settled that part of France.
While some Vikings became the scourge of Europe, others became great seafarers. Their ships carried settlers to Greenland, a land unknown to Europeans at the time, and to Iceland. One Viking, Leif Ericson, even landed in North America about 1000 and established a short-lived settlement there.
The Byzantine Empire
Rising out of the eastern half of the old Roman Empire was the Byzantine Empire, which for centuries buffered much of Europe from such Eastern invaders as Arabs and Turks. While Byzantine rulers retained Roman government and legal traditions, the empire was far more influenced by Hellenic culture than Latin. As a result, the Byzantines helped to preserve ancient Greek language, literature and philosophy.
The capital, Constantinople – now Istanbul – was one of the world’s most important cities at the turn of the millennium, the crossroad between East and West through which the wealth and knowledge of the East flowed into Europe.
Christianity flourished in the empire and became an important civilizing force among the Slavic peoples of southeastern Europe and what is now Ukraine and Russia. The Eastern church in Constantinople had always been united with the Western church in Rome under one banner of Christianity, but strains between the two had been growing for centuries over a multitude of issues.
The divide became permanent in 1054. Standing apart from Rome, Byzantine Christianity eventually developed into the Eastern Orthodox churches.
The Islamic world
The spread of Islam was rapid after its establishment in the seventh century, and Muslim civilization carried with it a vast amount of learning retained from Hellenic science, imported from Hindu sources or pioneered by Arab researchers.
The physicist Alhazen (965-1039) advanced knowledge of optics, mirrors and lenses, and others extended the work of Al Khwarizmi, the 9th century mathematician from whose name comes our word “algorithm" and from whose work comes the term “algebra."
Hindu mathematicians had introduced the notion of zero, as well as a decimal system in which the value of each number was determined by its position. Both are familiar now. But they would transform science in Europe, which remained stuck with unwieldy Roman numerals until the Arabic-Hindu “positional" system took over in the 13th century.
Chinese scientists also were busily at work, taking detailed astronomical observations, inventing modern paper and gunpowder and exploring the magnetic properties that would lead to the compass, although that device would find perhaps its greatest effect in the West.
Apocalypse then
Depending on where you were living in 999, you might have heard “informed" reports that the world was coming to an end.
The idea was based on the biblical book of Revelation, which stipulates that, at some point in a somewhat ill-defined future, the Devil will return, after having been locked up “in the abyss" for 10 centuries: “And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations, which are in the four quarters of the Earth."
Whereupon would ensue a final battle and Last Judgment. If you believed that the millennial period began with the birth of Jesus, then 1000 seemed like a good bet for apocalypse.
A few doomsday boosters took up this theme, but none with the exuberance of Roger Glaber, an itinerant monk from Burgundy who could not hold a job but wrote a sizable history of the period, insisting that a spate of bad news and weird events – including the appearance of Halley’s comet in 989 – seemed to agree pretty well with Revelation.
As it happened, the world failed to end in 1000. Brother Glaber recalculated, adding the age of Jesus at his death to the millennium to arrive at a new due date of 1033.
On the Year 2000 front, humans are the big wild cards
By Barnaby J. Feder
With four days until the year 2000, government officials, company managers and computer experts are waiting anxiously to see if the public will remain calm.
It is not that everyone is sure the computers and the machinery in which they are often embedded will perform flawlessly as they roll past midnight and encounter Year 2000 dates – far from it. Repair work has lagged behind in many countries and some domestic sectors, like small businesses. And even the most stringent programs will inevitably have some overlooked flaws.
Still, the prevailing view is that the technical glitches are likely to have limited economic and social impact. Bigger disruptions could come, the experts say, from unwarranted stockpiling, withdrawals of large sums from banks, or other sudden efforts by millions of people to insulate themselves from possible technical failures.
“The biggest remaining variable is public attitude,” said Harris N. Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America. (For the moment that attitude is more confident than ever: The Associated Press’s latest poll found that 92 percent of Americans expect minor problems at worst.) “One incident can change it quickly,” he added, “but if we stay on this track, the whole thing could end up as a major victory for common sense.”
Such thinking is disputed by Year 2000 readiness advocates who contend that it is reckless for individuals not to prepare for major disruptions just as the government and major companies have done. But whatever happens, there is wide agreement with John A. Koskinen, chairman of the President’s Council on Year 2000 Conversion, that Y2K, as the computer problem is known, has become “the greatest management challenge of the past 50 years.”
Had nothing been done, the world’s financial systems would already be sagging from errors in software that relies on future dates – like programs tracking debt payments – with an almost certain collapse early next year. Manufacturing, food distribution, power and phone networks and most other basic services would have begun slowing within weeks if not minutes after midnight December 31. Computer users not hit directly would nonetheless have been quickly crippled by breakdowns among suppliers or key customers, experts say.
To prevent such a fate, tens of millions of people have been involved in preparations ranging from fixing computer code to developing contingency plans to deal with any remaining glitches. More than $250 billion has been spent in the effort, mostly in the last three years, according to several estimates.
The Year 2000 problem came as no surprise to programmers. It stems from a decades-old space-saving tactic of using just two digits to represent the year. Many programmers recognized that 00 would be ambiguous – some computers would interpret it as 1900 and others not recognize it as a valid date – but they mistakenly assumed that the two-digit programming practice would die out long before the new century and the software using it would be retired.
It was not until the late 1990’s that most senior managers recognized how deep the problem ran. Now, even computer novices realize that Year 2000 flaws can crash their systems or pump vast amounts of faulty data into files, billings or other documents before they are recognized.
It has turned out that faulty computers in machinery like phone switches, industrial robots and video recorders are rarer and usually more trivial than many experts originally feared. In fact, officials in the airline and electric industries said recently that their repairs turned up no embedded computers that could have caused major failures.
