Y2K 25th anniversary

[NormanStewart]

Goldman strategist remains bullish, though less so, for 2000

By Reuters

Abby Joseph Cohen, one of Wall Street’s most influential strategists, said yesterday that the stock market’s stunning 1999 ascent had turned her into a regular bull.

“I used to be a superbull. Now I’m just a bull,” the chief United States market strategist for Goldman Sachs said in an interview on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

For 2000, Ms. Cohen is forecasting single-digit percentage gains for blue-chip stocks, in contrast to the double-digit percentile advances the Dow Jones industrial average registered in each of the last five years, including 1999.

Ms. Cohen spoke a day after the Nasdaq composite index closed at more than 4,000 points for the first time, up 84 percent for 1999.

“What we’re telling our portfolio manager clients is that technology deserves to be a core holding. That said, ‘we’re not as super-enthusiastic because they’re not as cheap,’” as at the start of 1999, she said, when they were undervalued.

In the past, she said, many investors treated technology as a cyclical industry when it deserved better. She noted that technology-related capital spending had quadrupled as a percentage of United States gross domestic product.

“In 1999, investors said ‘Eureka.’ It’s a secular industry that’s brought about an enormous structural change,” she said. “This was an important year of inflection. Technology stocks finally got some respect.”

She said that the sector was now fairly valued. “People should not have just one or two names, but a handful. And it should not be the driving force in a portfolio,” she said.

Ms. Cohen has won open praise from floor traders and gained the esteem of Wall Street with the accuracy of her bullish forecasts and her down-to-earth style.

She was ranked the top portfolio strategist three years running in the Institutional Investor survey, and as the ninth-most powerful woman in the world by Fortune magazine, and yet she continues to take the bus to work from her home in Queens.

At the New York Stock Exchange yesterday, Ms. Cohen was surrounded by her family as she formally closed the trading session. And her own exuberance was in evidence as the gavel she used to strike the end of trading smashed in half.

The stock market did not cooperate with the occasion, however. For the day, the Nasdaq and Dow closed with modest losses. The Dow, at 11,452.86, is now up nearly 25 percent for 1999.

But the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, the subject of intense research by Ms. Cohen, edged up to a record 1,464.47. It is now up more than 19 percent for the year.

For 2000, Ms. Cohen expects more moderate gains with the S&P 500 closing out 2000 at 1,525 points. Her Dow target is 12,300.

At this point, it looks like Ms. Cohen may get caught in the same situation as last year, when, she said, “I thought it would be a good year, but it turned out to be a great year.”

When she made her 2000 forecasts in mid-December, her S&P target suggested an 8 percent gain for next year. Two weeks later, her forecast would represent just a 4 percent gain because the index has risen.

This year, Ms. Cohen ratcheted up her targets as the months progressed. In 1999, “everyone thought the economy was in trouble,” she said. “We were seen as extremely aggressive. In 2000, I think the consensus is closer to being right.

“We have stated that if there is a risk to our forecasts, it’s likely that they are too low, because the global economy get stronger,” she said.

[NormanStewart]

On millennium’s heels, one for Jews

By Deborah Sontag

How to find a Jewish angle for the millennium? With the eyes of the world on the Holy Land, Rabbi Shlomo Gestetner wanted to exploit the moment, without, he hastened to add, commemorating Jesus.

The turn of the millennium is a confusing time for those who live in the land where Jesus was born, lived and died. Mostly Jews and Muslims, they do not attach religious significance to the moment, yet they live, to some degree, in the modern, secular world. It may be the year 5760 according to the Jewish calendar, but there is no denying the worldwide “energy and sense of trepidation,” Rabbi Gestetner said.

And so he came up with an idea: a Y6K benefit concert. Two hundred and forty years early, but why be an accountant?

“I’m not expecting the end of the world, but we are still waiting for the Messiah,” said Rabbi Gestetner, director of the Mayanot Institute of Jewish Studies, a modern Hasidic organization that caters to college-age students from abroad. “And in Jerusalem, all good Jewish organizations are always looking for a way to fund-raise.”

Significantly, the Y6K event will take place on the night of January 1, and not on New Year’s Eve, when Jerusalem will effectively be shut down for the Jewish Sabbath. The actual millennial eve will be a non-event for most people here, although secular Tel Aviv and Palestinian-ruled Bethlehem are expected to be lively. But in the holy city, where most millennial tourists are staying, it will be at best a closeted party of limited merriment – no music, no dancing – because of Sabbath restrictions imposed by the rabbinical authority.

“Oh, pooh,” said Jane Waugh, a tourist from Nottingham, England. “We’re not terribly religious but we figured this would be the most happening city in the world. Now it seems, by all accounts, that it will be dead here. Nottingham would be more eventful.”

The day itself is likely to be bustling, particularly at the Temple Mount, or Haram al-Sharif, in the Old City, which will see hundreds of thousands of worshipers in shifts – first Muslims, then Jews, then Christians. The Muslims, for whom this is approximately the year 1420, are expected en masse to pray at Al Aksa Mosque for the fourth Friday of Ramadan, the holy month. At sundown, the usual traffic of Jewish worshipers will crowd the plaza at the Western Wall. And, later, local Christians and pilgrims will gather at the Basilica of Gethsemane and at the Mount of Olives.

The literal millennium madness is no longer expected, although anything is possible. Kfar Shaul, the mental health center, had reserved beds for foreigners struck by doomsday delusions or the more commonplace Holy City derangement labeled Jerusalem Syndrome. But Dr. Yair Barel, the director, said not a single person believing himself to be God, a prophet or in direct communication with either had shown up in the last 10 days.

Sam Jabari, owner of the Black Horse Hostel off the Via Dolorosa, said a Swedish woman had left suddenly, saying Jesus had instructed her to check out. And a woman from Canada, who claimed to be speaking with Jesus, was taken away by the police and deported, he said.

Other hoteliers in and around the Old City reported “nothing out of the ordinary,” as Stellios Odeh, the Gloria Hotel’s reception clerk, said.

The police, though, will remain on high alert. Earlier this year, the police deported to the United States and Britain a group of apocalyptic cultists and several religious eccentrics who had lived on the Mount of Olives for years. Now their concerns are broader: the combustible mix of religious groups revolving through the Dome of the Rock and Western Wall area, worldwide terrorism cautions, specific terrorism concerns related to the revival of the peace effort, and Y2K computer issues. The government sought and received special dispensation for a heavy mobilization of police officers, public workers and volunteers on the Sabbath.

The police will heavily guard most religious sites. At the national park in the ancient city of Megiddo, for instance, the police and forest rangers will step up their patrols since the site is believed to be the Armageddon from the New Testament: the place where the world will end.

In Jerusalem, almost all restaurants are closed on Friday nights, and this Friday night will be no different. The hotels, whose invaluable kosher certificates can be revoked if there are perceived violations of the Sabbath, had reached an agreement with the rabbinate allowing modest parties. But after pressure or perceived pressure from the local religious councils, most hotels will not hold anything more than a Champagne toast at midnight.

“Almost all the hotels that had plans to do events for Christians only, they withdrew those plans and none of them will do anything,” said Yonatan Harpaz, director of the Jerusalem Hotel Association, referring to “threats that are more than veiled.”

In line with the downsizing of the millennial eve, the Israeli government has canceled a scheduled concert of Handel’s “Messiah” at the Jerusalem Convention Center.

Undeterred, Ronit Levy, an American-born university student, was stocking up on Champagne this week. “I really don’t think the state of Israel should be cowed by the rabbis into conceiving of New Year’s Eve as a Christian event,” she said. “Hello? How many Israelis have any clue that it is the Jewish month of Tevet? My laptop isn’t programmed to the year 5760. We’re Y2K like the rest of the world.”

Officially, though, Israelis seem both ambivalent and sometimes clueless hosts to the Christian pilgrims in their hotels. The Hyatt Regency unwittingly held its Christmas dinner on December 24, following the Jewish tradition of holding the festival meal on the eve of a holiday.

The once vaunted “millennial season,” which some hoteliers say was inadequately promoted by the government, is turning out to be a dud. Many hotels, which raised their rates in anticipation of hordes, are experiencing lower occupancy rates than last year. At the Jerusalem Hilton, the Christmas-New Year’s season usually brings back-to-back bar mitzvah groups, but not this year.

The Palestinians do not have many hotel rooms to fill. But they are holding another celebration in the newly refurbished Manger Square in Bethlehem, where they will release thousands of doves of peace – despite opposition from a French animal rights group.

Like Hatem Abu Ahmed, a Muslim food vendor, most Palestinians will not celebrate the day themselves. Mr. Abu Ahmed said the millennium meant nothing to him, and then retracted his statement. “If I am lucky, the millennium will mean a good day for shwarma,” he said, referring to the meat in pita sandwiches that he sells.

[NormanStewart]

A new year, an adopted tradition

By Chris Hedges

Russell Merrill and his neighbors have spent every weekend this month scouring junk heaps for a winch and a telephone pole, cutting plywood and wrapping 250 feet of lights – the kind you see on the sides of tractor-trailer trucks – to make their own New Year’s Eve ball.

It stands perched 57 feet in the air, in what folks here call Maxfield Common, just in front of the iced runway that will be used on Friday afternoon for turkey bowling, a competition in which two bowlers roll frozen birds at wooden pins.

Of the town’s practices for the first ball drop in its history, said Mr. Merrill, “We have tried it four to six times.”

“It’s more personal to have it done in your hometown,” added Mr. Merrill, 47, an electrician who estimated that 240 work-hours and $1,100 went into the creation.

In the kind of I-don’t-need-New York attitude that is common in Maine, this town of 2,500 people – several dozen of whom fled the city – has been holding meetings for 50 weeks to plan its own New Year’s Eve celebration carefully.

And while the people here shudder at the thought of jamming into Times Square, they cannot conceive of bringing in the 2000s without a lighted ball. The local cable access station, Lake Region TV, will show the ball drop later, sometime in January.

A winch to lower the ball was found, pulled from a pile of rusting junk in Maurice Robbins’s backyard. And in a concession to drinking habits, three men will work it, so all will have a free hand to hold a beer.

The ball is scheduled to take a minute and 4 seconds to drop. The words “Harrison 2000” will be in lights on a post, and operators will flash the lights for the sign and ball on and off.

There are still $25 buttons that provide admission to all the day’s events. In addition to the ball drop and turkey bowling, there will be a cribbage tournament, Bingo, a torch-light parade and church events like clog dancing and story telling. For all the pull of the famous events in Times Square, there are still some rooms to be had in the larger metropolis, but not here: the three at the Crystal Lake Inn and the five at the Harrison House are booked with visitors here for the big show.

That should not be a surprise. The visitors are the sort who like the idea of celebrating New Year’s Eve in the midst of nature, and this place has more space and fresh air than most. The Oxford Hills, rolling and pine-forested, merge into the White Mountains about a half-hour away. The jagged snow-capped ridges of Mounts Washington, Madison and Jefferson lie silhouetted against the western skyline. The night sky, free of the street lights and nearby houses, glitters with a canopy of 2,000 stars. The deer and moose are as common as the blue jays and chickadees.

But even though this town’s aesthetics and attitude are decidedly different from New York’s, the ties between the two are hard to miss, and some go back to the turn of the century.

There were huge resorts in this part of Maine in the early part of the century that drew some of the wealthiest people from New York north for the entire summer. Long Lake and Crystal Lake here have attracted many vacationing artists, especially opera singers, over the years.

In 1936, a New York opera coach, Enrica Clay Dillon, opened the Deertrees Theater, which still has summer stock productions. It brought in stars like Rudy Vallee and Tallulah Bankhead, as well as numerous regulars from the operatic world. Vivian Vance, who went on to become Lucille Ball’s sidekick on the television show “I Love Lucy,” used to act in the Deertrees company in the ‘30s.

The town still lures tourists from the city; in the summers it doubles in size. And 15 or so children’s camps, like Owatonna, Waziyatah, Pinecliffe, Newfound, Wigwam and Tapa Wingo, draw heavily from the New York and Boston areas.

Many residents who left New York for Harrison retired in the area after years of vacationing here, although some, like Donna Joyce, who grew up in East Flatbush in Brooklyn, simply packed up their families and left for the slower life of the country. Mrs. Joyce, who says she misses New York most during the Christmas season, works as a nurse at the hospital in Bridgton, Me.

Then there is Eleanor Frank, 84, a Bronx native who was a camp counselor at Tapa Wingo in 1934 when she met her future husband, a swimming teacher at a neighboring camp. They lived most of their life at Broadway and 88th Street, “right in the middle of the mess,” she said. Then, in 1972, her husband retired as a governor at the American Stock Exchange, and they moved here, to about 200 acres and a rambling 14-room farmhouse built in 1908. He put a stock ticker in the house and it clattered away until his death in 1982.

She likes her quiet life in the country. “Of course, it’s calmer and you do what you want,” she said. “When your car stops you are parked.”

“Many years ago they asked those of us who had houses on the lake if we wanted our mail delivered to our docks,” she said, sitting in her hilltop home as a wind blew against the white clapboards. “There was not one yes. We all wanted to go into town. How would we know what was going on? If I sneeze in my living room, someone in the post office says ‘Bless you.’ That is how fast news travels in Harrison.”

The town, considered upscale by neighboring communities, is tame by the crime standards of Maine. There was a rooftop shootout recently in a neighboring town, but the closest thing to a sensational crime here was the arrest of the local drug dealer, who had the town paying for the electricity to grow his marijuana.

So fears of millennial terrorism here are not rampant. Any threat will probably be home-grown, everyone concedes. Gordon McLaren, the emergency management director for the town, has designated the firehouse as the emergency shelter for any Year 2000 crisis. Selectwoman Sheila Smith wanted to be sure the shelter would be used only if it was really necessary. “Anyone in Maine should be prepared to go without power for 12 to 24 hours,” she said. “Five hours without power does not warrant an emergency shelter.”

