Probably the most comprehensive overview of what happened with last week's power outage, and the various arguments over its causes, can be found here. You'll be reading for quite a while but you'll come away with quite a lot of understanding you probably didn't have before.

Jane Galt also has two terrific back-to-back posts on why the debate over regulation or deregulation's role in these blackouts is fruitless. What needs to be discussed is finding the best ways to make sure infrastructure improvements are made.

It should also be noted that, despite claims to the contrary, last week's power blackout was not the worst in the nation's history. It was "the biggest" only in the sense that there are more people in the country now, so more people were affected than the last two big ones. But the major outages in the 1960s and the 1970s hit bigger areas and likely would have hit more poeople than last week's outage did if the population back then was as big as it is now.

One thing I keep hoping is that things like this will help people get over their insane fears of nuclear power. After all, it remains the cleanest, safest, most environmentally friendly, and least harmful waste-producing method of power generation mankind has yet to develop. I won't hold my breath, but it would be nice to see.

* Update * By the way, while linking Jane, I might as well post to this terrific post on the Broken Window Fallacy that's being pushed by some people who think that last week's blackouts would "help the economy." Actually things like that are just another blow the economy didn't need--just like SARS, the Mad Cow stuff up in Canada, and all the other things that have hit this economy over the last three yars. We really can't afford more things like this, which do all kinds of harm and very little good.