The Big Band Jazz, Swing, Show Tunes, Pop Standards, and Contemporary Cabaret.
That's Sunday nights at 9 for Everything Old is New Again with me, David Kenney.
Only at 99.5 FM, WBAI, New York.
When everything old is new again, should everything old is a new again.
The Big Band Jazz, Swing, Show Tunes, Pop Standards, and Contemporary Cabaret, is
Sunday nights at 9 for Everything Old is New Again with me, David Kenney.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI in New York, the time is 9 AM.
This is Emanuel Goldstein filling in for David Rothenberg on this, not just any Saturday,
but the first day of the year 2000.
He made it.
Sometime me think me co-worker crazy, the way Christine would a go and jokey-jokey.
In a next time now, a no-nonsense dance, the way she wind up the place, last Christmas
dance.
The way she love to talk about conspiracy.
Me and Christine in a the canteen a talk, about the death of black people in a custody.
How not a cat make meow, or a damn dog bark.
How nobody high up in a society, can offer explanation, nor remedy.
When Christine hit up her bro, like say a row, she a go row.
Screw up her face, like say a trace, she a go trace.
Hear her now.
You think a just MI5 and James Bond, and police and soldier over North Island one.
When it come to black people Winston, some police in a England got license to kill.
Well nothing Christine say, surprise me still.
But hear me now.
What you mean, Christine?
A who tell you that?
A must you a idiot.
You can't prove that.
A who tell me fi go say that?
Christine kiss her teeth, then she cut me with her eye, and she say, you a prove?
You can't ask Clinton McRaven about him have fixation.
And you can't ask Joy Gordon about her suffocation.
You can't ask Stalin Roach, if him really shoot himself.
And you can't ask Vincent Graham, if he's him stab himself.
But you can ask the commissioner, about the license to kill.
Ask Sir Paul Condon, about the license to kill.
You can't ask the Douglas them about the new style baton.
And you can't ask Kuni Hassan, about him death by neglect.
You can't ask Marlon Jones, if him have any regret.
And you can't ask El Gamal, about the mystery of him death.
But you can ask Dame Barbara, about the license to kill.
Ask the DPP, about the license to kill.
You can't ask Ibrahim, about the CS gas attack.
You can't ask Mrs. Jarrett, how she get her heart attack.
You can't ask Oliver Price, about the grip around him neck.
And you can't ask Steve Boyce, about him death by neglect.
But you can ask the PCA, about the license to kill.
Ask the ACPO, about the license to kill.
You can't ask Maggie Thatcher, about the license to kill.
And you can't ask John Major, about the license to kill.
You can't ask Michael Howard, about the license to kill.
And you can't ask Jack Straub, about the rule of law.
You can't ask Tony Blair, if him is aware or care.
About the license to kill, that plenty police feel them got.
Sometime me think me co-worker crazy.
The way Christine would a go and jokey jokey.
Then a next time now, a no nonsense dance.
The way she wind down the place, last Christmas dance.
The way she love to talk about conspiracy.
The way she love to talk about conspiracy.
The way she love to talk about conspiracy.
You want proof?
You want proof?
You want proof?
You can't ask Maggie Thatcher, about the license to kill.
And you can't ask John Major, about the license to kill.
You can't ask Michael Howard, about the license to kill.
And you can't ask Jack Straub, about the rule of law.
You can't ask Tony Blair, if him is aware or care.
About the license to kill, that plenty police feel them got.
The way she love to talk about conspiracy.
The way she love to talk about conspiracy.
The way she love to talk about conspiracy.
The way she love to talk about conspiracy.
The way she love to talk about conspiracy.
The way she love to talk about conspiracy.
The way she love to talk about conspiracy.
The way she love to talk about conspiracy.
The way she love to talk about conspiracy.
That's Linton Quasey Johnson, off the new one more time.
Here on radio station WBAI New York.
Emanuel Goldstein here, with you.
Filling in for David Rothenberg.
This Saturday morning.
The first day of January.
The first, ok, let's just get this clear right here and now.
It's not the first day of the millennium.
Ok, now there's several things that really annoy me.
About this whole thing that's been going on over the past year.
I've been keeping quiet about it for most of the time.
Alright, enough is enough here.
The first day of the millennium.
First of all, it's not the first day of the new millennium.
Which would be 2001, is actually when it begins.
Reason being, years began with the year 1, not the year 0.
Ok, that's easy enough to remember.
But everybody's going around saying happy millennium.
You know, it's like saying happy year, happy day, happy week.
No, no, it's a new millennium.
If you accept the fact that it's really not the new millennium yet.
That will happen next year.
It was a nice new year celebration.
Four digits changed.
That's really what this boils down to, is four digits rolled over.
Ok, cool, you know, I'm all for it.
But let's call, you know, let's just keep the terms straight.
Alright, not a new millennium.
Alright, just a new year.
And boy, it was quite a new year, I'll say that.
Quite a lot of things happened.
Let's take a look at the way it was reported in the mainstream news.
And then we'll have some personal opinions.
And of course, we'll be asking everybody out there, what happened?
What happened to you?
How did you suffer because of Y2K?
And various other things.
Maybe we can predict some more doom in the future.
Basically, with a few minor glitches and heavy security,
the eastern United States welcomed the new millennium.
This is actually a dated report from the web.
Because obviously the western part of the United States has also welcomed the new millennium,
if you believe it was a new millennium by now.
From New York's Times Square to Newport, Kentucky.
You know, I didn't even know there was a Newport, Kentucky.
I thought that was up in New England somewhere.
Washington's hallowed monuments to Miami, and you get the idea.
Basically various cities.
In the nation's capital, tens of thousands gathered to hear performances by entertainers
and a speech by President Clinton,
who prefaced a spectacular fireworks display that began at the stroke of midnight.
The Washington celebration peaked with a white light of fireworks
cascading up the side of the 555-foot Washington Monument.
The White House had billed its finale to a day of millennium-related events,
which is another stupid phrase, millennium-related events.
What does that mean?
They billed that as an unforgettable midnight moment.
Well, Clinton would know about unforgettable midnight moments, wouldn't he?
As Clinton used the occasion to appeal to America's youth,
America must stay young, Clinton said.
Don't fear change. Embrace it.
The sun will always rise in America,
as long as each new generation lights the fire of freedom.
Well, that's nonsense. It's going to rise no matter what.
I don't know about that.
The torch is passed to a new century of young Americans.
Well, let's get back to New York.
The three-hour, $12 million show competed for top billing in the United States
with the customary celebration in New York's Times Square.
The New Year's tradition was marked at midnight
when a six-foot glowing crystal ball descended from a flagpole high
atop the one Times Square building.
Police said Times Square had been filled to capacity hours before midnight
and no one else would be admitted.
The peaceful crowd swelled northward up Broadway towards Central Park,
nearly 20 blocks away.
Authorities provided no official crowd count,
but veteran observers said it easily exceeded one million.
And as we all know, the weather was clear and rather warm.
And there were all kinds of other celebrations,
but I'm sure if you were watching TV, you probably would have seen them.
As far as things that got kind of messed up,
well, as the clock struck midnight across the United States,
some Americans hoping to phone their loved ones with a New Year's message
were instead greeted by an all-circuits busy message.
Yeah, phone companies experienced heavy calling traffic early Saturday
as the date rolled over, enough to force some callers to dial more than once.
Well, we told you it was going to be rough, folks,
and it's been a nightmare for everybody.
Some people had to dial more than once.
Some carriers anticipated other peaks in calling, such as in the late morning.
Oh, that's coming up real soon.
When people would normally wake up and call family.
Well, if you're waking up and turning on the radio before calling family,
you might want to reconsider because if you don't reconsider,
you might have to dial again, and that could be really heartbreaking.
The industry reported no failures related to the Y2K bug along their networks,
and federal officials expected the volume of traffic to eventually trail off.
Any congestion will drop off rapidly,
said the nation's Y2K chief, John Koskinen, in an early morning briefing on Saturday.
Bell Atlantic saw its call volume spike six to eight times that of a normal evening
in the first half hour right after midnight hit the East Coast.
There were some minor blockages, said the group president of network services, Bell Atlantic.
SBC Communications said call traffic after the rollover with one of its subsidiaries
was 50 percent higher than on a normal Monday, the heaviest calling day of the week.
Did you know that? Monday is the heaviest calling day of the week.
There was even more traffic on the wireless systems in places such as New York City,
and I can attest to this personally.
People got a fast, busy signal instead of a dial tone right after the Y2K turnover.
Sprint cellular callers in Miami had similar problems,
and long-distance traffic surged after the East Coast midnight with the nation's number one carrier,
AT&T, handling some three million calls in the first hour alone.
It's higher than normal call volume for a New Year's Eve, said spokesman John Heath.
So far, things have been running smoothly.
Earlier Friday, some U.S. callers had to dial more than once to get through to other countries
that had already begun the millennium festivities.
Again with the millennium festivities.
Sprint said while long-distance calls along its lines did increase after midnight,
they still only reached 65 percent of Sprint's network capacity.
Some phone companies also positioned workers at 911 call centers to monitor incoming calls
and see if the computer systems that were providing enhanced services,
such as pinpointing where a person was calling from.
I guess they left out the last part of that sentence,
but I guess to see if the computer systems there were actually working.
All the nation's 911 call centers have reported that they will be able to perform basic services
like answering calls and dispatching emergency response teams.
Major satellite providers reported no problems Friday with their ground-based facilities,
which contain control and tracking systems set to midnight Greenwich Mean Time or 7 p.m. Eastern Time.
That was our biggest hurdle.
We think we've come through with no problems, said Clay Morris of the Satellite Industry Association,
which represents major commercial satellite providers.
It was uneventful, said Ramu Portazu, chief information officer for Intelsat,
which owns and operates a global system of 17 satellites.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration also said all of its spacecraft and facilities were fully functional
as the space agency passed the GMT milestone.
We're green across the board, no problems at all, said Mark Hess,
a spokesman for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
Satellites don't rely on times or dates, and thus we're not expected to be impacted by the rollover,
but that didn't stop people from panicking anyway.
Here's something interesting.
A monitoring system failed at a Japanese nuclear power plant.
That's going to make you a little bit nervous.
A system that monitors radiation levels around the nuclear power plant in Japan was hit by problems
shortly after midnight on January 1st, according to local media reports.
The system measures radiation levels around Hakuriku Electric Power's Shiga nuclear power plant in Ishikawa
and transmits the data to several monitoring stations in the region.
Shortly after midnight, a monitoring station at the prefectural hall in Ishikawa
stopped showing data from the system, according to the reports.
Staff were dispatched to the plant but found radiation levels within the normal range.
The cause of the problem and whether it was Y2K-related or not had yet to be determined, said the reports,
and the problem was one of a few reported during the nighttime across Asia
as country after country entered the new year with no other Y2K-related problems,
or actually that wasn't necessarily one either.
And let's see what else we have here as we look around the World Wide Web.
Involving aviation, there were no Y2K aviation troubles reported.
After years of analysis, countless software adjustments, and months of tests and retests,
initial reports indicate the world aviation community has soared past potentially crippling Y2K-related problems.
As the critical midnight hour arrived in time zone after time zone,
and then when 12 a.m. January 1st was logged at the Greenwich Observatory in London,
air personnel reported nothing out of the ordinary,
either aboard aircraft aloft or in air traffic control centers.
Midnight GMT, also known as Universal Coordinated Time or Zulu Time,
was a critical moment for air travel because GMT is used as the basis for the world's air traffic control systems.