The millennium has heightened the sense of the need for security, even here. The five members of the board of selectmen, which administers the town, have been debating security modifications to the town offices. As Selectwoman Sue Gazza put it at a recent meeting, “There are a lot of weirdos in this country.”

The New Yorkers here, known as “out-of-staters” or “displaced locals,” are sometime viewed as intruders, or as people with different ways. Philip H. Denison, 70, a retired chicken farmer and leather worker with a laconic wit and down east drawl, was talking about them as he stood under the low ceiling of his farmhouse, which has been in his family since 1812.

As the town humorist, he will tell stories and poems, some of them rather ribald, at the community church on New Year’s Eve, though he may change some of the punch lines. He’ll be in church, after all.

“You don’t know anybody in town anymore except for the old-timers,” he said. “We used to be able to hunt all around here, but a lot of these out-of-staters post their land: ‘No Trespassing.’ It makes me kind of mad. And, of course, they talk funny, they call supper dinner. We eat dinner at noontime.”

And for sure, New Yorkers and their city ways will figure in Mr. Denison’s performance. In one skit, he plays a host of characters, including a country bumpkin from Harrison, wearing a suit made by a city tailor, John Paul. The tailor’s motto, as Mr. Denison utters it, is “John Paul fits them all, young, fat, short and tall.”

The suit the bumpkin is wearing has sleeves that are too short, mismatched lapels and a baggy seat. He complains to the tailor, first about one flaw, then about another, and each time the tailor shows him a solution: hold up the seat, pull down the sleeves and keep the lapel flat with a tucked-in chin. Mr. Denison is left limping around the stage, like Richard III.

Enter Mr. Denison as a sympathetic observer: “Look at that poor man. He can hardly walk.”

“Yup,” comes the response. “But his suit sure fits good.”

Dick Clark, eat your heart out.

[NormanStewart]

Cultural differences reveal millennium gap:
On Asian calendars, year 2000 means less

By Michael Richardson, International Herald Tribune

Many of the world’s 3.2 billion Asians, especially the majority who live in rural areas, are bemused at the fuss about the arrival of the new millennium being made in the West and among Western-influenced Asians.

Some, like Hermawan Cahyono, who lost his job at a rubber factory in Jakarta during the Asian financial crisis and has not managed to find full-time employment since, are too poor to join any lavish parties to ring out the old year and welcome the new on Friday night.

“I will take my family out on my motorcycle around the city to celebrate the New Year,” he said. “I’ll let my two children blow trumpets.”

But the millennium gap is not just about money; it reflects cultural differences as well.

January 1 of the year 2000 is also the 17th month of Markali in the Thiruvalluvar year 2030, in the calendar observed by ethnic Tamils in southern India, Sri Lanka, and parts of Southeast Asia.

In their view, those using the Christian Gregorian calendar – widely adopted in Asia for civil and official purposes as a result of European colonization and the spread of international trade – are 30 years late in celebrating the start of another 1,000-year cycle in human history.

On the Indonesian island of Bali, many locals say that they have more than 77 years to prepare for the next millennium. Their Saka calendar shows January 1, 2000, as the sixth lunar month in the year 1922.

Muslims in Asia have even longer to wait – 579 years to be precise. According to the Islamic calendar, New Year’s Day is the 24th of the fasting month of Ramadan in the year 1420.

The Chinese have a calendar said to date back to the mythical Yellow Emperor, who is thought to have created his complex method for recording time 2,629 years before the birth of Christ, the starting point of the Gregorian calendar.

The Asian Civilization Museum in Singapore recently opened an exhibition on different ways of measuring time. “This is an anti-millennium millennium project,” the museum’s curator, Tan Huism, said of the exhibit, “The Dating Game – Calendars and Time in Asia.”

The Gregorian calendar, widely used around the world as the main instrument for measuring time, takes its name from Pope Gregory XIII, who made its use mandatory in the Roman Catholic Church in 1582. Its adoption by Protestant countries in Europe became widespread only in the 18th century.

Just as the Gregorian calendar has become the standard international calendar, the Christian-era dating system is also the most widely used in history books, the media, academic and international publications.

But in the more remote parts of Asia, life still moves to older rhythms and time is measured in traditional ways, at least for religious and festive purposes.

“In much of Asia, the Gregorian calendar regulates time for civil purposes,” said Lee Chor Lin, senior curator at the museum.

“The Gregorian calendar is probably the most accurate, but that doesn’t mean everybody has to use it for all purposes,” she said. “In remote parts of Asia, where there may be no radio or television, people still rely on village priests and local calendrical practices.”

For example, the 50,000 Kodi people on Sumba Island in eastern Indonesia do not have a written calendar. Instead, they have an official calendar keeper, known as Rato Nale, or the Sea Worm Priest.

At about this time of year, Rato Nale goes into contemplative seclusion. Guided by the monsoon weather season, growth stages of the rice crop and the different phases of the moon, he must predict the exact day on which a particular type of sea worm, Leodis viridis, will come swarming along two coasts of Sumba in a mating frenzy. This will be the beginning of the new year, and hopefully a good omen for the harvest.

The majority of Asians use calendars for religious and festive purposes that are based on Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam.

The Balinese use their Pawukon calendar as the basic reference for temple ritual days, personal anniversaries, market days and selecting auspicious days.

The Hindu calendar in India is said to emanate from Brahma, the god of creation. It is based on a cyclical concept of life and rebirth. But it takes millions of human years to complete one day of Brahma – a cosmic arrangement intended to show the creator as invincible, and human life as utterly insignificant.

[NormanStewart]

An executive status symbol: Being needed New Year’s Eve

By Jennifer Steinhauer

When the glittering envelope arrived earlier this month, Dr. John W. Rowe acknowledged, he was tempted. It held the invitation to a fancy New Year’s Eve party in London, to be given by some old friends. His wife leapt to pull out the suitcases.

But Dr. Rowe, who is the chief executive of Mount Sinai NYU Health, has opted instead to work tonight at the two hospitals under his tutelage. Sure, he spent most of 1999 delegating all the technical and medical preparations for the big night. But he has no intention of handing over ultimate authority now that it is here.

“This is my identity,” Dr. Rowe said. “When people ask me, ‘Where were you at the millennium?’ I can say, ‘I am an academic medicine administrator and I was in my hospitals.’” And in the spirit of homecoming week at a suburban high school, during which anyone who is anyone is seen at the right party, he added: “All of our senior executives will be there.”

At any other holiday season, power is measured by the number of smart party invites received and the relative coolness of one’s vacation plans. Executives take calls from the office, but they do so on their cell phones from a trendy brasserie in Aspen.

But in an odd twist in the corporate power equation, one that will be played out all over Manhattan tonight, the most important people in an organization are the ones who will be working. To be away from the office on this New Year’s Eve is to be rendered, in Y2K argot, “nonessential,” and what executive wants that? Not Eugene R. McGrath, the president and chief executive of Consolidated Edison Inc. Of course he is working, he said. “Isn’t everybody?”

Tonight, with computer glitches and other specters of evil lurking about, an executive’s importance in the corporate hierarchy will often be determined by his skills at dealing with the highly unlikely. To be essential means to hold the key to technical problems that will probably not occur, or to have the only voice at the other end of the line that nervous customers, who almost certainly will not call, would want to hear.

To be told to show up to do not much of anything denotes a particular primacy.

Edward L. Goldberg, the executive vice president for operations at Merrill Lynch, acknowledges that most of what he will do tonight is “watch the clock turn.”

Perhaps a subordinate could have been assigned to that task?

“Well, why should I let him do it when I can do it with him?” said Mr. Goldberg, slightly indignant. “I feel it is an honor having been given this responsibility to lead Y2K preparedness over the last four years. That is why I am nervous and excited to be there.”

Sure, Mr. McGrath of Consolidated Edison could have demanded that a minion crawl out of bed and make it to Times Square by 6 a.m. to flip the switch that will light the famous falling ball. But why take away all his fun? “I want to be the one to do it,” he said. “This is a pretty exciting time.”

Who decides who is essential? Not the working bee herself, one hopes. In January 1966, practically moments after he was inaugurated, Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York found himself in the middle of a transit strike. The mayor begged commuters to honestly consider their relative importance and to stay home “if you’re not essential to your job.” This was not good psychology. New Yorkers, who since the beginning of time have prided themselves on their role in commerce, did not appreciate the implication.

Some executives have managed to show their best anti-micromanagement face by boasting that they are leaving this evening for the troops to handle. But many others said that it would seem a tad unappreciative to assign lower-ranking executives to a night of worrying or boredom while they flitted about in St. Bart’s or otherwise swilled the night away.

“It is important to be here for several reasons,” said Dr. Rowe, who presides over Mount Sinai and New York University Hospitals, which merged last year. “First, to thank people for their efforts. Also, I think that if something happens, either technical with Y2K or in the city related to some disturbance, it is appropriate to have the C.E.O. there. If in fact something happened, how would you feel if the C.E.O. was in London?”

Others still cannot quite articulate why they feel the need to work, but also cannot imagine not being on the job. “I don’t have to be here,” said Xavier Lividini, the general manager of the Mayflower Hotel on Central Park West. “But when I became a hotel manager, I never thought of New Year’s Eve for anything else. My father was a chef, so I don’t even think about it.”

But for many executives, this is the first New Year’s Eve in memory that they have been stuck at work. Most years, Mr. Goldberg has taken advantage of the stony silence on Wall Street and spent the holiday in his home in Sarasota, Fla. “I go there, read, walk on the beach and recharge my battery,” he said. “Then, I go to bed and get ready for the next walk on the beach.” But balmy temperatures and red snapper dinners would pale in comparison with dinner in Merrill’s data center and bringing in the 2000s next to colleagues, he added.

Leonard A. Aubrey, president and chief executive of NYU Downtown Hospital, said the last time he worked New Year’s Eve was back in the 1970s when he was a young budget analyst at the city’s Office of Management and Budget, when New York was suffering a severe fiscal crisis. That work shift was certainly not a sign of his power and influence, he recalled, and by the way, it was extremely bothersome.

This year, “I am not annoyed at all,” he said. “It comes with the territory. I absolutely cannot delegate. It is simply too important. I feel entirely obligated that me and the rest of the senior management team have to be there.”

Some executives are used to being beeped at parties, hauled out of bed at strange hours and otherwise hectored – it is part of business as usual. So why not just take a shortcut, they reason.

Joel A. Miele Sr., the commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, said he thought it would be prudent to be at the city’s central command center tonight, given the 2,000 square miles of watershed under his direction. “Normally I would be at home in bed at the other end of the beeper,” after a night of good food shared with family and friends, he said. “My wife is a little more than upset.”

But he is really not anticipating that he will do more than eat takeout and gab with other officials. “Our system tends to be pretty low-tech,” Mr. Miele said. “Our equipment was designed to be operated by hand. When all else fails, we can fall back on a man turning a valve.”

Many executives said that they would be making the best of it with loved ones in tow, and some even said that they were really looking forward to a night of being extremely essential.

“I think this will be my best New Year’s ever,” Mr. McGrath said. “The city is really abuzz. It is really going to be exciting.”

[NormanStewart]

More Christians believe the Second Coming is approaching

By Diana Jean Schemo

In an apocalypse that Dawn Rivette expects to see in her lifetime, Jesus Christ rides to earth on a white stallion, sweeping believers up to heaven while calamity swallows the faithless left behind.

Chantel Mikell, a security guard, imagines the Second Coming as a tender, guiding hand righting a world gone crazily wrong. For Jeffrey Case, chemical and biological weapons will unleash massive destruction in an all-out war, as heaven opens the only escape.

And in a late-20th-century entreaty reminiscent of St. Augustine, Aida Guadalupe, a mother of three in the Bronx, prays for salvation – but not yet.

As the final days ticked down before the year 2000, nearly one out of three Christians in the New York metropolitan region said they believed they would witness Christ’s return in their lifetimes, according to a recent New York Times poll. Asked the same question four years ago, only one out of five Christians in the region believed they would see the end of time.

Belief that the apocalypse will occur in the coming years appears to be higher among Christians elsewhere in the United States than in New York, according to a recent CBS News poll that posed a question similar to the New York Times survey. In that poll, 37 percent of Protestants and Catholics said they believed Christ would return to earth sometime after the year 2000. Four years ago, 26 percent of Protestants and Catholics surveyed nationally said they believed Christ would return in their lifetimes.

The recent Times survey, conducted from November 29 to December 5, polled 1,615 adults of all religious backgrounds in New York’s Roman Catholic Archdiocese, which includes Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island and seven upstate counties.

While the New Testament sets no specific date when the terrible visions described in the Book of Revelations will strike – indeed, it says the time is not known – television evangelists, supermarket tabloids and a variety of books with titles like “There’s a New World Coming,” and the highly popular “Are We Living in the End Times?” have taken to predicting the end is at hand.

William D. Dinges, a professor of religious studies at Catholic University of America, in Washington, likens popular belief that the apocalypse is coming to a “low grade fever, that flares up at different moments in history.”

Generally, those beliefs grew strongest in times of adversity, surviving even after being proved wrong time and again. “There’s something deeper that’s going on here,” he said.

One such movement, started by William Miller, a farmer, predicted the Second Coming in 1843, and then recalculated it for decades later. The prediction’s failure became known among Millerites as the Great Disappointment.

One follower, Washington Morse, wrote of his anguish after altering his life in preparation for Christ’s imminent return. “That day came and passed and the darkness of another night closed in upon the world. But with that darkness came a pang of disappointment to the Advent believers, that can find a parallel only in the sorrow of the disciples at the crucification of their Lord,” Mr. Morse wrote in 1901.

“And now, to turn again to the cares, perplexities and dangers of life, in full view of jeering and rivaling unbelievers, who scoffed as never before, was a terrible trial of faith and patience. When Elder Himes visited Waterbury, Vt. a short time after the passing of the time, and stated that the brethren should prepare for another cold winter, my feelings were almost uncontrollable. I left the place of meeting and wept like a child.”