Still, because there are billions of embedded processors, even a small percentage of date-sensitive units adds up to millions of devices that could cause trouble if incorrectly handled. Chrysler has identified 6,000 robots, controllers and other electronic devices in 50 plants that it will reset on January 3 before it restarts its production lines. No one knows how many have been overlooked or inadequately tested.
For all the work that has been done, tough challenges remain.
While some embedded flaws will remain invisible until machines are turned off or on for the first time in the Year 2000, which could be months from now, the worst of that threat will be over quickly in January. Most managers are more worried about office systems and software. The information technology that runs the world’s offices, banks and government agencies could continue to have problems for months as different programs, like payrolls or tax accounting packages, deal with Year 2000 dates for the first time.
Major computer users may have hundreds of millions of lines of code in their software, and research shows that even the programs that have ostensibly been fixed and tested still have flaws, some serious. Managers in this country are confident that they have found enough of the major problems to be able to fix new ones that come to light before they do much damage.
One hopeful sign is that flaws have, so far, been showing up at slightly lower rates than analysts had projected. For example, the Gartner Group, a technology consulting firm in Stamford, Conn., expected Year 2000 problems to create 75 percent more breakdowns than normal this month but its latest projections suggest that the increase will be 65 percent. But Gartner is sticking by projections that programmers will be twice as burdened as normal thanks to Year 2000 flaws for the first two months of next year.
“The issue will be, you’ve got a boat, you’ve got a hole in it, how fast can you bail?” said James Woodward, the Dallas-based head of North American Year 2000 services for Cap Gemini, Europe’s largest computer services company.
As December 31 nears, concerns about computer viruses and intruders are also on the rise. Managers fear that the vast amount of work on systems may have left them more open to security breaches. In addition, publicity about Year 2000 “acts as a draw for those who want to make a statement,” said Richard Landes, director of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University.
A growing number of computer users are erecting defenses like those of the Regional Medical Center in Orangeburg, S.C., which is shutting off computer access from its system to the Internet on December 31; executives in its command center that want to track information on the World Wide Web will use a separate computer installed for the rollover.
Security threats aside, many companies are preparing to execute elaborate precautions affecting employees, suppliers and customers alike. Many large chemical plants and oil pipelines are shutting down for the transition. Major freight railroads and Amtrak are suspending service on New Year’s Eve to go through one last round of equipment and signal checks after midnight.
Perhaps most of all, government and company officials will be struggling to separate fact from rumor, and a vast number of public and private information networks are being pieced together for the occasion. A recent test of the Government’s Y2K Information Coordination Center included telecommunications links to counterparts in 80 countries and 50 states and many numerous emergency management officials.
“We are going to be asking what is happening with everything all over the world,” Mr. Koskinen said. “Our major requirement is to put out accurate information, but we have to be timely, too. There has never been anything like this in all of history.”
Reliable information is crucial for contingency planners, because the computers and human actors they have been worrying most about are those beyond their control.
International businesses say information is particularly hard to come by overseas. All assessments describe Russia as the largest nation far behind in preparations. China by virtue of its size and heavy reliance on pirated software is seen as a higher-than-average risk. Japan started late but seems to have largely caught up, at least among its larger companies.
Nigeria is one of several African countries considered especially risky; the national Year 2000 group was given $1 million of the $200 million it said it needed. But oil companies have said they expect exports as usual from there, the Persian Gulf and Venezuela.
Of course, many of the countries least prepared for the problem are those most accustomed to coping with disruptions. Only a handful of nations with major Year 2000 problems are likely to suffer substantial economic consequences, according to projections by the International Data Corporation, a consulting firm based in Framingham, Mass. Even then, I.D.C. says, worldwide losses will be less than $24 billion.
No one thinks Americans will stay relaxed if major disruptions develop. Indeed, for most of this year, many of the biggest debates have swirled around how to encourage some preparations without inciting unusual behavior or panic.
Authorities have been warning homeowners against storing gasoline or taking large amounts of money out of the bank. The Gartner Group predicts lines and possible spot shortages of gasoline the last two days of this month as Americans top off the tanks in their cars.
“It’s going to get hairy for a couple of days,” said Lou Marcoccio, Year 2000 research director at the Gartner Group.
The actual arrival of the Year 2000 might seem like a letdown, experts say. But most experts agree that it will take several quiet weeks to be confident that the first global technology challenge has been met successfully.
Even if it all unfolds as smoothly as the optimists project, a potentially titanic legal battle over who pays is shaping up. Xerox, Nike and Unisys are among the eight companies that have already sued for reimbursement from their insurers for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on Year 2000 repairs.
They cite language in business contracts dating from the 19th century, when insurers would pay ship owners for money spent trying to prevent a ship from sinking. The insurers argue they owe nothing because Year 2000 losses were completely foreseeable, and Congress acted last summer to limit their exposure.
Opinion: Public interests; a new New Year agenda
By Gail Collins
This week it’s hard to avoid thinking about the future, particularly if you work half a block from Times Square, soon to be the scene of the very biggest and best New Year’s celebration that our local holiday planners and anti-terrorism squads can provide.
“I suspect most people aren’t going to be paying much attention to politics during Christmas and before the millennium,” said George W. Bush earlier this month. This was probably more of a prayer than a prediction. I have been loath to make any sweeping judgments about how the average voter views Mr. Bush’s campaign performance thus far, since living in Manhattan provides approximately as much insight on the attitudes of typical Republicans as living in Pyongyang. However, I spent the last week doing research in Ohio, employing the deeply scientific method of interviewing every Republican who happened to walk into my parents’ living room, along with a very nice manicurist at the local mall. I can now say with total confidence that an overwhelming majority of Republican Party members in this country are worried that Mr. Bush is, if not genuinely dim, at least a little too shallow to be President.
But we are talking today about the future:
Campaign themes that deserve to be retired in the next millennium.
Listening to the people. Call me old-fashioned, but I always hoped that a candidate for high office would have done the listening before he or she decided to run.
Setting standards. In the better and wiser world of the 21st century, elected officials will not get credit for demanding higher fourth-grade reading achievement until the fourth graders actually learn to read.