Left uncorrected, the Y2K bug could cause computers to misinterpret 2000 as 1900 and malfunction or crash.
While the New Year's Eve transition went smoothly,
experts point out that Y2K-related computer problems could crop up in coming days or weeks.
It is far too early to declare victory, said John Koskinen, the head of U.S. President Bill Clinton's Y2K Task Force.
We have a lot of systems and a lot of countries to go through
before we'll see what the actual impact has been of the transition.
Captain Claus Schraut of Germany's Lufthansa said from his airborne craft
that he and his crew were encountering nothing unusual at 7.35 p.m. Eastern Time,
which is 12.35 a.m. Greenwich Time.
Business as usual, really, over southern Algeria.
On his airliner, schedule a flight from Frankfurt, Germany to Windhut, Namibia.
In fact, hours before United States FAA Administrator Jane Garvey would report to Clinton from a commercial airliner
that U.S. airspace was without problems,
similar reports would be logged by aviation officials in India, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Japan, Taiwan, and China.
The president of government-owned China Eastern Airlines piloted a commercial flight from Shanghai to Beijing,
timing the run to have him airborne at 12 a.m. Saturday local time.
No difficulties were reported with that flight.
And that's pretty much it as far as things that were going on around the world with Y2K potentially related problems.
As you can see, most of it just didn't take place.
Well, we had a bit of an adventure of our own last night, a few of us here in the studio.
Actually, a bunch of us did different things.
But if you tune into my regular program, which is on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. off the hook,
we've been talking about Y2K issues for quite some time now, I believe over a year at least.
And one of the crazy things, one of the crazy promises I made was that I would go to Times Square on New Year's Eve.
And the main reason I did that was because one of the other people on the program, namely Isaac,
who happened to just come in, said that I would be crazy to do that,
and that he would be as far away from Times Square as possible.
And, well, Isaac, I decided to do it anyway.
And I put my life at great personal risk just to prove you wrong.
Oh, Isaac.
Yeah.
It had nothing to do with the fact that you wanted to be in Times Square for the celebration.
Well, you know, I wanted to be there, but...
Okay.
Well, it's glad to see that you're not a fine white ash.
Yeah.
Well, you know, here's the thing, all right?
We were all there, you know, two million of us or so, and it was really very nice, very peaceful, very harmonious.
Never felt more comfortable.
And I think...
I would imagine it would have been loud, though.
It was fairly loud, but, you know, no louder than playing music in a loud room.
You know, they had loudspeakers up on the sides of buildings, and they were playing all kinds of international tunes,
which I thought was very impressive.
Throughout the course of the entire day, there were all kinds of celebrations every hour on the hour,
sometimes on the half hour, too, because some countries have half-hour differences instead of hour differences.
And it was just very nicely done.
You had a real feeling that this was an international event, that it wasn't just an American event.
It was things happening all over the world, and you just saw celebration after celebration.
And I think what we also saw was what mankind is really all about, which is peaceful coexistence.
I mean, that's kind of the default setting.
But I think that people are generally pretty nice towards each other, pretty harmonious and peaceful.
And, of course, we have to stir things up occasionally and make people panic
and make people think that all these horrible things are going to happen.
And that way, when they don't happen, we say, OK, we defeated the evil people.
But, you know, I thought the interesting thing about this whole terrorism scare was that...
What was the actual scare? What was the actual threat?
It was all theoretical.
We were all saying, hey, they could do this.
They could drive some kind of car bomb into the middle of Times Square at the stroke of 12 midnight.
And, boy, that would really be bad if they did that, where they could drop a nuclear weapon in the middle of the city.
And, you know, none of this happened, because I don't think anybody really wanted to do that in the first place.
But, I don't know, I just had a lot of trouble following the train of thought that led us there.
And, of course, now that we've gotten over the point where nothing has happened,
we can proclaim victory against the terrorists who don't seem to exist as far as this particular threat went.
You know, it was kind of interesting to watch all that.
They existed, and the theory of terrorists...
Terrorists exist, OK, but did they exist in this case?
Well, they arrested four people down in Brooklyn.
Does that mean anything, though?
I mean, we deal with computer hackers all the time.
Correct.
We see people getting arrested and being accused of all kinds of phenomenal crimes that really have no basis in reality.
Some kid goes out and changes the name of a file on the White House website,
and all of a sudden he's responsible for national security issues and, you know, $250,000 in damage and all kinds of downtime.
When we know full well that all it was was renaming a file and it takes five seconds to fix.
So, you know, knowing that, I have to have a big shred of doubt here as to just what exactly the connection was with these people in Brooklyn.
Obviously, I don't have all the facts.
Obviously, there's a lot still that needs to be told.
But I think we should keep a very watchful eye on the whole situation to see just what it was these people are being accused of.
Granted.
I mean, are we talking about Algerians who are trying to use fake passports to get into the United States,
or are we talking about people with a very detailed plan as to what it is they're going to do once they get here?
You know, I think we should make sure that we hear the details and not just brush it away and say,
oh, yeah, terrorists, don't want to hear anything more about them.
Because, you know, it's funny, a lot of people are saying the same thing about computer hackers these days.
They hear computer hackers, okay, whatever they did, just lock them away, don't want to hear anything more about them.
Well, I'm not saying lock them away, but there was definitely a potential for some kind of event to take place at Times Square.
Yeah, but you see, here's the thing.
There's potential every day, every minute for something to happen.
Yes, but the fact that it was such an event, what's the word I'm looking for,
multiplied the potentiality of something bad happening.
That's what my former FBI director said.
I wouldn't want to be in Times Square for Y2K.
Well, maybe he had better plans.
Maybe he had something else to do.
He never elaborated on the statement.
Well, I chose a specific quote out of it.
The whole theory behind terrorism is to strike without warning when people aren't expecting it.
No, it's not.
So everybody.
No, no, no.
Well, you tell us what the point of terrorism is.
The point of terrorism is to gain as much attention as possible.
The idea is to be able to make your thoughts known and to express your views when other means are, at least in their mind, exhausted.
Yes, but you see, that works in movies.
But if you look in real life, you see that they don't actually strike at the most populated areas, the most populated time.
They don't hit the Super Bowl.
They don't hit the World Theater.
Yeah, because there's security involved.
Now, look.
I was in Times Square last night.
Okay.
And it was easy to plant anything you wanted to plant any place.
I mean, you know what they said?
They were taking away garbage cans to prevent all kinds of bombs.
You know what they did?
They put plastic bags over the garbage cans.
Okay, well, that's.
And they put signs on them saying, do not put trash here.
That was the protection right there.
Well, they were probably taking a hint from London when they remove all the rubbish.
Well, in any event, the point is, you know, if a terrorist wants to strike, he will strike.
He will strike.
And it doesn't matter if it's New Year's Eve, the Super Bowl, or just a regular day.
The fact of the matter is we don't see.
I'm not trying to belittle terrorism at all.
But we see so little of this, and we have so much fear about it that it controls our lives.
And by controlling our lives, we become controlled by the authorities.
We are willing to give away bits of our privacy, bits of our freedom, because it's all in the interest of protecting us.
Now, my point here is that what was it protecting us from?
We got all scared.
We thought something horrible was going to happen.
And was there even a credible threat?
Yes.
Well, I want to see the evidence.
So far, the evidence hasn't been presented.
There was a definite potentiality.
Yeah, of course there's always the potential, but that's not the same thing as a specific threat.
But it was heightened above, like, you know, yesterday or tomorrow.
The fact that there were 2 million people in one very small area, the eyes of the world were looking at this one point.
It would, you know, some kind of a show outside of the ABC, Disney-involved, you know, handing out of the balloons and Mylar wigs and things.
Did you get those, by the way?
Yes, I got everything.
You got everything?
Yeah, I got everything.
Okay, good.
You got to lock that up in a little cooler and bury it or something.
It's pretty amazing.
But the point is that it would be a draw to anyone potentially doing any number of things in order to get attention.
Well, no, obviously, but I'm just saying, was there a credible threat?
And by credible threat, I mean somebody specifically saying, hey, we're going to go over there and we're going to blow this place up.
If there was, you wouldn't be sitting across from me.
Okay, so all I'm saying is, were we just acting on theoretical scenarios or did we have something specific?
Well, what would you suggest we act on?
Just completely ignore mountains of history and evidence of the kind of activities people are involved in?
Are we going to take these kind of precautions every time there's a large number of people?
Because they're extraordinary.
Ask the Secret Service what kind of precautions they take when the president rolls down the BQA.
It's very similar, and it's because they are looking to protect these individuals.
Right.
Well, I think, as we've learned over the years, the Secret Service is not exactly having their foot planted in reality as far as what's security and what is not security.
Yes, but we've only lost a few presidents.
Well, anyway, we have a couple other people with us here.
We have Walter and we have Mackie from California.
Say hi, folks.
Hello.
Hiya.
Mackie is our webmaster, actually.
If you look at the 2600 website at any time, you're probably looking at some of his work or most of his work.
And, well, last night, the three of us, Isaac, where were you last night?
Because you swore you'd be as far away from Pasco as New York.
Yeah.
And the fact that you're here now tells me you couldn't have been that far away.
Well, as was discussed this past Tuesday, I was originally planning on being in Albuquerque for some of their New Year's celebrations.
And I was going to be in Socorro, New Mexico this morning when I'd arrive about ten minutes ago off of the highway.
But instead, I then changed my plans to heading upstate and spending it in Taconic State Park.
Uh-huh.
And due to some transportation issues, I eventually found myself out on Long Island.
You were out on Long Island.
Where I really did not want to be.
So, wait a minute.
At the stroke of midnight, you were right in the New York metropolitan area.
No, I was on Long Island.
That's the New York metropolitan area.
It's considered that.
Well, I was on Long Island.
You're in the same ladder as the rest of us.
Well, I was in a different area code.
In fact, I passed through two new area codes to get there.
Okay.
Well, we're not going to talk about area codes today.
We can do that on Tuesday.
But the three of us, Walter Mackey and I, had quite an adventure.
And this is living proof of how the security precautions we saw last night really were just a lot of smoke and mirrors.
Because we were able to get right into, and I'm not joking when I say this, the front row in front of everybody else in the whole damn place.
All one, two million, however many people were there.
We were just able to social engineer our way into the very front and be in places that we were not supposed to be.
And it was really pretty cool.
That happens all the time.
Should we tell our secrets here?
I think so.
Well, one of the things we did was we tried to get a hotel room in the area.
We figured, you know, why not do this in comfort?
If we're going to be in Times Square, why not have a place to stay?
But, you know, come on.
The day before New Year's Eve in the year 2000, you know, it's going to be really, really hard to find a place.
You know, there were so many places.
Because of the terrorist scare, there were so many cancellations that we were able to get a room just like that.
The Marriott is, you know, the one with the elevators.
That's the one that everybody seemed to want to get rooms at.
The one with the elevators?
Oh, the glass elevators.
The glass elevators that go up and down.
I was thinking, what Marriott doesn't have elevators?
Yeah, well, some of them don't.
But they were willing to let us in on Thursday night.
But they said, if you want to stay Friday night, you have to take our three-day package and pay $2,000.
I didn't realize until afterwards that it was a play on the year, you know, 2000.
Yeah.
So, if you stayed one night, you paid something on the order of $200 or even less, I think.
Right.
If you wanted to stay two nights, well, you had to stay three nights and pay.
Real work are these people.
So, we decided, okay, we're just going to spend the one night.