At our century’s end, Mr. Dinges said, nuclear weapons had put the horrific visions of the apocalypse within reach of popular imagination. “What we have is a scientific discovery that facilitates the plausibility of this end-of-time prophecy,” he said. The sustained economic boom has probably tempered expectations of the second Advent, he said, but they were still heightened, according to the poll.

Ingebor G. Luckner, 73, a retired hairdresser and bank clerk in Port Jervis, N.Y., said she watches Billy Graham on television and believes she will see the Second Coming by her 80th birthday.

“It looks like we’re getting near that time,” said Mrs. Luckner, who participated in the New York Times poll and was reinterviewed afterward. Mrs. Luckner, who grew up in Hitler’s Germany, said terrorism and violence among young people, which she said was shown by the wave of shootings at schools, made her think the end was near. “This I have not heard of throughout history,” she said.

Mrs. Luckner imagined the second Advent could resemble the destruction she saw during the Allied bombing that ended World War II, when her family fled to the mountains and returned home to find neighbors digging the bodies of loved ones from the rubble.

“I try not to let it affect my life to the extent that I get hyper and panicky,” she said. Mrs. Luckner said she is not without sin, but has led a “quiet, decent, honest life,” toiling to care for ailing family members. “I tried hard,” she said. “I tried very hard.”

Ms. Mikell, 26, said she, too, thought the world had reached a turning point. “When you see children killing other children, you know the world is on its way to a serious downfall,” she said.

She said she believed that Christ’s return would prove nothing like the predictions St. John the Divine described during his exile on Patmos. “I don’t believe that Jesus will come to harm,” Ms. Mikell said. “He’ll come to repair things, because there’s a lot that’s wrong with the world.”

Those who believed the Second Coming is near share a belief that humanity is in trouble. Mrs. Rivette, a mother of three in Hyde Park, N.Y., said natural disasters like floods and earthquakes had almost become everyday occurrences. “It just seems like the end is getting closer,” she said.

Mrs. Rivette said technology had made daily life easier, but the world was no more harmonious for it. She said she looked forward to an end of crime and hatred with the Second Coming, and to being swept up in the rapture and to being reunited with deceased relatives.

She said, too, that she expected those who did not believe in Christ would face punishment. “I don’t see it as a bloody thing, but I think it’ll be sad for the people who don’t know who he is,” she said.

Mr. Case, 29, who manages a beverage store in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., imagines mankind’s final chapter as a global disaster, triggered by chemical or biological weapons.

But Mr. Case said he did not expect that non-Christians who were humane would suffer with Christ’s return. “I don’t think you have to believe in Jesus,” he said. “In my mind, how could you let good people die?”

Aida Guadalupe, 34, said she, too, expected the end to be “devastating” for those who remained on earth.

Ms. Guadalupe said that her belief did not consume her life, because the uncertainty was still large. “I’d go out of my mind,” she said. “All I can do is pray to God, to try to get to know him.”

Ms. Guadalupe said her in-laws, who live in Florida, always ask whether she is attending church and feels ready for the rapture.

“In a way, I don’t want it to come,” she added. “I’ve got children, and I want to see them grow up. I want to see grandchildren.

“I’m hoping, ‘Please, not yet.’”

[NormanStewart]

London warms up to its Millennium Dome extravaganza

By Tom Buerkle, International Herald Tribune

Amid the heavy machinery that still surrounds much of the site, workers scurry to complete the finishing touches, a tractor trailer from the English National Opera disgorges props and roving teams of police conduct security sweeps.

With less than 24 hours before its opening-night extravaganza, the Millennium Dome is hurriedly making the transition from Britain’s biggest construction site to center stage of the country’s millennium festivities.

Although doubts about the wisdom of spending £740 million ($1.19 billion) on a one-year celebration persist, the sheer presence of the 20-acre (8 hectare), white-roofed Dome with its 12 towering steel masts has quieted most of the critics and generated a growing public enthusiasm.

“I think people were awestruck by the scale of the achievement, the richness of the content,” said Lord Falconer, the government minister responsible for the Dome. “We as a nation have delivered a world-class building on time, on budget. I think the nation is becoming increasingly proud of what we have done.”

Even so, problems and controversy dogged the project down to the wire. The Mirror newspaper said Thursday that the Dome could be half empty on opening night because of a ticketing problem.

Organizers acknowledged that only 3,000 of the 10,000 tickets had been sent out to invited guests before Christmas, but they said another 4,000 were dispatched this week and the remaining 3,000 would be made available for pickup on the night of the show.

The disclosure this week that the New Year’s Eve extravaganza would feature a high-wire “Lovers’ Duet” between two seemingly naked acrobats aroused concerns that the show would be too vulgar for Queen Elizabeth II and the host of invited dignataries.

“They seem to be trying to attract the hardened addict of the peep show,” said Peter Ainsworth, the culture spokesman of the opposition Conservative Party.

The incidents were typical of the Dome’s short but checkered history.

Conceived by the former government of Prime Minister John Major as a monument in the tradition of the Great Exhibition of 1851, which celebrated Britain’s industrial prowess, the Dome was little more than a blueprint when Tony Blair came to power in 1997. Many members of his Labour Party opposed it as a misguided extravagance and urged its abandonment, but Mr. Blair embraced the Dome as something that would capture the public’s imagination and project a modern image of an innovative, high-tech and culturally hip Britain.

Over subsequent months, artistic disputes and walkouts made front-page headlines and Parliament questioned whether anyone knew what to put inside. But gradually, corporate sponsors came on board, contributing £160 million to the project, and many of the leading artists and architects in Britain signed on to give substance to the Dome and its 14 thematic zones.

On a visit to the Dome last week, Mr. Blair hailed it as a triumph of confidence over cynicism, boldness over blandness, excellence over mediocrity.

Inside, visitors will be able to walk through a giant pumping heart or see computer simulations of how they will look in 20 years inside an 88-foot (27-meter) tall sculpture of two human bodies; take a trip to the center of the Earth guided by animated aliens designed by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop; explore environmental issues in a Lighthouse made of recycled drink cans, trigger a virtual recession by spending £1 million with a fantasy credit card or save a soccer penalty shot in the video-arcade Game zone.

The opinions of the 28,000 people who previewed the Dome over two days just before Christmas were not all favorable, but they certainly suggested that the backers had succeeded in fulfilling Mr. Blair’s goal of making the Dome “a great day out” for British families.

“My skepticism rapidly changed to total enthusiasm,” Norman Rosenthal, exhibitions secretary of the Royal Academy of Arts, wrote in a letter to The Times. “The Dome is a triumph – entertaining, informative, architecturally distinguished and, above all, full of real beauty.

“It is unpatronizing and, thank God, not at all Disney-like.”

Clearly, not everyone will be pleased. One reviewer in the Daily Telegraph complained that corporate sponsorship of the 14 zones “does seem to be rammed down your throat.”

And some conservative critics complain that the building and its contents are a depressing reminder of all that is banal and ephemeral in modern society, leaving no permanent legacy like the National History Museum and other British institutions created by the 1851 exhibition.

“What happened to the British, people will say, that the best they could come up with was this gigantic plastic tent, whose life-expectancy is a couple of decades?” an editorial in The Spectator magazine asked.

[NormanStewart]

Costlier fares for the new year

By Roger Collis, International Herald Tribune

What are my predictions for travel in 2000? Don’t expect too much from my crystal ball, which is sure to crash at midnight. But the consensus of sundry soothsayers is that a strong increase in business travel will keep costs high as airlines and hotels continue to enjoy a seller’s market with high load factors and occupancy rates.

Airline alliances (along with rising fuel prices and reduced capacity) and global hotel brands are consolidating their grips on their markets, reducing competition, making it harder for business and leisure travelers to get deals. The old adage applies: What’s good for the travel trade is bad for the traveler. And vice versa.

So as travel budgets become more constrained, more road warriors will probably fly in economy on short- and long-haul trips, and on discounted tickets. As hotels become more sophisticated in “yield management,” corporations will find it harder to negotiate special rates, especially for “last room availability.” Airline alliances are the most seminal issue in air travel since deregulation in the United States in 1978 and Europe in 1997. Look out for more consolidation in 2000 as more carriers join one of the four mega-alliances, which account for around 60 percent of world traffic.

And expect to see changes within alliances as airlines switch sides. Delta, for example, has left the Atlantic Excellence Alliance to build its own deal with Air France and AeroMexico. Virgin Atlantic essentially has merged with Singapore Airlines.

Airlines contend that alliances offer travelers “seamless” travel to a wider choice of destinations. But alliances will probably bring about a return to the days of monopoly routes and higher fares. You never know these days if the airline you thought you booked on is the one you will fly.

There are more heartening prospects for travelers in Europe as no-frills airlines develop and prosper. Ryanair, EasyJet, Virgin Express, British Airways Go and KLM’s Buzz collectively serve about 50 destinations. Expect to find a no-frills carrier on all major point-to-point routes within the next two years. Analysts predict that no-frills airlines, which carried an estimated 6.5 million passengers in 1999, will carry 20 million a year by 2003.

With cheap and flexible one-way fares, no-frills airlines are not only challenging the entire pricing and branding strategy of “full service” carriers, but also changing the mind-set of business travelers who find they can travel in adequate comfort and save a ton of money. Long haul is different. But the no-frills experience will lead more people to travel “à la carte” – buying their own frills, such as airport lounges, as and when they need them, which makes cattle class less of an ordeal.

Michael Boult, vice president of global supplier relations at Rosenbluth International in Philadelphia, predicts that domestic U.S. air fares could increase by 8 percent. “Overall yields for airlines have been in decline for most of 1999 and they’ll be looking to further boost their bottom lines with higher fares,” he said. “Fuel is at its highest price since the Gulf War, which means that airlines will be passing these costs on to travelers. Business air fares are already at record high levels despite a slight increase in capacity. Some areas of the U.S., especially the eastern states, can expect to see higher than average fare increases because of monopoly holds by airlines.”

Travelers flying from the United States to the Asia-Pacific region could see fares rise by about 5 percent. Fares for those flying across the Atlantic may decline by about 5 percent in 2000 because airline capacity will outpace demand. There might also be a decrease in fares to Latin America, by about 2 percent, because of competition.

Business travelers in the Asia-Pacific region face overall increases in air fares of 6 percent and of 5 percent to 10 percent for lodging, said Clint Cable, director of supplier relations at Rosenbluth in Sydney. He pegged the increases to an overall improvement in local economies in the last six months of 1999.

Eric Meierhans, director of purchasing management at American Express in Sydney, attributed a widening gap between premium and economy fares for the region to strong demand in corporate travel as Asia recovers from recession. Meierhans predicted more increases in fares over the next few months as “cost savings for regional carriers that resulted from joining major airline alliances have not been reflected in reduced fares” and as carriers cut commissions to travel agents, which in turn will result in higher fares. Examples are Singapore Airlines for travel booked in Singapore, and Cathay Pacific and United Airlines for travel from Hong Kong.

In Australia, the cost of travel seems set to increase by 10 percent in 2000 with the introduction of a new goods and services tax on airline tickets, hotels, meals, car rentals and other services. “Air fares, along with hotel rates, will rise by about 5 percent next year because of increased demand and lack of capacity due to an increase in tourists for the Olympic Games in Sydney,” Cable said. Travelers will also see rising rates for three to five-star hotels in China of 10 percent to 20 percent because of increased intra-Asian trade and recovery from the 1998 recession. Rates for lodging in other parts of the Asia-Pacific region (Hong Kong, Singapore and India) will “remain steady or rise slightly.”

Business travelers in Europe will face air-fare increases of around 6 percent, said Bill Hemmings, director of supplier relations at Rosenbluth in London. That is because of decreased competition among carriers, “a more cautious approach to adding capacity and the continuing reluctance of regional and national carriers to conclude effective pan-European deals.”

The American Express European Corporate Travel Index for the third quarter of 1999 warned travelers to brace for another wave of business-class fare increases coupled with a widening price differential between leisure and business tickets. Typical business air fares are nearly 3.7 times higher than the lowest discounted leisure fare. But fuel prices will push fares up for all classes.

Roger Collis can be reached by fax at (33-4) 93-74-77-92.

[NormanStewart]

With a whole lot at stake, I.B.M. and Microsoft await Year 2000

By Steve Lohr

At the Microsoft Corporation, the price of freedom on New Year’s Eve is high indeed – more than $60 billion, by one reckoning. Which is another way of saying that Steven Ballmer, the president (personal worth: $28 billion), will be working, but William H. Gates, the chairman (personal worth: $91 billion), has the night off.

At the International Business Machines Corporation, none of the senior executives have the night off. Louis V. Gerstner Jr., the chairman, and the other dozen members of his executive team will be on the job monitoring the Year 2000 transition of the world’s computer systems past midnight.

“They realize how important this Y2K transition is to our customers and to I.B.M.,” observed David Cassano, general manager of I.B.M.’s Year 2000 program.

Every major computer company is gearing up to cope with any problems that emerge as the dates flip over to 2000 in millions of machines at midnight – first in Asia, then Europe and then the Americas. But I.B.M. and Microsoft probably have the most at stake in terms of reputation, and potential liability.

They have the highest profile on the issue, though for very different reasons. I.B.M. introduced computing to corporations and governments in the 1960s, and the origins of the Year 2000 problem – the storage-saving convention of dropping the first two numbers in the dates of years – date back to the mainframe era. And an estimated 70 percent of the world’s business data still resides on mainframe computers, most of them I.B.M. machines.

As the dominant technology company of the personal computer era, Microsoft is a lightning rod for concern about the Year 2000 problem partly because its Windows desktop is the face of computing to most users.

Both companies have been criticized for dragging their feet on Y2K, as the computer problem is known. Critics have said that I.B.M., as the company closest to the problem, was aware of the issue long before it began to move forcefully with Year 2000 efforts in the mid-1990s.

