Jennifer Yourdon will be on the 700 Club today, Monday, April 20th. Pat Robertson is doing something on y2k every Monday.

-- Robert Brown (peace2u@bellatlantic.net), April 20, 1998

Answers

I live outside the US. What is the 700 Club? If it's TV, I can probably get it on cable.

Thanks

Steve Francis Toronto

-- steve francis (sfrancis@sympatico.ca), April 20, 1998.

The 700 Club is a religious show that is usually on the Family Channel and I believe on some religious channel on cable. It may show up on other channels, but these are the ones I have noticed it on.

-- Rebecca Kutcher (kutcher@pionet.net), April 20, 1998.

I think the 700 Club is doing an OK job with Y2K awareness. I saw Ed Yourdon do an extensive interview with Robertson a few weeks back. Those of you who think religion and Y2K don't mix, I'd recommend watching anyway if you get a chance. This is the first religious program I have ever payed any attention to.

-- Gail (gmt@students.wisc.edu), April 20, 1998.

My apologies to Ed and Jennifer, for whome I have nothing but the highest respect ... but ...

I would prefer not to see them on The 700 Club.

I don't want to offend anyone who may see The 700 Club as part of their faith. I have, in fact, watched it on occasion and have found that it is one of the few places covering certain Libertarian issues in an appropriate fashion.

Nevertheless, it's impossible to deny that the show's image is that of being a part of the fringe, at best. It doesn't have the public perception of, say, a 60 Minutes, or (shudder) Nightline.

Now, please don't get me wrong: I am not attempting to criticize the quality of the program versus others. In fact, I find both 60 Minutes and Nightline to be at best only tangentially accurate.

Nevertheless, the public perception is that The 700 Club is largely a haven for ... well, religious nuts. There, I said it. Most people don't take it seriously at best, and denigrate it as a reflex action at worst.

I'm concerned that going on that program -- even if it has the effect of informing some percentage of people about Y2K -- has the overall effect of damaging the problem's credibility.

I'm certain that well inside eighteen months, Y2K will be the only thing that both 60 Minutes and Nightline are focusing on. There will come a point after which no other story is even relevant. Until that time -- and even after -- associating strongly with The 700 Club strikes me as roughly akin to associating strongly with the Psychic Friends Hotline.

Again, please understand that I personally find The 700 Club to be fairly accurate, presenting in many cases the stories I only wish the rest of the press would touch on. But I'm an extreme minority. I know people who scoff at the program as a reflex action.

There is such a thing as bad publicity. I'm concerned that this may be one of them.

"John Smith"

-- "John Smith" (pobox42@hotmail.com), April 20, 1998.

Dear "John Smith",

If you hear laughter in the background it is I, reviewing your post. I apologize, but I just can't keep a straight face, I'm sorry.

You stated "that the show's (700 Club) image is part of the fringe". So? If you haven't noticed, nobody BUT the "fringe" is talking about it. More people in the US know who the second string 3rd baseman of the Cardinals is, than know who Roliegh Martin is! Let's see how many famous people are stumping for Y2K, Westergaard, North, Cowles, Yourdon, uh..... hmm where are all the Hollywood actors and musicians?

You stated that you "find 60 Minutes and Nightline to be at best only tangentially accurate". You are vastly more generous than I. I can not think of ANY complex technical news item that the popular press has even gotten CLOSE to being right about!

EXAMPLES: AIDS - Not one single peer reviewed article or symposium has ever linked the so-called HIV virus with AIDS (which was initially called GRID). Hemophiliacs are living twice as long as the did in the late 70's, but from the mass media you'ld think they've all have died off from "tainted blood". AZT is an abandoned chemotherapy drug that was so toxic the inventors never bothered to patent it as it's death rate made it useless. NUCLEAR POWER - Chernobyl was (is still) a weapons grade plutonium factory that uses its waste heat to generate electricity. Three Mile Island released so little radiation that a person standing by its fence would have recieved less radiation than you getting flying coast to coast in a commercial jet. OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING - You absolutley HAVE to have a high velocity wave front explosive to do the type of damage to reinforced concrete like the Murrah building. Fertilizer and fuel is a low velocity wave front explosive, duh! ET CETRA - ozone holes, global warming, Linear No Threshold Analysis, radon, asbestos, alar, lead in fuel vs. lead in paint chips, etc. the list goes on and on and on and on.

