How to Beat the Heat
- Read “To Build A Fire,” the classic short story by Jack London, wherein a man slowly freezes to death. (Text courtesy of Project Gutenberg.)
- Read a blog written by Simon Coggins, a scientist in Antarctica. Specifically, you should check out the entry ”Fun at -50C.” The character in “To Build A Fire” notices his spit freezing at -50C, while Coggins has entertaining photographic and video evidence of boiling water, as well as long, wet hair, freezing at precisely the same temperature.
- Get naked, as noted in this AP story from today’s “National Briefing” section of the New York Times:
Workers at the Justice Department removed the blue drapes that had covered two scantily clad statues for three and one-half years. “Spirit of Justice,” with her one breast exposed and her arms raised, and the bare-chested male “Majesty of Law” basked in the afternoon light of the Great Hall. The drapes, installed in 2002 at a cost of $8,000, let John Ashcroft, then attorney general, speak in the Great Hall without fear of a breast showing up behind him on television or in newspaper pictures.