At Microsoft, Mr. Gates was long dismissive of the Year 2000 problem, and the company has been criticized for his stance. In July 1996, for example, Mr. Gates said the problem was one attributable to “aging mainframe software” and he insisted that Microsoft’s products “won’t cause problems.” His confidence in Microsoft products proved to be exaggerated. But in the last two years the company has hurried to test its 4,400 products, fixing nearly all problems, so the company says its products are now “98 percent Y2K compliant.”

For both companies, the Year 2000 problem seems to have been a balancing act between wanting to help customers and not wanting to invite trouble. “The dilemma for companies like I.B.M. and Microsoft is that if you take too much of a leadership role, you risk becoming more a focal point for Y2K worries and lawsuits,” said Edward Yardeni, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities and a Year 2000 expert.

The more alarmist predictions about Year 2000 problems – widespread power failures and food shortages, for example – have receded in recent months. The concern among Year 2000 experts now centers mostly on the possibility that software flaws, though fixable, will make supply, procurement and distribution in many industries less efficient for months.

If that problem materializes in any significant way, it will be a challenge for I.B.M. whose industrial-strength computers power so much of the economy. “I.B.M. is at the center of the supply chain worldwide,” said Scott Winkler, a technology consultant in Fairfield, Conn.

I.B.M. is cautiously optimistic that such supply and distribution headaches will not be widespread. “No one knows for sure how this will play out,” Mr. Cassano said, “but our large customers have made investments, tested their systems and they say they are ready.”

If so, I.B.M.’s business of helping customers fix Year 2000 problems should decline quickly. In 1999, Year 2000 revenues were $540 million, estimated Steven Milunovich, an analyst for Merrill Lynch & Company.

I.B.M. has been preparing for the Year 2000 transition for years. In 1985, it began work on converting its MVS mainframe operating system to a four-digit format for years. In 1991, it introduced a version of Cobol, the programming language used for many corporate software applications, that was ready for Year 2000. In 1995, I.B.M. announced that it intended to offer Year 2000 versions of all its products.

The company’s Year 2000 Web site, set up in 1997, is now receiving one million visits a week, three times the volume earlier this year. Over the New Year’s weekend, tens of thousands of I.B.M. workers will be on the job and on call, three times the usual number, Mr. Cassano said. And I.B.M.’s 150 global call centers will be open 24 hours a day.

“We’ve had more people wanting to work than we’ve asked to work,” Mr. Cassano said. “They consider it a badge of honor.”

At Microsoft, a total of 6,000 people will be on the job or on call worldwide including a staff of 300 at the “command center” in Redmond, Wash. “Sure, we’ve turned down people who want to come,” said Don Jones, director of the Year 2000 program. “They’re geeks, and they want to be at the nerve center for Y2K.”

Microsoft may have awakened late to the Year 2000 problem, but it reacted with characteristic aggressiveness once it did. In scanning its 4,400 products, the company has prepared fixes for products as far back as a 1983 version of Word for DOS, the pre-Windows operating system. Since June, it has sent out 60 million Year 2000 advisories to customers by direct mail and e-mail. It has distributed 10 million CDs containing fixes for its most popular products. It has produced a free video available free at Blockbuster stores, which instructs home PC users on how to make hardware and software ready for the Year 2000 rollover.

Microsoft is also distributing antivirus software free from its Web site. “The viruses are my biggest Y2K concern,” Mr. Jones said.

The viruses can be carried in e-mail or attached documents, and their only direct connection to the Year 2000 problem is usually that they are Y2K-related hoaxes. One recent virus purported to be an e-mail from Mr. Gates with a Year 2000 fix for Windows 95. When a user opened the attached file, it destroyed data on the hard drive. Another circulated this week and claimed to be a Windows fix from the “US Institute for Y2K Readiness.” (There is no such institute.)

The legal vulnerability of either I.B.M. or Microsoft stemming from Year 2000 problems remains to be seen. Much will depend on what happens in the first days and months of the new year. If there are problems, I.B.M. and Microsoft offer big, deep-pocketed targets – though they are also companies with seasoned legal teams.

An I.B.M. spokesman declined to comment on the legal issue. But Mr. Jones of Microsoft said his company had been the target of two Year 2000 suits to date, and both had been dismissed. In a ruling last March, a Federal District Court in Chicago noted that the media focus on Year 2000 problems would “inevitably lead to much litigation.”

Mr. Jones says Microsoft has a strong defense. “If anyone wants to come after us after all we’ve done for customers, I feel ready and able to take the stand with confidence,” he said.

[NormanStewart]

Whatever it is, let’s celebrate

By Jon Pareles

When the sun comes up tomorrow morning, it will be the 23rd day of Tevet in 5760 by the Jewish calendar. In Chinese tradition it will be the 25th day of the 11th month in 4697, year of the earth rabbit. It will be the 24th day of Ramadan in 1420 under the Islamic calendar, and the 10th day of Pausa in 1921 by the national calendar of India. It would, in other words, be just another day, except that for most of the Western world (and its business partners), tomorrow will also be New Year’s Day 2000.

The date is an arbitrary slice of time; many historians doubt that the Gregorian calendar’s starting point accurately matches the year Jesus Christ was born. Yet the equally arbitrary milestone it leads to, with the nice round number of 2000, has by now created whole industries of anticipation, revelry, planning and retrospection. Never have three zeroes added up to so much.

As an inevitable result of simple arithmetic, 1999 has been a year of lists, polls, histories, assessments, reassessments, pontifications and summations. Not to mention commercial tie-ins: there have been ubiquitous variations on the phrase “Last (whatever) of the millennium,” a line that will finally be laughed out of existence tomorrow. Let all the nitpickers and killjoys insist that today is only the last day of the 1900s, not the first day of the 21st century and the third millennium A.D. Everyone else is getting ready to say goodbye not just to a decade, but also to a century and a millennium, maybe two. And there’s no agreement on the right spirit for the sendoff.

New Year’s Eve always arrives with mixed emotions: reminiscing about some things while trying to forget others, mingling nostalgia and relief and hope and apprehension. Yet tonight is, by any reckoning, the most polarized New Year’s observance in memory, far outstripping the fin de siecle agitation of the 1890s. That’s because at midnight tonight, no one knows whether to expect a jamboree or a disaster. This year more than ever, New Year’s Eve is simultaneously the province of reckless hedonists and grim pessimists. As Jimi Hendrix sang, “Is it tomorrow or just the end of time?”

That split in attitude ran straight down the middle of popular culture in 1999. Early on, musicians endorsed confident good times in releases like the Backstreet Boys’ album “Millennium,” Robbie Williams’s song “Millennium” and Will Smith’s album “Willennium” and its current hit single, “Will 2K.” (Oddly, these high-profile millennial tidings were geared to pop’s teenage and younger audiences, some of whom have barely digested a decade, much less a century.) Movies and television took the opposite tone, rushing to envision impending disasters and apocalypses in “End of Days” and the television movie “Y2K.” A major incentive for the gloom was probably that explosions look dandy on screen.

Advertisers, meanwhile, have been cracking jokes about the Year 2000 computer bug, which, as everyone has been told, will leave some computer programs clueless about what year it is. More than a year’s worth of wildly varying forecasts have posited that the bug will knock out anything from a handful of antiquated home computers to unprepared power plants to the entire world economy. Some commentators, interpreting Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce or the Bible, say the Year 2000 bug could trigger the apocalypse; others have simply been urging people to cash everything in and head for the backwoods.

So tonight may be the best time ever to conversationally drop the word chiliasm: the belief, as the historian Eugen Weber defines it in “Apocalypses” (Harvard University Press, 1999), that “the world order was about to end in terrible torments, to be followed by the millennium, a thousand years of blessedness.” (Is it coincidence, or portent, that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are to perform tonight on the Fox Network?) Unfortunately for most of the population, the Revelations of St. John stipulate that only a saved elite will be left on Earth to enjoy that happy millennium.

Optimists and entrepreneurs aren’t about to wait. They’re determined to make tonight the worldwide party of all time. Unlike previous centuries or millennia, the 20th century built instantaneous global communications, and all those connections will be flaunted today. On television, ABC, PBS and CNN are tracking the change of the year for 24 hours, from the moment it hits the International Date Line at 5 a.m. New York time. (And if Year 2000 problems strike when 1/1/00 arrives abroad, correspondents will be in place.)

The annual crowd scene for millions of visitors to Times Square, this time waiting for the new crystal ball to drop at midnight, has been extended this year into an all-day event with a one-world theme. Beginning at 6:30 a.m., it will follow the time zones to present traditional music and dance from various cultures as their home countries reach 2000. England has built a Millennium Dome for its own mass gathering, and in city centers around the world throngs are expected to pack arenas and restaurants, cruise ships and concert halls, clubs and bars and luxury suites.

Yet unbridled, free-spending hedonism has had fewer takers than expected for the big rollover. Promoters who banked on the wildest extravagance have been, by and large, severely disillusioned. Apparently no one expects the Year 2000 bug to wipe out their credit-card balances. In New York, a much-touted program at the Javits Center, with Sting, Aretha Franklin and Andrea Bocelli for $1,000 and up a person, didn’t find enough customers who wanted to meet the year 2000 inside a convention hall. (Ms. Franklin is to sing on ABC, and Mr. Bocelli moved his performance to Nassau Coliseum.) Tickets for Billy Joel’s concert at Madison Square Garden from $150 to $999.99 were still available yesterday. Many restaurants offering lavish prix-fixe dinners were advertising heavily this week.

Still, plenty of people will observe the changing year by heading out on the town. While no one in popular music had the chutzpah to try to stage a truly epochal event – no reunion of surviving Beatles, no resurrection of Ritchie Valens – musicians are as much in demand tonight as baby sitters, bartenders, police officers and computer experts. Club dates by local favorites including Patti Smith (at the Bowery Ballroom) and Yo La Tengo (at Maxwell’s in Hoboken) are sold out.

As usual, concerts won’t be the only gatherings for people who want to celebrate with convivial acquaintances. In New York City, people will be running a chilly five-kilometer race through Central Park, dancing to disc jockeys at Chelsea Piers, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge while fireworks flash overhead or bellying up to their favorite neighborhood bars, if they can cram themselves in.

Bars and people giving their own parties don’t have much time left to decide which song will bridge 1999 and 2000. Will Prince’s “1999” get its last chance? R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)”? Some 20th-century jazz from Ornette Coleman’s album “End of the Century”? Or how about Patsy Cline’s potentially prescient song about a breakdown of transportation as the Year 2000 bug hits: “Walkin’’After Midnight”?

Even as people put on their party duds or running shoes, no one has been able to avoid absorbing more dire predictions about the end of 1999: the foreboding that if a computer fiasco doesn’t get us, maybe terrorists will. Between assurances that every node of the computer-controlled infrastructure has been checked and double-checked, some public officials have quietly suggested laying in enough bottled water, batteries and canned goods to get through a winter storm or power failure, just in case. For the occasion, MTV has put half a dozen people in a bunker under Times Square to be televised as potential survivors of a Year 2000 meltdown. Of course, the ratings will suffer if no one can watch.

The arrest of a man taking potential bomb materials into Washington State has heightened anxieties about terrorism everywhere, not least in New York City. The big multicultural party in Times Square has been surrounded with precautions: nearly 8,000 uniformed and plainclothes officers on duty, helicopters surveying the area, streets cleared of cars, mailboxes locked and manhole covers welded shut to deter bombers. As if to continue the apocalyptic theme, the police operation is named Archangel.

What’s an appropriate commemoration of the last century? Maybe it would be to revel in the technological marvels of the present, lest some unknown Year 2000 side effect scramble them all beyond rebooting. Crank up some all-synthetic music by the likes of Autechre or Squarepusher. Ignore a phone call as it comes through the answering machine. Check out that remote video feed from Djibouti on the network news; tape and replay it. Log on to the Internet for a connection to some stranger’s obsession, perhaps monitoring signs of the Second Coming through the self-designated Messiahcam trained on Jerusalem’s eastern gate, the next Messiah’s earthly portal (www.olivetree.org). Taste a fresh mango in New York in December; think about the window view from a recent airplane trip.

Amid all the modern comforts, some people are winding up the last day of 1999 by fasting, meditating, praying or observing a vow of silence at Buddhist centers and churches. At the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, there is an annual concert dedicated to peace. Consider it a deliberate pause in the information barrage or a somber memorial to millions of victims of a violent century and millennium; gunpowder was invented in China about 1,000 years ago. As 1999 ends, the penitential mode seems no less appropriate than frantic celebration.

Another way to measure the passage of eras would be a temporary return to the conditions of 1899. Shut off the computer, the television, the CD player, the VCR, the radio; forget about watching the ball drop in Times Square, where the annual stunt wasn’t inaugurated until 1904. People might still read this newspaper under recently installed electric lights. They could listen to recorded music, but they’d have to crank the newfangled Edison machine or put a nickel in a coin phonograph to spin one two-minute selection at a time, recorded on a cylinder. Perhaps they’d pump the player piano instead, or pick up a guitar. Carriages and bicycles would be rolling through the streets; trains would be huffing across the countryside. Distances would seem far greater and nights much darker than they do now.

Or go back even further, to 999. Clear away New York City and the United States, still hundreds of years in the future. No one speaks an English we would recognize. Music hasn’t developed harmony. Europe is a feudal patchwork dominated by a nascent Holy Roman Empire, while other centers of civilization – in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and what would become the Americas – are surrounded by unmapped places where nature, not information, dominates the landscape. The borders of a village or estate or encampment circumscribe most people’s lives. And while every flood or war raises fears that the end times are about to arrive, there’s no particular January 1 furor as all the digits change. Although churchmen did recognize the 1,000th anniversary of the Nativity, the Gregorian calendar wouldn’t come into general use for centuries to come, while the new year was celebrated not in January, but in March. When an abacus was used for commerce, there was no Y1K problem.

