Last Thanksgiving weekend, CBS's "60 Minutes" closed their program on the year 2000 problem with me saying: "I think we'll have a few pretty bad situations, but not the catastrophes that the panic-creating people are talking about. The problem, deep down, is that nobody knows."

Most people would prefer a mesmerizing revelation to such a bland conclusion. All the more so, since this event does not have an imagined deadline, like most mystical predictions, but is guaranteed to happen on January 1, 2000. No wonder we constantly hear about it, and no wonder most stories spin scarier than a typical apocalypse.