  We present and discuss new determinations of metallicity, rotation, age,
kinematics, and Galactic orbits for a complete, magnitude-limited, and
kinematically unbiased sample of 16,682 nearby F and G dwarf stars. Our 63,000
new, accurate radial-velocity observations for nearly 13,500 stars allow
identification of most of the binary stars in the sample and, together with
published data complete the kinematic information for 14,139 stars. A major
effort has been devoted to the determination of new isochrone ages for all
stars for which this is possible. Particular attention has been given to a
realistic treatment of statistical biases and error estimates, as standard
techniques tend to underestimate these effects and introduce spurious features
in the age distributions. We demonstrate, however, how strong observational and
theoretical biases cause the distribution of the observed ages to be very
different from that of the true age distribution of the sample. Our first
results confirm the lack of metal-poor G dwarfs relative to closed-box model
predictions (the ``G dwarf problem''), the existence of radial metallicity
gradients in the disk, the small change in mean metallicity of the thin disk
since its formation and the substantial scatter in metallicity at all ages, and
the continuing kinematic heating of the thin disk with an efficiency consistent
with that expected for a combination of spiral arms and giant molecular clouds.
Distinct features in the distribution of the V component of the space motion
are extended in age and metallicity, corresponding to the effects of stochastic
spiral waves rather than classical moving groups, and may complicate the
identification of thick-disk stars from kinematic criteria. (abridged)