For this New Year’s Eve, everyone can seek an individual balance of celebration and dread. Wired to the world, with party hats and noisemakers, Champagne on ice and flashlights stashed nearby – just in case those Year 2000 warnings come true – toasts will be raised and invocations offered to the four new digits on calendars and computers. And next year at this time, a punctilious few will celebrate the new millennium.

Hub of the party

“Times Square 2000” will be held on Broadway and Seventh Avenue between 43rd and 47th Streets. There will be music, costumed dancers, puppets and video broadcasts of New Year’s Eve celebrations from all over the world. It begins today at 6:30 a.m. and continues for 24 hours. Programs begin 15 minutes before each hour, and each lasts about 30 minutes. The Times Square ball will be lowered at midnight. Free. Remote viewing screens at the Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, Eighth Avenue at 43rd Street, and Broadway at 50th Street. Information: (212) 354-0003.

[NormanStewart]

Elite team at the ready for a glitch in computers

By Andrew C. Revkin

While the New York Police Department deploys thousands of its best officers, SWAT units and bomb squads to respond to any New Year’s Eve mayhem, another kind of special-operations team will assemble in downtown Brooklyn, ready to move at a moment’s notice.

But instead of being experts in counterinsurgency or sharpshooting, this elite group of 54 men and 6 women is trained in the arts of network management, information technology and data storage.

Wielding only cartons of spare parts and charts of the city’s sprawling computer network, they will be ready to roll in a fleet of vans borrowed from the City Sheriff’s office to the site of any cyber-related chaos that erupts as computer clocks roll from 1999 to 2000.

For these computer fixers, who have been training since September, this weekend represents the pinnacle of careers spent fielding daily phone calls from perplexed agency officials reporting garden-variety disk crashes, data tangles and network bugs.

It is a one-shot deal, a team that exists for this millennial moment, said Allan H. Dobrin, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. “Hopefully, we’ll never have to go through this kind of thing again,” he said.

One of the team members, Kamal Bherwani, left his city computer job in the summer for a position with a private company in Florida, but is flying north as a volunteer to be on hand to help keep the city’s data flowing, officials said.

The prime focus of the team will be sustaining the 25 functions, provided by 13 city agencies, that are considered critical to the lives of New Yorkers, officials said, including the police’s 911 phone line and child-abuse hot lines at the Administration for Children’s Services.

But the work load could rise quickly shortly after midnight tonight, when each city agency will be required to begin testing its mainframe computers looking for any problems should the computers fail to distinguish between 1900 and 2000.

The first signs that the computer fixers would need to plan for a busy night could come early today, said Stephen Vigilante, an associate commissioner of the information technology department and the head of the team.

He and others will spend most of the day in constant communication with IBM and other companies that provide the underpinning of the city’s computer system, watching for any failures of particular pieces of hardware or software in Asia, and then Europe, as the New Year arrives in those places.

“That way, we’ll have a head start,” Mr. Vigilante said.

At the same time, other specialists will be monitoring the city’s networks and a variety of Web sites for signs of viruses being spread to mar the millennium.

A separate watch will be kept for any efforts by computer hackers to tamper with the city’s computers or Web sites. This monitoring will be carried out partly by city specialists and also by a private company that is responsible for “intrusion detection” – and which sometimes hires young hackers to test the security measures, Mr. Dobrin said.

Yesterday, six members of the Year 2000 computer team met in their “war room” on the fifth floor of the city’s computer center, in the MetroTech complex in downtown Brooklyn.

A few yards away sat the heart of the system they were preparing to protect: a bank of 10 eight-foot-tall carousels of data cassettes, each with a robotic arm inside, relentlessly plucking one or another tape as some official in some city agency miles away requested some bit of data.

In a circular, glass-enclosed control room nearby, a board flashed the status of 54 e-mail networks at different agencies – green for on, red for off. Ten were turned off for the weekend as a precaution, including the e-mail systems for the Fire and Transportation Departments.

Last night, the computer center began creating backup files of each agency’s data in case problems develop over the weekend, officials said. The team members and Mr. Dobrin headed home for a last night with their families before disappearing for the weekend.

“It’s strange,” Mr. Dobrin said, “that it’s finally here after all these days.”

[NormanStewart]

How big a bite will Y2K bug take?

By Brian Knowlton, International Herald Tribune

In the next few hours, the world will begin to learn whether the tens of billions of dollars spent to remedy a tiny computer glitch almost unknown a few years ago were worthwhile.

Will the thousands of hours spent reprogramming and updating computer software, the enormous investments in checking, preparing and contingency planning, pay off? Will the world wake up in the new year, as one magazine editor put it, uttering a collective “Whew!” or a massive “Yikes!”

The answer to how big a bite the Y2K bug will take, to how sweeping and disruptive its impact will be on transportation, supply chains, communications, travel and business, will not come overnight.

It will not boil down to a single newspaper headline, will not become clear until days and even weeks have passed. Problems, if they pop up, will emerge slowly, experts say, and be remedied largely as they come up.

The global effect of the bug, in which some computers mistake the year 2000 for 1900, will become clear only about the third week of January, said Bruce McConnell, who heads the International Year 2000 Cooperation Center, financed by the World Bank.

His center, set up under United Nations auspices, has worked with officials in 170 countries to prepare for trouble and, as much as possible, to prevent it.

Meanwhile, he said, there will be an accumulation of small errors, “lots of inconveniences,” some declines in productivity as workers are diverted to rectifying Y2K-related problems or are idled by those problems, and possible disruptions in world trade. But, he said, probably no serious supply shortages.

Even Mr. McConnell, however, was not completely sanguine. “We have never gone through a global event like this in which all the world is affected by one thing at the same time, something that has the potential to disrupt commerce,” he said. “It has the potential, but it’s hard to know how big that potential really is going to be.”

Many people are blasé about the bug, suspecting its threat exaggerated. Others have been mobilized for months.

In Tokyo, where the new year will arrive 14 hours before it does in New York, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi will monitor Y2K-related events from a command bunker at his residence. More than 1 million Japanese workers, including thousands of government employees, will remain on duty.

President Bill Clinton will attend a millennium celebration on the Mall, in central Washington. But his year 2000 “czar,” John Koskinen, is leading a team of 400 technicians and officials in a round-the-clock watch on government computers.

In a busy schedule this week, he has repeatedly assured the public that U.S. financial systems, communications networks and power grids should be working Saturday.

Preparations have been undertaken, nonetheless, for every possible emergency, from power failures to a meltdown at a nuclear-power plant. The agency for these preparations, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, has deployed workers to each state and five overseas territories.

Mr. McConnell and other specialists feel comfortable, in any case, that there will be no glitch-driven Armageddon. Russian specialists have joined Americans at a special bunker in Colorado to monitor, side-by-side, the status of the nuclear-tipped missiles in each country. The exercise is purely precautionary, they say: These missiles can be fired only with human intervention.

Few serious disruptions are expected in electricity and telecommunications around the world. “Even if there is a Y2K problem,” he told a briefing here, “it doesn’t cause the power to go out or the phones to go out.”

Communications satellites lack date-sensitive software and should function normally; problems at ground stations have been rectified. Aviation authorities affirm that air travel should be safe.

The bug works in what may seem a biblical way: the last shall come first and the first shall come last. The poorest countries, for once, have an advantage in not being overly computer-dependent, and in being hardened to life with power and communications failures.

The richest nations are potentially the most vulnerable; they also, of course, have the greatest resources to remedy the problem. Thus, the United States and Western Europe are given high marks for their preparations.

Most Asian countries, Mr. McConnell said, have done “a great job” of preparing. Indonesia is a possible exception; preparations there have suffered from the political and financial crises the country has endured. North Korea is thought to have prepared its huge military for Y2K; its civil society has little computer dependence.

Latin America is generally well-prepared, specialists say. Middle East oil producers expect no disruption.

The greatest concerns, in the view of Mr. McConnell and other specialists, involve East and Central European countries and Russia, countries advanced enough to have considerable reliance on computers but without the money for the huge investment needed to achieve a high level of computer comfort.

[NormanStewart]

Pop and jazz guide

Here is a selective listing by critics of The Times of new or noteworthy pop and jazz concerts in New York City this weekend, including New Year’s Eve celebrations. * denotes a highly recommended concert.

ANTIFOLK Y2K PARTY, Sidewalk Cafe, 94 Avenue A, at Sixth Street, East Village, (212) 473-7373. Ring in the new century the East Village way, at a conclave of local poets, satirists and rabble-rousers led by Lach, the man who has almost singlehandedly kept antifolk alive in the Clinton era. He will play with his new band, the Secrets; other performers include the wonderful Heather Eatman, the Humans, Joie DBG, David Gragov, the Grey Revell Band, Patsy Grace, Joe Bendik and Maj. Matt Mason U.S.A. Tonight at 8; admission is free (Ann Powers).

GATO BARBIERI QUINTET, REGINA BELLE, MIRI BEN-ARI TRIO, Blue Note, 131 West Third Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 475-8592. All gatos have a few lives, and Mr. Barbieri, the saxophonist, has had three: first as a free-jazz wailer in the early 1970s, then as the soloist on the celebrated “Last Tango in Paris” soundtrack and now as a smooth-jazz balladeer. He is on the bill with the singer Regina Belle and the up-and-coming violinist Miri Ben-Ari, whose attack is so ferocious that she may give you your necessary second wind. The first party is tonight from 7:30 to 12:30; $500 a person at the tables, including a four-course dinner, open bar and Champagne toast; or $300 per person for table seating without dinner; or $250 at the bar (minus dinner). The second show starts at 1 a.m. and lasts until whenever; the price is $180 a person at tables, without dinner and open bar, and $100 at the bar. Regina Belle performs tomorrow and Sunday night at 9 and 11:30; $45 cover with a $5 minimum (Ben Ratliff).

DAVID BERKMAN QUARTET, Detour, 349 East 13th Street, East Village, (212) 533-6212. More often than not, in clubs without a piano, Mr. Berkman reminds his audiences why the Fender Rhodes electric piano is a beautiful instrument in its own right, not just a substitute for the real thing. When he does have the real thing, he’s even better. He’s a burner in the straight-ahead jazz style, with a good debut album, “Handmade” (Palmetto), to his credit. Music starts tomorrow at 9:30 p.m.; there is no cover charge (Ratliff).

BLACK 47, Connolly’s Pub, 14 East 47th Street, Manhattan, (212) 867-3767. Black 47 plays Irish neighborhood music from the Bronx, not Dublin. Bainbridge Avenue runs through a Bronx neighborhood where new Irish immigrants meet the New York mosaic. In Black 47’s songs, jigs and reels mesh with rock and hip-hop. Music begins tonight at 10; admission is $20 (Jon Pareles).

ANGELA BOFILL, Iridium, 48 West 63rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 582-2121. The singer Angela Bofill, a virtuoso with a four-octave range, has moved in and out of jazz and pop. She lavishes lung power and ornamentation on her love songs. Two shows tonight: one at 7:30, including a three-course dinner, for $125 a person, and one at 10:45, with a four-course dinner and unlimited Champagne, for $295 a person (Pareles).

CLAUDIA QUINTET, Knitting Factory, Old Office, 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa, (212) 219-3006. This imaginative band, led by the drummer and composer John Hollenbeck, lays vibraphone, clarinet and accordion on top of bass and drums. It’s sensitive, thinking music, continually changing shape and texture. And it’s clear that Mr. Hollenbeck’s goals lie beyond jazz, but all the same he swings, neatly and unostentatiously. Sets are Sunday night at 8 and 9:30; admission is $7, with a one-drink minimum (Ratliff).

PAULA COLE, THE ROOTS, Life, 158 Bleecker Street, at Thompson Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 420-1999. In keeping with its thriving system of hierarchical V.I.P. rooms, Life presents a three-tiered party tonight. The priciest ticket includes a buffet dinner at 6:30 p.m. and a performance by the bohemian pop-soul singer Paula Cole; $100 less gets you no chow but a 10 p.m. set by Ms. Cole. And for $125, and well worth the price, you can show up tipsy at 3 a.m. and welcome 2000 with the best live band in hip-hop (and one of the best in any genre), the Roots. Shows are at 8 and 10 p.m., and 3 a.m.; tickets are $350, $250 and $125 (Powers)

RICHIE COLE’S ALTO MADNESS ORCHESTRA, the Phoenix Room, 570 Amsterdam Avenue, at 88th Street, Manhattan, (212) 544-2210. The alto-saxophonist Richie Cole was in Buddy Rich’s big band for three years in the early ‘70s, which helped him understand jazz as a sort of perpetually exploding dynamite shed. He’s a good player, influenced by Phil Woods, and he’s been underrecognized for a few decades. Tonight: limited seating from 8 to 10 p.m.; six-course dinner plus open bar is $200, and a late-night buffet with admission to one set is $100; Champagne toast at midnight. Seating in the Cherokee Room with a late-night buffet and champagne toast for $50 is also available (Ratliff)

DEEP BANANA BLACKOUT, Wetlands Preserve, 161 Hudson Street, at Laight Street, TriBeCa, (212) 966-4225. For this big night, the team that runs Wetlands could have highlighted any number of musical styles that pass through the club, from Grateful Dead homages to neo-bluegrass, techno-tinged progressive rock or earthy hip-hop. But who could blame them for choosing a band that adheres to the fundamentals of body-shaking funk? Deep Banana Blackout is one of the Northeast’s favorite party bands, so the vibrations in the room should be excellent. With Electric Hill. Doors open tonight at 8, and music begins at 10; admission is $60 (Powers).

DR. ISRAEL, Knitting Factory, Old Office, 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa, (212) 219-3006. The deep, leisurely bass lines of dub reggae are the foundation of jungle, which layers jittery electronic drumbeats on top of those bass lines. Dr. Israel (alias Douglas Bennett), a reggae singer, reunites the two branches of reggae’s family tree, singing uplifting messages over vertiginous grooves. Music tonight at 11; admission is free (Pareles).