Using the bully pulpit. This venerable term, coined by Theodore Roosevelt to describe a president’s power of moral leadership, is currently employed mainly by candidates who want to get credit for things they don’t intend to pay for; e.g., “Education is a state responsibility, but I intend to use the bully pulpit to encourage smaller class size.”
While we are at it, let’s bar all Republican candidates who espouse strict limitations on the federal government’s role in domestic policy from saying Theodore Roosevelt is their favorite President.
Brand-new political phenomena we would like to see nipped in the bud.
The Corn Man. The following is a genuine press release from the Al Gore campaign: “Today Iowans for Gore released the statements of Corn Man, the six-foot-tall piece of corn who’s stalking Bill Bradley… who is expected to continue his reluctance to talk ag issues by avoiding tonight’s agricultural debate at Iowa State University.”
We should also make it illegal for any candidate whose opponent shows up for three debates a month to complain about said candidate’s failure to come to debates.
Blowing kisses to one’s spouse at the start of a public appearance. This is a Gore tactic, but repeated exposures to George W. Bush suggest we might also make it illegal for a candidate to begin every single speech by saying that getting married to Laura was the best decision of his whole life.
The voters’ hunger for authenticity. This is the media’s work, a desperate attempt on our part to explain why voters who otherwise appear to be in their right minds say they could support either John McCain or Bill Bradley, two candidates who have absolutely nothing in common except campaign finance reform.
It is possible that people are now so obsessed with campaign finance reform that they no longer care what the next president thinks about abortion, gun control, health care, Social Security or what to do with that little boy from Cuba as long as he bans soft-money contributions. Or they might indeed yearn solely for a leader who is in touch with his inner self. But I suspect they’ve decided to ignore any election until the year it’s scheduled to occur. Therefore, they have no idea yet what Mr. McCain or Mr. Bradley think about anything. When they say they like them both, it may simply be their way of telling us that they have picked up enough information about Al Gore and George W. Bush to know that they would rather not go there.
Personal new year’s resolutions for the next millennium.
Stop writing about the 2000 presidential campaign in 1999. Stop making sweeping conclusions after interviewing a Cincinnati manicurist.
Reading Eagle (December 28, 1999)
Y2K gala shuttered in Seattle
The downtown center will be closed at 6 p.m. because of the possibility of the terrorism. About 50,000 had been expected to gather here.
Fireworks launch from the top of the Space Needle in Seattle during New Year’s Eve celebrations last January 1. Mayor Paul Schell has canceled the upcoming celebration below the Needle, though the fireworks will still go off.
SEATTLE (AP) – The mayor has canceled the city’s New Year’s Eve celebration below its landmark Space Needle, citing the possibility of terrorist acts.
“It is safer to be prudent,” Mayor Paul Schell said Monday. “This is already an unprecedented, unpredictable New Year’s, and we did not want to take chances with public safety, no matter how remote the threat might seem.”
International media coverage of the event makes it impossible for federal officials to rule out the area as a terrorist target, he said.
The mayor said federal officials have not advised him of any specific threat to the city.
An estimated 50,000 people had been expected to gather below the sky-dotting Needle, located at the 20-acre Seattle Center just off the city’s downtown. The 605-foot landmark, built for the 1962 World’s Fair, is a traditional gathering point for New Year’s Eve revelers.
Afternoon concerts and a circus performance will go ahead as planned on Friday, and fireworks – the centerpiece of the millennium party – will still pour from the Needle at midnight. But the center will be cleared and the gates locked at 6 p.m., Schell said.
Only a private function atop the Needle will be allowed to go ahead, he said.
Schell’s decision is the latest in a string of moves to scale back the city’s once grand ambitions for the event.
A plan to set aflame 14 giant wood-and-papier-mache sculptures – part of a $120,000 project – was canceled last Wednesday, while the mayor’s plan to cover nine bridges and four parks in colored lights to mark the new century was scaled back to just one bridge because of cash shortages.
The city’s nerves have been strained in recent weeks following tumultuous, sometimes violent World Trade Organization protests. Both Schell and Police Chief Norm Stamper, who has announced his resignation, came under fire for their handling of the demonstrations.
News that a man arrested at the U.S.-Canadian border with alleged bomb-making materials had booked a hotel room near Seattle Center also heightened security fears.
Space shuttle back on Earth following successful mission
A night landing completes an eight-day journey that was highlighted by repairs and upgrades to the Hubble observatory.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) – Space shuttle Discovery and its seven-member crew returned to Earth Monday after fixing the Hubble Space Telescope during a mission that gave NASA a badly needed success.
Air Force Col. Curtis Brown landed the shuttle at 7:01 p.m. at Kennedy Space Center.
“Welcome back to Earth after a fantastic flight,” said Mission Control’s Scott Altman.
NASA passed up the first opportunity for the shuttle to land at 5:18 p.m. because of concerns about crosswinds on the runway. Instead, Discovery made the 13th night landing in the history of the shuttle program.
The mileage for the eight-day trip was 3.2 million miles.
The mission, originally scheduled to last 10 days, was cut to eight because of several launch delays and NASA’s desire to have the shuttle on the ground well before New Year’s to avoid any Y2K computer problems. It was the first shuttle flight during Christmas.
During three spacewalks on three successive days, the astronauts repaired the Hubble and upgraded the $3 billion observatory.
The Hubble, which has been in space for 10 years, stopped working on November 13 after its gyroscopes broke down. The telescope needs the gyroscopes to lock onto stars, galaxies and other celestial objects.
Astronauts replaced all six gyroscopes; installed a new radio transmitter, guidance unit and data recorder; and put in a faster, more powerful computer. The new equipment cost nearly $70 million.
The astronauts also fitted the telescope with voltage regulators to keep its batteries from overheating and hung two steel shields to help prevent damage from solar rays.
