essays & effluvia: Lessons from the Blackout

Tuesday, August 19, 2003

Lessons from the Blackout

From my college friend Jeff Zoldan, who lives in Brooklyn (Park Slope), and runs a used furniture business in Manhattan. Here is his interesting and funny take on the blackout :

Zoldan's Lessons from the Blackout
1) I like my beverages cold.

2) Without electricity, we are like any other third world country, perhaps even worse off.

3) Cell phones don't really work too well during emergencies.

4) Sleeping is difficult when you are drenched in sweat and not lying on a beach.

5) I prefer "light pollution," which doesn't allow you to normally see the stars in the skies from big cities like NY, over the blank darkness and stillness of a city in a blackout. If seeing stars at night is your thing, there is always the state of Maine.

6) We need to regulate utilities. The Republican and pro-business lobbies who have forever cried for deregulation in the name of an efficient marketplace that will deliver the best and most efficient services at the best prices is total bullshit. The only thing that we are guranteed in an deregualted atmosphere is that all parties will only take whatever action is in their self-interest. If the businessperson's self-interest happens to coincide with the public's need, we're in luck. But if not, whoa nelly!

7) The Bush Administration will use this latest blackout incident to further gut environmental protections (nuclear reactors in Queens, right?) and to push for faster and deeper drilling in the Arctic National Wilderness Refuge.They will also push for more credits for the utilities that started this whole fiasco because there is nothing more certain than the Republicans shamelessly using misfortune to reward their supporters for failure.

8) Perhaps Al Quaeda may not be as entrenched in the US or NY as we have been led to believe? I don't want to mitigate the possible dangers of lunatic Muslims who live here among us but if there are "sleeper cells" poised to strike, what the hell are they waiting for? Wouldn't Thursday evening have been a prime time to do something, anything, to unsettle an already unsettled populace? Come on, how hard would it be even for a stupid Arab terrorist to drop a small homemade explosive device in a corner garbage can? We're not talking sophisticated planning. So my premise is: if not now, when? Maybe the bogeyman doesn't lurk in every shadow as the Govt. would have us believe so that they can continue to curtail civil rights in the name of fighting nameless terrorism?

9) Nothing beats the sound of the hum of an air conditioner on a hot summer evening.

As always, Jeff raises some interesting points. If he wasn't such a technophobe, it'd be up on his blog. But since he doesn't and I do, (with his permission), here it is.