But since after midnight of that night, they started imposing these really, really strict controls in the area.
You needed to get a special gold card.
You know, you have these little card reader, card room keys.
Well, you had to get a special Millennium Gold one.
And that would allow, it would open your room, but it would also allow you to get into the area in case the police were closing streets.
And that's, you know, that's when the light bulb clicked.
If we just don't give that back the next day, then we still have that.
And it's very unlikely they're going to be out there with a card reader saying, hey, is this card still valid?
No, they're just going to look at the front of it and say, oh, okay, this person is supposed to be here.
Well, we went uptown last night at about 7, 730 or so.
And the streets were all being closed.
42nd Street was completely closed.
Oh, yeah.
And we just walked up to some cops at, I believe it was 8th Avenue and 42nd Street and said, hey, we're trying to get back to our hotel.
Here's the card.
They let us through.
They just let us on.
And 42nd Street was completely empty.
No cars, no people.
We were walking right down 42nd Street.
It was great.
Of course, we got stopped by cops about four more times.
Yeah.
Wanted to know just what we were doing there.
And every time we showed them the card, they just let us go right by.
It was great.
And so then we turned up right around the Times Square area.
And we saw this section where nobody was, really.
It was basically all the people came up to a certain point.
And then right in front of that, there was a smaller little pen.
And there was virtually nobody there.
You know, a few people.
Mostly people in wheelchairs.
So we figured that was the handicapped area.
Was it marked in blue?
No, no.
There was nothing like that.
But it was very sparsely populated.
But there were all kinds of people just kind of milling around.
And there was nobody watching the entrance.
So, you know, we just sort of fumbled on in.
And as the hours went by, it got more and more crowded.
And we later found out that that was the volunteer section.
And also it was a place for handicapped people.
And it was also the place for families of the cops.
Because they kept coming in in droves.
Apparently unofficially, probably.
Unofficially, yeah.
Letting people in.
But it was great.
Everybody was posing with the cops, you know, for pictures and things like that.
But it got more and more full as the hours went by.
And by that time, nobody could question anybody.
You know, and they completely closed it off by then.
But, yeah, we got right into the front.
And we could have walked around all different places, I'm sure, if we had really tried.
But I had a great time.
I'm glad everybody else did too.
I heard nothing but good things all around the world.
Everyone seems to have welcomed in the new year.
So what we'd like to do now is hear from people who are just waking up now.
To hear of the decimation of the planet Earth.
Due to all the Y2K bugs out there.
That's another thing, Isaac.
And all the Y2K predictions of doom here.
I believe I went on record many months ago saying that there was not going to be any kind of significant problem.
And, hey, look at this.
It's January 1st, 2000.
And nothing happened.
I don't know if I bet money.
I don't think I bet money.
I'm joking.
No elevators broken.
All right.
No electricity.
They were turned off 20 minutes before midnight and turned on 10 minutes after that.
Yeah, like that really did anything.
Oh, you know, by the way, when we got into the Marriott, you know, they gave us a little flashlight.
That's nice.
They gave us a little flashlight.
Just in case.
Yeah.
And those flyers, do we have those with us?
You have them, I think.
So you might want to search for those.
Yeah, we got these little flyers that they handed out at the front desk telling us not to worry.
Everything was under control.
There might be some Y2K issues.
But, hey, everything's going to be fine.
Right.
It's all precaution, you know.
You're preparing for something.
It's all smoke and mirrors.
It's not all smoke and mirrors.
I think it is.
Because if something were to happen and you had your little flashlight, you would be thankful for your little flashlight.
And what did it cost anyone?
It maybe cost them a buck apiece.
How many rooms do they have?
600?
$600.
Well, they certainly charged it back to the people, I'll tell you that.
Well, fine.
I paid for that flashlight.
Fine.
Yeah.
But it's a matter of being prepared.
And if nothing happens, hey, you have an extra flashlight.
You have a little memento.
And 60 years from now, you can tell your grandkids, well, I was at the Marriott and they gave me a flashlight.
We didn't keep the flashlight.
You threw away the flashlight?
No.
We figured that would be stealing if we took the flashlight.
Oh, come on.
It's like taking a lamp, you know.
It was sitting there.
No, we didn't take the flashlight.
Of course not.
Oh, all right.
No, we really didn't take the flashlight.
You should have.
I feel like an idiot now.
Yeah, I should have taken it.
Well, you said you paid for it, so why didn't you take it?
Well, of course I paid for it.
I pay for everything, you know, and that doesn't mean I take it, you know.
Wait a second.
You pay for something and you don't take it?
Well, yeah.
Like, for instance, I pay for the paving of the streets and I don't take the tar off the streets, you know.
No, but you use them at least.
Well, yeah, but that's not the same thing.
I've used the flashlight.
I turned it on and shown it around the room and got bored and put it down, you know, so that was the end of that.
You could have sold it on eBay for 400 bucks or something.
The Millennium Flashlight.
Well, it wasn't a commemorative flashlight.
Other places, I believe, had logos and things that said Y2K on them.
There you go.
These particular flashlights did not have any such markings.
No, they just said Marriott Hotel on them.
Well, they said Marriott Hotel on them.
Yeah.
They're yellow, too.
I guess they have flashlights for...
You could have written up a little certificate of authenticity.
Well, in any event, did we notice anything else weird happening in New York?
I mean, there were all kinds of strange...
Oh, anything weird happening in New York?
The security measures were really bizarre, kind of haphazardly applied.
We had heard on the news prior, in days in advance, that all garbage cans would be removed.
Right.
And so inside the subway, we saw the ones that you mentioned with the plastic bags on top of them.
Well, in Times Square, they were replaced by disposable cardboard trash cans, which were just as...
Completely defeat the purpose.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah.
And we'd also heard that the manhole covers would be welded over.
I couldn't really understand the logic behind that either.
Are they trying to keep people in or keep people out?
The only thing that that could really be for, as I concluded, would probably be blocking off escape routes.
If you had just done something bad, if you had an accomplice maybe lift up the manhole cover for you to make a quick escape.
Yeah.
Well, they're not that easy.
There was a little bit of a bead weld on some of them, but there didn't seem to be a lot of logic between which ones had been welded shut and which ones hadn't.
There just some were, some weren't.
And they also had, right by the Marriott, behind police barricades, were a row of about 10 porta-potties.
Yeah.
And hay fountains.
And that's something I noticed right away, the porta-potty.
I mean, that is the obvious weak link right there.
You leave a bunch of porta-potties out on a street corner.
I mean, who's going to want to inspect inside there, you know, especially deep down?
That's a perfect place to, you know, put something really, really bad.
Just dump some diesel fuel.
I'll put it in my terrorism notebook.
Yeah.
Well, I'm just saying, you know, a lot of the security measures were meant to make us feel better, but I don't think they really accomplished all that much because I don't think there was a threat to begin with.
How many times?
There was a threat.
There was a threat in our minds.
Again, you know, I don't think there was a significant threat from any entity.
But, again, if I'm wrong—
Any specific entity?
Yeah, of course.
That's what I mean by—
Well, if there was, they probably would have acted and they would probably have been taken care of because the security measures weren't in place.
But, well—
The thing is these—
We can argue this until we're blue in the face, but—
These things don't happen as a rule.
We shouldn't force ourselves into thinking that we're constantly in danger because then we'll just—we'll be living our lives in fear all the time, and that's no way to live.
At least I don't think so.
Would you prefer Nerf World?
Well, no, no.
That's not what I want either.
Give us a call, 212-209-2900.
We're on the air for another hour and 20 minutes talking about the brand new—I don't want to say brand new millennium.
Oh, century.
No, U.S.—
It's not a brand new century.
U.S. Naval Observatory gave - well, kind of assigned a designation to this year.
It's supposed to be the millennial.
What in the world does that mean?
The millennial year.
Oh, okay.
It's just something that all the millennium people can grasp onto.
My prediction is that next New Year's Eve they'll be saying, this is the real millennium.
Yeah, we've got to outdo ourselves.
Yeah, they're going to do it all over again.
Of course.
We do it all along.
All right, let's go to the phones.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Morning.
Oh, good morning.
I'm sorry.
We usually do an evening show.
Good morning.
Good morning.
How are you?
Just fine when I hear my family talking.
I wanted to say that I got ABC's first touchdown in the Pacific Ocean country, of course.
I was ignorant about, but nevertheless, it was a concentration of our pigmented cousins.
This was 5 a.m. on Friday?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or something.
I saw it, too.
Did you?
Yeah.
Wasn't it pure Hollywood?
Well, yeah, I think most of it was pure Hollywood everywhere you looked.
That was pure Hollywood.
All the other stations that were devoid of color, you didn't see the usual dance and
cutting up stuff and so forth.
Okay, cousins, we're together the rest of the year.
Bye-bye.
Thanks for calling.
Thank you, sweetie.
212-209-2900.
Good morning.
Hold on one.
See, I told you the phones would be there for us, and now they're calling us.
Good morning.
You're on the air.
Hey, hello.
How are you?
Hi.
I'm surprised to hear that some people who are involved in computer hacking and what
you guys call social engineering and I would call playing a con were played by this terrorism
frenzy.
I mean, it was so obvious that they were trying to play people.
And like I guess one of you guys said, the whole thing behind this, the whole thrust
behind this is that people are like driven to a frenzy and scared into giving up their
rights.
And it's the same as kind of the drug frenzy, which there actually is some basis to the
drug problem, but that problem is magnified many times to cloud people's minds over and
make them agree to things that otherwise they would never agree to.
And this whole terrorism thing around Y2K was a total con.
I mean, it's so obvious.
I agree with you.
And I think that this morning as we all wake up, we're saying to ourselves, we won.
We defeated the terrorists.
Isn't America great?
And we didn't do anything.
There was no terrorist threat to worry about.
That's how I feel because I don't see any evidence of one.
And watch the laws and the police activity and everything that's going to come down and
say, and now to ensure in the future we defeat the terrorist threat, we'll take these measures
and it'll be measures that are taking away your rights.
So watch for it.
That's what we have to watch out for.
Take it easy.
Thanks for calling.
You know, I never in my life saw so many cops as I did for the last day or so.
I mean, entire subway stations with nobody but cops in them, entire blocks.
I mean, you know, I didn't see any of them misbehaving.
I thought they were all pretty nice.
Taking pictures.
Taking pictures.
With their FunSaver cameras.
Yeah, everything seemed pretty cool and happy, but boy, it was a show of force like nothing
I ever saw before in my life.
That was the intent.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, think of it in more than one perspective.
Think of it in more than one way as, you know, just protecting us from these evil terrorists,
you know.
Think of it as a stepping stone towards being used to that kind of thing.
No, it's not supposed to be about that.
But, yes, we have to be cautious of just that eventuality.
Well, I think it needs to be emphasized that I don't think, they didn't really protect
against anything.
Anyone could have gotten into that area and done anything they wanted.
I think the cops were there to contain the crowd and clean up afterwards if anything
did happen.
I don't think they clean up.
That's the sanitation department.
Yeah, those guys deserve a round of applause because they do really well every year.
The sanitation department.
Yeah.
They park these big orange trucks on every single street filled with sand.
That's to prevent the truck bombs from coming through.
I mean, it's really something that they actually are thinking along these lines, that truck
bombs are going to plow through and set themselves off.
They're all preventative measures.
But how many times has something like that happened in this country?
How many times?
Don't use that as an excuse.
Well, I'm just saying.
How many times does it happen around the world?