Scientists will test the telescope’s instruments over the next two weeks with the hope of putting it back into service January 9.
The success of the Hubble repair mission was a much-needed boost for NASA, which in recent months has suffered a series of embarrassments.
The problems have included the loss of two missions to Mars: The Mars Climate Orbiter apparently burned up in the planet’s atmosphere in September because of a failure to convert measurements to metric units, and the Mars Polar Lander disappeared without any explanation this month.
There also were serious technical problems during the last shuttle launch and the subsequent discovery of frayed wiring in all four shuttles.
Discovery’s mission was a very nice Christmas present, said John Pike, director of space policy for the Federation of American Scientists.
“Santa Claus has been very, very good to NASA, no lumps of coal in their stocking," he said.
The next shuttle launch is set for late January or early February, when Endeavour lifts off on an Earth-mapping mission.
With passing of 1999, 2000 becomes old hat
BOSTON – Marketing departments and advertising agencies have a Y2K problem of their own to worry about – what to do with products and companies named 2000 once the year 2000 passes?
The imminent arrival of the new millennium has some companies in a name-changing rush.
Computer maker Gateway 2000 has dropped the number from its corporate name and is now known as Gateway Inc. Shell Oil Co. has stopped selling its SU2000 gasoline. A “2000” microwave popcorn under the ConAgra Brands is about to become “Extreme Butter” instead.
Even children’s book hero Harry Potter has been given an upgrade. Harry’s “Nimbus Two Thousand” flying broomstick used in early volumes of the series has been traded in for a “Firebolt” in the most recent book. which, compared with the older model, boasts “superbly smooth action.”
“Once New Year’s Eve comes and goes, anything that says ‘2000’ on it could seem backward-looking," said Richard Schreuer of Chadwick Martin Bailey, a Boston consulting firm that helps companies develop product names.
“It was this nice, round number, a universal symbol that conjured up a future we could all relate to,” Schreuer told The Boston Globe. “I don’t know what the shorthand for the future is going to be.”
Amish well-insulated from Y2K troubles
Most of the sect, 175,000 strong, expect to rely on home-grown and homemade products to survive any computer glitches.
BIRD-IN-HAND (AP) -~ Omar Stoltzfus lives in 1999 as if it were 1899.
He has gas lamps at home and in his crafts shop in this Lancaster County community. He uses gas heat and has an air compressor to pump water into his store. He has a car battery hooked up to his cash register.
Stoltzfus is not being overly cautious about Y2K-related problems. He is Amish, and his isolation from the world is a religious preference. If that also insulates him from any computer problems that could happen January 1 – well, that’s fine with him.
“I don’t think planes are going to fall out of the sky or anything, but it won’t really affect me much anyway,” Stoltzfus said.
The nation’s 175,000 Amish are among the most protected from Y2K, the glitch that could lead computers to fail because they think it is the year 1900 instead of 2000. Some fear it could cripple public services, bank machines and the nation’s transportation network.
But most of that doesn’t apply to the Amish. Situated in 22 states, Canada and South America, most Amish don’t drive cars, own telephones or use public utilities. About half of Amish families are farmers, so they grow or raise much of what they eat and often have large storage cellars.
“We have what we need, don’t need more," said Mamie Stoltsfus, who is not related to Omar Stoltzfus.
Mamie Stoltsfus tends a vegetable garden and raises chickens and horses. Her husband runs a dairy farm. Their gas tanks are refilled about twice yearly, and they have an air compressor to pump water from the well.
“We don’t know any other way," said her husband, Gideon Stoltsfus.
Still, the Amish are not entirely independent. About half Pennsylvania’s Amish work for non-Amish businesses or operate their own small businesses, so a crisis that affects shipping or customers could affect them, as well.
Though Amish are forbidden to own telephones or computers, many businessmen have cell phones owned by someone else and can contract with an outside company to build them a Web site.
“There are certainly a number of ways in which they are more immune from possible Y2K complications in terms of their immediate family life,” said Amish expert Donald B. Kraybill of Messiah College, Grantham, Cumberland County. “On the other side, they are very much interfacing with the outside world in terms of the marketplace.”
Many Amish families shop for basics such as flour, yeast and sugar at least once a month and more often for eggs, milk, vegetables or meat. Most Amish use banks and ATM cards and often have home and farm loans – though the Amish do not use plastic as much as other Americans.
Mary Fisher, an Amish mother of six from Intercourse, has heard talk about the potential for a Y2K financial and electronic crisis. But she is not worried and does not plan to stock up on food, money or water.
Federal officials confirm it’s all systems go for 2000
A White House adviser says he would like people to simply prepare for a long midwinter weekend.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Eat, drink and be merry on New Year’s Eve, because the advent of the year 2000 should cause few, if any, problems, a bevy of federal officials said Sunday.
Hospitals, power plants, air traffic control systems and prisons are all Y2K ready, they said.
Indeed, officials said Americans should make no more preparations for New Year’s this year than they would do for any long winter weekend.
“Our goal has been to avoid overreaction,” President Clinton’s top Y2K adviser, John Koskinen, said on ABC’s “This Week.” “We would like people to be prepared for a long midwinter weekend but we think that’s all that’s necessary.”
The Y2K problem arises out of the fear that older computers programmed to read just the last two digits of a year will read “00” as “1900” rather than “2000.” Billions of dollars have been spent to correct the problem.
Even if some of the Y2K scenarios of computer failures do come true, officials said they were prepared to handle any emergencies.
“Hospitals are in the business of preparing for the unexpected,” American Hospital Association chairman Fred Brown said on ABC. “I don’t think there really will be an inconvenience. The American public can feel very confident if they have to go to hospitals.”
Koskinen said prisons and power plants had been tested and found to be Y2K compliant.
Most emergency 9-1-1 call centers also are prepared. A December survey from the National Emergency Number Association found 98.5 percent saying their equipment was Y2K ready.