It would be statistically improbable for the mass media to get anything right that requires the least bit of science knowledge to understand.

It would be more probable for Bill Clinton to condemn pre-marital and extra-marital sex than for the mass media to have enough integrity to go to the trouble of learning about what they are reporting (reading).

(do you get the impression that I'm not in love with the current state of mass "new journalism circa 1960's" media in the US?)

You stated, "I'm certian that well inside eighteen months, Y2K will be the only thing that both 60 Minutes and Nightline are focusing on." Again, you are more generous than I. I don't know if it was Clements or Mencken that said, "There is nothing so big or so obvious that it can't be ignored." Good grief, the popular press is talking about a federal budget surplus, when in reality we are still spending over $150 billion more per year than we take in.

You stated, "I know people who scoff at the program (700 Club) as a reflex action." Yes, and I know people with degrees in economics that still consider the Phillips Curve to be valid even though they lived through the 1970's!!! Idiots act like idiots <-- this is not a new concept. The message should not be confused with the messenger. The fault lies in the people you know and the economists, not in the message or the relation between inflation and unemployment.

You stated that, "There is such a thing as bad publicity." True, I agree, however I think we passed the point of worrying about that and Y2K about 2 years ago.

Again, I apologize, but I just can not understand anybody complaining about Y2K publicity. Y2K is serious, people are going to die from Y2K, a LOT of people. ANY amount of increasing public awareness about Y2K is to be cherished as it is the only way that fewer people will suffer from Y2K.

P.S. I do not watch the 700 Club, I have no interest what so ever in Pat Robertson's religous views or his political ambitions.

-- Ken Seger (kenseger@primary.net), April 20, 1998.

Sigh.

I knew I'd get at least one.

Okay, you want to know why it The 700 Club as a forum for Y2K activism bothers me so much? It's really simple:

My wife.

For more than a year, I've been hammering her with the idea that this is real, that it's now beyond the point of avoidability, and that if we don't get our act together, now, the whole thing could concievable kill us and our young daughters.

Now, I love my wife dearly, but she's a goddamm Lemmming. She won't make any apparantly rash decisions based on mine -- or even her own -- rational analysis of a given issue. What she needs in order to take any kind of action -- about any issue -- is peer support.

Well, at the moment, there is none. I'm the only person around her substantively worrying about this issue.

I've been courting my local press for nearly a year regarding Y2K. I've got a number of reporters in local papers that I now actively support and encourage (somewhere in the "Ignorance or Conspiracy?" thread, you'll find an example of what I mean).

With my direct assistance, the local paper to which we subscribe is now starting to do substantive, accurate articles on Y2K.

My wife is not yet at the point of taking Y2K seriously. But I'm making progress. It's a very difficult thing for her, because like all Lemmings, she's perfectly content to wander off the cliff, as long as she's following a pack.

The 700 Club is, frankly, not where I want her to see Y2K stories. It makes it much easier for her to dismiss the entire issue and undermines my efforts to convince her otherwise. I want her to read stories in The Daily Herald, The Chicago Tribune, and The Chicago Sun-Times.

If the Sun-Times does a story on Y2K, it lends the issue an air of respectibility, regardless of the accuracy of the story.

If The 700 Club does a story on Y2K, it lends the issue an air of lunacy, regardless of the accuracy of the story.

Is this strictly fair to The 700 Club (or the Sun-Times, for that matter)? Of course not. In a perfect world, people would always evaluate individual stories on their own individual merit.

Since we live in the real world, however, we must contend with real-world rules. One of those rules, for good or ill, is: Any news agency with the direct backing of a Christian religious organization will be perceived by the majority as lunatic.

You don't have to like it -- in fact, I don't. But the universe is what it is, not what we want it to be.

So for me personally -- and I suspect that I'm not unusual -- a story on Y2K on The 700 Club hinders my efforts at personal preparation because it enables my spouse to dismiss the issue.

Frankly, if they never did another story on it again, I'd be thrilled.

"John Smith"

-- "John Smith" (pobox42@hotmail.com), April 21, 1998.

My apologies about the formatting ... let this be a lesson to you: don't put in an HTML code without an appropriate ending tag.

I've put an "end italics" tag as the first in this message.

