Cold Temperatures Quotes

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I cannot go to school today" Said little Peggy Ann McKay. "I have the measles and the mumps, A gash, a rash and purple bumps. My mouth is wet, my throat is dry. I'm going blind in my right eye. My tonsils are as big as rocks, I've counted sixteen chicken pox. And there's one more - that's seventeen, And don't you think my face looks green? My leg is cut, my eyes are blue, It might be the instamatic flu. I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke, I'm sure that my left leg is broke. My hip hurts when I move my chin, My belly button's caving in. My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained, My 'pendix pains each time it rains. My toes are cold, my toes are numb, I have a sliver in my thumb. My neck is stiff, my voice is weak, I hardly whisper when I speak. My tongue is filling up my mouth, I think my hair is falling out. My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight, My temperature is one-o-eight. My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear, There's a hole inside my ear. I have a hangnail, and my heart is ... What? What's that? What's that you say? You say today is .............. Saturday? G'bye, I'm going out to play!
Shel Silverstein
The climate of Barrow is Arctic. Temperatures range from cold as shit to fucking freezing.
Steve Niles (30 Days of Night)
Maybe you've never fallen into a frozen stream. Here's what happens. 1. It is cold. So cold that the Department of Temperature Acknowledgment and Regulation in you brain gets the readings and says, "I can't deal with this. I'm out of here." It puts up the OUT TO LUNCH sign and passes all responsibility to the... 2. Department of Pain and the Processing Thereof, which gets all this gobbledygook from the temperature department that it can't understand. "This is so not our job," it says. So it just starts hitting random buttons, filling you with strange and unpleasant sensations, and calls the... 3. Office of Confusion and Panic, where there is always someone ready to hop on the phone the moment it rings. This office is at least willing to take some action. The Office of Confusion and Panic loves hitting buttons.
Maureen Johnson (Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances)
Isolate her, and however abundant the food or favourable the temperature, she will expire in a few days not of hunger or cold, but of loneliness.
Maurice Maeterlinck (The Life of the Bee)
Do you really like studying?" Mattia nodded. "Why?" "It's the only thing I know how to do," he said shortly. He wanted to tell her that he liked studying because you can do it alone, because all the things you study are already dead, cold, and chewed over. He wanted to tell her that the pages of the schoolbooks were all the same temperature, that they left you time to choose, that they never hurt you and you couldn't hurt them either. But he said nothing.
Paolo Giordano (The Solitude of Prime Numbers)
What kind of lover has cold hands?" "One who makes up for temperature with talent.
Roshani Chokshi (The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves, #1))
I knew it was cold, but singing familiar Christmas songs and the fellowship warmed me through and through—until we stopped in front of a bank and saw the temperature on its marquee: six degrees below zero!
Larada Horner-Miller (Hair on Fire: A Heartwarming & Humorous Christmas Memoir)
The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe.
Jack London (To Build a Fire)
Meat is necessary when there is hard physical work to be done, or in a very cold climate, or when edible plants cannot be found...Animal flesh provides all the substances we need, both for the intensive working of our organism and for maintaining a normal temperature in cold climates.
G.I. Gurdjieff
When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists? Moreover, if you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general on this planet will die out in due course: it is a stage in the decay of the solar system; at a certain stage of decay you get the sort of conditions of temperature and so forth which are suitable to protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in the life of the whole solar system. You see in the moon the sort of thing to which the earth is tending -- something dead, cold, and lifeless.
Bertrand Russell
Still, winter is an abstract season: it is low on colors, even in Italy, and big on the imperatives of cold and brief daylight. These things train your eye on the outside with an intensity greater than that of the electric bulb availing you of your own features in the evening. If this season doesn't necessarily quell your nerves, it still subordinates them to your instincts; beauty at low temperatures is beauty.
