Here it is: 2001.

And Stanley Kubrick has turned

out to be way off base.

Not only have we not found

anything interesting on the moon; we haven't even been to the moon in

over two decades.

And we're a long, long way

from thinking about a mission to Jupiter. We don't have an artificial

intelligence capable of throwing a temper tantrum, either.

What we do have is a brand

spanking new century and new millennium.

And since we humans seem to

be in the habit of making individual resolutions at the beginning of each

new year, it seems only fitting that we think about some resolutions for

the entire human race as we embark on a fresh thousand.

I can't speak for the whole

human race, of course, but I can make suggestions. Here are a few.

1. Get over that whole race

thing.

I know we've only been on the

planet for a blink of an eye in cosmic terms, but we've been around long

enough to start growing up a little bit. Our first goal for 2001 should

be an end to the notion that we should be friends or enemies based solely

on skin color, or any other purely superficial attribute.

I'm not so naive as to think

that we can somehow make people stop hating and looking down on those

of other racial and ethnic backgrounds, but we can start by simply ignoring

and shunning racists.

If you want to write a book

that promotes racist ideas, that's your business. But why should the media

and the NAACP help you sell it by calling attention to it?

We who are in the majority

and I truly believe that racists are now in the minority should turn our

backs on racism and move on, so that a thousand years from now historians

will reflect that references to racism began to disappear from the record

at the turn of this century.

2. Get moving on the space

thing.

That's where the future is.

Sure, "There are plenty

of problems here on earth," the oft-repeated mantra of the fearful.

But solving problems on earth and moving into space are not mutually exclusive.

And we've learned in recent

history that sooner or later the human race is going to face extinction

it's not an "if," it's a "when" because of the cloud

of debris that swarms around in our little corner of the universe. If

we don't get busy, there's a very good chance we won't be able to do a

thing about it when some observatory announces there's a city-sized rock

on the way.

If you believe in the biblical

prophesies that one day the earth will come to an end, you may be thinking

that we shouldn't try to thwart God's will. But if God is truly planning

to put an end to the earth, I'm not worried that we'll be able to stop

Him. I just think it's our responsibility to do everything we can to survive,

as individuals and as a species, and let God take care of God's will.

Also, one of the problems we

face "here on earth" is overpopulation. Every day, the world

is adding enough people to populate the United States. And there is a

limit to how many people the planet will support.

We're going to have to spread

outward. And yes, it is possible to colonize other parts of the Solar

System, and it's essential. We need to get cracking.

3. Solve the crime thing.

While we're researching diseases,

digging archaeological sites, going into space and advancing on all the

other scientific fronts, we need to put some real effort into the science

of criminology, directed toward actually isolating and attacking the causes

of crime.

Yes, to some extent that means

attacking poverty, something conservatives are supposed to be against.

But that's just the view of conservatives that liberals want you to believe.

Conservatives, for the most

part, are not opposed to fighting poverty. They're just opposed to pouring

billions of dollars into poverty-fighting programs that don't work, and

they're opposed to the idea that the solution to poverty involves taking

money by force from those who earned it and giving it to those who didn't.

That just spreads the poverty around.

But most of us are not opposed

to studying and working to find solutions that do work, as long as we

don't break the bank in the process. In other words, there's a limit to

how much of our common resources, i.e. taxes, we can devote to it.

Crime and poverty fit into

the chicken-and-egg category anyway. Making progress on one will bring

progress on the other.

And with the reasonable approach

of setting a budget that we can live with, trying programs and ending

the ones that don't work, progress can be made on the local, national

and global levels.

4. Put an end to the corporate

thing.

By "corporate" I

mean the notion that people are defined by the groups they are associated

with, rather than as individuals.

It's part of the racism problem,

but it's also in its own category. We'll always have wars and racism until

we learn to view each person as an individual. That may sound overly simple,

but in this country we've just finished an administration that had the

stated goal of subverting individualism in favor of the "common good."

Without individualism, there

will be no "common good." There will only be subgroups fighting

for dominance.

I hope you all, individually

and corporately, will have a great millennium.