Cohen: Greatest world threat is from common man
By Richard Cohen
The State Department has issued yet another warning to Americans traveling abroad. Rumors of suspected terrorist attacks are circulating within the United States. A mild panic, sure to affect New Year’s Eve events, is under way despite the White House saying it has no specific information about targets. A chilling symmetry announces itself. The century that began in terrorism is threatening to end the same way.
To my mind, the 20th century really began with Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb and a member of a secret society, the Black Hand. On June 28, 1914, he assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to Austro-Hungarian empire, and his wife, Sophie. “Es ist nichts” (It is nothing), the archduke kept saying as he died. But he could not have been more wrong. His murder precipitated World War I.
It’s conceivable Europe would have had its great war in any case. But it is also conceivable that, absent what German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had presciently called “some damned foolish thing in the Balkans," the war might well have been avoided. To this day, historians puzzle over the war and how it started. It made little sense.
But the plunge into chaos and carnage was swift and the consequences both catastrophic and enduring. The Russian, German, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires collapsed. Communism rose in Russia and, eventually, controlled all of Eastern Europe, threatening Western Europe for a time as well.
Adolf Hitler, a veteran of the Eastern front, seized power in a weakened and dazed Germany. World War II and the Holocaust followed.
Even the winners lost. Britain and France were never again the great powers they both had been. France, in particular, had been bled white, a nation of war-wounded that was supine later in the face of the looming Nazi threat. The financial markets moved west to the stability and wealth of New York and remained there even after the stock market collapsed in 1929.
It is both good and instructive to end this century by honoring its great men – the leaders, the inventors, the scientists, the artists. It has been a remarkable century in that regard – Roosevelt, Mandela and Einstein just for starters. These are people who enrich our lives, show us how to live – what is possible. We need heroes. Even atheists need gods.
But more and more we are beginning to recognize that this is pre-eminently the century of the common man. Often he is good and worthy – the heroic nobody of Aaron Copland’s stirring fanfare, the GI of World War II, the indomitable farmer of the dust belt, the immigrants who keep coming here, the unknown tank man of Tiananmen Square, and the geeks who took an insight and some garage space and created an industry.
But Princip would smirk at that list. It is his century, too.
It was also ordinary men, the very title of Christopher Browning’s great Holocaust book, who murdered the Jews of Europe. It was ordinary men who killed John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, even John Lennon. The ordinary struck down Gandhi in India and Yitzhak Rabin in Israel. Each and every act changed history – and the terrorist knew it. Each could, with a single act, nullify an election, rebuke an entire movement – turn back history itself. With our neat weapons, we have empowered the powerless and turned losers into instant winners.
Caesar was assassinated, I know, and Lincoln, too. Terror is not unique to this century. But it is, I think, more common, more pervasive. Partly this is because governments can be held hostage to the consequences of their actions. The United States and the Soviet Union did not fight because war was, simply, inconceivable. Terrorists, however, have no constraints. The worse the consequences, the better the outcome for them.
We feel less and less secure in our own country. Who is this Ahmed Ressam, arrested in Washington state last week with bomb-making materials? What was he up to? Have others like him already gotten into the country? Down deep, we know the government can only do so much. We can’t even stop kids from coming into schools with guns and bombs. How could we possibly seal the border? We are a trading nation. Goods come in, goods go out. So do other things.
So the century ends with a furrowed brow. We are concerned, we are worried. We are learning the difference between terrified and terrorized – between a passing fright and one that lingers. New Year’s plans are being changed, a concession to terrorism right there. The common person, hero of the century and parents to us all, recognizes his enemy. It is the common person.
Richard Cohen is a syndicated columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.
Security tightens for New Year’s Eve
Cities and towns anticipate throngs of people attending 2000 celebrations. Police step up measures to ensure safety.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Pennsylvania is bracing for potential New Year’s Eve security problems, with Philadelphia Mayor Edward G. Rendell predicting Monday that more than 1 million people will crowd into his city for light shows, fireworks and other events.
Pittsburgh police said the city’s First Night Pittsburgh 2000 celebration is expected to draw 100,000 celebrants, and authorities are putting extra police, as well as a SWAT team and bomb-and drug-detecting dogs, on patrol.
In smaller towns where throngs of partygoers are less of a concern, emergency officials still are not leaving safety to chance.
For example, in Butler, a city of about 15,000 some 40 miles north of Pittsburgh, two additional dispatchers, two amateur radio operators and a state police cruiser will stand by at the 9-1-1 communications center at midnight Friday in case of an electrical or communications blackout.
Philadelphia police are taking special precautions, said Chief Inspector Charles Temparali, who is in charge of Y2K security for the city.
“We are cognizant that Philadelphia is the cradle of liberty,” Temparali said. “We have treasures here; we have signature buildings.”
A police helicopter and bomb-detecting dogs will be checking out the crowds.
“We are going to have plainclothes people in every area of the city,” Temparali said. “We haven’t gotten any indication of any terrorist activities targeting Philadelphia.”
Rendell said he was confident the city would be safe for New Year’s celebrants.
“Everyone’s on alert,” he said. “I think there is going to be no Y2K problem. I think terrorism is not going to be a factor.”
Rendell will be in the thick of the celebrating from a 2 p.m. Friday mass wedding of several hundred couples at which he and his wife, Marjorie, a federal judge, will do the honors, to a 5 a.m. Saturday scrapple feast at the Philadelphia’s Civic Center. The first 2,000 people get free scrapple, a Philly favorite concocted of corn meal and pork, first boiled, then fried.
The mayor’s major cautionary note at a news conference Monday was to urge people to use $2 millennium passes that allow buyers unlimited use of buses, subways and regional rail trains from 5 p.m. New Year’s Eve to 5 a.m. New Year’s Day.
With many city blocks dedicated to millennium events and barred to vehicle travel, “you are foolhardy if you try to bring a car in,” Rendell said.
One Philadelphia community group said the best way to increase public safety this year or any other would be to end the custom of shooting guns in the air to greet the New Year.