New York is not immediately immune from terrorism simply because we're New York.
That's true.
But I'm saying, you know, it has not happened.
We don't have...
It hasn't happened because we've taken these precautions and we've...
See, that's the mistake.
I don't think it hasn't happened because we've taken these precautions.
As I've said, these kind of things could happen at any point.
We could have stuck bombs in Bell Atlantic pay phones and the whole thing could have
blown up and that would have been a horrible thing.
They didn't take away those things.
Anybody can do these things.
It could happen at any time.
The fact that it does not happen is not because we take these great precautions and have millions
of cops out on the street.
It's because these things tend not to happen.
They're very rare.
They're very rare?
Yeah, they're very rare.
I'd like you to mention that to somebody from Jerusalem or perhaps Northern Ireland
or one of the people who was on the plane over in...
Where was that?
Pakistan?
Well, they were...
I am talking about in this country.
So these things are pretty rare in this country.
It's not because we look out for them.
The government was using some of the same arguments, some of the same logic
in addressing hackers in the previous week saying,
oh, well, we expect there to be lots of hackers attacking servers.
And they were just kind of, oh, yeah, they'll be attacking internet sites
and very vague on the specifics.
And the only specifics that did come out of it was that they were thinking about websites.
So some Department of Defense were taking down their web servers over the holidays.
And by the same token, they would be saying that they were victorious against the hackers.
Exactly, and it's the same thing they're doing with the terrorists.
Oh, well, we stopped the terrorists.
Well, they didn't really establish that there was a threat from hackers.
If they were just thinking about web page hacks,
which are by and large pretty relatively harmless compared to blowing things up,
there's better odds that you would have more web page hacks on, say, Christmas
when there's a bunch of teenagers home really bored and nothing better to do
than on New Year's where they're all out partying and having a good time.
There was this paranoia propaganda also about hackers planning to get together
and attack all the websites and bring things down on New Year's Eve.
And being responsible for Y2K, the whole problem.
Yeah, almost as if it's our fault that Y2K happened in the first place.
Or explicitly saying that.
I know we've gotten lots of e-mail from people thinking hackers, by and large,
were solely responsible for the Y2K bug, like it's some sort of virus
which wouldn't even fall underneath the category of a hacker anyway.
Let's go back to the phones.
Good evening.
I keep doing this.
Good morning.
You're on the air.
Good morning.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
You know, I constantly get a little annoyed when I hear people bandy about things
to the effect that, well, these things are not rare.
And when you say that, I'd really like you to back that up.
I'd refer you to a reference source by, I think the author's name is Glassner,
called Culture of Fear.
It's nonfiction.
It's not paranoia or anything like this.
It's well-documented statistics in which the author uses actual information
from government and other sources.
He talks about the actual statistical probability of things like airplane crashes
and other, as Emanuel says, unlikely and very unprobable occurrences.
And for someone to say, well, look at Israel or look at some other country
and use that as an example here is really not appropriate, number one.
Number two, I asked a question, and I'd really like somebody to address this.
What is it that is being done in this country's name that they're assuming
so many people are angry at us that they want to come here and do something?
Well, I can think of quite a few reasons myself.
I mean, that's certainly a sarcastic and rhetorical type of an inquiry.
But, you know, to say that, well, these things are likely and probable
is just not true on any account.
It just isn't.
All right.
For a normal day, I would agree with you.
These are rare events.
They shouldn't be worried about.
But for an event like the New Year's Eve in Times Square,
when you have the eyes of the world pointed at this one particular area, it ups the ante.
Okay.
But let's, I mean, you guys are pretty bright, and the audience is pretty bright.
Let's look at this mathematically.
Look at all the places in the world where these events are happening.
Okay.
Different times, different places, millions of people.
Okay.
And you're going to single out, you know, this spot, this spot, this spot.
Yes, I mean, it's within the realm of probability.
But from just a statistical point of view, you know, I mean, we're talking about lottery here.
We're talking about lottery odds.
And I'm not saying that these things should be dismissed.
But I think that the argument that the city is using, that, oh, okay, these things are likely to happen,
and they're admitting that they're not likely to happen.
Well, it's not a matter that they're likely to happen.
It's not a matter that they're likely to happen, but there is a very big potential,
and with the number of people there, there is a fairly large threat.
If you have everybody should know.
I mean, we agree that there wasn't a large threat.
No one, in fact, said that there was any threat.
All right.
Well, if you want to play math games, I mean, we can take the entire surface area of the Earth
and divide out the number, you know, the poundage of potential bomb explosions of the entire planet.
And, you know, you divide it out, and you have 1 cubic centimeter per, you know, square mile or square 10 kilometers.
Hectare or whatever.
Yeah, whatever.
There are definite hot spots where people would be watching.
I mean, if you were to set off a firecracker in the middle of, you know, the Yucatan,
the densest rainforest, it's not going to make much of a difference.
But if you're trying to make a point, you're going to go to some place that people are watching.
For instance, Sydney, London, New York, Washington, one of these capitals.
And just to brush it off and say that, well, you know, it's not going to happen
because the cumulative explosive amount allotment for that particular area, which is only, say, 20 miles large,
is why only, you know, 10 grams worth of plastic.
But do you think the reason nothing happened in any of these cities, any place,
is simply because of the police presence there?
No, I don't.
I certainly don't believe that.
I don't believe that at all.
But I, you know, the precautions being, to have the precautions was responsible in my view.
Okay, but the question, I think, is not whether or not to take the precautions,
but were the precautions proportionate to the risk?
And that's really the question.
That's another story.
Okay, well, there's a question.
I would tend, well, honestly, I am not a proper analyst for this kind of thing.
You also weren't in New York City during all this, so you didn't actually see all the police presence.
In fact, I'd like to hear from people who were in the city
who might be able to tell us some more things that maybe we missed that happened.
Well, let's, I'd like to end on this.
We have all of these precautions now that have been set up.
For instance, those cameras in Times Square.
I mean, the resolution on those things is pretty damn good,
and I don't have to tell you guys about the technical abilities of those cameras.
What happens to them now?
Thank you.
That's exactly what I was thinking.
Are those cameras coming down?
They ought to.
I would say that, you know, if we take security measures for individual events like these,
I have absolutely no problem, but to use it as an excuse to, you know,
turn in all of these, you know, round-the-clock security and surveillance devices?
No way.
But you know that's what happens.
I do not support that, like in London right now.
I mean, the voices do not go, those cameras are going to be up there,
and they're going to be, I mean, you won't be able to take a step to go to Modell's before somebody.
And they've already proven their value.
They saved two million lives.
Well, that's the kind of thing that we can't accept as an excuse to leave it up there.
Well, let's keep an eye on those cameras and see just what the situation is.
Thanks for the call.
Okay. Happy to hear you guys.
And, you know, I was thinking to the extent that the purpose of an act of terrorism is to instill terror in the masses.
It's not to instill terror.
How do you know what terror is stand for so well?
It's not to instill terror.
I think that would definitely be.
Get the terrorist handbook. We'll look this up.
That would definitely be one of the goals.
If the people are living in constant fear, that does a great deal to undermine terrorism.
This is where I think that.
And I think to that end, the government was, the U.S. government was responsible for most of the terror.
Going in yesterday evening, I had a great deal of anticipation for what was going to happen,
but a little bit of fear because I was, you know, I read the reports, my family was concerned,
and I was wondering, well, gee, is something going to blow up?
Is there going to be a stampede?
But once we actually got there and I looked around, I really realized, well,
it's not all that different than any other time security-wise.
You know, if anything, the welding of manholes and the security,
and I use that term loosely, was really a false sense of security.
And it might have been better off if they were just a little bit more honest with, well, you know, it could happen, but.
I think it's true to say that it was mostly crowd control.
And I had some problems with the way the crowd was controlled as far as being funneled down narrow streets and things like that.
I think that caused a few more problems than it should have.
But I also think that the role of terrorists to cause terror, to make people afraid,
and I do think that's a major part of it if it's not the only part of it.
I think it coincides with the role of many governments to make people afraid so that they will listen and do what they're told.
We don't have communists anymore to be afraid of.
All right, let's make some more phone calls.
They're all over the place.
Those dang grads, you know, got to get rid of them.
212-209-2900 is taking another phone call.
Good morning, you're on the air.
Yeah, good morning.
Hello.
Hello, happy New Year.
Good morning, happy New Year.
You know, I was listening to the news this morning, one of the stations saying, you know,
Giuliani's thanking American people and the terrorists for behaving themselves.
I thought that's just an insult to my intelligence.
Yes, yes.
And I thought if it was any intelligence in the people, they would have boycotted last night the Giuliani party.
Well, now, let's not give him credit for the party, okay?
It wasn't his party.
It was a party for 2 million people in the middle of New York City.
And I think they proved exactly how, what kind of people they are in the first place.
I agree.
There was absolutely nothing that happened, and I didn't expect anything to happen.
And for the person with you who said that, gave an example for Ireland and Israel, because they have more bombs, they are in civil war.
Yes.
So, you know, it's like really, it's, we buy into this to say that, well, because they've been prepared, that's why this didn't happen.
I'd just like to ask them how many did they caught if they'd been prepared, if they have cops all over and trucks and all these things.
How many did they catch with bombs?
Well, the FBI picked up four people down in Brooklyn.
Excuse me.
I mean, you know, how do you know that even they had these things?
I mean, when they talk about, oh, they catch this and they catch that, we don't even know if that's true.
Well, we haven't heard in much, much detail as far as these things going.
I really think we should press to hear what exactly these people were allegedly planning and what evidence there was.
You know, again, I'd like to say this for the people, for the listener, that the media is really not on the people's side.
It's not on the true information side.
The media, the money, the corporation works together.
So everything we hear, it's not necessarily true.
I'd like to think like that.
I'd like to doubt every, you know, TV news.
Anyway, have a happy end.
Stay alert, please.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for calling.
I think that's something that we all should do is definitely stay alert.
It's the best kind of listeners, one who questions everything that is said to them.
Right.
And says, well, prove it to me.
Or, well, not necessarily prove it to me because this is a broadcast media and you can yell at your television all day long and they're not going to reply.
You can't do that with a cop, though, when the cop's questioning you in the street.
Like what's happened to me about 50 times yesterday.
Oh, then they say, you know, you go over there.
You can't really say, well, why should I go over there?
You know, you have to kind of just go over there.
You can, but you end up kind of in bad shape if you do.
Yes, you do.
It was very frustrating, I must say, navigating some of those barricades in a, well, I guess it's warm for you guys, cold for me.
Uh-huh.
And Mackie's from California.
In fact, this is his first trip to New York, so quite a day you picked to come out.
We're going to be back in just a moment.
This is Emanuel Goldstein and friends filling in for David Rothenberger.
We'll be back next week.
We're talking about the brand-new year of 2000.
Not a new millennium, but a brand-new year with a really cool number.
And all the Y2K things that didn't happen, all the terrorist things that didn't happen.
Who knows?
Maybe something will happen, but we'll just have to stay tuned and find out.
We'll be taking more phone calls in just a couple of minutes.
Stay tuned.
Stay tuned.
Back in 1899 when everybody sang Auld Lang Syne
A hundred years took a long, long time for every boy and girl
And now there's only one thing that I'd like to know
Where did the 20th century go?
I swear it was here just a minute ago
All over this world
And now the 20th century is almost over
Almost over, almost over
The 20th century is almost over
All over this world
All over this world
All over this world
The 20th century is almost over
All over this world
Does anyone remember the Great Depression?
