ADVANCE INTERNET SERVICES (including NJ.com, Nola.com, Cleveland.com, Masslive.com, etc.) has been using weblogs as a backup — their emergency page sends people to The Command Post, Buzzmachine, etc. for updates while they work to restore service.

Weblogs as distributed redundant news services. Why not?

Here’s an update from Patrick Brown in London, Ontario:

For what it’s worth, power is still off in my neighbourhood in London, Ontario, though it’s on at the university a 15 minute walk away (which is where I’m emailing you from). Parts of the city have had power since about 8 pm yesterday. We’re situated about halfway between Detroit and Toronto. The big news here is no news – no disasters, no looting. People spontaneously organized themselves in traffic. I drove right across the city (it’s a sprawling town of 330,000) at 5 pm yesterday and saw only politeness and efficient managing of intersections. I only saw a traffic cop at one intersection. Everywhere else, people took turns and were polite. Lots of reports to radio stations suggested people were getting along fine, helping each other. At one radio station in Kitchener, Ontario (an hour down the highway from here), the staff took batteries out of their cars and ran the station using them.

CBC is reporting traffic “chaos” in Toronto, but that’s CBC. One of their reporters in a live, on-the-scene report during rush hour, with a breathy, dramatic voice, allowed that things were so bad he “wouldn’t be surprised to see a fender-bender or a pedestrian being hit.” Oh, the humanity!!

Well, back to marking term papers for my summer course :- (

Grading term papers — now that is a disaster.