“We say, ‘let’s go back to blowing horns, drumming on pots and shouting Happy New Year,’" said Ruth Birchett of the Heritage Community Economic Development Corp.
She and other neighborhood activists, ministers, police and residents held a news conference Monday calling for a New Year’s Eve cease-fire.
“The tradition has to stop before someone gets hurt or killed,” police Capt. David Mockus said.
Pittsburgh and Allegheny County police said their preparations will include putting about 60 extra police on duty, along with a county police SWAT team and two bomb squads, and more than 200 additional police on call in case of emergency.
The Allegheny County Emergency Management Agency will activate its emergency operations center and be ready to respond to emergencies in any of the county’s more than 130 communities, county police Inspector Ken Fulton said.
Smaller communities do not face the crowd-control problems of Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, but Frank Matis, Butler County’s emergency services director, said officials want to be ready if electrical power or telephones fail.
If communications problems develop, radio amateurs will relay emergency pleas for help to officials, and a state police car standing by will let local officials communicate with state authorities, he said.
“We not really expecting anything like that to happen,” Matis said, predicting that the big danger would be “some human factor: somebody hits a pole and takes some electricity out someplace, and some people think it’s a Y2K event and panic.”
But millennium or no millennium, Matis said, “We expect it to be a busy evening.”
“New Year’s is kind of busy every year, so we are going to gear up for that,” he said.
Web sites give glimpse of years to come
Predictions by professionals and amateurs abound on the internet
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The imminent arrival of 2000 has prompted professionals and amateurs alike to try to guess how life will change in the decades and centuries to come, and the Internet offers a glimpse into many of those crystal balls.
One good place to start is the World Future Society’s Web site (http://www.wfs.org). The 30,000-member Bethesda, Md.-based group’s home base in cyberspace includes its Top 10 forecasts for the year 2000 and beyond. Among them:
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The number of centenarians worldwide will increase from 135,000 today to 2.2 million by 2050.
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By 2010, bio-monitoring devices that resemble wristwatches will provide wearers with up-to-the-minute information about their health.
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Tiny electronic microchips implanted in a person’s forearm could transmit messages to a computer that controls the heating and lighting systems of intelligent buildings.
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The 21st century could see widespread infertility and falling birthrates.
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Farmers will become genetic engineers, growing vaccines as well as food.
The site also features a compilation of quotations, “The Wisdom of the World ~ 1,000 Messages for the New Millennium," compiled by academic Bruce Lloyd. It includes pithy quotations from Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin and others.
This page (http://www.wfs.org/Q-intro.htm) has a link that enables visitors to “contribute whatever wisdom you have to the new millennium.”
The best contributions will be posted on the site when the millennium arrives officially on January 1, 2001.
“We think that’s kind of fun,” World Future Society Program Director Robert Schley, who maintains the group’s Web site, said in a phone interview with Reuters earlier this year. “People from all over the world have responded.”
He said interest in the new year has been magnified by the millennium bug computer problem, which added an undercurrent of concern to customary optimism that accompanies the change.
The group is far from alone in trying to figure out the future, University of Cincinnati faculty, for example, have been peering into the next century. Their great expectations can be found on http://www.uc.ed/info-services/tips.htm
The Cincinnati predictions include:
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Terrorists will use high-tech methods to create bigger incidents. There will be fewer incidents, partly due to greater interagency and intergovernmental cooperation, but more casualties because of the potency of explosive, biological and chemical weapons.
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Home products such as videocassette recorders, televisions and coffee makers will be voice-activated and programmable to understand a variety of languages. But traditional VCRs, CD players and DVD players will not be around for long. Movies and music will be available on computer chips that also are programmable so consumers can place themselves within a favorite movie or sing along with a favorite group.
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The United States will run out of oil between 2030 and 2050, radically altering the “car culture.”
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More companies will recognize the dominance of dual-income families by offering on-site child care, flexible working hours and other family-friendly policies and benefits.
A number of consulting and research firms make their living trying to give businesses, governments and others a look at things to come. While they may not want to give away the store by telling all, some of their forecasts can be found online.
The Rand think tank in Santa Monica, Calif., gives a sampling of its predictions, including a report titled “In Athena’s Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age." The reports can be found at http://www.rand.org/HOT/index.html. Older reports, including the one on war, are at: http://www.rand.org/publications/featured.html
Media organizations also are peering into the future. For example, CNN.com has “the Next millennium: NOW WHAT?” with 14 experts prognosticating about topics as varied as language, sports, space and religion.
The site also has video predictions by others and a 14-topic 100-year look back. Find it at: www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1999/future/flash.html
Visions of future are hard to figure
A look back at some predictions for the year 2000 demonstrates the pitfalls of foretelling what may come.
(San Francisco Examiner) – A few years ago, the Futurist, a journal published by the 30,000-member World Future Society, received an article discussing the coming threat of the Y2K virus.
They rejected it.
That editorial decision epitomizes the hazards of forecasting the future over the long and the short term.
In late 1960s issues of the Futurist, predictions for the year 2000 included then-Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey’s forecast of the virtual elimination of bacterial and viral diseases, science writer Isaac Asimov’s prediction that even home appliances would be powered by batteries with nuclear radioisotopes, and a Xerox Corp. paper’s claim that “for short journeys around the world, people will ride in magnet-controlled luxurious flying saucer type devices, similar to guided missiles.”
Flops, all.
Also in the 1960s, controversial futurist Herman Kahn forecast that by 2000, Americans would work an average of 1,100 hours a year, roughly 20 hours a week.
In reality, as a recent issue of the Futurist ruefully acknowledged, the actual work rate by 1993 rose to 1,905 hours for men and 1,526 hours for women (up by 100 and 233 hours, respectively, from 1976).
Futurists haven’t always been wrong. But rare indeed is the long-term forecast that proves to be spot-on – for example, United Nations’ demographers forecast, around 1960, that the world population would exceed 6 billion by 2000. Sure enough, that’s almost exactly the present world population.