I read all about it in true confession
I'm sorry I was late for the recording session
But somebody put me on hold
Has anybody seen my linoleum floors?
Petroleum jelly and two world wars
They've got stuck in the revolving doors
All over this world
And now the 20th century is almost over
Almost over, almost over
The 20th century is almost over
The 20th century is almost over
All over this world
The winter's getting colder, summer's getting hotter
Wishing wells, wishing for another drop of water
And Mother Earth's blushing cause somebody caught her
Making love to the man in the moon
Tell me how you gonna keep him down on the farm
Now that outer space has lost its charm
Somebody set off the burglar alarm
And not a moment too soon
The 20th century is almost over
Almost over, almost over
The 20th century is almost over
All over this world
All over this world
All over this world
The 20th century is almost over
All over this world
Old Father Time has got his toes a-tappin'
Standin' in the window
Grumblin' and a-rappin'
Everybody's waitin' for somethin' to happen
Tell me if it happens to you
The Judgment Day is getting nearer
There it is in the rearview mirror
If you duck down I could see a little clearer
All over this world
And now the 20th century is almost over
Almost over
Almost over
The 20th century is almost over
All over this world
All over this world
All over this world
The 20th century is almost over
All over this world
Now the 20th century is almost over
Almost over
Almost over
The 20th century is almost over
All over this world
All over this world, all over this world
The 20th century is almost over
All over this world
You know, probably the thing I like best about that song is that it's true now
The first day of 2000, the 20th century is almost over, but it's not over yet
We're in the last year of it
That song comes to us from Steve Goodman from an album back in 1977
You know, Pete Seeger was playing on that as well
And a bunch of other people
An album called Say It In Private
One of my favorite songs back when it came out and today and probably well into the future
We're talking about the dawn of the year 2000, which took place just about 10 hours ago
Here
Right here in New York, yeah
Well, I guess it's taking place everywhere by now, right?
The whole planet is now 2000
And I have not heard any major disruptions from Y2K
I haven't checked my computer yet, so I don't know if anything weird's going on with that
You haven't checked your computer?
Well, how could I check my computer?
I'm wandering around the streets of New York
You didn't go home?
Well, no, of course not
I've been up
In case I sound a little out of it, I've been up since yesterday morning
Well, I took an express Long Island Railroad train here
Really?
Yeah
I ran in all out of breath, like 30 seconds before we went on the air
Well, it happens
But no, we haven't been to sleep for a while
You can't sleep
People are just wandering around the streets of New York
Great carnival atmosphere
It's what New York is really all about
People getting together, hugging total strangers
Saying Happy New Year, just walking down the street
That's what it's all about
That's the true spirit of humanity
That's what I mean when I say people are inherently good
Most of them are not belligerent
Yeah
I mean, we're New Yorkers
We have this reputation for being rude and nasty
Oh, come on
And we're not
It's an exterior thing that we do
So we don't have to be as friendly as other people
Who are really hiding their true natures
But if you're interested in coming to New York
And having somebody be rude and nasty to you
You just come up to me and I can do that
That's right
Or talk to a cop
Well, yeah
Actually, some of them we met
They were a little bit gruff, I must say
They're on overtime
They're working three shifts
I was talking to a guy last night
Who was coming back on the train
And he's working three shifts
What does that mean, working three shifts?
He got two hours worth of sleep
He got two hours?
Now, how good a cop can he be?
Not a very good cop
Not a very good cop
But when, you know, the people of New York
When you are called in to do this kind of overtime
I mean, you can turn it down
Or you can take it
No, I think everybody had to take it
That's how it was explained to me
Every single cop had to be on duty last night
That's your answer
And they had a lot of cops working double shifts
Things are often very unfair for them
I know that
And to work with an hour or two of sleep
I mean, I've had no sleep
But I'm not holding a gun here at the station
And I don't hold life and death situations in my hand
But when you're making those kind of decisions
You really should get a good night's sleep
I suppose they made up for it in mass numbers
One cop at his 20th of his full operating capacity
Will just have 20 more cops
Well, that might have worked out mathematically
Did you see the race?
The race?
The race around Central Park with the costumes and everything?
How could I see a race around Central Park
When I'm standing in Times Square?
Well, I thought you said you were wandering around the city
I thought you wandered north
Well, we wandered at 7 o'clock into Times Square
And didn't wander out of there until about 12.30
Okay, well, the race was supposed to start at midnight
I did see the fireworks coming out of the Cup O' Noodle soup thing
That was pretty scary
We didn't want to get locked out of our pen
We weren't expecting that
We weren't expecting fireworks
We weren't expecting the fireworks to come
Come catapulting out of skyscrapers above us
You never had a Cup O' Noodle?
But I was anticipating explosions
So it was a little disconcerting
Yeah, we assumed they were fireworks, too
You know, we were so worked up
We didn't know what was coming out of those buildings
What was heading down towards us
Toilet paper, confetti
But there was no panic or undue alarm from people
Everyone seemed really calm, cool, collected and friendly
And that's how I'd like to remember this tour
It was a really good vibe there
Definitely, it was like Woodstock
It was like the real Woodstock
You know, not like that crap they had last summer
With the $8 bottle of water thing
You know, that's why people set the whole thing on fire
Because they were fed up with that
Well, that's no excuse
That's no excuse
But I don't blame them anyway
Because, I mean, come on already
You know, they were confiscating bottles of water
From people walking into the place
Confiscating bottles of water
You have to buy our $8
I mean, come on
And what should have happened
Is everyone should have said
You know what, forget this
Well, they kind of wandered all the way up there
Refund my ticket, I'm going home
This is pointless
Yeah, but they don't just refund your ticket
Because you don't like them
That's not how it works
Have you ever been to a concert
You can't just
They don't like the guy's tone when he's talking to you
Or you don't like the rules
You can't just get your money back
You already bought the ticket
That's personally fine
But if you have like 200 or 300 people
All demanding their ticket prices back
And getting on the news
That's when the riot starts
That's not when the riot starts
That's when you go down to Ticketmaster
And say we want our $40 back
And you get on the news
And you do that kind of thing
And in all fairness
The riots did, you know
It was at the end of the week
When everybody was at the end of their rope
And really kind of fed up
And just wanted, probably
Wanted to have one last party
It's no excuse
You don't go burning tractor trailers
Because, you know, you're leaving
And you think it's a bad thing to do
You smash the Starbucks
You don't burn the tractor trailers
You can't really defend the violence
And I think that's kind of a shoddy justification
If you throw a stone in the city
You're likely to hit a Starbucks
Do you know that?
I saw that statistic somewhere
The $10 burritos probably played a role
And that's what they blamed a lot of it on
It's probably the last straw
But it's probably not completely honest
To blame it entirely on that
212-209-2900 is our phone number
We're taking phone calls from people
As we wake up on this New Year's Day
How was your New Year's?
Was it everything you expected?
Any Y2K issues with you?
Any problems adjusting to the year 2000?
We can never say 19 anything again
We can't say it's 19
That's going to be kind of hard
We've got to say it's 2020-01
Or whatever it is we're going to be saying in the future
It's going to be weird
I've got to start crossing lines
Through the 19s on my checks
The word ought will make a comeback
Ought?
O-U-G-H
A-U-G-H-T
I like it
I like it
Did anybody see the New York Times today?
It's right here somewhere
No, but my mother is desperately looking for copies
So she can seal them in nitrogen vacuum packs
Okay, yeah
The New York Times has the most incredible headline today
It's just the date
1-1-00
That's not Y2K compliant!
Well, yeah, it is
00?
Is that 1900?
Is it 2000?
It's making the same damn mistake all over again
Humans can interpret it
It's not machine-readable
The point is
The point is that
It's bigger than any typeface I've ever seen in the New York Times
There's more white space there
I mean, this is an issue you've really got to pick up
It's not a bigger font, it's just white space
Yeah
It's something that
I don't know, people need to see
Because I've never seen a copy of the New York Times like this
And it just has the date, nothing else, just the date
It's a collector's item
I guess so, but
The New York Times always has headlines set up in a certain way
And it's
It is
Very odd to see that much white space
Yeah
On the Times
And they also
I think they had an article yesterday about what to call the new
The new decade
Oughts, noughts
Uh-ohs
Well, we're still trying to figure out what we're going to
You know, abbreviate WWW for
Yeah
Did we ever finally figure that one out on the show?
I just like saying W
You know
In fact, I like even replacing it with W
I mean, we've got to get over this 3W thing at some point
Yeah
But that's another topic
212-209-2900
Good morning, you're on the air
Hi, how are you doing?
Good, how are you?
Good, let me turn this down
Uh, Michael Clare from the Institute for Policy Studies
Has a great line about domestic terrorism
He says
Domestic terrorists don't operate in the United States
Because they can't get any attention amid all the random violence
Beautiful, beautiful, yes
Except for our own homegrown insane terrorists
Like the Midwesterners who have been so active in the militias
Mm-hmm
Yeah, and people going to high schools
And, you know, extracting justice in their own way
I don't really see any difference between, you know
The things that happen in places like Columbine and terrorists
I mean, you have the same mindlessness behind it
So what if their cause is, you know
To prove that the jocks suck or something like that
Or whether it's, you know
Whether it's a Palestinian issue or an Irish issue
Or a jock issue
It's still terrorism to a degree
Absolutely
I have a sort of a millennial computer question
I wonder if I might ask you
What's that?
I just got one of the optical mice
You know, the Microsoft things with the red light in them
Yeah
And at the very end of the book it says
Any messing around with the settings on this
That is outside of parameters specified in this book
May result in hazardous radiation exposure
Ooh
What in God's name are they talking about?
Do they really say messing around?
Do you want me to read you what it actually says?
Yeah, I'd like to hear the exact phrasing of this
This could be important
Let me see if I can find the documentation
Which I always keep at the absolute top of my, you know, pile
Oh, yeah
That's a good way to really get people not to touch things
You know, if there's radiation
Don't crack it open and shine it in your eye
I think that's probably what it comes down to
No user serviceable parts inside
Yes
Use of any settings not specified in this manual
May result in hazardous radiation exposure
It's probably, it probably has a laser diode inside of it
And if you
Class 1 LED it says
Just an LED?
Yeah
Alright, people call me paranoid
But that's a little over the edge
If it were a laser diode
You could, if you had it directly shine in your eye perhaps
If you had the powers tuned up
It might be a problem
So they're not talking about ionizing radiation, right?
It's not ionizing radiation, no
At most I could imagine you'd have some retinal damage from a laser
I see
Okay
I think it's an interesting thing to say
I'll send you, I'll email you the entire text
It's very interesting
Yeah, I'd like to see that
And if anybody wants to email us
Of course they can email us at our
Normal radio show's email address
Which is oth at 2600.com
Oth of course standing for off the hook
We usually come your way every Tuesday night at 8pm
And today we're filling in for David Rothenberg
From 9 o'clock this morning till 11
Who will be back next week
And we're taking your phone calls
Talking about the dawning of a new age
The year 2000
Good morning, you're on the air
Hello
Hi, how are you?
Good, thank you
What's on your mind?
