But with today's column, Dowd is back to form, meaning I can forgo Sullivan and Atrios, thank God.

She is discussing the blackout, but of course - could this possibly be any more trite, obvious, contrived or pointless?

Thursday reminded us of the tenuousness of our romance with technology; we spend our days using a thicket of high-tech equipment without a clue about how it actually works or what to do when it doesn't.

We have BlackBerrys that are also telephones and Palm Pilots that are also cameras and cellphones that also send text-message mash notes. We take it on faith that the power will come on when we switch on computers to send e-mail around the world instantaneously from our air-conditioned, well-lit, cable-TV-equipped, key-coded, A.T.M.-financed worlds, without ever knowing that our power might be originating in Canada - eh? - or looping eerily around Lake Erie.

Now comes news that our foamy lattes are steamed by the antiquated, overloaded system at Niagara Mohawk? I thought we'd already seen the Last of the Mohicans.

One groaner after another.

Washington is a welter of blame. Democrats fingered the Republicans for catering to the oil industry; Republicans fingered the Democrats for being cowed by the environmental community. The only illumination in the blackout was this: Pols have been holding the energy bill hostage to their special interests.

This is just churlish piffle: we also learned that people can respond in a very civilized manner in a crisis, and even show concern for their fellow man, reinforcing positive messages from 9/11. Our own Jan Herman notes this:

New Yorkers got a taste of what William Sydney Porter meant when he called their town Baghdad-on-the-Hudson. "There's more poetry in a block of New York," said Porter, otherwise known as O. Henry, "than in 20 daisied lanes." Last night during the great Northeastern blackout of '03, he could have said "than in all the lights of the city."

If the city's friendliness under duress wasn't poetry, it was something like it. People who rarely talked to each other before sat on their front stoops chatting by candlelight. It could have been the turn of the 20th century. Let's make an annual holiday of it. Keep the electricity running, but set aside one day of the year to turn off the lights across North America.

David Greenberg sees the same in Slate:

With the odd exception of Ottawa, Ontario, none of the major metropolises hit by Thursday's blackout faced social disorder on a large scale. In New York City last night, street life was not a fearful tableau of pandemonium but a convivial scene of neighbors and strangers sharing candlelight, radio news, and small talk.

In fact, Greenberg sees a real seismic shift evidenced in this blackout vs. the looting that took place during NYC's blackout of '77:

Perhaps most important, New Yorkers (and other city dwellers) have a greater sense of investment in their metropolis. Large numbers of immigrants, who have a stake in their businesses and communities, have changed the face of the city's neighborhoods. And while inequities still burden poor black neighborhoods, the deep sense of grievance that once gripped them has abated. A virtuous cycle has taken hold, in which civic pride has led all manner of New Yorkers to care more about their city.