Look, I tried to explain this earlier, but this is very simple and very selfing on my part:

My wife thinks that I'm insane when I talk about Y2K. I need all the help I can to convince her to let me start making preparations while we still have time.

I've tried everything, constantly using Ed as a source, because he's a well-respected expert in IS/IT.

It simply hurts his credibility -- and the credibility of Y2K in general -- when the Yourdons appear on a program associated with the lunatic fringe. This in turn hinders my efforts to get my family out of the way of the impending train wreck.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Ed and Jennifer make decisions about where to seek publicity based on my family alone. I would like them to consider the idea that my wife's reaction probably isn't unique, and that be appearing on The 700 Club they are damaging their own credibility and making it more difficult for people like me who have to sell this idea to a skeptical relative.

"John Smith

"John Smith"

-- "John Smith" (pobox42@hotmail.com), April 21, 1998.

John,

Although I can sympathize with you, I cannot agree.

A person that refuses to consider something because the source is "tainted" is not likely to consider that something EVER. The excuse that the source is rediculous is just that, and excuse. The real thing is that the person just doesn't want to think about that. If President Clinton walked into your living room and said that y2k is real, it would not help. If any person that your wife considered credible were to tell her that y2k is real, I bet she would find a reason to deny it. For some people, some things are just too painful to consider. The reasons for not considering it sound plausible, but usually they are cover-ups.

If I were standing on a railroad track and some drug-crazed bum told me that a train was coming, I'd get off the track. If I were in denial I would probably have said that it couldn't be, the guy that told me just isn't credible, besides, I'm comfortable here.

Sorry.

George

-- George Valentine (georgevalentine@usa.net), April 21, 1998.

You analogy isn't entirely correct.

If I'm standing on the tracks and a bum tells me a train is coming, I'm going to notice the tracks, the train, the noise, and say, "Damn, it's a good thing this guy brought me to my senses! What was I thinking?"

Unfortunately, a more correct analogy with The 700 Club is something like this:

I'm standing ten feet to the right of the tracks, about sixty feet from a switch which is obscured by a bush. I can't see the switch personally.

To make matters worse, I'm currently standing four inches of warm tar, making it hard to move in the first place.

Understand that it doesn't look to me like I'm in any real danger. I'm well away from the tracks. Unfortunately, I can't see that the switch has been left in such a way that the train will derail and run me over.

Then this wild-eyed man comes running up to me. I've seen him around before, muttering things at people, gibberish I never listened to very seriously. A few people paid him attention, but nobody I know personally, and most of the time he sounds like a harmless kook.

Unfortunately, he chooses today to have noticed the switch and comes running up to tell me.

"You're gonna die! You gotta get out of this tar and run!"

"Uh ... yeah. Thanks. I appreciate it, really."

That's the situation we're in. It's not that a heretofore unknown bum is warning us of an impending and obvious calamity. It's that a known bum already categorized as a head case is warning us of a danger that we can't even see.

Under the circumstances, if Bill Clinton walked up and said the same thing, of course I'd take him more seriously.

-- "John Smith" (pobox42@hotmail.com), April 21, 1998.

"John in Chitown"

Whatever Christian Fundamentalists are, I think very few of them are lunatics. "Lunatic Fringe" is great ad hominem for use by the Cosmopolites of America's various Gotham Cities , John, but really....

There are some 40+ million such folks out there as I gather from the surveys, and I think they are just as entitled to get y2k info from or thru someone who is an authority to them and be enabled to decide what a prudential response might be, as your wife is to get y2k info from or thru someone who is an authority to her. I wish for her sake it could have been you, but then you aren't a Christian Fundamentalist, head of household, Promise Keepers type family decision making couple.

Of course, I live primarily in Gotham #1, but my wife is more of an independent thinker than I - so I didn't have your problem. Frankly, while I don't see the Pat Robertson Show, I think I would probably find his research on this more credible than, say, a typical Mike Wallace 60 Minutes hatchet job. On Robertson's Christian Eschatology speculations, however, I would pass him by ....in hyper drive.

-- victor Porlier (vporlier@aol.com), April 21, 1998.

