Lights Out
I've been cleaning up a lot this week and came across an old issue of Wired (7.04) which told black out stories. It piqued my interest since the big blackout on the east coast made so much news maybe a month ago. Of course the east coast affair was a bit hyped - my humble opinion but I think you'll agree if you read the cover story from this issue.
It's also interesting to look at the worst power outages to date. They make the east coast blackout seem like a picnic - imagine 33 days without power!
The hook of the article, besides flirting with the Y2K blackout that never occured, is how dependent we are on electricity. As much as my farm toting, South Dakota friends like giving me a hard time on how much dependence I have personally (most waking hours behind a screen), having the milk machines at your dairy farm go out for a month is a lot worse than being unable to get online for a month.
In Kenya, black outs were like rain storms in South Dakota: yawn, get on with life. A candle and a book if it's early, or sleep and hope it works in the morning.
Still, my scorn is short lived: we are all addicts. From the haus frau washing clothes to the mogul trading stocks to the developer writing perl.
1:31:47 AM 
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