EMINEM, Tunnel, 220 West 27th Street, Chelsea, (212) 695-4682. With his cutting, nasal voice, droll productions by Dr. Dre and an imagination that turns carnage into comedy, Eminem (for the initials of Marshall Mathers, his original name) was the leading bad-boy rapper of early 1999. He mocks every propriety and everyone including himself, and while he is not the most skillful rapper onstage – he needs backups to keep him somewhere near the beat – it hardly matters when his fans are eagerly shouting along. The Tunnel has also scheduled eight disc jockeys in three rooms, among them Ivan Gonzo and Eddie Baez. Doors open at 9 p.m. Tickets are $99, or $175 with open bar; the club is also offering a weekend pass for New Year’s Eve through January 2 for $150 (Pareles).

*TOMMY FLANAGAN TRIO, Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-2232. Mr. Flanagan helped define an elegant postwar mainstream in jazz piano; he plays with such refinement that he makes bebop seem like a natural fit with the American song tradition. And his small-group arrangements in his longtime trio with Peter Washington and Lewis Nash are models of economy and imagination. Tonight’s first set is at 8, with a three-course dinner, for $100, or without dinner for $50; the second set is at 11, with a three-course dinner, show, party favors and dancing, for $225, or $150 for the show only. Sets tomorrow night are at 8 and 10:30, with a cover of $25 and a $10 minimum; on Sunday night, sets are at 7 and 9, and the cover charge is $18 with a $10 minimum (Ratliff).

DAVID HAZELTINE, Smoke, 2751 Broadway, at 106th Street, (212) 864-6662. This pianist plays with a cooperative quartet, including the trumpeter Jim Rotondi, the bassist John Webber and the drummer Neil Smith; they can play hard-hitting, involved music, and this new, small jazz club, frequented by students, seems like a cheerily low-key place to spend the evening. Music tonight is from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m.; there is an open bar, a raw bar with shellfish, party favors and a Champagne toast for $195. From 1 to 8 a.m., there is one more live set and a D.J. dance party for a $15 cover; early guests may stay for no additional charge (Ratliff).

JAVON JACKSON QUARTET, Sweet Basil, 88 Seventh Avenue South, near Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 242-1785. Without staging a full-scale subversion of jazz, the tenor-saxophonist Javon Jackson makes good decisions about material and instrumentation; there might be a Hammond organ on the bandstand, and you might hear music written by Frank Zappa, Caetano Veloso or Carlos Santana. And as a soloist he is a thoughtful player, laid-back enough to savor the horn’s natural gargles. Tonight’s celebration is from 9 to midnight, with an all-inclusive dinner package for $175; the late show is from 1 to 3 a.m., with a $40 cover and a $25 minimum, including Champagne toast. Sets tomorrow at 9 and 11 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. and Sunday at 9 and 11 p.m.; cover charge is $25 with a $10 minimum (Ratliff).

BILLY JOEL, Madison Square Garden, Seventh Avenue at 32nd Street, (212) 465-6741. Billy Joel’s huge catalog of hits includes songs that touch on every idiom from doo-wop to sea chantey to bossa nova to barrelhouse pop, driven by formidable piano technique and an underlying pugnacity. He’s the bard of the suburbs, assuring fans that even if they’ve settled down they’re still rebels at heart. While he has said he’s giving up pop songwriting for instrumental music, he’ll be rolling out the hits for New Year’s Eve. Tonight at 9; tickets are $150 to $999.99 (Pareles).

KID CREOLE AND THE COCONUTS, Greatest Bar on Earth, 1 World Trade Center, lower Manhattan, (212) 524-7000. August Darnell, or Kid Creole, runs his band like a compact Broadway revue, with Kid Creole – a suave would-be Casanova who’s not always lucky – flanked by the Coconuts, who are both all-purpose temptresses and a chorus line. Long before the rediscovery of Latin rhythms, he performed as if Manhattan were the northernmost Caribbean island; more recently he has raised the quotient of funk. Music begins tonight at 10; admission is $300 with open bar (Pareles).

LI’L ED AND THE BLUES IMPERIALS, Chicago Blues, 73 Eighth Avenue, at 14th Street, West Village, (212) 924-9755. Ed Williams, or Li’l Ed, plays his blues basic and rowdy. His band stomps out Chicago blues and shuffles while Li’l Ed belts the tunes, makes his guitar squeal and slide, and jumps all over the stage. It’s primal good-time music, and once it revs up there’s no stopping it. Sunday at 9 and 10:30 p.m. and midnight. Admission is $10, with a two-drink minimum (Pareles).

JOE LOVANO TRIO, GLORIA LYNNE, Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, Clinton, (212) 581-3080. A gig not to miss, if you want to be reminded why jazz quickened your pulse in the first place. Mr. Lovano just winds up and lets his broad, powerful saxophone sound go, ripping up ballads and open-ended originals with a superb trio that includes the bassist Cameron Brown and the drummer Idris Muhammad. He’s a generous performer who gives it his all. Tonight beginning at 9; table seating $150 per person plus $25 minimum, $100 at the bar with a $25 minimum. Includes a Champagne toast at midnight. Performances tomorrow are at 9 and 11 p.m.; cover charge is $30 with a $10 minimum (Ratliff).

*MANOLITO Y SU TRABUCO, S.O.B.’s, 204 Varick Street, at Houston Street, South Village, (212) 243-4940. A top Cuban band leader with his eye on the world, the pianist Manolito Simonet has his ear to music across Latin America, from older Cuban styles like charanga (with violin and flute answering voices) to trumpet-topped Cuban conjunto to cumbia to current salsa romantica and songo. He’s a traditionalist on one song, up to the minute on the next as the singers announce his intention to reach listeners in Venezuela, Colombia, Puerto Rico and New York. Since Cuban bands play constantly for dancing crowds, Manolito y Su Trabuco (War Machine) has honed its music to keep people in motion. Tonight the club is offering packages at $95 a person (general admission after 1 a.m.), $195 (general admission after 10 p.m., with hors d’oeuvres and a Champagne toast) and $395 (including a five-course dinner and breakfast at dawn) (Pareles).

MEAT LOAF, Beacon Theater, 2124 Broadway, at 74th Street, Manhattan, (212) 496-7070. Meat Loaf recently made his latest comeback as an unhandsome character in the movie “Fight Club.” Onstage, however, he’s still applying his rock heldentenor to Jim Steinman’s proudly, campily bombastic songs about fondly remembered teenage lust and the possibility of love. Tonight at 8; tickets are $75 to $250. Tomorrow night at 8, tickets are $50 to $100 (Pareles).

BUDDY MILES, Chicago Blues, 73 Eighth Avenue, below 14th Street, West Village, (212) 924-9755. Buddy Miles was the quintessential singing drummer of the 1960s, playing in Electric Flag and then in Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies and belting a hit of his own in 1969, “Them Changes.” After some hard years, including a jail term for theft in the 1970s, he has returned to the circuit, still an exuberant singer and a splashy, hard-hitting drummer. Shows are tonight at 9:30, 11:30 p.m. and 1:30. General admission is $50; seating is $75 for the first set and $100 for the second set (Pareles).

MURPHY’S LAW, Continental, 25 Third Avenue, at St. Marks Place, East Village, (212) 529-6924. Still bratty after all these years, Murphy’s Law is one of New York’s long-running, die-hard punk bands. It shares a guitar-charged lineup with Helldorado, Candy Snatchers and Suicide King. Tonight at midnight; tickets are $30 (Pareles).

TITO NIEVES, JOSE ALBERTO (EL CANARIO), JOHNNY PACHECO, Copacabana, 617 West 57th Street, Clinton, (212) 582-2672. A salsa triple bill leans toward romance amid the rumbas, cha-chas and boleros. Tito Nieves is one of Latin pop’s longtime Romeos, promising “salsa con clase” (salsa with class). With a sincere, ardent tenor, he vows his love in Spanish or English. Jose Alberto sails above the salsa grooves with fervor and improvisations that have earned him his nickname, the Canary. The flutist Johnny Pacheco has been one of salsa’s most important band leaders since Fania Records ruled Latin music in the 1970s. Music begins tonight at 10. Table seating is $125 a person; general admission, $60; admission after 3 a.m., $30 (Pareles)

*MACEO PARKER, Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, at 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800. There was a reason James Brown used to shout “Maceo!” in the middle of a funk workout. Maceo Parker was the alto saxophonist who drove the horn section in Mr. Brown’s groundbreaking J. B.’s and went on to work for George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic when Mr. Clinton latched on to members of the J. B.’s. After sparking two definitive funk bands, he leads a group that knows the secrets of getting on the good foot. Special guests are also promised. Doors open tonight at 9. Tickets are $200 (Pareles).

P. M. DAWN, CRYSTAL WATERS, SUGAR HILL GANG, Shine, 285 West Broadway, at Canal Street, lower Manhattan, (212) 941-0900. Two hip-hop groups and a dance-floor diva share this triple bill. P. M. Dawn has made some of the dreamiest albums in hip-hop, combining psychedelia with a quest for Christian faith. Its music floats understated raps and Prince Be’s ethereal singing on tracks that melt in the ear. Crystal Waters brought social consciousness into discos with her 1991 hit, “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless),” and has since switched to singing about love and basketball. “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang, released in 1979, is the cornerstone of recorded hip-hop: just a party tune that happened to set off a musical revolution. Now the Gang has turned itself into a hip-hop oldies act, performing its own rhymes and others from back in the day. Tickets tonight are $250 to $450, including open bar from 9:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. (Pareles).

*GIL SCOTT-HERON, ROY AYERS, Cooler, 416 West 14th Street, West Village, (212) 229-0785. With assertively political poems like “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” Gil Scott-Heron was integral to the consciousness-raising poetry movement that was part of the roots of hip-hop and the 1990s revival of spoken-word performance. But while his convictions remain intact, he has turned from recitation to singing, slipping his ideas into easygoing jazz-funk vamps. The vibraphonist Roy Ayers has built a career on sleek pop-jazz grooves that have lately found a second life as hip-hop samples. The disc jockeys Franco and Bugaloo Mike are to fill in between sets. Doors open at 9:30 p.m.; open bar until 11. Tickets are $120 (Pareles).

*MICHELLE SHOCKED AND THE PHILOSOPHER KINGS, Bottom Line, 15 West Fourth Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 228-6300. Michelle Shocked is a radical artist, unafraid of sharing her political views and her bare emotions. She has run into trouble with the mainstream music industry, but she hasn’t quit; she just retrained her focus on the grass-roots following that got her in the first place. Now she will share the latest fruits of her unwavering work ethic: all new songs at her three performances this week, to ring in a new millennium of constructive troublemaking. Doors open tonight at 7:30 for a 9:30 show; tickets are $50 (Powers).

*SUN RA ARKESTRA WITH MARC RIBOT, Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa, (212) 219-3006. Sun Ra’s Arkestra couldn’t be more appropriate for the first night of 2000. Its founder, who died in 1993, long ago had his eye on the future, with its 21st-century promises of space travel and interplanetary communication. The Arkestra, now led by the saxophonist Marshall Allen, is a big band that bristles with exuberant loose ends, and its sets move from barely warped swing-band arrangements to vamp tunes (like “Space Is the Place”) to squalls of free jazz. It turns typical swing-band arrangements into something richer and stranger by adding layers of dissonance and percussion that only make the music sound more joyful. The guitarist Marc Ribot, who has played with Tom Waits and Chocolate Genius, can pick through jazz changes or make his guitar clank and boing; he should be thoroughly compatible with the Arkestra. Tomorrow at 8 and 10:30 p.m.; admission is $14 (Pareles).

TIJUANA CARAVAN, Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4700. Get down to the basics of rootsy funk-rock with this Philadelphia-based party band. Three sets, party favors and a Champagne toast keep the mood high. Doors open tonight at 8; tickets are $35 (Powers).

THE VOLUPTUOUS HORROR OF KAREN BLACK, CBGB, 315 Bowery, at Bleecker Street, East Village, (212) 982-4052. Punk, heavy metal and plenty of mascara add up to the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, a long-running punk-rock show band whose songs hark back to the Cramps and early Blondie. Kembra Pfahler, the band’s semiclad singer, makes promises like “Take my hand and you will see/What a maniac I can be.” The bill also includes Motor Betty and Probe. Music begins tonight around 10; admission is $35 the day of the show (Pareles).

DR. MICHAEL WHITE’S ORIGINAL LIBERTY JAZZ BAND OF NEW ORLEANS, Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, West Village, (212) 255-4037. Dr. Michael White takes his chosen idiom, New Orleans jazz of the ‘20s, very seriously, and his band, nearing a decade of New Year’s shows at the Vanguard, performs lively versions of tunes associated with Louis Armstrong, King Oliver and others from the Crescent City. If the concept is strictly classical, the players have presence and nerve. Tonight doors open at 10, with a set at 11; $125 a person includes the $25 drink minimum, party favors, a New Year’s Eve T-shirt and New Orleans-style food. Sets tomorrow and Sunday are at 9:30 and 11:30 p.m., with a third set tomorrow night at 1 a.m.; cover charge is $20 with a $10 minimum. No credit cards (Ratliff).

PAUL WINTER, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 1071 Amsterdam Avenue, at 112th Street, Morningside Heights, (212) 662-2133. In the cathedral’s annual New Year’s Eve concert, hopes for peace are expressed in New Age music with multicultural ambitions. The Paul Winter Consort plays one-world music full of reassurance, good intentions and candy-coated exoticism. It shares the stage with the African-style Forces of Nature Dance Company and with Madafo Lloyd Wilson. The concert begins tonight at 7:30; tickets are $75 to $100 (Pareles).

BERNIE WORRELL AND THE WOO WARRIORS, Grange Hall, 50 Commerce Street, at Barrow Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 924-5246. As the keyboardist in Parliament-Funkadelic, Bernie Worrell put the oozing, organic textures in the P-Funk groove machine. He can take credit for the slow-bubbling synthesizer bass lines that are still ubiquitous in hip-hop and rhythm-and-blues; he also has an encompassing knowledge of jazz, funk, gospel and rock that he tosses around lightly. Seatings tonight are at 10, 10:30 and 11. Admission, with dinner, is $150 (Pareles).