Well, just thought I'd congratulate Pat Robertson for having the courage to go public with y2k. I think most of the folks who watch The 700 Club are sane, patriotic Americans who happen to believe in Jesus. I'm one of them! I thoroughly enjoy this broadcast, especially the news as it is well researched and usually issues affecting everything from politics to health to y2k are reported way before the main-stream news media. So, thank you Ed and Jennifer for appearing on the 700 Club...I will be watching.

God Bless, Susan

-- Susan (jclont@mastnet.net), April 21, 1998.

I second Susan's statement and also thank both Ed and Jennifer for being on the 700 Club. I know Ken from another forum and thank him also for his input. Well said, Ken. I think we need to get the word out to as many people we can as fast as we can and in any way that we can do it. Every y2k forum I have lurked on gets into some kind of religious discussion and I think this is because this is a life and death matter. We all feel deeply about such issues - and rightly so. The bottom line is that all people will have to face this problem and every possible venue of discourse should be used. I look forward to Pat Robertson having more info on y2k as it appears to be even handed and accurate. I hope that the Yourdons will make another appearance on the 700 Club and that John Smith's wife will hear the truth - no matter what the source may be!

-- Ben Alurker (ben@usaa.net), April 21, 1998.

Why did they appear on the 700 club? They are selling a book.

I thought Lee Webb asked some great questions like: "Jennifer, do you think there will be bank runs like in the 30's?" Jennifer says, "The American consumer is a very smart consumer, and if he senses a problem he will take action." Jennifer, next time, just say, 'hell yes'. It's o.k. to say hell on his show :-).

Thought she did an excellent job. Much better looking than her dad.

-- Bob Brown (peace2@bellatlantic.net), April 22, 1998.

In the words of Richard Nixon, I just want to make one thing perfectly clear.

I am not trying to be critical of The 700 Club, nor of fundamentalist Christians, nor of Christians generally. I know it sounds like I am, but in actuality I have a lot of respect for the show. I've not seen it often, but what I have seen is fairly impressive. As I mentioned above, they are one of the few programs I've seen cover certain traditionally Libertarian issues with anything like accuracy.

While I know it will cause me to lose credibility, I'll state that I am categorically agnostic, but unlike may agnostics and atheists I do not have an axe to grind with Christianity. In fact, I think that on the whole, Christianity has been a startlingly good influence on humanity. I think that's by providing a humane set of rules to live by, it's held an otherwise very savage part of human nature in check. While I don't believe in God, I would have no real difficulty recommending the teachings of Christ to anyone as a set of rules to live by. And in fact, I'm married to a Catholic and we're raising our daughters in that religion.

My problem is one of perception.

See, what you or I think of the show is irrelevant. It's what the average person on the street thinks of the show. I'm convinced that the average person on the street lumps The 700 Club in there with the average poorly-coiffed, haranguing, cry-at-the-drop-of-a-hat televangelist with a deep southern accent.

It doesn't matter if the perception is true any more than it matters that global warming is based in extraordinarily poor science. It's the perception that counts.

It's one of those ugly truths of life that the universe is what it is, not what we want it to be. In the universe I have to deal with, most people think of The 700 Club as a show for the goofballs.

I don't have to like it -- in fact, I don't. It's just the way things are.

"John Smith"

-- "John Smith" (pobox42@hotmail.com), April 22, 1998.

I think Jennifer Yourdon did a fine job during her interview on the 700 Club. Even though I am not a fan of religious bible thumping, I plan to watch as much coverage of this problem as I can.

-- Gail (gmt@students.wisc.edu), April 22, 1998.

Dear George, Funny you should mention President Clinton, one of the itmes that absolutely convinced that Y2K is going to be REALLY bad was when Clinton stated that it would be okay.

Dear "John", I sympathize with you. Thank you for telling us about your wife, mine is similar. Mine believes that Y2K will be rough, so preparing for it is "okay". She has not, and probably will not understand how bad it is going to be. Her mind is closed, she thinks that the NYSE will survive, along with her pension. That is driving me crazy.

Back to your problem. Does your wife want confirmation of Y2K from "peers" or figures of authority? If peers, what is peer to her? Housewives? Nurses? Gardeners? Grandmothers? I am not being flip, I'm serious. If from peers, you are out of luck unless she is a professional.

