How to read a book a day for a year.

Choose short/easy/audio books. Actually, I read a book a day and have for years — but it's an audiobook, and most of this reading is don...

Another idea for delaying aging.

At last night's open thread, the Coal Café, our beloved commenter Lem got inspired to look for updates on that story from a couple week...

"Eleven days after the windstorm, more than 2,300 Amherst County residents remain without power."

"To beat the heat, some chose to stay in an unlikely shelter — the old Amherst County Jail." Seventeen people took refuge in the j...

"Daybreak Sunday found 789,358 in the Washington region still without power..."

"... facing another sweltering day and the prospect of returning to work Monday before electricity is restored to their homes." Se...

"Deadly storms, intense heat bring misery to millions."

Are you okay?

"Two [University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point] students trapped in the New Zealand wilderness by a snowstorm survived for nine days..."

"... by rationing their supplies of peanut butter and rice - and warming themselves in hot springs."

I love this small house, plunked down in the desert near Death Valley...

... but an astounding sentence appears at slide #4 of the slide show : The house has no air-conditioning; a ceiling fan hangs overhead. Expo...

"But suddenly, the lawyer became so uncomfortably hot that he leaped up to move."

"He tried to put on his flip-flop sandals but, inexplicably, they were too hot to touch. So he ran barefoot to the shade." The Las...

Energy efficient windows...

... versus vinyl siding. (Warning: 1. Link goes to video that begins with a commercial, 2. Don't have vinyl siding.)

"The annual contest... had been held since 1999."

"It will never be held again...."