The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Grant Barrett:

gas pumps run on electricity

So does a lot of water in NYC. Is it above the fifth floor that the natural water pressure is insufficient to force it out of the pipes? Something like that. During the blackout, none of the toilets in our office flushed--very nasty very quickly--the faucets didn't work, and even the water cooler didn't give out water. No juice, then no H20. Even if the pressure had been sufficient, there still wouldn't have been water or flushing many places because they use electric switches.

I'd add a small AM/FM radio to your kit if there's not one there already.

My kit is currently very small, but it has all my life documents--birth certificate, passport, leftover foreign currency, immunization records, etc.--a flashlight, a Leatherman, a small bottle of water, pen and paper. I do keep dried pasta in the house at all times--a conscious choice due to remembering Sept. 11 and last August--because it packs well, has high calories, doesn't spoil easily (except when wet), and can be chewed if water is unavailable. Also, like the Gaines burgers mentioned above, it's not something you can gorge yourself on without taking time to prepare it. I am also aware that we have usually have a large bag of cat food. Not that tasty, but damned near the perfect food (as long as you don't consider what's in it).

This conversation reminds me of The Stand and Lucifer's Hammer, both which have little moments where a character makes a pre-disaster assumption that reveals how little what's happened has penetrated their mindsets. King describes the older woman that the motorcycle rider hooks up with in Manhattan trying to walk in sling-back sandals. (I think: It's been so long since I read it.) Niven and Pournelle write (again, if I remember correctly) about one of the main characters coming home to his wife, who is dead, and seeing that she's packed as if going away for a holiday rather than forever.

Do they all look the same? Or are they like stamps: each country with its own IRC design? I've only ever seen one, years ago, when I was a boy, when I used write away to international shortwave broadcasters to ask them for stickers.

The usual example of this I cite is the white guy who comes busting into a well-established discussion of (say) colonial policies in North America, yelling at self-indulgent length about how we’re callously ignoring the fact that the indigenous peoples were genocidally dispossessed of their lands.

This is what Rushdie, in his essay "Notes on Writing and the Nation," calls "New Behalfism." He writes:

« Beware the writer who sets himself or herself up as the voice of a nation. This includes nations of race, gender, sexual orientation, elective affinity. This is the New Behalfism. Beware behalfies!

« The New behalfism demands uplift, accentuates the positive, offers stirring moral instructions. It abhors the tragic sense of life. Seeing literature as inescapably political, it subtitutes political values for literary ones. It is the murderer of thought. Beware! »

ON line you mean, you New Yorker you, right?

A couple small addendums:

In Paris on Friday evenings at 10, thousands of rollerbladers meet up in Montparnasse and cruise the city. They roll quietly by, with the buzzing and whirring of wheels, the occasional shout from a skater, and traffic at a standstill. Now *that's* owning the city.

Here in New York, note the existence of Critical Ass, the underwear-only bicycle ride based upon the critical mass bicycling movement, in turn based upon natural human self-herding among Chinese pedallers.

If we get a stadium on the West side, we may also get the 7 train extended. If we get the 2012 Olympics, they will both happen, as will a LaGuardia subway link, and the extension which will bring Long Island trains into Grand Central.

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