If from figures of authority, you have no problem if you do it right. Gary North has a website

http://www.garynorth.com

which has over 1,400 links to articles on the Internet, none of which are written by him. They are from the London Times, US Govt., etc. Ie. nice bland main stream sources. Now you'll have to look these articles up in secret and then print them out at night because Gary North is a Christian. Just take the printouts and purify them by placing them between the books The Naked Lunch and Earth In The Balance for 20 minutes so they'll lose the Christian link taint. Anybody notice that Christians are the only "group" that it is socially acceptable to hate and revile currently?

Another source of politically correct info would be the AICPA,

http://www.aicpa.org

how much blander can you get than accountants? Hmmm, another group that it is politically acceptable to make fun of. Do I detect a trend?

Anyway, the London Times is about the most staid paper on earth, makes the Wall Street Journal look like the Workers Daily. If you can't find a nice bland vanilla source from either North's Links or the AICPA, ya ain't lookin' hardnuf'.

-- Ken Seger (kenseger@primary.net), April 22, 1998.

My husband was in total denial about Y2K...to the point of driving me nuts! What made it even worse, he spends all day on a computer at work. His company has an email address so I started sending one of his co-workers (who is also a good friend) tons of mail about Y2K from one of those anonymous E-mail sources on the internet. I bombarded this guy with information, never letting on who I was. The other night we were driving home from a shopping excursion and he asked me if I had heard about what deep trouble the airlines were in because of Y2K. He told me his friend was talking about it at work with some of the other employees! I said "sure" and then rattled on for about 15 minutes about the airlines! :) It's a start!

-- Gail (gmt@students.wisc.edu), April 22, 1998.

John Smith - if your wife needs press clippings from unbiased sources to make her believe in possible Y2K problems, try Peter de Jager's site at http://www.year2000.com/cgi-bin/y2k/NFyear2000.cgi and click on the "Press Clippings" link. I've found that it's updated even more often than Gary North's site and contains more articles.

-- Melinda Gierisch (gieriscm@hotmail.com), April 22, 1998.

I appreciate the sympathy and suggestions. Unnfortunately, my wife is a fifteen-year veteran of the IS/IT industry.

That's right: my wife is a systems analyst who spent more than a decade as a mainframe COBOL and Assembly programmer. She wrote thousands of lines of non-Y2K compliant code herself.

She is one of those IS/IT people who is in complete and utter denial about the problem. It's very interesting for me to watch from a psychological perspective.

It's actually almost funny. Just the other day, she was proudly proclaiming to me that her company was celebrating its Y2K-compliancy with a giant jar of M&Ms (MM -- the latin numbers for 2000). Then, in an almost offhand and humorous way, she mentioned that she'd found some non-compliant code in a system that she is responsible for.

I mean, get this: she knew that her company was Y2K-compliancy without being compliant, yet some part of her brain was able to pass her system off as an aberration. When I've suggested that it might be possible that other systems might also be non-compliant, she dismissed it as naive thinking. She couldn't concieve that her situation was anything other than an aberration.

When I suggested that other companies might be in the same situation (i.e. celebrating compliancy while not actually being compliant), she totally dismissed the idea as crazy.

It's really interesting to me. A couple of things seem to be going on with her psychologically:

On the one hand, she has been so conditioned to blindly accept the word of those in authority that it doesn't even occur to her to question its accuracy. Me, I started questioning authority as a teenager and never really got over it.

Secondarily, my wife is anything but a risk-taker. She spent five years flipping burgers at McDonald's while in high school and college. She hated the job so much that she welcomed summer classes because it gave her a reason not to have to go. Yet, it never occurred to her that there might be better, probably more lucrative, jobs available for an intelligent computer science student. As far as she was concerned, she had a job, and having an income was more comfortable than risking it.

Talk about enduring the ills we have rather than flying to others that we know not.

Finally, she's surrounded by other people of the same mindset. I have a theory that people who work in larger companies (the poor guys who sit in cubicles all day) are the sorts of people who are psychologically ill-prepared to take risks. They want a safe, stable job with a big company that they percieve as being unlikely to disappear.

Contrast that with people like me, who work for small companies and enjoy the challenge of walking into something new literally every day. I'm psychologically ill-prepared to deal with large beaurocracies and multiple layers of middle management. I used to work for a subsidiary of AT&T and the exposure I got to AT&T management was more than enough, thank you.

For myself, I have more than enough confidence in my skills to go from business to business and be certain that I'll be paid well for it.

