"My God... It's full of stars..."

2001: A Space Odyssey

The Great Blackout of 2003. So the northeast is blacked out tonight, fifty million people without power, worse than any other blackout in US history. My sister in Detroit is blacked out; her neighbors are holding an impromptu block party to grill and barbecue all their thawing meats. Good thing we went up there last weekend instead of this. Look for a statistical increase in babies born in May 2004.

I was born in August 1966 in Ohio (my birthday was just yesterday) and moved to New Jersey in 1973. Among my friends, more were born in August 1966 than in any other month. Not coincidentally, their parents were living in NJ the previous November, during the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965. My birthday really was a coincidence, as Ohio wasn't affected at the time.

I remember the July 1977 NYC blackout. Living in NJ we weren't affected directly, but I recall being really pissed off that the TV stations in NYC couldn't broadcast the shows that I wanted to watch (for some reason, I'm thinking it was a rerun of Charlie's Angels). We had to get the rabbit ears for the TV so we could watch a snowy picture come in from a Philadelphia station. There were an extra-ordinary amount of babies born in May 1978, too.

News articles using the New York Times wire services quote this one guy saying "You can actually see the stars in New York City." How long has it been since New Yorkers could see the stars while standing on the streets of Manhattan?