Why do so many futurist visions fall flat?
Partly because futurists have trouble wresting themselves from the cultural, technical or political assumptions of their time.
In a 1900 issue of Ladies Home Journal, John Elfreth Watkins Jr. anticipated that by 2000, “every river or creek with any suitable fall will be equipped with water motors, turning dynamos, making electricity.” That idea might have sounded great during the early days of electrification, but it would horrify today’s environmentalists.
While some old forecasts now seem hilariously overoptimistic, others now seem comically understated.
Consider forecasts that appeared in Scientific American over the last half century. In 1948, the magazine informed its readers that the invention of the transistor “may outmode the conventional vacuum tube in many applications.” In 1970, it explained that a new technology, liquid crystal displays, “can be used for the presentation of images.”
None of these forecasts hinted where each of these technologies would lead: to today’s world of fabulous high technology including personal computers with liquid crystal displays and movies with hyper-realistic, computer-generated special effects.
After analyzing numerous 30-year-old forecasts, World Future Society founder Ed Cornish concluded they had “an accuracy of 68 percent… On the other hand, the error rate was high enough to make one pause before venturing to make a forecast even when we feel quite certain that we know what we are talking about. The future can always find ways to surprise us.”
When will Y2K start, and does it matter?
Some may ask if we are jumping the gun on the new millennium. Others may ask, ‘Who cares?’
(St. Petersburg Times) – Pick a momentous event and somebody will pick a fight over it.
And if it’s something that occurs only once in 1,000 years, like a millennium change, the argument likely will go global.
Where will the millennium begin? Who will host the first sunrise? Are we jumping the gun by celebrating the new millennium as 2000 begins?
By now, after all the attention given to it, some might ask: Who cares?
For those who are still paying attention, the last question has the easiest answer.
Officially, yes, the world is getting ahead of itself. Since there was no year 0 on the modern calendar – the first millennium A.D. began with the year 1 – the third millennium actually will begin in 2001.
If you want to celebrate it then, do so by all means. You won’t have the same crowds or the emotion you will experience this December 31 when the hyped-up, souped-up, technology-triggered, commercially driven millennium engulfs most of the rest of us.
You may take some lonely solace, however, in the fact that you are correct, from the Gregorian point of view.
Where will the new millennium begin? That’s a harder question and requires some explanation.
For many people, the new year will begin at the international date line, where Friday in the central Pacific is Saturday in the western Pacific. Most of this line parallels longitude 180-degrees, though it jogs a couple of times, around Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and the territories of New Zealand, to keep jurisdictions that share the same government in the same day.
Because the date line has no legal status – it is undefined by any international treaty – governments can shift its location to meet any whim.
In 1995, the government of Kiribati moved the date line around its territory 30 degrees east, so the nation’s easternmost land mass, a group of uninhabited atolls called Caroline Island, moved to the west side of the date line.
Thus Caroline Island, renamed Millennium Island for the occasion, will see the century change first, despite the fact that Caroline Island is nearly 10 degrees east of Honolulu, which will have to wait for the millennium for nearly a whole day.
The other claim for the millennium is exactly halfway around the world, at 0 degrees longitude, a demarcation also known as the Greenwich meridian.
According to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England, an international conference held in Washington, D.C., in 1884 adopted the Greenwich meridian as the prime meridian for all the world, the place where the universal day and time begin. Therefore, the observatory claims, it will not be a new millennium until it is a new millennium there.
Lending some credence to the Greenwich claim is the fact that the airline industry, for one, operates on Greenwich (or Zulu) time. Thus, when the new century opens in Kiribati, it will be 5 a.m. EST on December 31. When midnight reaches Greenwich, it will be 7 p.m. EST December 31 here. And only then will it be the new millennium in the aviation industry.
Perhaps the biggest argument is over who will see the first sunrise of the millennium. And in that regard, it depends entirely on how you define “first.”
The very first place that will see the sun on January 1 is in the extreme southern Pacific Ocean, near the Antarctic Circle, where it is nearly perpetual day at this time of year. But some say that doesn’t count because it’s open water.
The land on which the first rays of sun will fall will, indeed, be Kiribati’s Caroline Island. Some say that doesn’t count because it is uninhabited.
So the winner by default is Pitt Island in New Zealand’s Chatham Island chain.
“The folks from the National Geographic Society came here and studied and declared that we are the first inhabited place to see the first sunrise of the new millennium,” said Val Croon, owner of the 15-room Hotel Chathams Ltd., the largest tourist haven in the islands.
“We have visitors coming from all over the world, though we can’t accommodate too many since there are only 66 rooms available on the whole island,” he said.
And the celebration?
“Well, there are only 700 people living in the Chathams, so we won’t be having a rock concert,” Croon said. “It will be more a family thing, folks who have left coming back to see their relatives. We don’t get much excitement here as a rule. We don’t want to overdo.”
This is as opposed to Katchal, a small tropical island in the far south Bay of Bengal east of India, the place that will see the first sunrise for those committed to Greenwich time.
A few hearty souls have chartered sea planes to the Caroline Islands. A New Zealander is flying charters to Antarctica. The king of Tonga is hoping to meet the millennium in a new, ceremonial double-hulled canoe – if it’s ready in time. And in Queenstown in eastern Australia, the first bungee jump of 2000 is being auctioned for charity.
Across the world it’s anticipated that larger-than-usual assemblies of people will gather to watch grander-than-usual fireworks displays. Key West might take the prize for the longest party, a 10-day affair, already begun, called Fantasy Fest, billed as a cross between Halloween and Mardi Gras.
But according to the newspaper Travel Weekly, the millennium isn’t living up to its bookings. Hot spots like New York and London are expected to draw big time, but many millennium travel packages haven’t sold out.
Right now, the Chatham Islands seem the best place to be, what with a horse race, golf and fishing tournaments planned.