I also think that this need for stability is what drives the corporate denial of Y2K. If you're a person who needs to know your job is safe, wouldn't it frighten the hell out of you to consider the implications of Y2K? Doesn't it seem a lot safer just to ignore it?

If I'm right, and large companies are made up of people like my wife, they may never get it.

"John Smith"

-- "John Smith" (pobox42@hotmail.com), April 23, 1998.

Dear "John",

I think I see another parallel, spouse-wise, here. Your wife has worked very hard to get where she is. Even though she is a lot younger than my wife (15 years in IS/IT,right?) she still had to battle anti-woman prejudice to get where she is. She does not want to see, therefore mentally will not allow, 15 years of fighting go *poof* because of Y2K. Been there, done that, good luck.

Anyway, here is a another good source for non-christian Y2K info

http://www.afr.com.au/content/980408/inform/inform3.html

it is by the Chairman of the Australian Stock Exchange telling doctors and hospitals that they won't have any malpractice insurance against Y2K errors because all of the insurance companies will put in Y2K exclusion clauses. This same site has

http://www.afr.com.au/content/980420/survey/survey19.html

That is article #19 in a series of 20(?) articles on Y2K, get them all.

Best wishes, you have an uphill battle (speaking from experiance).

-- Ken Seger (kenseger@primary.net), April 23, 1998.

I know it's hard to imagine, but my wife doesn't percieve a particular problem with sexism as an IS/IT professional. She knows women who've complained about it from time to time, but she's always considered them very reactionary.

My experience with IS/IT is this (and I've been in it one way or another for about fifteen years myself):

For the longest time, the only

people in the field were those who were uncomfortable with people. They didn't have the social skills to "work and play well with others", and felt more comfortable with logical machines than irrational humans.

Indeed, even today, the industry is dominated by such personalities. When I last did a job search, one of my major selling points was my communications abilities. I'm one of those rare highly-competant technical people who can easily interact with a wide range of personalities.

When women started to appear in IS/IT, they were largely welcomed with open arms because they were such a novelty. There's a level of male sexism involved here, simply because the men who welcomed the women wanted the scenery. After so long staring at nothing but machines and other guys into machines, the sight of a female figure was not only refreshing, it offered the men a chance at socialization with a woman that could -- potentially at least -- understand them.

You see where I'm headed? The majority of techno-heads have a really hard time with women. They have little in common with the average women. They therefore have a hard time communicating with them, much less dating them.

A woman in IS/IT represents a potential date with similar interests.

Only a complete idiot or flaming homosexual would spoil a chance with the only potential date in the workplace by discriminating against her.

As time went on and IS/IT became a clearly lucrative industry, more women and non-techno-heads entered the field. Both are now no longer rare occurrances. It also became easier for techno-heads to attract "ordinary" women: marrying a computing professional wasn't the same as marrying a doctor, but given the money, a lot of women would certainly settle for it.

And I know, you're going to accuse me of sexism right here. Let me reiterate: the universe is what it is, not what we want it to be. Like it or not, men are hard-wired at some very basic level to look at womens' bustline. Women are likewise hard-wired to think about family and the logistics of maintaining it.

The smartest thing I ever heard about women came from Dr. Laura Schlesinger -- and I'm glad she said it, because I'd get lynched doing so. She said, "Women want to be equal with men, but we also kind of want to be taken care of by one."

I've seen no reason to doubt that statement anywhere in my personal life.

But getting back to the industry ...

In short, it has not been an industry that fostered much sexism. There probably is some now, what with more non IS/IT middle management becoming involved in things. In my experience, however, it's fairly rare. As long as you're competant, even the most sexist manager will reward you for your work. Otherwise, he might not get good work out of you in the future.

See, there's no shortage of jobs for women. If you work for a pig in this industry, feel free to pack up and find another gig -- probably at better pay and for no other reason than to get you away from your current job. Lateral moves with higher salaries are very common. I know people who make a habit of changing jobs every three years on principle simply because they know they can get a more dramatic pay increase.

That applies equally to women as well as men. And managers know it.

"John Smith"

-- "John Smith" (pobox42@hotmail.com), April 23, 1998.

See, I'm learning ... I'm now including ending tags at the tail of my posts whether I think they're necessary or not. It catches my typos ...

