We finally said goodbye to the unsteady year of 1998, and together we ushered in the New Year of 1999. Although we could hardly ignore the many famous prophecies which had sentenced 1999 to be the impending end of the world, we still clung to our beautiful dream of a better life as we entered the last year of this century. And with relief, everything in the world seemed to have quieted down for a while. Bill Clinton successfully survived his shame; the disastrous air strike on Iraq eventually ca