Unplugged: “True story: Several years ago, when Bethesda lost power for several days due to an ice storm, a highly educated lawyer discovered to his astonishment that a neighbor had made a cup of coffee. ‘How did you do that?’ he asked. She said she boiled water. But how did you boil water? he asked. She said she had a gas stove. Stunned, he said he had a gas stove, too, but noted that it had an electronic ignition to create a spark. She said, ‘I used a match.’ In a state of nature, this man would be eaten alive by field mice.”