"John Smith"

-- "John Smith" (pobox42@hotmail.com), April 23, 1998.

I am a CPA and Christian minister who is grateful to have found out about Y2K from another Christian source. I think it is terrific to have Pat Robertson doing a show on it every Monday.

As to "John Smith" and his personal problems with the Robertson show, I guess I can understand him. Robertson is excited about being a Christian and he lets people know it. This causes people to think he is a little bit weird and it makes people uncomfortable, just as Y2K makes people uncomfortable. When people who are not Christians encounter Robertson, they sometimes duck their heads and run because, "what if he's right?". Non Christians don't like to think about death and what comes after. People will talk about Satan or Mohammed or Budha at a bar, but everyone leaves when anyone brings up Jesus.

I find it interesting that, apart from computer mavens, the only people who seem to care about Y2K are Christians. I haven't found any other coverage in non computer trade publications.

I am not at all sure what will happen on 7/1/99 or 1/1/2000 but I think that it is likely that something significant will happen. At present, only Christians and computer mavens are getting any type of advance warning to stockpile food, buy generators, purchase a pre 1980 car and move to the country. Isn't that interesting! The rest of the world, including Rather and Koppel, are marching toward the edge of the cliff like a bunch of lemmings.

Of course, perhaps Clinton has a vested interest in saying nothing. If the worst materializes, Clinton may declare a national emergency in 2000, invoke martial law and cancel the elections.

Ah, but of course, this could never happen in America, could it?

Anyway, to the Yourdens, keep up the good work and tell whoever will listen. In the bible, the prophet is told to blow the trumpet. Keep blowing guys.

-- Rev. Stephen L. Bening (Gammadim@AOL.com), April 23, 1998.

Rev. Bening:

You've touched on something I've been meaning to put to HTML for some time now.

One of the most interesting things about the Y2K problem is that it's almost biblical in nature. I'm not for a moment suggesting that it's a harbinger of the Second Coming or anything like that (though no doubt some fringe group will do just that in the next 18 months).

What I mean is this:

The problem is basically with a flawed industry standard. But this industry standard evolved from two things, only one of which was technical. Yes, in the early days of computing, it was cheaper and more expedient in terms of resources to omit the century digits.

That's only part of it, though. I mean, be real: two digits is comparatively nothing, even by the computing standards of the 60s and 70s.

The big issue was psychological. Programmers (rightly or wrongly) said to themselves, "The turn of the century? The distant future. The stuff of science fiction. Hell, the way things are today, I'll be lucky to live that long. By then, we'll have HAL 9000s, and all this junk will be obsolete."

This is the same phenomenon that I've seen in science fiction for years. Authors will place a story too close to the present day, only to see it outdated. Did you know that the character of "Khan" from Star Trek, first created in 1966, was supposed to have been a dictator from the then-distant-future of 1996? And I won't even mention the spacefaring society outlined in 2001: A Space Odyssey ...

The point is that we've been conditioned -- primarily by our religions -- to think of the turn of the millennium as something particularly special. Our religions (either directly or indirectly), our popular culture, everything for generations has thought of the new millennium as something particularly important.

Inherently, of course, the tick of a clock from one second to the next means nothing, no matter what year it is. But we've all been conditioned to think that the 1999 to 2000 rollover is really special.

And it was that conditioned socialization that caused programmers to omit century dates, to use "99" as a special record notation, to assume that by the turn of the century, all their work would be meaningless.

I find it highly ironic. In a way, the turn of the millennium being an event was a self-fulfilling prophecy. It wouldn't have been an event had we not thought of it as such in the first place. Because we did, now it really will be an event.

"John Smith"

-- "John Smith" (pobox42@hotmail.com), April 23, 1998.

Found this in the book "The Faith Healers" by James Randi-"Pat Robertson handed the public a real whopper when he claimed on one TV broadcast that during a crusade in China he delivered his sermon in English, as usual, and was pleased to learn that his audience was miraculously able to understand every word because God arranged for them to individually hear Robertson's words in their own regional dialect of Chinese." I think I'll opt to have the wife wait for the 60 Minutes show.

-- Connie Lingus (Cofkee@aol.com), April 24, 1998.

I can understand why Smith's wife does not believe him about Y2K. If I had to listen to his incessant palaver and pshcyo-babble on a daily basis, I'd tune a deaf ear too!

