Millennium Celebrations

As we get closer to the year 2000, I’ve noticed that the world is going to have a lot of celebrations on New Year’s Eve and Day.

I was just wondering what the world is celebrating about. Is it the pollution of the oceans, rivers, lakes and skies, or is it the poverty a lot of people live in, or is it the fighting between the Hindus and Muslims, between Catholics and Protestants, or the fighting between people of opposing religions or ideologies, or is it the decimation of the animal kingdom, or is it the destruction of the Amazon, or is it the overpopulation of a planet with limited resources? I’d like to know what the world is celebrating about.

If it’s just because the calendar changes from 1999 to 2000 then the whole world is very ignorant. We shouldn’t be celebrating, we should be hanging our heads very low.

CHARLES W. LeCOMPTE

Santa Barbara

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The popular misperception that Jan. 1, 2000, is the beginning of the new millennium is hardly a big issue like AIDS, soaring U.S. debt to the rest of the world or global warming. So don’t worry, be happy, and “party like it’s 1999.” But it’s important to remember that this process is driven by marketing, the capitalist God of the 20th century. So mark my words, we’re going to see a similar hype drive as Dec. 31, 2000, approaches--again with a millennial theme!

JIM DEVINE

Culver City

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It’s a contest! Who will win? Come Jan. 1, 2000, I wonder which will total the greater number: computers, unthinking machines, mistakenly believing it’s the year 1900; or people, supposedly thinking beings, mistakenly believing it’s the beginning of the 21st century and the new millennium. Unfortunately, I think people are going to win this contest hands down.

STEVE MITTMAN

Garden Grove

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If the whiners want to celebrate the millennium a year from now, go for it. But they surely understand that there is nothing “embarrassing” or stupid about wanting to celebrate it now (letter, Nov. 27). The big deal is changing the 1 to a 2.

Vent your spleens on something that deserves displeasure--abused children, global warming, Afghanistan’s Taliban, Chechnya, Kosovo, ad infinitum.

TANYA HANSON

Oxnard

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It seems like the same folks who believe that a $6-trillion national debt is a budget surplus, that disarming law-abiding citizens will eliminate crime and that a dysfunctional psychopath is a great president are now insisting that everyone celebrate the first 99-year century in history. To hell with the dumbed-down masses. Viva la new millennium: Jan. 1, 2001!

AUGUST SALEMI

Atascadero