We are nothing without electricity

Going without electricity is always a good reminder of how dependent our species is on this magical thing, we would be screwed without it.

Dave, did you recently come back from a trip to India?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/world/asia/power-outages-hit-600-million-in-india.html

Agreed, had an outage in raleigh, NC last week one day when it was a cozy 110 degrees. Sucks

+1 on dave's comment

If it weren't for air conditioning, I'd live about 1,000 miles North of here.

Outside of that, I always like un-electrified things more. I go into antique shops and occasionally get this near psychotic wanderlust triggered by the strangest low tech things. I'll see a well-designed and working coffee mill and think, "That's it! The final creature-comfort puzzle piece! I'm moving my family off-grid!"

And then I snap out of it. :slaphead:

http://www.lehmans.com/store/catalog?Args= every thing a good Amishman needs

dont tell anyone but i have a zassenhaus hand cranked coffee mill and i use it .

I sometimes feel human beings might be better off with it... We live in such a convenient place, but with each technological advance we made, the society seems to have lost something along the way... Yes, we maybe nothing without electricity, but we maybe more sane without it Going home and eating dinner at a reasonable time, and waking up with the sun rise!

The worst thing about short term (a few days) power outages are people with generators. Noisy, smell things running non-stop so that folks don't miss a rerun of Gilligan's Island. I can understand people with medical issues needed them, but being without power for a few days just isn't that big of a deal. And there's an etiquette to them--run them for a while to power the refrigerator or septic sump pump, then turn the darn thing off.

We had a big ole tree fall down across the street taking the electrical wires, a transformer, and some of the pole tops with it. For a small town this was a big deal with (what seemed like) every inhabitant taking a drive by to gawk and get the news. At one point their was about 50 people standing out here on the corner looking down the street when 2 Amish buggies roll by giving us all a look that read like, "what's the big deal here?" To me the message came through loud and clear.