Not long after Bloomberg's news conference this afternoon, during which he announced that ConEd could have power restored in most of Manhattan by midnight, did the cries of joy begin eruptnig across Twitter.

The majority of New York's timeless manhole covers are made by shoeless workers earning dollars a day in an anachronistic West Bengal, India foundry. The workers, pouring 2,500 degree molten metal into those classic ConEd molds, are usually stripped to the waist and bereft of anything resembling protective gear. New York City's Department of Environmental Protection, naturally responding to the world's increasing flatness, said only that "state law requires the city to buy the lowest-priced products available that fit its specifications," and apparently the Indians undercut their competitors, Fagin's Bedraggled Ragamuffin Concern Ltd. of the UK.