Joseph Brodsky
A positive attitude is most easily arrived at through a deliberate and rational analysis of what’s required to manifest unwavering positive thought patterns. First, reflect on the actual, present condition of your mind. In other words, is the mind positive or not? We’ve all met individuals who perceive themselves as positive people but don’t appear as such. Since the mind is both invisible and intangible, it’s therefore easier to see the accurate characteristics of the mind through a person’s words, deeds, and posture. For example, if we say, “It’s absolutely freezing today! I’ll probably catch a cold before the end of the day!” then our words expose a negative attitude. But if we say, “The temperature is very cold” (a simple statement of fact), then our expressions, and therefore attitude, are not negative. Sustaining an alert state in which self-awareness becomes possible gives us a chance to discover the origins of negativity. In doing so, we also have an opportunity to arrive at a state of positiveness, so that our words and deeds are also positive, making others feel comfortable, cheerful, and inspired.
H.E. Davey
It was fucking cold. The rover and trailer regulate their own temperatures just fine, but things weren’t hot enough in the bedroom. Story of my life.
Andy Weir (The Martian)
—Do you know what we mean by Cold War? —War don’t have no temperature.
Marlon James (A Brief History of Seven Killings)
At least I was doing something, unlike Max, who seemed fairly committed to doing absolutely nothing, ever. On a particularly cold day, he stepped outside, shivered, looked up at the sky, and declared, “I’m not made for this,” before wandering back into the house. I quickly learned that Max was apparently only “made for” an exceptionally narrow set of environments, temperatures, activities, and interactions.
Carissa Broadbent (Daughter of No Worlds (The War of Lost Hearts, #1))
That ‘it’ll never come again’ felt so ominous, so striking! If words were measured like temperature, they’d feel as cold as a planet with no sun and as dark as the ground of the Old City.
Misba (The High Auction (Wisdom Revolution, #1))
The temperature jumped another ninety degrees. Why couldn't anyone see in my life how awesome Noah was? I shoved up my sleeves, welcoming the cold air on my skin. "Echo, stop!" Ashley propelled her self out of the gliter. I froze and then remembered Ashley was damaged. I was going on a date, not to Vegas to elope. Noah's strong hand slipped over my wrist before he entwined his fingers with mine. The sensation of warm flesh against an area I allowed no one to see, much less touch, caused me to shiver. My eyes widened, realizing my mistake. This is what had freaked Ashley out. What had come over me? I never pulled up my sleeves. I spent all my time pulling them down. When had I become...comfortable? He rubbed his thumb over my hand. "I planned on taking her to my house to meet some of my friends." Noah could have told them he was getting me to the ghetto to buy us crack and they wouldn't have heard him. Ashley stood in place, staring at my exposed scars as my father stared at our combined hands. I reached over to pull down my sleeve, but Noah casually placed his hand over my forearm, preventing me fron doing it. My lungs squeezed out all the oxygen in my body. Noah Hutchins, in fact, a human being, was overtly, on purpose, touching my scars. I'd stopped breathing moments ago, as had Ashley. Noah continued as nothing earth-shattering had happened. "What time does Echo need to be home?" Blinking my self back to life, i answered for them, "My curfew is eleven." "Twelve." My father stood and extended his hand. "I didn't have a chance to properly introduce myself earlier. I'm Owen Emerson.
Katie McGarry (Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits, #1))
Women, and what went on under their collars. Hotness and coldness, coming and going in the strange musky flowery variable-weather country inside their clothes -- mysterious, important, uncontrollable. That was his father's take on things. But men's body temperatures were never dealt with; they were never even mentioned....
Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1))
That it’ll-never-come-again felt so ominous, so striking! If words were measured like temperature, they’d feel as cold as a planet with no sun.
Misba (The High Auction (Wisdom Revolution, #1))
There is a quasi-scientific fable that if you can get a frog to sit quietly in a saucepan of cold water, and if you then raise the temperature of the water very slowly and smoothly so that there is no moment marked to be the moment at which the frog should jump, he will never jump. He will get boiled. Is the human species changing its own environment with slowly increasing pollution and rotting its mind with slowly deteriorating religion and education in such a saucepan?
Gregory Bateson
Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
Let X equal the quantity of all quantities of X. Let X equal the cold. It is cold in December. The months of cold equal November through February. There are four months of cold, and four of heat, leaving four months of indeterminate temperature. In February it snows. In March the Lake is a lake of ice. In September the students come back and the bookstores are full. Let X equal the month of full bookstores. The number of books approaches infinity as the number of months of cold approaches four. I will never be as cold now as I will in the future. The future of cold is infinite. The future of heat is the future of cold. The bookstores are infinite and so are never full except in September...
