You may remember that twenty years ago, at this time in 1999, we were all full of anxiety about the coming 21 st century. Prophets of doom eagerly fed the general sense of uneasiness with dire predictions. Terrorism, war, trouble in the Middle East, economic stagnation and political meltdown were all confidently predicted, and they all happened, as they always do, and here we are. Now those prophecies seem as inevitable and commonplace as death and taxes. The two big things that failed to happen were the end of the world and the obliteration of all computers in the famous Y2K crash. That last was the only one I was really looking forward to. I’ve been looking back at some columns I wrote in 1999, when I was rash enough to make predictions about the coming century. My guesses have proved to be pretty accurate so far. I followed the five golden rules of prophecy: state the obvious, stick to the small stuff, be vague about the details, predict things that are certain to happen anyway, and