Well what's on my mind
Well what's on my mind
One thing is I think it's pretty neat
That people are going from 1 to 2
Like we're through all the 19 to 1200s
The 1300s, 1400s
And that is a big thing to go to the 2
Yeah, you're right
You're right, a lot has happened in the 1
A heck of a lot
Sure
Wow, I didn't think of it that way before
But yeah, I mean that's a big change
And also we're going from
Most people were born that are alive right now
In the 1900s
So we're going out of that too
So it's like a whole new century
Where people were all born in the 1900s
And nobody has ever written anything but 19
Except for those few people
Who were around in the 1800s
And that's, you know
We're all making this change together
Except for of course
Those people who don't use our calendar
So it's quite a step
I really got the sense of that
Standing in Times Square
That this was a world event
It wasn't just a New York event
It wasn't just a United States event
And I really got to give credit to the people
Who put on the show in Times Square
They didn't play, you know
The crappy music you would expect to hear
On network TV or something
Ushering in something like this
You heard music from different countries
From Africa, from Asia, from South America
As the hours ticked by
And I really think that they brought all that home
And mixed it up
Even when they played the United States music
It was done well
That's great, that's good to hear
Yeah, and people really seemed to react to it as well
There was all kinds of dancing and enthusiasm
Why don't we hear this music more often?
Because it definitely evokes emotion from people
It evokes all kinds of things
It's really good
It makes you realize
What a world community we all are
Yeah, I was home listening to Moxie Frugis
Which is an environmental political band
And they're just wonderful
I also wanted to say one more thing
Yes
And I hope I don't blank out
This is the first time I'm on the air
My New Year's resolution is
Call BAI if you want to
Because I've never been on the air
I've been listening for years
Great, welcome to the airwaves
Good to hear from you
Thank you
Oh, I know, the other thing
Speaking about the prevention things
For the bombings
And especially in New York City
I do think it's kind of like preventative medicine
Like if you take vitamin C
During the year or whatever
You take a certain amount
Or you don't need it
But when like the fall season comes around
It's really good to take extra
I've found that even if I don't take C
A lot of the...
If I take it in the fall
I don't get a cold
And everyone else is getting sick
Around September, October
And it's kind of like preventative
To like, well, do those manhole covers
And take those measures
Because it is...
The anti has been upped up
And that's the time when people get sick
In the fall
And this is a time when
Yes, something could happen
So why not take those measures?
That's when the police force
Really does what it's supposed to do
I think
And that's why the system was put in place
So we could protect each other
Well, I mean, do you really think
The anti has been upped?
I do
Because we have all these people there
Obviously, having all these people
Means that if something happens
It's all the worst
But what has changed in the world community
To make us more of a target now
Than, say, a year ago?
I think just the fact that
It is such a big time of the year
That it is such a world event
And people who might be
Not thinking so well
About the United States
Which is the biggest power in the world
As far as greed
And taking money from smaller countries
And exploitation and sweatshops
That it's a time that they might target here
More than other times
Interesting the way you phrase that
Because I was thinking about this before
That maybe our reaction to this
Is kind of just a feeling of guilt
You know, that, hey, all these people
Are really mad at us
And if they're going to strike
They're going to strike now
You know?
That could be
I mean, I don't think, you know
Canada is a country somewhat similar to us
I don't think they were nearly as worried
With their celebrations
Because they don't have so many people
That don't like them
Because they don't mess around
With other lands nearly as much as we do
Yeah, I agree
All right, hey, thanks for the call
Okay, thank you
Happy New Year
Yeah, bloody Canadians
And, you know, I find it easier to believe
Or more probable
That there would be an attack
Being planned against Seattle
Rather than Times Square
Simply because it was less expected
And it was so much focus of
Oh, yeah, everyone's looking at Times Square
That's where it's going to be
I guess the mayor of Seattle
Agreed with you on that
Because he canceled the celebration
It negated the need to attack Times Square
That's a big, that's actually a big thing
And I wish I had the Giuliani quote
But Giuliani had made a comment
As soon as, well, shortly after
The mayor of Seattle canceled their plans
Because of the threat of terrorism
And Giuliani had basically said
Well, I paraphrase him
That, well, we're not going to cancel ours
Because if we were to
It would just be handing it directly over
To the terrorists
Without them having to do anything
Whoever they may be
Whoever they may be
We would be so afraid
To actually go out
And have a celebration like this
That they would have succeeded
Without even having to try
I would agree
I would agree with that statement completely
I agree with it somewhat
But I would agree with it completely
If there was a credible threat
From a specific terrorist organization
Saying we're going to do this to you on this day
Then, yes, we can say
That we would be bowing into terrorism
But without a threat, how can you say that?
No, the threat exists without
A threat exists in our minds, yes
But does the threat exist?
Did you hear somebody claim
Or basically warn ahead of time
That they were going to bomb the World Trade Center?
No
But after the fact
Everybody and their brother terrorist group
Decided to claim responsibility
For the World Trade Center bombing
Why?
Because their name would get in the paper
It's a matter of attention
But they didn't actually want to bomb the World Trade Center
No, they didn't want to
They just wanted the attention
Right
So are there that many people out there
That really want to do something horrible?
I don't think there are that many people that do
There are some
There aren't
But they have the ability
To wreak some major havoc
Look, I'm not saying that we should
Was there a credible threat made?
Not was there a credible threat in our eyes
Was a threat made?
We're getting hazy on the definition of threat here
There is always a threat
Of something bad happening
Does that mean we always have to have
All these police on the street?
No
Why not?
Are the people walking around Times Square today
Any less important than the people yesterday?
Because the threat is so minimal
The gentleman even said
The caller previously
I agreed with him
He thought that I might not
But I agreed with him
That it is very unlikely
That you will be in a building
In which there is a terrorist activity
But there are some places
To diverge from that a little
There are some places
And sometimes
When the ante is upped
Where there is definite attention
That can be gotten
By committing an act
At this particular place
Or at this particular time
And that's where you have to be cautious
Don't, by no means
Should you be walking around the streets
With looking over your shoulder
And expecting some guy
To jump out of a dark corner
And stab you
If you live like that
You drive yourself absolutely nuts
But isn't that to a degree
How we're living with this?
Well, that's not what should be happening
You just have to be aware
At specific places
At specific times
That there is a potential
And you have to prepare for that
If you don't
You can be caught with your pants down
And I'm pretty sure
That if something were to have happened
At Times Square last night
The ramifications would be far worse
Than if we had just put up some cameras
And now we have to demand
That the cameras are taken down
Well, it was a lot more
Than just cameras
But Mackey, you have a point
Well, yeah, I mean
I think we could, you know
Argue like this all day
We could
But what it really comes down to
Is addressing possible
Ulterior motives in government
I think that's something
We could probably all agree on
Is that it needs to be analyzed
Regardless of the degree of threat
And, you know, clearly
It would present a more appealing target
On New Year's than on, you know
Any regular day
I think what we really just
All need to be vigilant
As to what's perhaps being slipped by
How this is being used
By those in power
Well, whenever a new form of technology
Is introduced
It is never withdrawn
It is never withdrawn
So when you have something
That is introduced to combat terrorism
Within five years
It'll be there all the time
Or communists
That's almost guaranteed
That's what we have to be aware of
And that's what we have to avoid
And be active about stopping
For little incidences like this
Or little occurrences like this
And in specific places
Say a federal building
I agree that security measures
Should be taken
But so far as every day
With those cameras
Looking down at Times Square
It's inexcusable
But you have to take into account
The effects of fear
That the government hype creates
And how that can be used later
To usher in other legislation
And all those things
And it all plays in together
It's more than just the legislation
It's more than just
The feeling against us
It's the whole mood of the country
Which has changed
Over the past couple of decades
It has
You have now
Barriers every place
Outside the White House
Outside every federal building
Downtown
Outside the federal building
There's permanently
A big sand truck parked there
To prevent truck bombs
From coming through
Do we really want to be
This kind of society
That's a bit much
Where we have to constantly
Barricade our government
From its people?
No
That's not the way it should be
Not allowed to take pictures
Remember the hassle
We went through
With the medic demonstrations?
I was one of the people hassled
We can't take pictures
Of the federal building
In our own city
And I argued with
The security officer
Saying why can't I take a picture?
We have photons
Coming from the sun
And they're bouncing off the ground
And they're entering my camera
You can sit in any building
And take a picture anyway
But that's beside the point
The thing is
We're developing this mentality
That certain things
Just have to be shielded
And I think
That price is too high
Yes
Yeah, there's a risk
There's a risk
Some maniac is going to
Drive a sanitation truck
Filled with fertilizer
And blow up a building
Yeah
But aren't we giving
The terrorist
Or whoever it is
Exactly what they want
When we
Completely barricade
Buildings permanently?
You're correct
We as a people
Have to be
Very aware of
The fact that
The government
Is going to try
And get away with
Things like this
And use it as an excuse
Where there is
Perhaps a grain
Of real preventative
Measures to be taken
In specific instances
We can't let them
Get away with that
And implement it
As a full policy
Measure everywhere
The thing is
You may ask
Well, how do we
Get away with
That?
Well, there's
You may ask
Well, how does
Putting a barricade
Up in front of a building
Or a sand truck
In front of a building
How is that
Something against the people?
And while it's not something
That directly affects
Our privacy
Or our freedom
In any way
It is something
That affects the way
We look at things
It affects the way
We look at our government
As not something
Where you can actually
Interact
But something that
Is walled up
And kept away from us
Something we are not
Allowed to touch
Or to approach
And that kind of seed
Gets planted in your mind
And that is how
Your government is viewed
By you over the years
And then when new people
Come along
Who haven't seen it
The way it used to be
They just accept it
And I see this kind of thing
All the time
I see it on college campuses
Places where people
Used to demonstrate
All the time
For various causes
Where there used to be
All kinds of, you know
Action
Some kind of mischief
And now things are
Very controlled
You know
It's very
It's very
It's very
It's very
You know
You can't
Do certain things
It's
It's kind of like
High school now
You know
A lot of college campuses
I've noticed have changed
Fraternities are everywhere
Where they didn't used to be
I mean this is my own
Little personal rant here
But I just noticed that
There's a lot more
Control of students
On college campuses
Than there was say
Ten years ago even
And
The thing is
When you go into a place
Like that
You don't know
What it's like
Because you've never
Been there before
The only people who know
What it used to be like
Aren't there anymore
So it's very easy
To change things
Suddenly
And then one day
It's completely different
Than it was
A few years ago
And that's what we have
To watch out for
Wholly agreed
Alright
So let's talk about
Those rare moments
Those rare moments
We both agree
I'm sorry
Oh yes
This is a milestone
Those of you in the
Off the hook archives
Take note
But
Why don't we talk about
I bring people together
This is what I do
Alright
Why don't we talk about
Some computers crashing
Some computers crash
But if someone has a computer
Out there that crashed
Please call us up
We'd like to hear about it
You just wait till Monday
I don't have to wait till Monday
They're crashing now aren't they?
Or people haven't turned them on yet?
Is that what you're saying?
No no
People are going to go into work
And they're going to find something
Cash registers perhaps
I still don't know
What happened to my computer
So I have to check that
When I get back
Give me an email if you can
I will
Let's take another phone call
Good evening
I'm sorry
I did it again
Good morning
You're on the air
Hello
Hi how are you
Speak up please
I disagree with you
Wow
How can you disagree with both of us
Since we're disagreeing with each other
I'm in the clear
Okay
I disagree with one of you
More than with the other
Okay
Alright
I tell you
Terrorism
You see the police
And the army
And everybody these days
Instead of doing manoeuvres
They invent many many things
So that they can practice
And be equipped
Like the people in Seattle
You know
Who look like from Mars
And then
Can you imagine
What would happen
If you were in the air
And you were in the air
And you were in the air
And you were in the air
Can you imagine
If all the festivities
Of last night
That money
Would have been channelled
To six people
And Africa
And the Middle East
Or whatever
You know
We are living
In such plenty
And doing such crazy things
And terrorists
Are here to stay
They are going to strike
You can't be now
More secure
Because nothing happened
Last night
On time
So you can't
You can't
would basically consist of take those empty soda bottles and fill them with water.
