"Time Bomb 2000" describes how the year 2000 problem can potentially affect all facets of business life if not properly addressed. Chapters are devoted to effects on home PCs, on the job, the news, airplanes, and more. Advice is given on how to deal with the problem if and when they actually occur.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER By the time psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware reached the school the damage was done: A sniper had opened fire on a crowded playground, but was gunned down before any children were hurt. “Virtually impossible to put aside until the final horrifying showdown.”—People While the TV news crews feasted on the scene and Alex began his therapy sessions with the traumatized children, he couldn’t escape the image of a slight teenager clutching an oversized rifle. What was the identity behind the name and face: a would-be assassin, or just another victim beneath an indifferent California sky? Intrigued by a request from the sniper’s father to conduct a “psychological autopsy” of his child, Alex begins to uncover a strange pattern—it is a trail of blood. In the dead sniper’s past was a dark and vicious plot. And in Alex Delaware’s future is the stuff of grown-up nightmares: the face of real human evil.

The new millennium. The Year 2000. Beyond Mayan prophecies, a more immediate danger loomed: Two-digit year date fields had been used by software programmers for decades to conserve expensive computer storage space. As a consequence, legacy systems reading “00” on January 1, 2000 would most probably interpret the date as 1900. Infrastructures critical to civilization—including heat, electricity, water and sanitation—were at risk, all complete unknowns. There was fear of an accidental nuclear arms deployment. There was fear of monetary systems being jeopardized, infrastructure collapse, internet security failures, and interruption of government-provided social programs. Banks experienced massive cash withdrawals while law firms worked overtime to develop novel litigation plans. Insurance enterprises worried. Year 2000: The Inside Story of Y2K Panic shares the untold story of the actors operating on the global stage responsible for managing computer hardware and software for Year 2000 compliance, thus keeping national infrastructures, finance, and commerce functioning. It turned out that the world did not end January 1, 2000. In fact, most people rang in the new year with the perception that nothing happened at all. This positive outcome was not a stroke of luck, nor was it because people overestimated or exaggerated Y2K risk. It was only possible because people across industries, from legal clerks to programmers to President Bill Clinton himself, worked tirelessly to offset disaster. But the Millennium did not pass completely harmlessly: it turns out that the United States, for a brief period, lost all satellite reconnaissance at 7:00 PM EST, December 31, 1999 (midnight GMT 01/01/2000). As a leading consultant and speaker on the challenges of Y2K during the lead-up to the new millennium, author Nancy P. James was directly involved in preparation for Y2K on the local and global stage. Using first-person experience, primary source documents outlining Y2K issues, anxieties, and the actions, influences, opinions, and strategies of those involved, James reveals the untold story of the behind-the-scenes scramble that made Y2K – seemingly – come and go, and offers stark lessons on how the global community can unite to face problems that challenge our world at large. James tells the contemporaneous story of those national and international Y2K actors who at the time did not know the outcome of the Year 2000 computer problem.

Updated to include a new chapter about the influence of social media and the Internet—the 20th anniversary edition of Bowling Alone remains a seminal work of social analysis, and its examination of what happened to our sense of community remains more relevant than ever in today’s fractured America. Twenty years, ago, Robert D. Putnam made a seemingly simple observation: once we bowled in leagues, usually after work; but no longer. This seemingly small phenomenon symbolized a significant social change that became the basis of the acclaimed bestseller, Bowling Alone, which The Washington Post called “a very important book” and Putnam, “the de Tocqueville of our generation.” Bowling Alone surveyed in detail Americans’ changing behavior over the decades, showing how we had become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and social structures, whether it’s with the PTA, church, clubs, political parties, or bowling leagues. In the revised edition of his classic work, Putnam shows how our shrinking access to the “social capital” that is the reward of communal activity and community sharing still poses a serious threat to our civic and personal health, and how these consequences have a new resonance for our divided country today. He includes critical new material on the pervasive influence of social media and the internet, which has introduced previously unthinkable opportunities for social connection—as well as unprecedented levels of alienation and isolation. At the time of its publication, Putnam’s then-groundbreaking work showed how social bonds are the most powerful predictor of life satisfaction, and how the loss of social capital is felt in critical ways, acting as a strong predictor of crime rates and other measures of neighborhood quality of life, and affecting our health in other ways. While the ways in which we connect, or become disconnected, have changed over the decades, his central argument remains as powerful and urgent as ever: mending our frayed social capital is key to preserving the very fabric of our society.

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Southwest Asia is one of the most remarkable regions on Earth in terms of active faulting and folding, large-magnitude earthquakes, volcanic landscapes, petroliferous foreland basins, historical civilizations as well as geologic outcrops that display the protracted and complex 540 m.y. stratigraphic record of Earth's Phanerozoic Era. Emerged from the birth and demise of the Paleo-Tethys and Neo-Tethys oceans, southwest Asia is currently the locus of ongoing tectonic collision between the Eurasia-Arabia continental plates. The region is characterized by the high plateaus of Iran and Anatolia fringed by the lofty ranges of Zagros, Alborz, Caucasus, Taurus, and Pontic mountains; the region also includes the strategic marine domains of the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, Caspian, and Mediterranean. This 19-chapter volume, published in honor of Manuel Berberian, a preeminent geologist from the region, brings together a wealth of new data, analyses, and frontier research on the geologic evolution, collisional tectonics, active deformation, and historical and modern seismicity of key areas in southwest Asia.