A new pope safely ensconced in office and all the world's problems solved, the
Times turns to the important stuff.
Design NotebookThe Bedside BattlegroundQuote:
Consider the bedside table, a modest domestic surface that nonetheless offers as concise a portrait of human aspirations, anxieties and appetites as one could hope for in 2013. It’s a mess.
Look at the tangle of electronics and other items, for example, that hums next to the head of David Rose, 46, a visiting scientist at the M.I.T. Media Lab, as he sleeps — or, more often, doesn’t. Mr. Rose, the inventor of what is known as “glanceable technology,” which embeds digital interfaces in objects like light bulbs and cabinetry, has a Zeo sleep monitor; a Philips Sleep light (it dims as he gets ready for shut-eye); a cordless phone; an iPhone; a Bose speaker dock that his wife uses as her phone charger; a wristwatch; and a few paperbacks. It’s all jammed onto the 18-by-24-inch landscapes of a pair of Ikea night stands that he and his wife have had for decades.
“It’s embarrassing,” Mr. Rose said parenthetically, “to still be in this 20-year transition from Ikea.”
Second place:
Michael Winerip, Times reporter and Pulitzer winner, with 1,500 words [plus video, plus multimedia slide show] on how he had to junk his car after Hurricane Sandy.
Quote:
LONG BEACH, N.Y. — My dear, fun 2002 Volkswagen Cabrio — my black convertible summer car, the car that carried the family’s surfboards and bikes, that on warm nights with the top down, I’d take for moonlight drives along Jones Beach — was pronounced dead on Feb. 21 at the Alliance Auto Parts salvage yard at 50-16 72nd Street in Woodside, Queens, one more victim of Hurricane Sandy.