I submitted this as an Ask Slashdot. If it gets accepted, I'll consider removing it.

Back during the Northeast Blackout in August, something got me thinking of all the things that require electricity and other modern conveniences, and what I would be doing with my life if things like computers weren't around. I eventually forgot all about it. But when Hurricane Isabel hit, I lost power at home for about a day, giving me great boredom outside cleaning up the yard. My grandfather, who sells and repairs antique electric model trains, is still shut out of work with lost power at his home. This brought up the idea again of what if we didn't have electricity? What would people be doing? I'm curious to see what fellow slashdotters would be doing if not for the industrial revolution and the information age. What would you be doing?

Update 9 pm EDT Monday: Rejected after about a day's worth of consideration.

Power came back on last night around 9:30-10:00. 24 Hours almost right on the nose.

I went to the Phillies vs. Reds last night. Thanks to the Cincinatti people for letting us win (see previous JE) and, combined with a loss by the Marlins, taking the lead in the wild card standings. One or two more wins would be great in keeping the Marlins at bay.

South Philadelphia is now a mess. A Flyers pre-season game was also going on last night, tying up what little parking is left. Since I was getting to the stadium late, I wound up parking 12 blocks from the stadium near Front & Pattison. The stadium is at Broad & Pattison. Front St is the fancy name for 1st St, and Broad is essentially 14th. Reminds me of an old quote saying something like "We live in a country where people want diet cokes, low fat food, and parking as close to the stadium as possible."

Who sang the song mentioned in the subj? Seems appropriate for the situation. It came on the radio while driving to the deli for lunch yesterday. Thought to myself it would be the perfect tune to play at some point during the Phillies game that afternoon.

Isabel roared through last night. Big heavy winds that seemed to just stay in the tree tops. No major damage beyond a large branch that fell out of a tree. We lost power around 9:30 last night, and it's still out this morning. News radio this morning did not make reference to state of emergency requiring people to stay home, so I'm now at work, and have yet to see another person here. Someone is here, the coffee has been made and I hear a keyboard off in the distance puttering away.

Aha! Someone just walked past my cube.

Phillies game yesterday was a big one. A desparately needed win. All they need now is more wins combined with Marlin losses and they'll be in the playoffs. The Cincinatti Reds come into town for three games. FortKnox (and other Cincy folk), do you think you guys could spare some W's this weekend? The Phils could really use them.

Yup. The subj is sarcasm.

This morning driving to work I hear on the radio of an accident in southbound I-295 near Woodcrest. Since I'm headed through that stretch northbound, I think little of it other than maybe a small slowdown for rubberneckers.

Indeed, one rubbernecker made himself well known to the northbound traffic. As I approached my entrance ramp to the highway (about 1/2 mile from the accident), traffic suddenly backs up and I hear on the radio that the southbound accident had been cleared, but now there's an accident in the NORTHbound lanes!

Driving home from work this afternoon along I-295 had something a little amusing. The stretch I drive through is under construction, and to maintain three lanes during the work, NJDOT made lanes out of the shoulder, and in some spots split the highway -- one lane on the right (the shoulder), two on the left, divided by barriers and the road crews. One stretch of that is for about 2 miles, during which I make my exit, meaning I have to use it (really sucks when someone decides to rubberneck). This lane is bounded by a guardrail on the right, and a jersey wall on the left, making it just wide enough for one car.

This afternoon while driving home I noticed that NJDOT, in their infinite wisdom for highway construction zone safety standards, on the right side of this single-car wide stretch, placed an orange diamond sign that reads "Stay In Lane."

This is just plain hilarious:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/963814.asp

#1 The NL Wild Card race currently has a five-way tie for the lead, with three other teams in close contention.

Who will win it this year?

#2 Where will the Montreal Expos be playing next year:
  a - Montreal
  b - Portland, OR
  c - Washington, DC / Northern VA
  d - Puerto Rico
  e - Elsewhere
  f - CowboyNeal's Field of Dreams

I'm in the market for a portable MP3 player. I'd like one that's easy to use, has significant capacity, and minimal disruptions while transfering files between computer and player. Apple's iPod certainly fits these, however I dont think my computer has USB2.0 (is there a way to tell?). Rios are another option, but I think most of those are of small capacity. Suggestions? Alternatives?