The New York Times (December 29, 1999)
Citing security, Seattle cancels a New Year’s Eve party
By Timothy Egan
After planning for two years to stage one of the biggest New Year’s Eve parties in the nation, Seattle officials today canceled their public celebration at the base of the city’s best-known landmark, the Space Needle, citing security concerns.
Seattle has been on edge ever since riots broke out at the World Trade Organization meetings here three weeks ago, and the December 14 arrest of an Algerian, Ahmed Ressam, who was carrying enough explosives to blow up a building. Mr. Ressam, who was stopped at Port Angeles as he tried to enter Washington State by ferry, had booked a hotel room for one night near the Space Needle. The authorities have said they have no evidence that Mr. Ressam was planning to blow up the 605-foot spire.
“It’s a combination of things,” said Mayor Paul Schell. “No other city has had a bomb delivered to its doorstep, or the kind of anxiety we’ve had over the W.T.O. meetings, plus Y2K concerns.”
More than 50,000 people had been expected for the fireworks, concerts and arts shows on Friday night at the Seattle Center. The fireworks show from the Space Needle will still go on, but the public will be barred from the 75-acre public area around the Needle beginning at 6 p.m. on Friday.
“Although we are comfortable that Seattle is not a target, we cannot assure people that there is no risk,” Mr. Schell said.
Contributing to the fears about security is a missing propane truck, stolen south of Seattle just before the trade meetings, city officials said.
“That truck is still out there somewhere,” said Vivian Phillips, a spokeswoman for the mayor. “It’s one of the concerns.”
While other cities that plan to hold New Year’s Eve celebrations are going ahead with their plans, the cancellation of a party that was billed as the biggest civic celebration in a generation indicates that perhaps the greatest concern over the start of 2000 is not computer glitches, but terrorism.
Asked whether Seattle’s cancellation might embolden terrorists into intimidating other cities, Mayor Schell said: “Obviously, we took into account those who would say we would be giving in to terrorism. But I’m more concerned about the safety of our citizens.”
Mr. Schell has been under heavy criticism as failing to provide adequate security at the W.T.O. meetings. Some demonstrators broke windows and looted stores, causing more than $2 million in damage. More than 600 people were arrested.
This time, the mayor said he wanted to leave very little to chance.
“We know there is funny stuff going on out there,” he said. “The millennium, by its nature, is going to bring out the kookier fringe.”
Officials in New York, Chicago and Washington, which are also planning major New Year’s Eve parties, were reluctant to criticize Seattle’s move, and said they had no plans to change their celebrations. But Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York indicated disapproval.
“I would urge people not to let the psychology of fear infect the way they act, otherwise we have let the terrorist win without anybody striking a blow,” Mr. Giuliani said. “No mayor, no governor, can offer anyone perfect security. Life involves a level of risk.”
New York is expecting upward of two million people for the celebration in Times Square. More than 8,000 police officers will be on the streets, and city officials say they have taken extraordinary security precautions, including bolting down sewer manholes in the area.
“This is New York,” Mayor Giuliani said. “If you tried to cancel, probably instead of two million people showing up, four million people would show up.”
Some of the fears have been stoked by statements from former intelligence officials. Jim Kallstrom, the former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who was in charge of the investigation into the crash of T.W.A. Flight 800 off Long Island in July 1996, recently urged people not to show up at the Times Square event.
“If there is a terrorism strike, it will be in a large gathering,” Mr. Kallstrom said.
In Washington, city and federal officials are proceeding with plans for the millennium celebration to be held at the Lincoln Memorial. The festivities, at which the singer and actor Will Smith will be the host, will culminate in a midnight fireworks display set off by President Clinton.
The F.B.I. has assisted Washington officials throughout the planning for the New Year’s Eve party, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office said. And members of the National Guard will supplement the 3,500 police officers patrolling the streets on Friday night, said Kevin Morison, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department.
In Chicago, guests invited from every country in the world have started to arrive for the city’s millennial party, a dinner and fireworks display at McCormick Place, the lakefront convention center.
“I can understand what they did in Seattle,” said Lois Weisberg, an organizer of the party. “It’s too bad, because we have a combination of Y2K and terrorist threats making everyone cautious. It really casts a pall over everything.”
Las Vegas, which is expecting about 250,000 out-of-town visitors this weekend, has also stepped up security, although none of the major outdoor celebrations have been curtailed, city officials said. About three and a half miles of the Las Vegas Strip, fronting most major casinos, will be closed to vehicle traffic on New Year’s Eve, and more than 800 police officers will be on patrol.
While hotel owners had once expected more than a half million visitors and fully booked hotels, they now say up to 20 percent of the city’s 120,444 hotel rooms will be empty on New Year’s Eve.
“The F.B.I. has informed us, as late as this morning, that they have no evidence of a credible terrorism threat against Las Vegas,” said Richelle Thomson, a spokeswoman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
In Seattle, while some people complained about being shut out of the millennial party, most public officials said they were relieved that the celebration had been canceled.
“We have been worried about the Armageddon people, and this terrorism issue was just one more thing,” said Ron Sims, the executive for King County, which includes Seattle. “We have been immune from terrorists for a long time. But sooner or later it catches up with you.”
Mr. Sims had urged Mayor Schell to cancel the party.
“It just didn’t feel right,” Mr. Sims said. “We’ve seen enough signs that there could be trouble.”
Mr. Schell said that while he had no evidence that Mr. Ressam, who is being held without bail at a federal detention center here, planned to strike in Seattle, the bomb-making material found in his car indicated a threat.
“All I know is he had a room reservation in Seattle, and the car was going to be returned to the airport,” the mayor said. “You can draw an inference from that that a bomb was intended for here.”
Among the harshest critics of Mr. Schell during the W.T.O. protests were members of the Seattle City Council. Today, most council members backed the mayor.
“These are unusual times, with unusual circumstances” said Sue Donaldson, the Council president. “It seems unwise to create a crowd of 50,000 in this uncertain situation.”