Word: direness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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DIED. WILLIAM MCCHESNEY MARTIN JR., 91, even-keeled Chairman of the Federal Reserve for 19 years; in Washington. Martin, who helped define the Federal Reserve as an independent entity, was known for his cautious, if not entirely dire, predictions; he described economic booms as "the party that leads to the hangover." His no-nonsense style--and occasionally unpopular stands--nevertheless managed to inspire the trust of Presidents from Truman to Nixon...
...Ancient Greeks told of a mania that masquerades as clarity, one that demands tearing a human being limb from limb and scattering his or her remains to the winds to quench some dire compulsion for cosmic order. That kind of bacchanalia, bloody and bestial, did not perish with the age of Sophocles. The remains of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper County, East Texas, are testament to its endurance...
Really? No, not really. Well, not likely anyway. But that hasn't slowed the mounting angst over the Year 2000 glitch, particularly on the Internet, where the mix of technical savvy and suspicion is proving to be the perfect outlet for dire predictions. "I've never seen such hysterical projections, and I lived through the paranoia of the 1960s," says Nicholas Zvegintzov, president of Software Management Network, a Los Altos, Calif., company specializing in software maintenance...
Many of the most dire Y2K scenarios are predicated on the assumption that the glitch will KO the country's electric utilities, turning out not only your lights but everything from the pumps at the gas station to the Slurpee machine at the 7-Eleven. It's a plausible theory. The conventional and nuclear power plants that produce our electricity are all controlled to some degree--usually a large degree--by computers, and some of the suspect programs are etched directly onto silicon chips, making them even harder to find and fix. Some utilities have only recently begun the process...
...while taking the stairs may be good for your heart, you won't have to do it for fear the elevator will fall--another dire bit of misinformation making the Y2K rounds. "An elevator doesn't need to know the date to go up and down, so we never put date-sensitive controls in there," says Peter Kowalchuk, a spokesman for Otis Elevator Co. Other major elevator makers have issued similar disclaimers...