*JOHN ZORN’S MASADA, MARC RIBOT Y LOS CUBANOS POSTIZOS, CYRO BAPTISTA’S BEAT THE DONKEY, Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, near Delancey Street, Lower East Side, (212) 358-7503. Masada is a collection of 205 klezmer-tinged tunes by John Zorn, who oversees various ensembles that play them, including a quartet that recalls Ornette Coleman’s pianoless lineups. With Joey Baron on drums, Greg Cohen on bass, Dave Douglas on trumpet and Mr. Zorn on alto-saxophone, Masada moves from the pulse of dance music to modal Middle Eastern inflections to Romantic filigree. Less fragmented and more melodic than most of Mr. Zorn’s music, Masada finds connections to Jewish tradition everywhere. The guitarist Marc Ribot started Los Cubanos Postizos to play songs he loved from Cuba in the 1940s and ‘50s, from the repertory of Arsenio Rodriguez; he honors the tunes, but he isn’t afraid to add some downtown clank and down-home twang in his solos. Cyro Baptista is a Brazilian percussionist who is fond of melody and humor as well as rhythm. Mr. Baptista’s “Vira Loucos,” an album that reclaimed and utterly transformed the Brazilian folk tunes once adapted by Heitor Villa-Lobos, featured Mr. Ribot and was produced by Mr. Zorn; they may well collaborate again. The triple bill appears tonight at 6:30, with tickets at $45, and at 10:30, for $65 (including a Champagne toast). Tickets for both shows include admission to Sub-Tonic with the D.J. Toshio Kajiwara (Pareles)

[NormanStewart]

EATING OUT: New Year’s brunch

If you’d rather not face making brunch the morning after the New Year revels, why not relax and let someone else do it for you? Here are 12 restaurants that will serve brunch on New Year’s Day. (These summaries are taken from dining reviews, columns and articles in The Times by William Grimes, Eric Asimov and others.)

1. Blue Water Grill
   [ * ] [Rating: One Star]
   (212) 675-9500
   31 Union Square West, at 16th Street
   Manhattan
   $$ All major cards

You won’t leave Blue Water Grill having eaten the best meal of your life, but chances are you’ll leave this bustling, rambunctious restaurant happy and feeling you got your money’s worth. This was originally a bank, and the marble walls and high columns remain, giving the big room a casual, airy feeling. Brunch starts with a free bloody mary, screwdriver, bellini, mimosa, Champagne, orange or grapefruit juice. Egg selections include eggs Benedict, alone or with lobster, Nova Scotia salmon or crab cakes, and many omelets. Pancake lovers have a choice of blueberry, banana or plain buttermilk. Heartier selections include seafood Cobb salad with shrimp, crab meat, avocado and roasted peppers; grilled Atlantic salmon with asparagus and roasted potatoes, and porcini-crusted yellowfin tuna with roasted tomato and basil couscous in a shallot port wine sauce. An a la carte raw bar and seafood cocktail menu are also available.

2. Capsouto Freres
   [ +++ ]
   (212) 966-4900
   451 Washington Street, at Watts Street
   TriBeCa
   $$$ All major cards

Capsouto Freres was a TriBeCa pioneer, moving into a fine old 1891 landmark building long before the area became chic. The dining room is a pleasant, airy space with brick walls, wood floors and beautiful light. Although the bistro fare is sometimes disappointing, the restaurant is popular and at its best for brunch. Specials for New Year’s Day are eggs Benedict with truffles, egg-white omelet with smoked salmon, grilled tuna with beurre rouge, striped bass with lobster sauce and breast of free-range chicken with fig sauce. The restaurant’s regular menu is also available and includes hearty dishes like steak frites, sauteed veal with lemon and warm confit of duck with vegetables.

3. Drovers Tap Room
   [ + ]
   (212) 627-1233
   9 Jones Street
   Greenwich Village
   $ All major cards

The husband-and-wife owners of Drovers, David Page and Barbara Shinn, have tried to recreate the sort of Midwestern family restaurant that Mr. Page remembers from his childhood in Berlin, Wis. But the all-American food is anything but nostalgic or cliched. The unusual salads are wonderful, like a flat-leaf parsley salad with paper-thin slices of salty country ham, sweet tomatoes and Wisconsin Asiago cheese. The brunch menu also includes baked stone-ground grits casserole; baked eggs with tequila and lime-cured salmon; cornmeal fried catfish po’boy with peppered bacon, apples and spicy tartar sauce; hot cakes; waffles and old fashioned desserts like butterscotch pudding and homemade cookies and ice cream.

4. The Grange Hall
   [ + ]
   (212) 924-5246
   50 Commerce Street, at Barrow Street
   West Village
   $ All major cards

The coat of arms says it all: an ear of corn, a sprig of wheat and a pitchfork. Middle American farm food is the specialty of Grange Hall, where an appealing 1930s aesthetic is expressed with a Diego Rivera-style mural and touches that are meant to recall Frank Lloyd Wright, Thomas Hart Benton and Raymond Loewy. The Grange Hall has a large “breakfast and lunch” menu with dishes like poached eggs on toast with a tarragon-and-thyme-seasoned woodland mushroom cream sauce; griddle cakes; grilled Virginia ham steak served with three eggs and fried cornmeal mush; and organic oatmeal among the many breakfast offerings. The lunch portion of Grange Hall’s menu features sandwiches, salads and homemade soups. And traditional brunch beverages like bloody marys, mimosas and kir royals are also available.

5. Les Halles
   [ ** ] [Rating: Two Stars]
   (212) 679-4111
   411 Park Avenue South, near 29th Street
   Manhattan
   $$ All major cards

Taking its name from Paris’s legendary wholesale food market, Les Halles also functions as a French meat market, with butcher cases in the front and a room with the air of a real Parisian brasserie in the back, with wood molding, off-white walls, tulip sconces and tables draped in butcher paper. The menu, naturally, is heavy on the meat, with choucroute, the classic Alsatian blend of pork, sausages and sauerkraut; blood sausage; cassoulet; and a brasserie favorite, pig’s feet, as well as steaks and roasts. The brunch menu also offers eggs any style and the traditional French remedy for those suffering the effects of too much Champagne: onion soup.

6. Lola
   [ +++ ]
   (212) 675-6700
   30 West 22nd Street
   Flatiron district
   $$$ All major cards

Lola is a festive spot that offers American cooking with a touch of soul and a touch of Asia. On New Year’s Day Lola offers two seatings, at 11:30 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. for its popular gospel brunch. Each seating is followed by a 40-minute gospel performance. The two-course menu starts with an assortment of breads, muffins and scones served with homemade apple and pear preserves. Entrees include caramelized banana hallah French toast, smoked salmon and fried eggs, grilled chicken and shoestring potatoes, and fresh fruit crepes. Chocolate truffle cake, banana Tatin served with raspberry sauce, and warm apple mango crisp with mango puree are among the desserts.

7. Mesa Grill
   [ ** ] [Rating: Two Stars]
   (212) 807-7400
   102 Fifth Avenue, near 15th Street
   $$$ All major cards

Mesa Grill’s brunch menu features Bobby Flay’s spicy and delicious Southwestern cuisine served in a casual, loud and bright room. Start with roasted pumpkin and smoked chile soup, grilled quail salad with pomegranate molasses-horseradish glaze or cornmeal crusted oysters with green chile coconut milk sauce and salmon caviar. Entrees include tequila smoked salmon quesadilla, scrambled egg enchiladas, toasted blue corn pancakes, cinnamon and pecan waffles and grilled shrimp and cilantro pesto pizza.

8. Odeon
   [ ++ ]
   (212) 233-0507
   145 West Broadway, at Thomas Street
   TriBeCa
   $$ All major cards

SoHo’s first great American bistro is cooking after all these years. The dining room is unpretentious and comfortable, and it still feels as if it is filled with artists. Popular as a late night destination, Odeon is also well known for its Saturday and Sunday brunch. The reasonably priced menu includes old favorites like eggs Benedict, steak and eggs, blueberry waffles, a smoked salmon and bagel plate, Caesar salad and great cheeseburgers and fries.

9. Park Avalon
   [ +++ ]
   (212) 533-2500
   225 Park Avenue South, near 18th Street
   Manhattan
   $$ All major cards

Every neighborhood needs a place to hang out. In this part of town, Park Avalon provides it. The restaurant has something for almost every appetite at reasonable prices. The huge high-ceilinged room is usually filled with a cross section of neighborhood people. Celebrities and hip young things mingle happily with the Gramercy Park crowd in the pleasingly casual space. The brunch menu is divided into breakfast and lunch fare. Breakfast offerings include French toast, granola, pancakes and a large selection of eggs and omelets. Lunch selections range from Caesar salad with grilled chicken breast and grilled hamburger and French fries to lobster salad served with asparagus, roasted pepper, avocado, tomatoes and cucumber with miso-lime vinaigrette.

10. Park View at the Boathouse
    [ ** ] [Rating: Two Stars]
    (212) 517-2233
    Loeb Boathouse, about 72nd Street in Central Park
    $$$ All major cards

In the Loeb Boathouse next to Central Park’s prettiest lake, Park View combines pastoral charm with views of skyscrapers peeking over the trees. The prix fixe brunch buffet starts with a champagne mimosa and features a Continental table with muffins, scones, Danish; a smoked seafood table with sliced smoked salmon with lemon and a buffet table that offers French toast, waffles, pancakes and omelets, pasta and meat dishes. Salads and cheeses are also available. There are cakes and tarts for dessert. The staff at Park View is so pleasant and the setting so pretty that you feel lucky to be there.

11. Petrossian
    [ ** ] [Rating: Two Stars]
    (212) 245-2214
    182 West 58th Street
    Manhattan
    $$$$ All major cards

At this elegant restaurant evoking imperial Russia, diners are treated like aristocrats, whether or not they are indulging in huge spoonfuls of caviar or the $35 prix fixe dinner. Petrossian is best known for its caviar, which this dark, elegant restaurant offers in any number of ways, from 15-gram samplings (a half-ounce plus) of sevruga, osetra and beluga, up to kilogram presentations (2.2 pounds), enough to feed a party of 20. Dozens of Champagnes are available (as well as little glasses of iced vodka) to wash down the caviar. Beyond caviar, the $38 three-course New Year’s brunch menu offers borscht with creme fraiche and pirojkis; smoked river trout salad; and Russian salmon roe with blini and creme fraiche among the appetizers. Main courses include a salmon sampling, Swedish pancakes with a berry compote; and omelets with sevruga caviar or smoked sturgeon. Vodka turns up in the desserts here too. Try the vodka fruit sorbets or the seasonal fruits and berries with vodka chocolate ice cream.

12. Vox
    [ * ] [Rating: One Star]
    (646) 486-3188
    165 Eighth Avenue, near 18th Street
    Chelsea
    $$ All major cards

Vox, whose name is an allusion to vox populi, is a small modern-feeling bistro with Asian and (nonclassical) Latin accents. The restaurant, which opened this year, seems to get a more diverse crowd than many other Chelsea restaurants. The brunch menu is primarily breakfast dishes like Irish oatmeal, French toast, an omelet of the day, and poached eggs with biscuits, apple-smoked bacon and hollandaise sauce. If you prefer lunch fare, try the house-cured Scottish salmon served with horseradish creme fraiche, osetra caviar, dill and blini, or the Reuben sandwich.

Summaries taken from reviews use the star ratings. Others are taken from the $25 and Under column ( + ) and articles ( ++ ), and capsule reviews from New York Today: www.nytoday.com ( +++ ).

What the stars mean:
[ **** ] – Extraordinary
[ *** ] – Excellent
[ ** ] – Very good
[ * ] – Good
None – Poor to Satisfactory

Price range: Based on the cost of a three-course dinner, per person, tax, tip and drinks not included.

$ – $25 and under
$$ – $25 to $40
$$$ – $40 to $55
$$$$ – $55 and over

Past reviews – Eating Out columns back to June 1998, along with reviews from The Times and capsule reviews by Times critics of additional restaurants not reviewed in the newspaper, are available on New York Today.

[NormanStewart]

NYC: An urgent Year 2000 problem: what to call the new decade

By Clyde Haberman

By the time you fumble for your first cup of coffee today, this may have already proved to be the stupidest column ever written.

Planes could be falling from the sky over New Zealand, where 2000 tramped in on big cat’s feet while most New Yorkers were pulling the covers over their heads this morning, squeezing the last drops of sleep out of 1999. Nuclear power plants could be blowing their fuses around Japan. Rickshaws may be the only means of transportation still functioning in Hong Kong, and – horrors! – the casino may have gone dark at the Hotel Lisboa in Macao.

Go ahead, focus on the human tragedy. But the real menace is that this column will look monumentally dumb, for it is written on an assumption that we will muddle through the rollover of all those nines to zeros without too many machines thinking we are back in 1900.

What greater show of confidence can a New Yorker make than to have in his pocket a 30-day MetroCard valid through January 18? Trust us, this is not the sort of guy who’d have blown $63 on a card if he thought the subway turnstile computers would go haywire after midnight tonight.

Of course, he may have guessed wrong. Things could always turn out far worse than suspected. Terrorism, Heaven forfend, could be rampant by tonight. Worst of all, this could indeed be the end of days, the planetary reckoning that some have prophesied.

If that turns out to be the case, consider yourself free of any obligation to read on. But before you go, remember that doomsday is not without its plus side.

Think of a world with no more Donald Trump droning on about the women he has bedded. A world with no more Jesse Ventura interviews, no more “I Love Lucy” reruns, no more tabloid headlines about Puff Daddy or Monica, no more having to figure out who makes you angrier, Patricia Duff or Ronald Perelman.

Odds are, however, that we won’t be that lucky. More than likely, we will still be here tomorrow, mulling over deep issues like whether Gwyneth and Ben will get back together.

