With the impeachment trial finally out of the way - none too soon - the media had to find another horse to beat to death. It found the perfect victim in the so-called Y2K problem, which supposedly threatens to disrupt computer functions and life as we know it, and create a global panic with the advent of the new millennium.

History records countless doomsday prophecies announced for the arrival of the year 1000, scaring folks out of their wits. Judgment Day was imminent, the earth was going to open up and draw all sinners into hell. Well, our planet has survived for another thousand years, only to be threatened now by the deadly virus Y2K. End of the millennium hysteria is mounting.

To look at it from a broader perspective I advise our readers to turn to the February issue of the Smithsonian magazine, pg. 45, to the article "Forget Y2K!" by Timothy Foote. He gives a condensed, two-page overview of some highlights from recorded history, before and after Homo Sapiens appeared on the scene. In his article Foote quotes from an essay by a famous biologist, H.J. Muller, who suggests to imagine the history of all life-forms on earth as a long rope composed of evolving cells and genes, stretching more than 200 miles between Boston and New York City, terminating in the middle of a desk in the Wall Street office of J.P. Morgan (a contemporary of H.J. Muller).

This long, imaginary rope represents three or four billion years, starting with the appearance of the first minute signs of life on earth, primeval protoplasm. Genes mysteriously multiply and differentiate, mutate. Following the path of the rope would seem boring at first, because the first four-footed land animals don't appear until we reach the city limits of New York.

When the rope reaches Harlem, the first mammals and birds appear, together with dinosaurs who stay with us until the rope reaches 42nd Street. Monkeys first appear at Macy's on Herald Square, apes evolve in a spot directly in front of the House of Morgan on Wall Street.

Inside the building, still 15 feet distant from the designated desk, stands the first Neanderthal man. Homo sapiens makes his appearance inside the office, a mere seven and a half feet away from the desk. Five and a half inches from the center of the desk we mark the Fall of Rome and the beginning of the Dark Ages. Still closer, 1-1/2 inches from the center of the desk, occurs the discovery of America. A quarter of an inch from the end of the rope Darwin develops his theory of evolution and "man awakes to the transitory character of his shape and his institutions." Seen from this perspective, we humans are a relatively new species which has not yet found its proper place within the general design.

This finally leads us to January 1, 2000, and the threat of Y2K. Our chances for passing this hurdle are rather promising, I would say.