READER TIM MCCULLOCH wonders why no one is talking about a SCADA attack as the cause of the blackout. Beats me, though as I mentioned earlier, you don’t need terrorists to get a blackout on a hot August day.

UPDATE: Here’s the latest report I’ve seen on the inquiry into what happened:

MICHEHL GENT, PRESIDENT of the North American Electric Reliability Council, or NERC, said in a conference call with reporters that investigators had determined that a section of the power grid known as the Lake Erie loop experienced a “oscillating power phenomenon” that lasted nine or 10 seconds at the outset of Thursday’s outage.

That event — which saw a 300 megawatt eastward flow of electricity quickly reverse into a 500 megawatt flow to the west — caused other transmission lines and power plants on the grid to shut down as protection systems automatically disconnected them to prevent damaging equipment, he said. . . .

The Lake Erie loop, which runs from New York as far west as Detroit, then jogs northward into Canada before dropping back into the United State, has “been a problem for years,” Gent said, explaining that the locus of transmission lines south of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario makes it difficult to monitor and control the flow of electricity.

Bottom line: nobody knows anything yet. But elected officials are already making fools of themselves by blaming each other. Shut up, guys — at least until next week.

Meanwhile Nick Schulz is quoting Jose Ortega y Gasset:

As they do not see, behind the benefits of civilisation, marvels of invention and construction which can only be maintained by great effort and foresight, they imagine that their role is limited to demanding these benefits peremptorily, as if they were natural rights.

Indeed.