Your tone may be flip, but you put your finger on something. I'd been watching the disintregation of civil order in New Orleans, and here at the HabitableZone I was seeing the signs of the same thing. As if anarchy is contagious...and perhaps it is, among us smart social primates. Monkey see, monkey do.

I think the particular thing that's contagious is the apparent license to cast off the usual social constraints in times of danger. That's where looting comes from. The term "political looter" has been bandied about (in an ironically self-referential way, by people using it to score their own political points). As an analogy it's not bad. At a time when you'd expect civilized people to become even more solemn and restrained, the opposite happened, and flame wars erupted over political abstractions even as people continue to suffer.

It's a humbling reminder that while we may wear clothes and carry around shiny gadgets like computers and cellphones, powering it all is a brain that evolved on the savannah. Civilization is a veneer 5,000 years thin atop the depths of five million years of hominid evolution.