Don't go out and buy five-gallon jugs of water or go out and buy, you know,
these super-duper water storage things with the super-duper tablets and
buy the stupid camp stove and all this other stuff. You don't need to go out and
buy that stuff. You already have most of what you have,
like, on hand. And if you buy any extra food,
buy food that you're already eating so that, you know, month down the line maybe
you're having the pasta you were planning on having
over the chair fire that you were going to set
when the power went out potentially on Y2K. And in California we
we always have earthquake supplies, or those of us who are prepared.
So I know in my backyard we have a whole bunch of water.
Another fellow called in with the LED, wondering why there was radiation and all that.
Yeah. If you take a diode and you excite it hard enough, it'll double the
frequency. Maybe that's what they were talking about.
You know, a frequency doubling diode.
It'll carry through even to an LED, possibly. I don't know.
Okay. Hey, thanks for the call. All right. Bye now. Take care. And if there's anybody
out there listening to us in a bunker that has not yet emerged and you ran
the... You know, people have done this. They've gone into
bunkers, but they brought the phone lines down with them. In fact, I was talking to
somebody on IRC once on the computer who was hiding out from
a tornado, and that was pretty interesting.
And the best thing they could do was sit on IRC. If you're in a bunker right
now, please give us a call. You know, we'll reassure
you it's safe to come out now. At least we think it's safe to come out.
If you believe any day is safe, well, you know,
January 1st seems to be pretty safe. Well, Y2K isn't over yet.
When is it going to be over, Isaac? It's not going to be over for a while. When?
A year. I want a date. I want to know when it's over. I can't give you a date because
I don't know when these failures are going to be, but I'm going to say...
You still think there are going to be failures?
Well, let's put this in perspective here. We've gone through the whole year of 1999
without anything. Now it's 2000. Let's put this in perspective here.
I've been saying that you're going to have some minor inconveniences and
you're going to have some systems fail. Originally, I was talking about
critical systems such as power and things like that, where there was a
definite potential at the time, but since we have been investing so much
time and money and energy into correcting these
kinds of things, we still have power, we still have gas, we still have all the
fundamentals that people were trying to get those
big kerosene stoves for. But I would imagine that on Monday, you're
going to go to work and you're going to see like maybe your little
notepad program not work properly or some silly thing like that, which is
going to give you a hassle. Actually, you know, this is interesting
because I got a notice in the mail a couple of
days... well, actually, I got it a couple of months ago, but I only found it a
couple of days ago because, well, I've been busy, and there was a
notice from a software company. The software company, in fact, that sold
us a voicemail system, a 2600. I hate that system. I really do. I
think the software is terrible. I've never liked it.
The touchstone response is awful, but you know, we just don't have
time to develop a better system. If anybody out there has
a cool system they'd like to develop, we're all for it. You know, a nice
voicemail system that's interactive. You can leave messages,
have public bulletin boards, things like that. Great. But we got a
message or a piece of mail from them saying, warning,
your voicemail system is not Y2K compliant.
Have we tried? Well, that's just it. I just remembered now that I never
responded. Let's do that. So let's call them.
But the thing is, the thing that really... Well, let's try calling our voicemail system
first. All right, let's call that before
other people call it. Okay, I might have to enter a special code here.
Okay, bring down the volume there so the code doesn't go right over the air.
Here we go. Magic number.
It's going to ring three times. Now, they wanted money for a Y2K upgrade.
You know, I just did not want to spend money for something that was
lousy as it is to make it what it should be.
But it might not work at all anymore.
If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again.
It's supposed to do this. If you need help, stay on the line and a hacker will assist
you shortly. Hey, what was that? Wait a minute.
Welcome to the 2600 voice BBS. Okay, it seems to...
Enter the BBS section, press one. Enter the 2600 voicemail system, press two.
For voice files, press three. For special phone services,
press four. Okay, well, it seems to work. It's there.
So, you see, this is what I mean. I was almost
suckered into spending money to fix something that I didn't have to fix.
They said this is not Y2K compliant. It seems to work to me.
And the irony is... Well, you didn't exactly extensively test
the thing, answered the phone. But here's the real irony of it. It doesn't
take dates anywhere. There's no date function. So how...
Where is there going to be a problem? Don't look at me. All right, well,
if anyone finds where the problem is, I'd sure like to know about it. My basic
point is we're not out of the woods yet. We got Monday morning, which you're
probably going to hear some reports from. You've got December 20th...
December 29th. February 29th, which has been mentioned as a potential
problem. I don't understand. Why is it a potential problem? People are saying
that this is an unscheduled leap year or something like that. This is a leap year
just like any other leap year. People are saying that it's supposed to
happen every four years, and it's happening every four years. 2000, the last
one was 1996, 1992 before then. Was there one in 1900?
I don't know. Probably. If it's divisible by four, yeah, I guess it was. 1900.
Well, I guess we're not going to have any problems. Well, I don't think so.
Basically, I don't think we're out of the woods yet.
Are you going to keep saying this for the rest of your life, or is there going to be a
point where you say, okay, we're out of the woods? In 2048, on my deathbed, I'm
going to be saying, Y2K is still going to...
Just keel over, and you can put that on my gravestone, actually.
We'll consider it. Thanks. Let's take some more phone calls.
Good morning. You're on the air. Hey, fellas. How's it going? Pretty good. How are you?
2600, is this? Well, we are affiliated. My clock is off
Year 2000. Okay, Emmanuel. Yes. I have to disagree with you a little bit.
Go right ahead. Okay, what I'd like you to do is to have
some of the hackers crack into the big companies
and find out their email, what kind of problems they ran into when they
were remediating their systems, and then you'll know if there was a problem or not.
You think it's just that easy? We can just target a system and
break in and check it out. Okay. People do believe that, though. I get that
all the time. People say, hey, can you just like hack into a bank and get me
like 10 bucks or something like that. It's not like that. I need help with my
credit report. I think you're going to find out a true
story of Y2K about a year from now when people will come clean about
what they found when they started spending all that 600 billion dollars.
Okay, and they didn't sue anybody, and he's hypers.
All right? There was a problem. There still is a problem.
Now, how big or how little, nobody can tell you.
All right? There will be problems, okay? You're on the money. Okay, but you want to
find out if it was a real problem, what happened to 600 billion dollars,
and how come there are no suits against the people that were hyping it and got
that money? Big business does not spend money
foolishly, and they sue if you run them down the
wrong track. If they could have spent that money to
make a lot of billions of dollars on the stock market.
So, I think just because nothing has happened, that doesn't mean it hasn't
happened, means you don't know about it, because of lawsuits and everything else.
So, be careful about, hey, it's over. Be alert. Don't get excited. Don't, you
know, drink the water slowly,
but there will be problems. There will be systems going out, accounting systems,
okay? On the small computers, people who have
Windows 3.1 or other systems, there will be an accounting packages
which don't take zero zero, okay? Everything has not been remediated.
All right, well, I'm looking forward to the chaos. I always look forward to the chaos.
There's not going to be chaos. Well, I'm very disappointed then, because I was
expecting some kind of chaos. Every time there's supposed to be chaos,
we're supposed to get a snowstorm or a hurricane. It never happens. We never get
the chaos. I want something. Talk to the people in Washington Heights
about the blackout, all right? Tell them how many people got
hurt, how many people got, you know, how much money was lost, okay?
But that wasn't Y2K related. Oh, well, everybody's saying it's not Y2K
related. We had three reactors scram, and none of them were Y2K
related. Of course, they were, like, a few minutes after midnight, but
not Y2K related. For all you know, things like that could happen every day.
They're just not reported. That's true. They do happen. The question you should be
asking is, asking the people who spent the money,
why did they spend it, and what did they find when they spent the money?
And they say, oh, we found nothing. Then we all laugh and say, ah, see, I told you.
But I can't believe people spent 600 billion dollars around the world, and it
was no problem. Well, I almost spent a few hundred bucks to fix a system I
didn't have to fix. So, I don't know. Maybe that's a
microcosm. Maybe not. On that note, your files, voice files, are they
date signed, time signed? I don't think so. I don't think the system has that
capability. So, try it out. That's the funny thing, you know, that I
don't believe we have date-time function.
Well, put messages in and try to retrieve them tomorrow or the day after.
Okay, no, we'll experiment with it. But, you know, I really do hate the system
anyway, so hopefully we'll just get a new one. All right, hey, thanks for calling.
Oh, as far as the terrorism, I was more scared of the eight helicopters in the
air than terrorism. I was thinking those
helicopters are going to plummet or crash into each other. That would have
been something. Okay. All right, thanks for calling. Be good.
I mean, that kind of thing really kind of scares me sometimes, seeing these
hovering helicopters over a crowd of a million people,
you know. What color were they? They were black. Oh.
Some were white. They had white underbellies.
I believe they were checking the rooftops.
They were shining lights down, and I don't think it was just to take a
picture. I think it was looking for various things. Yeah, onto the
roofs. Yeah. All right, 212, 209, 2900. We're here
until 11 o'clock, which is about 19 minutes away. At that time, we're
cutting to the Rose Bowl for a live broadcast featuring one of my
favorite groups of people, the Fire Sign Theater. So,
if you're into that, stay tuned, because that will be coming up in just about
19 minutes. We're here until 11 o'clock, filling in for David Rothenberg this
Saturday morning. It's Emanuel Goldstein here with you, along with Isaac, Walter,
and Mackie. We're usually on Tuesday nights at 8,
doing a program called Off the Hook. Check it out if you're
up at that hour, and if you like technology, computer hacking, privacy
issues, things like that. You can email us, oth at 2600.com. Let's
take another phone call, 212, 209, 2900. Good morning. You're on the air.
Hello? Hi, how are you? Yeah, on that unscheduled
leap year, isn't that because it's supposed to be like every 400 years
we do away with? You don't add February 29th or something?
Really? I hadn't heard that. The rules are complicated, but you have
leap years every four years, except years divisible by 100,
except years divisible by 400. So, that's why this year is a leap year.
Well, wait a minute. Except years divisible by 4, 2000 is divisible by 400.
Right. So, shouldn't there not be a leap year? That's the second except, though.
What's the exception? It's a fractal, I think. So, it is.
The exception to the non-leap year rule is every 400 years, is
every year divisible by 400. I heard about it a while ago, and I
had some calendars to plan, and I was checking some calendars that I
saw, and everyone had a leap year, and I was trying to,
you know, make sure I wasn't gonna get into a bind.
Yeah, I think we all know when the leap year is this year.
I'm pretty sure. I'm confused, though, because other people have been telling
me that there's all kinds of chaos on the way, so
I don't know. Okay, thank you. We'll let you know if we learn something.
Now, Walter, just explain it to me one more time, because I got really lost just now.
You're saying... Well, the exception to the leap year is years divisible by
100. What do you mean the exception to leap year? This is when... They're years
which are not leap years, and... Years which are supposed to be leap years that
aren't. They're not leap years. They're years divisible by 100.
Okay. But the exception to that rule, if it's... So you're saying 1900 was not a
leap year? 1900 is not divisible by 400,
so it's not a leap year. Really? Yeah. Well, we got to check the calendar program
and see if 1900 did not... We found the source of our problem.