David Auburn (Proof)
Worst of all was the blizzard. People from the east or west coasts of America may think they have seen a blizzard. Likely they have not. It is almost exclusively a phenomenon of the plains, and got its name on the plains. It entailed wind-driven snow so dense and temperatures so cold that anyone lost in them on the shelterless plains was as good as dead.
S.C. Gwynne (Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History)
Exposure to nature - cold, heat, water - is the most dehumanizing way to die. Violence is passionate and real - the final moments as you struggle for your life, firing a gun or wrestling a mugger or screaming for help, your heart pumps loudly and your body tingles with energy; you are alert and awake and, for that brief moment, more alive and human than you've ever been before. Not so with nature. At the mercy of the elements the opposite happens: your body slows, your thoughts grow sluggish, and you realize just how mechanical you really are. Your body is a machine, full of tubes and valves and motors, of electrical signals and hydraulic pumps, and they function properly only within a certain range of conditions. As temperatures drop, your machine breaks down. Cells begin to freeze and shatter; muscles use more energy to do less; blood flows too slowly, and to the wrong places. Your sense fade, your core temperature plummets, and your brain fires random signals that your body is too weak to interpret or follow. In that stat you are no longer a human being, you are a malfunction - an engine without oil, grinding itself to pieces in its last futile effort to complete its last meaningless task.
Dan Wells (I Am Not a Serial Killer (John Cleaver, #1))
The very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea was always cold and the telescope domes were chilled to the nighttime temperature which was often below freezing in wintertime.
Steven Magee
The cold November sun sent weak rays onto the floor of the old house. The floor beneath snickered, trying hard to hold back snaps of bawdy laughter. The temperature dropped with ease.
J. Thorn (The Seventh Seal)
At the lip of a cliff, I look out over Lake Superior, through the bare branches of birches and the snow-covered branches of aspens and pines. A hard wind blows snow up out of a cavern and over my face. I know this place, I know its seasons - I have hiked these mountains in the summer and walked these winding pathways in the explosion of colour that is a northern fall. And now, the temperature drops well below zero and the deadly cold lake rages below, I feel the stirrings of faith that here, in this place, in my heart, spring will come again. But first the winter must be waited out. And that waiting has worth.
Marya Hornbacher (Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power)
Despite my resistance to hyperbole, the LHC belongs to a world that can only be described with superlatives. It is not merely large: the LHC is the biggest machine ever built. It is not merely cold: the 1.9 kelvin (1.9 degrees Celsius above absolute zero) temperature necessary for the LHC’s supercomputing magnets to operate is the coldest extended region that we know of in the universe—even colder than outer space. The magnetic field is not merely big: the superconducting dipole magnets generating a magnetic field more than 100,000 times stronger than the Earth’s are the strongest magnets in industrial production ever made. And the extremes don’t end there. The vacuum inside the proton-containing tubes, a 10 trillionth of an atmosphere, is the most complete vacuum over the largest region ever produced. The energy of the collisions are the highest ever generated on Earth, allowing us to study the interactions that occurred in the early universe the furthest back in time.
Lisa Randall (Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World)
Outside, she thought that there ought to be a word for it: the air temperature that was perfectly neither hot nor cold. One degree lower, and she might have felt a faint misgiving about not having brought a jacket. One degree higher, and a skim of sweat might have glistened at her hairline. But at this precise degree, she required neither wrap nor breeze. Were there a word for such a temperature, there would have to be a corollary for the particular ecstasy of greeting it - the heedlessness, the needlessness, the suspended lack of urgency, as if time could stop, or should. Usually temperature was a battle; only at this exact fulcrum was it an active delight.