You knew this one was coming: Is the blackout an event of cyber-terror or other criminal hacking activity? This morning while driving into work Richard Clarke (formerly a US Gov't terror expert) was speaking on ABC News. He said that while US officials are saying terrorists have not struck, he stresses it should not be ruled out. Of interest is how vulnerable the grid might be. He stated that tests by Sandia, Livermore, and other national labs resulted in a better than 90% rate of breaking into systems on the power grid. These Red Team tests started in the 1990s. Not said was what they were capable of doing once on the inside, if these attacks were performed from the general Internet or a closed network, but he did say that no standard for security has been established (let alone implemented), with various actors (Dept of Energy, power companies, etc) still bickering over details. No link provided as one could not be located.

The University of Florida Gators have committed a travesty of mix-ups. Their football media guide for this year has a crocodile, not an aligator, on the cover. Anyone got a picture of it?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/football/college/news/2003/07/29/florida_croc_ap/index.html?cnn=yes

By now you've probably heard about the shooting at New York City Hall. I'm watching my local news, where Bloomburg has just made an announcement that the apparent target of the shooting, Councilman Davis, was shot and killed by someone who had registered to run against him in the next election. The shooter was shot by a plain clothes officer immediately after the first shots were fired and killed as well. Was this possibly an act of assassination?

It appears that regular pizza eating can do a person good to fend off cancer of the digestive tract. The study (by Italian researchers, no less) appears in this month's International Journal of Cancer, indicates that one pie per week can decrease risk by a significant margin. It is suspected that it's the tomato sauce that brings about the goodness here, as other studies have shown tomatoes to lower risk as well.

Update: After several hours, it's finally been rejected. Though I do expect this to end up on the front page before the end of the day.

Does anyone think we'll be seeing this article hitting newsstands soon?

(If you dont know what's going on: Patrick Dennehy is a Baylor University basketball player who has disappeared, suspected of being killed by a teammate, Jerry Stackhouse is an NBA player charged with misdeameanor assault of a woman in North Carolina, and Kobe Bryant has been charged with felony sexual assault in Colorado. Over the past several years, more than a few NBA players have gotten themselves into trouble with the law, prompting that article above.)

Has anyone been following or at least heard about the story where a high school student sued her school in order to be the sole valedictorian?

Here's the background: Blair Hornstine is a disabled student whose condition required home schooling. Because she was at home, she could take extra AP/honors courses that other students could not take otherwise (being home schooled allowed her to get around scheduling conflicts regular students had), and did not have to take classes like gym. As a result, she was able to get a higher GPA than was possible(*), and did so. So the school district, aware of this, wanted to award two valedictorians at graduation.

Hornstine, whose father is a state superior court judge and will be going to Harvard with plans of being a lawyer, sued the Moorestown School District in federal court, claiming it amounted to discrimination. She won, making her the sole valedictorian at her graduation.

Naturally, the students who actually attend class at Moorestown were pissed, as was the rest of the community. They started getting threatening phone calls, letters, vandalism to their home, etc. So Hornstine skipped the ceremony. And I think the school district executives couldn't have been happier, knowing all the jeering that would happen if she were there. They didn't even raise her name the entire night.

It turns out that Hornstine had written some articles in the Teen section of the Courier Post newspaper, and had plagiarized some parts of them. The plagiarism was found after the court ruling, but (IIRC) before the graduation.

The whole thing made national news, and students at Harvard shared opinions of those as people in Moorestown. Editorials of protest appeared in the Harvard Crimson student paper, along with petitions getting passed around both at Harvard and Moorestown wanting the university to drop her, make her share the valedictorian crown, etc.

The news: It appears now that Harvard has indeed dropped Hornstine from admission, though it is unconfirmed officially. The story appears in the Crimson, and locally as well (Courier Post, Philadelphia Inquirer).

My take on all this is that Hornstine should be proud. She is now the last high school student in the United States to reap the advantages and privileges she had being a home schooled student.

(*) - In many schools in NJ, a perfect GPA is not possible, as classes like gym are weighted less than honors or college prep courses. NJ requires four years of gym in high school, and Hornstine was exempted from that requirement, so she got a jump on other students.