-- Harlan Petersen (jesuscan@itis.com), April 24, 1998.

Harlan:

I pontificate by nature, that's true. I might mention that I don't talk with my wife about any of this -- that's why I do it in this forum.

"John Smith"

-- "John Smith" (pobox42@hotmail.com), April 24, 1998.

Dear "John Smith"

The year 2000 was targeted in 60 A.D. by Barnabas, who was a sidekick of the Apostle Paul. It was translated to English by Archbishop Usher of Ireland in the 1600's. He is the fellow who calculated the day of creation as 4004 B.C. Therefore, 1997 was actually the 6000'th year if Usher was to be believed.

There is obviously a fixation by the religious on the turn of the millenium. It is recorded that in 1000 A.D. and just prior to it, there were many predictions of the end of the world and many false messiah's appeared, both to Jews and Christians.

Barnabas'work is called the "Epistle of Barnabas". It almost was included as part of the new testament. It is generally regarded as original and authentic. His general premise was that this world would be "wound up" in 6000 years. Peter had written that to the Lord, a day is as a thousand years. Since the world was created in 6 days according to Genesis, this "extrapolation" by Barnabas does have biblical support.

It is available from World Publishers under the title "The Lost Books of The Bible and The Forgotten Books of Eden." E mail me if you want more details.

Rev. Steve

-- Rev. Stephen L. Bening (Gammadim@AOL.com), April 24, 1998.

Just an FYI for those of you who've been following my tribulations with my wife ...

Yesterday, after getting yet another batch of Y2K articles from Gary North's site, I called my wife and pre-warned her that I wanted to have a Y2K talk again, that I wanted it to be civil, that I didn't want to upset or frighten her and that's why I was "warning her in advance."

Well, this morning I brought it up. And she said, "I just put two of your paychecks into savings. You can use that for preparations if you want to. That's almost $3000."

She then further qualified it by mentioning that camping equipment (which I'd previously discussed with her in non Y2K terms) could be considered "off-budget", i.e. a household family expense rather than a specific Y2K preparation.

I am absolutely floored and elated! There is every indication that she'll consider a number of items "off-budget" and I'll be able to really stretch this three grand. And, having finally agreed that this is a problem (her guideline was, "I think we can plan for not being able to get certain things and that certain utilities might be down for a while"), she'll be more predisposed to allow me further funds in the future.

My god, there's a bit of light after all!

"John Smith"

-- "John Smith" (pobox42@hotmail.com), April 25, 1998.

John,

I'm glad for you!

George

-- George Valentine (GeorgeValentine@usa.net), April 27, 1998.

A previous poster said Pat Robertsons would be doing something on y2k every Monday...I checked their website today and there was no mention of y2k. Did anyone see it on TV and if so, could you summarize what was discussed.

Thanks, Susan

-- Susan (jclont@mastnet.net), April 27, 1998.

I made it a point to watch. Not a word about Y2K! I was not surprised.

-- Gail (gmt@students.wisc.edu), April 27, 1998.

if anyone wants to listen to that 700 club show with jennifer yordon goto www.gospelmedia.com/ram/bn042098.ram it replays the april20 show in real audio.

-- george (mrbowl1@webtv.net), May 25, 1998.

John Smith said:

"The big issue was psychological. Programmers (rightly or wrongly) said to themselves, 'The turn of the century? The distant future. The stuff of science fiction. Hell, the way things are today, I'll be lucky to live that long. By then, we'll have HAL 9000s, and all this junk will be obsolete.'"

This is partially true. As a programmer for 14 years, I can remember thinking this very thing when I started out. I was also told (by veterans) that by the Year 2000 computers would not use current software so it was a moot point. So, programmers have inserted and perpetuated non-compliant code.

However, there's another side to this problem: management. For years a few brave souls have been practically screaming at top management (whether in corporations or gov't) that Y2K was coming and software had to be fixed. The response?: silence or pink slips. Management doesn't want to hear bad news, especially if they're going to spend gobs of money to still be where they are.

So, who's to blame: programmers or management? Well, who's the captain, who holds the purse string, who hires and fires, and who makes long-range (5 years by today's corporate standard) decisions? All together now - MANAGEMENT! Our fearless leaders...indeed.

-- Ted Markow (tmarkow@agate.net), June 12, 1998.