All right. Well, you see, I think that's what would confuse people.
The fact that we have a leap year here, that's not going to confuse anybody.
Okay. I'm less confused now. Yeah, it has to be adjusted to the precise
length of the year, which is... You know, you need to make minor adjustments
every many hundreds of years. Okay. 2122092900,
good morning. You're on the air. Good morning. Welcome to the 21st century.
Well, okay. You can say that if you want, but I'm not going to...
Let's argue about it. Yeah, I'm not going to join you on that
until next year, but fine. Welcome to 2000.
Thank you. It is wonderful to see that basically things are still
around and functioning. I live out here in the suburbs, and
we were out last night at midnight banging a gong and
screaming over a bullhorn while fireworks were going off,
and seeing that the electricity was still running
made me feel pretty good, but it felt very artificial and
really mechanistic and mechanical, the countdown,
you know, from time, minutes, hours, and days,
and it just seems so detached from the natural order and the
natural world, and I just feel relief because
I had heard, you know, a lot of forecasting about
satellites spinning out of orbit and nuclear meltdown and just a complete
utter chaos and looting and riots and, you know, blackness and just,
you know, people, you know, going to be subsisting in
bunkers and with food supplies stashed away,
and, you know, it was going to be like, you know, all of recorded time erased,
and, you know, I didn't think it would be pretty much,
you know, as smooth as it seems to have been. I mean, I still have heat in my
house and I still have electric and, you know, it's just really...
A friend of mine who was really into computers had said,
it's just a big money-making scam, this Y2K, and it's not going to
amount to anything, and I heard another guy who said, you know, it's going to be
the end of the world, so I sort of felt it might fall somewhere in between, but
seems to have really fallen much more along the lines of
no big deal, and, you know, I'm very relieved. I'm happy
to see BAI is still on the air and
functioning beautifully. Yeah, and if we could make it through, I think anybody
can make it through because, you know, I don't know what kind of
things are Y2K-related here, but yeah, I agree with you. I think it
was overblown, and, you know, if it wasn't overblown, then you got to figure
somebody out there didn't do their job because not everybody's going to do the
same quality of work, and we're going to see some major colossal failures
real soon if we haven't already. Right. And Isaac, you're banging your watch. Is
there something wrong with your watch? It stops. Okay, well, there's the first one
right there. Okay, well, thanks for the call. Thank you.
You know, I also think the flip side to this is that
we're going to see, hey, we survived this. I mean, yeah, you know,
there's the manipulation of the crowds too,
but also there can be a positive aspect to this where we all see
just how we came through it. The Russian commanders shaking hands with the
American commanders. Hey, we're going to make it through this okay.
All the crowds, no problems at all. Everything is cool.
You know, maybe the Y2K thing wasn't so bad. We made it through that.
Maybe there'll be optimism for the future. Maybe we'll realize that the
human race actually has some really positive
attributes, and, you know, it's not quite as miserable and
hopeless as we're led to believe. I started again. You started your watch. You
had to hit it real hard in the sign. It worked.
Here are some companies. This is from today's New York Times in the
business section. This is the biggest Saturday New York
Times I think I've ever seen. It's almost as big as the Sunday Times.
Some companies have renamed their names based on the year.
If you remember, there was a company called Gateway 2000.
They're now known as Gateway. 20th century insurance company
is now known as 21st century insurance group.
20th century investors is now known as American Century,
and 20th century fund is now known as the century
foundation. What about 20th century Fox? Well, that's a very good question because
that's here as one of the companies who did not
rename their names. They're still 20th century Fox and also
century 21 is also remaining century 21. Well, no,
they don't have to work. I think 20th century Fox is also 30th century Fox for
Futurama. Yes, it is. Which is kind of cool. I don't know if
they're actually registered as that. I'm very glad to hear that about
Gateway changing their name. This is one of the many things that had
used the word 2000 as part of their name
without any real bearing or relation to what they were.
Lots of, particularly technology products and
electronics equipment. That's, you know, the Cybertron 2000,
which is kind of bizarre. Do they have anything to do with the year? No, no, nothing just,
or not even anything to do with the model number. Just, you know,
we liked the number. It was neat and sounded
scientific. You know, it's interesting, wandering around
Times Square, though, with the year now 2000, people seeing a
2600 hat, they think that's a year now. Oh, that's kind of cool. They said, oh, you're
pretty early. Yeah, yeah, 600 years early. I, for one, hope that I live to see 2600.
Well, the new issue will be out in a couple of weeks, if that's what you mean.
And if it's not what you mean, I don't want to hear it.
I thought you were checking out 2048. Isn't that what we established?
All right. That's the deep freeze. All right. Okay. Check in on a couple.
We'll call you out. Good morning. You're on the air.
Yes, I just wanted to confirm that every century year, which they're called when they
develop, change the calendar, every century year that's divisible by 400 is a leap year,
and 1900 was not a leap year. Okay.
And I think some of the calendars, most of the calendars out there that put a leap year,
they probably put the leap year, but they did the right thing, but for the wrong reason,
simply because four years ago, this should have been a leap year.
Interesting. Okay. Thanks for the clarification. Okay.
All right. I like that, actually, the three-layered rules. That's kind of neat.
Yeah. I can't imagine coming up with all these rules and regulations for calendars.
There are also leap seconds every once in a while.
Yeah. At the end of every year.
But the new atomic clock will disallow that. Well, it won't be necessary anymore.
We're now accurate to, what is it, like 10 to the 17th seconds?
Really? Decimal.
That's important. Okay. Well, fine.
No, I wasn't being sarcastic. www.nist.gov.
I wasn't being sarcastic. I was being tired, because as I mentioned, I've been up for two
days now, and talking about extra seconds, I guess, just isn't filling me with all kinds of-
Hey, I could have used a few extra seconds of sleep.
Yeah, we all can. Okay. Let's take some more calls from our listeners who are waking up now
to a brand new year. Not a brand new decade, not a brand new century.
Well, it is a new decade.
Well, now, how could it be a new decade if it's not a new century and if it's not a new millennium?
Because we ended a decade. It's no longer the 90s, right?
Well, wait a second.
Didn't a decade begin with the year 1-2? 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 was the first decade.
Second decade began with the year 11. Same business as century and millennium.
But then which decade would we be part of now?
Well, I don't know, but it's a new decade. We stopped numbering them after about 50 or so,
because we got tired of it.
I'm going to have to investigate that.
Yeah. Well, regardless, it's a new year. I think we can agree on that. It's the year 2000.
We all are unanimously agreeing on that.
Which is a big round number, and that's nice.
It's a really cool-looking number. Probably the coolest one we'll ever see.
It's the first time in the history of mankind, our calendar anyway, that all four digits have changed.
And for those of you who think that it's the second time, no.
The first time, 999 changed to 1000. There was no zero in front of 999.
At least I don't think there was. So it's three digits changing to four digits.
But never before have all four digits changed at once, and that was cool.
All right.
Well, a lot of things have happened for the first time, and they happen every day.
Oh, we lost a caller. Good morning. You're on the air.
Hi. I'd like to go back to the terrorism issue.
Go right ahead.
We're going to be suffering with it a long time after Y2K.
And my point is that Giuliani is not any kind of leader. He's not even a politician.
You know, because even politicians have a particular skill set, which Giuliani doesn't have.
But the thing that concerns me is that being a total incompetent the way he is,
he manufactures problems that he can solve.
And that's what I see. That's what I saw was the Cold War.
You know, and he's just, you know, we're just continuing the Cold War.
Manufacturing, you know, like the Cold War was that the Soviet Union was going to attack us
when they knew that the Soviet Union was always essentially on a
defensive footing rather than an aggressive footing.
And what Giuliani is saying is these terrorists are coming here
when two years ago he refused to see Arafat,
even though Arafat was a recognized leader of the country by the U.N.
In other words, Giuliani is picking fights so that he can then turn around and say,
oh, I have to protect you people.
In this case, I would have to say it goes beyond Giuliani because I think this is something...
Oh, yeah, yeah. I agree as far as the country goes.
You know, Giuliani is more someone that affects us very directly.
And, you know, I agree with you that it goes with the country
because essentially the country is run by businesses and banks
and not by, you know, even Giuliani or that other guy.
And of course, the racism and discrimination that it fuels
against people of Middle Eastern descent or people who...
There's also a good reason to, you know, to say, oh, we have to protect you.
Just strip search you.
We'll strip search you every time you want to walk into a library.
And maybe we'll start, you know, if libraries go online, you know,
maybe we'll figure out that we'll keep a profile
of all the books that you take out of the library now.
But, you know, it's just it's mind boggling that
our leaders are picking these fights with people.
One thing I noticed, one thing I heard reported in various newspapers
was that every single car within a 75 block radius
inside every parking garage was being sniffed by dogs.
Now, my question was, what happens if those dogs find drugs in those cars?
I think they were just bomb sniffing.
The bomb sniffing dogs don't sniff for drugs.
Yeah, the dogs are very specific.
Yes.
Yeah, the dogs are specific and you have to get, you know,
a drug sniffing dog if you want them.
Well, how would you know if they didn't get a drug sniffing dog
with a bomb sniffing dog or what?
The bomb sniffing dog said, hey, I think there's a bomb here.
Then the drug sniffing dog came along and found the drugs instead.
Would they admit him in court?
You know, there's all kinds of issues that get opened up here
when you start doing these massive surveillance things.
Anyway, sir, thanks for the call.
We are really out of time.
These two hours really flew by.
I'm still not awake yet.
Remind me never to do a morning show.
Actually, I'm surprisingly awake considering how long I've been awake.
You made us chug that coffee.
I think getting into a nice rousing discussion of issues of terrorism
and the city and things like that.
Well, at some point my brain will be coming into the studio
and I'll look back at this and wonder what the hell I was talking about.
Yeah, well, thanks everybody for calling in and for being part of the show
and just being part of 2000.
It's really cool to enjoy this all together.
My name is Emmanuel.
I'm here with Isaac and Walter and Mackie
and most of us will be back on Tuesday night at 8 o'clock for Off The Hook.
David Rothenberg will be back again next week from 9 to 11
doing his normal show, I presume.
Stay tuned for a live presentation of the Firesign Theater
coming to you live from the Rose Bowl.
Until next Tuesday, have yourselves a very happy new year.
Stay safe.
Stay awake.
Good night.
Oh, no.
Good morning.
Hey, Jean, this is Henry McLean
and I've finished my beautiful flying machine
and I'm ringing to say that I'm leaving
and maybe you'd like to fly with me and hide with me, baby.
Isn't it strange how little we change?
Isn't it sad we're insane?
Playing the games that we know end in tears.
The games we've been playing for thousands and thousands of times.
I'd be up in the sky and planning to fly.
I'd be up in the sky and planning to fly.
I'd be up in the sky and planning to fly.
I'd be up in the sky and planning to fly.
If you survive till 2005, I hope you're exceedingly full.
For if you are stunned, you will have to breathe out
while the people around you breathe in, breathe in, breathe in, breathe in.
People's breath on my side is something that I hate.
I'm so excited now to be here.
The people love heels on my feet
I'd be up in the sky and planning to fly.
I'd be up in the sky and plotting to fly.
I'd be up in the sky and planning to fly.
I'd be up in the sky and planning to fly.
I'd be up in the sky and planning to fly.
All we can say to you is goodbye
I'm alive inside you guys, goodbye
I'm alive inside you guys, goodbye
I'm alive inside you guys, goodbye