Super Bowl Outage Caused by Light Trigger

Boom-boom, out go the lights. That’s the old Pat Travers Band track that looped through my mind for 34 minutes on Super Bowl night.

Well, it turns out (Heh. I see what you did there.) that a device meant to prevent such outages actually caused it.

So says the power company. But the firm that made the relay says the trip setting on the device was too low. Pilot error.

Of course, I’m genetically incapable of seeing ordinary events as, well, ordinary. I perpetually parablize, and metaphorinate. (The latter terms from my coinucopious personal lexicon.)

The framers of the Constitution put in place safety devices designed to trip in a crisis, but their decendents tend to doubt their efficacy. So, they set the trigger light. Instead of allowing free-markets to work, we intervene. Whether it’s the federal bailouts or the fiscal cliff, there are mechanisms which would function properly if allowed to do so, but politicians tweak the settings.

And we’re left in the dark.