You know what that also means? Those tiresome best-of-the-old-millennium lists will be replaced by an equally dreary cataloging of the best of the new.

Rest assured that sometime after midnight, some dope at some party or some bar in some part of town will put an unacceptable number of bullet holes in some lover or some rival. That will immediately be dubbed New York’s crime of the century – until it is replaced by an even more gruesome slice-and-dice job an hour later.

On Monday, the second Abner Louima trial is due to begin in Brooklyn. There’s the trial of the century for you. Or it will be until the Amadou Diallo case goes to court in Albany in late January.

These best-of lists have sidetracked us from an arguably more important pursuit, namely figuring out how to refer to the next decade.

Surely, we have had ample time to decide what to call the 00’s. Various proposals have surfaced: the Oughts, the Naughts, the Oughties, the Naughties, the Zeros, the Zips, the Ohs, the Ooze, or perhaps the Preteens. A personal favorite is the Oh-Ohs. But no collective decision has been reached. Ticktock, people. Time is getting short.

Another question given scant attention is whose millennium is it, anyway? Certainly, it isn’t a particularly big deal for Jews, whose year is 5760, or for Muslims, for whom it is 1420.

Some people argue, at the risk of being razzed as politically correct, that the country’s growing diversity should be recognized by changing the dating game. They would drop designations like B.C., “before Christ,” and A.D., anno Domini, or “in the year of our Lord.” After all, whose Lord?

One proposal is to replace A.D. with C.E., for “common era,” and B.C. with B.C.E., for “before the common era” – a religiously neutral usage long favored by many Jews.

In a sense, the United States Supreme Court has shown the way. A spokeswoman says the court now tells lawyers certified to practice before it that “an alternate certificate is available.” On this substitute document, the words “in the year of our Lord” are omitted from the date.

While we’re at it, need we remind anyone that the old millennium does not truly begin for another year? Do the math. Vicki Rovere did. A New York writer who knows how to count, she put together buttons saying, “Happy millennium to all you innumerates.”

In that spirit, let us lift a glass to the dying 20th century, which began in 1901. Here’s to the only 99-year century we have ever known.

[NormanStewart]

Opinion: The journey to 2000

The concluding day of the 20th century and therefore of the second millennium – that event so freighted with various meanings by historians, politicians, fictionists and doomsaying preachers – is upon us. With allowances for the dateline, it will fall everywhere with equal finality, evoking all around the world the same feelings of solemnity for humanity’s catalogue of travails and triumphs, and stirring in every corner of our common planet the desire to celebrate our hope for a peaceful and healing future. Those aspirations will stir with an equal inexorability in quiet villages on far continents and in the digital glitter of Times Square.

At this newspaper, we cannot ignore the fact that the world’s most famous New Year’s Eve party takes place on our doorstep. The history of that party spans almost the entire century and is intimately connected to that of The Times. The intersection was known as Long Acre Square until 1904, when The Times moved to the area. In 1907 Adolph Ochs, who had purchased the newspaper 11 years earlier, came up with the idea of lowering an illuminated globe down a flagpole to mark the New Year. Ever since, Times Square has been the center of New York’s celebration, and with the coming of the age of television, the teeming crowd that gathers to watch the ball drop has become an international symbol of the passage from the old year into the new.

As millions cheer

Tonight an expected two million people will jam themselves into Times Square. Over a billion television viewers will be watching them count down the last seconds of 1999. At the dawn of the millennium, Times Square will become, in effect, the virtual town square for a nation and indeed for a world reshaped by revolutions in communications, transportation, medicine, commerce and perhaps most forcefully by America’s century-long act of self-invention. It is that chronicle of change that presses most insistently forward as 2000 comes into view.

Henry Luce of Time magazine put America at the center of the story with a memorable term: the American Century. Those three words convey unmistakable self-congratulation, but there should be no artificial modesty about an overarching fact of the era. This is a nation that within the memory of our oldest citizens used the blood of its soldiers and the power of its founding idea to guide the world away from totalitarian rule and economic ruin.

One hundred years ago

To be sure, the America that awaited the dawn of 1900 was by no means ready for its eventual role as guardian of what we now call the free world. But the years around the turn from the 19th to the 20th century became the hinge of a new age. After the great labor of filling up the continent, an inward-looking United States expanded its vision and ambitions, grasping for leadership in a world it had once ignored. In 1901 the only American president born in New York City, Theodore Roosevelt, moved into the White House. By 1908 he would enshrine progress and economic justice as national ideals. By reclaiming powers Congress had been accreting since the Civil War, he also created the powerful modern presidency as an institution capable of shaping both this nation’s goals and world events. In the same period the country began to move rapidly toward the urbanized, mass-consumer society as its dominant mode of living. Products, style and money swirled together in a hurricane of social exploration. In 1920, for the first time, a majority of Americans lived in cities.

But beneath these flurries of imperial ambition and middle-class materialism, more spiritual aspirations were quickening as well – a yearning for a society that was as enlightened as it was productive. That definitively American desire was captured in a letter written in 1912 by one apostle of the machine age, Thomas Edison, to another, Henry Ford. After surveying other societies, Edison concluded that “in a lot of respects we Americans are the rawest and crudest of all. Our production, our factory laws, our charities, our relations between capital and labor, our distribution – all wrong, out of gear. We’ve stumbled along for a while, trying to run a new civilization in old ways, but we’ve got to start to make this world over.”

The fight for freedom

The idealistic desire to make the world over is the deepest mystery of the American character and our signature national trait. It was also the guiding influence in the century’s thematic political conflict – the series of armed and unarmed struggles to thwart tyranny. American idealism is mysterious because it has always existed in a paradoxical linkage with greed, an alarming tolerance for social injustice, and the racial blindness that allowed the same mind that shaped the Declaration of Independence to condone slavery.

Despite these flaws, the American vision of remaking the world was built around a stainless philosophical core – the twin ideals of democratic self-government and individual liberty. These values would prove decisive in World War I, then World War II and finally the 50-year contest to block the Soviet Union’s military aspirations and its doctrine of monolithic state oppression. A hundred years before the start of the watershed conflict of World War II, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that citizens in a democracy would be slow to enter wars and dangerously ineffective in the early fighting. But, he predicted, they would “easily turn into good soldiers when once they have been torn from their business and their pleasures.” And he sensed that once engaged, they would not quit.

Less easy to foresee was that America and the West would have the benefit in World War II of the century’s most important leader, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He rallied, in his words, “the American people, in their righteous might” and led the alliance that defeated Adolf Hitler. On the humanitarian level, Roosevelt and his planners failed greatly in ignoring the apex of Nazi evil, the extermination of six million Jews. Nothing can erase the primal nature of that lapse. But the victors’ peace imposed by the next president, Harry S. Truman, did provide a contrasting pinnacle of wisdom unlike anything in the history of warfare. The Marshall Plan to lift a wrecked Continent from the rubble was both a monument to American idealism and a coup for strategic self-interest.

Struggle in the Nuclear Age

For with Hitler’s death, another, better-organized threat to liberty arose in the Soviet Union. Unless America had revitalized Europe, the Russian Bear would have ambled hungrily toward the Atlantic. Instead it was blocked through containment, a new doctrine that would prevent another global war but burden humanity with a prolonged anxiety about nuclear annihilation.

The bomb, however, was not the weapon that produced the concluding triumph of a century of expanding freedom. It was the American economy and the worldwide influence of the popular culture made possible by that economy. Robber-baron abuses and the Great Depression had, through painful steps, produced a consensus on how to manage capitalism. By regulation and taxation the government would curb the cruelties of laissez-faire capitalism, but never so sternly as to destroy the freedom of markets and the zeal of mold-breaking entrepreneurs. Unlike Europeans and the Japanese, Americans were get-rich-quick romantics willing to tolerate the huge, enduring income gaps between the most affluent and the poorest that remain the chief defect of the social contract governing their market economy.

The power of prosperity

The compensating factor was the creation of a huge middle class and the attendant expansion of workers’ ability to enjoy products and pleasures once reserved for the elite. Through mass communications, the images of America’s generalized prosperity had an impact that rattled totalitarian capitals. The Soviet Union disintegrated when its economy could not sustain a decent standard of living while also matching the United States in the renewed arms race announced by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Americans are still arguing whether his declaration of economic war on the “Evil Empire” was the act of a simpleton or a visionary strategist. But the shining fact is that the interplay between Mr. Reagan and the Soviet reformer Mikhail Gorbachev sped the destruction of a Soviet empire dedicated to the denial of civil liberties and national self-determination. For America, the century ended with a triumphant maturing of the concepts of freedom that a restless and innovative people had carried from Europe and nursed into vibrancy in the rough cradle of a frontier continent.

A toast of farewell

The original American frontiers had to do with covering geographic distance – from coast to coast, from farm to factory, from hamlet to city or suburb. But the nation finishes the century with many of its social frontiers uncrossed. Racial justice and decent medical care are not yet a guaranteed part of every citizen’s birthright grant to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Our people need arms controls that limit both nuclear weapons and the handguns on America’s streets.

Indeed, on this New Year’s Eve we still do not know if the invention of the silicon chip will surpass that of nuclear weapons as the signal technological event of the century. With visionary leadership, we may dare to hope that the ultimate engine of war will take second place in mankind’s memory to a worldwide explosion of knowledge. Yet what can be known in these last hours of the year 1999 should be saluted by the glowing orb in Times Square and with toasts in living rooms across the land. It was a century in which freedom triumphed and generosity became a global ideal because of the most distinctive of all American inventions, a society based on the values of political freedom, economic opportunity, individual worth and equal justice. It is that invention that must be preserved and celebrated above all others, for it is our national treasure and the world’s.

[NormanStewart]

1 hour to go!

Kosmi - Online Hangouts Made Easy

[NormanStewart]

Reading Eagle (December 31, 1999)

(Eagle/Times: Bob Schneider)

[NormanStewart]

Y2K safeguards increased

WASHINGTON (AP) – While most Americans appeared unfazed by possible Y2K failures, the government took further precautions Thursday, closing seaports for the New Year’s weekend on both coasts and repairing a last-minute bug in a key air traffic computer.

The State Department evacuated 350 diplomatic workers and family members who asked to leave Russia and three other countries where Y2K problems are widely anticipated.

The last-minute preparations in Washington, a day before the world welcomed a new millennium, contrasted with a public that chose not to rush to withdraw cash or hoard groceries.

“Banks, many of whom have made provisions for extra cash, now have a lot of extra cash sitting around,” President Clinton’s top Y2K expert, John Koskinen, said.

He also cited normal sales by the nation’s grocers, pharmacies and gasoline stations.

Preparations were evident elsewhere, though officials cautioned again they expect no national failures in the United States.

Some of the largest freight railroads indicated they plan slight delays near midnight Friday during the critical date rollover.

The Transportation Department said dozens of U.S. and foreign seaports will remain closed during parts of the weekend. It described the closures largely as a precaution against possible Y2K problems, but also the result of light traffic expected during the holidays.

[NormanStewart]

Millennial debate much ado about nothing

(St. Louis Post-Dispatch) – Shakespeare said it best. The debate over the starting date for the new century and millennium is “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Why? Because it’s all arbitrary.

Given that a century consists of 100 years, any day marks the end of a century – the hundred-year period that began precisely on the same day in 1899.

Even so, the issue seems to have split us into two camps:

The vast and blithe majority, who intend to celebrate the new year, the new century and the new millennium on January 1.

The small but fierce minority, who insist that the rest of us are jumping the gun. These people buttonhole others to sputter that the 21st century and third millennium will not arrive until January 1, 2001, which is more than a year away.

Technically, the spoilsports have it right.

The medieval monk who set up the Western system of numbering years put the start of the first millennium in the year 1 A.D. Once he settled on that, he settled the debate.

By definition, a century has 100 years; after all, the word “century” comes from the Latin word for “one hundred.” If you start a series of a hundred with No. 1, it can’t end until you get to No. 100 (If you’re dubious, count it out on your fingers).

The next series of a hundred – the second century, if you will – will then begin with No. 101 and continue through No. 200. The next (the third century) will run from No. 201 through No. 300, and so on.

Still fuzzy? Think of your checkbook.

The first book of a hundred checks begins with No. 0001 and ends with No. 0100. The second book begins with No. 0101 and ends with No. 0200. The third runs from No. 0201 through No. 0300, and so on.

Centuries and millennia work the same way. Just as banks have no Check Zero, our dating system has no Year Zero.

That medieval monk would have spared us all the sound and fury if he had started the first millennium with the Year Zero. That way, the first century would have run from 0 A.D. through 99 A.D., for the requisite total of 100 years. The second century would have run from 100 through 199, and so on.

So why didn’t the monk calibrate his starting point at the Year Zero? Because at the time he devised his system (it was around 525 A.D.), nobody had any notion of zero as a numeral.

Islamic scholars would later come up with the concept of zero, but they were much too late for sixth-century Europe. Those Europeans were stuck with Roman numerals, which lack a zero.

Given the limits of sixth-century math, the monk had no choice. He had to start the first millennium in 1 A.D. and continue it through the year 1000. The second millennium began on January 1, 1001, and will end on December 31, 2000. And the third will begin on January 1, 2001.

So the sticklers are correct. The rest of us are suffering from premature congratulation.

Then again, the business of numbering years is so arbitrary that the fuss seems – well, fussy.

Nature knows no centuries, no millennia.

When it comes to subdividing time, nature makes only two slices – days and years.

It’s basic astronomy. Earth rotates on its axis once a day. Earth revolves around the sun once every 365¼ days. Thus, the day and the year.

Beyond the day and the year, all of the rest – the millennium, the century, the decade, the month, the week, the hour, the second – are man-made multiplications and divisions.

In other words, they’re arbitrary.

In our multiplication of years, we favor units of 10 – 10 years to the decade, 10 decades to the century, 10 centuries to the millennium.

The reason lies as close as your hand, which has five fingers, 10 to the set. Because early humans started counting on their fingers, we naturally count by 10s.