Lionel Shriver (The Post-Birthday World)
I know your race and mine are never on the best of terms." There was a cold smile in his voice if not on his face. "But I do only what you force me to. You rationalize, Keeton. You defend. You reject unpalatable truths, and if you can't reject them outright you trivialize them. Incremental evidence is never enough for you. You hear rumors of Holocaust; you dismiss them. You see evidence of genocide; you insist it can't be so bad. Temperatures rise, glaciers melt—species die—and you blame sunspots and volcanoes. Everyone is like this, but you most of all. You and your Chinese Room. You turn incomprehension into mathematics, you reject the truth without even knowing what it is.
Peter Watts (Blindsight (Firefall, #1))
The air was cold and wet, and if you stood still for a moment the chilling damp would creep into your bones. I could tell the temperature was taking a deep dive, and the bright sky of the morning was a fond memory. It was an appropriate day to dump a body.
Charlaine Harris (Club Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #3))
On Hana’s island, diving is women’s work. Their bodies suit the cold depths of the ocean better than men’s. They can hold their breath longer, swim deeper, and keep their body temperature warmer, so for centuries, Jeju women have enjoyed a rare independence.
Mary Lynn Bracht (White Chrysanthemum)
You told me, if something is not used it is meaningless, and took my temperature, which I had thought to save for a more difficult day. In the mirror, every night, the same face, a bit more threadbare, a dress worn too long. The moon was out in the cold, along with the restless, dissatisfied wind that seemed to change the location of the sycamores. I expected reproaches because I had mentioned the word love, but you only accused me of stealing your pencil, and sadness disappeared with sense. You made a ceremony out of holding your head in your hands because, you said, it could not be contained in itself.
Rosmarie Waldrop
Are you cold?” he asks, turning toward me to run the backs of his fingers up and down my upper arm, as if testing the temperature of my skin. “Here,” he says, taking off his jacket and draping it over my shoulders. The jacket is warm and heavy and smells just like Nash, like whatever cologne or soap he uses. I figure it must be called delicious, maybe by Armani or some other fancy designer. It almost makes my mouth water. “Is that better?” He wraps his arm around me, too, as if to ensure I won’t be cold. Of course, I won’t complain. Even if I was sweating, I wouldn’t complain. “That’s much better, thank you.
M. Leighton (Down to You (The Bad Boys, #1))
And so, because business leadership is still so dominated by men, modern workplaces are riddled with these kind of gaps, from doors that are too heavy for the average woman to open with ease, to glass stairs and lobby floors that mean anyone below can see up your skirt, to paving that’s exactly the right size to catch your heels. Small, niggling issues that aren’t the end of the world, granted, but that nevertheless irritate. Then there’s the standard office temperature. The formula to determine standard office temperature was developed in the 1960s around the metabolic resting rate of the average forty-year-old, 70 kg man.1 But a recent study found that ‘the metabolic rate of young adult females performing light office work is significantly lower’ than the standard values for men doing the same type of activity. In fact, the formula may overestimate female metabolic rate by as much as 35%, meaning that current offices are on average five degrees too cold for women. Which leads to the odd sight of female office workers wrapped up in blankets in the New York summer while their male colleagues wander around in summer clothes.
Caroline Criado Pérez (Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men)
I tend to go back and forth between romanticism and cynicism. Crossing those barriers between hot and cold, I forget the lukewarm boredom of life; that lukewarm state is what I fear the most. Unable to return to feeling hot or cold, to be numb within a state of room temperature. In that state, we’re nothing better than dead.
Baek Se-hee (I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki)
So, the ‘you should be prepared for anything’ part of Meera’s speech is ignorable? Kusha thinks. She never speaks her thoughts, or maybe she speaks only 1% of her thoughts, but it’s not the reason she halts now. Kusha widens her eyes. That ‘it’ll never come again’ felt so ominous, so striking! If words were measured like temperature, they’d feel as cold as a planet with no sun and as dark as the ground of the Old City.
Misba (The High Auction (Wisdom Revolution, #1))
While we're on brunch, how about hollandaise sauce? Not for me. Bacteria love hollandaise. And hollandaise, that delicate emulsion of egg yolks and clarified butter, must be held at a temperature not too hot nor too cold, lest it break when spooned over your poached eggs. Unfortunately, this lukewarm holding temperature is also the favorite environment for bacteria to copulate and reproduce in. Nobody I know has ever made hollandaise to order. Most likely, the stuff on your eggs was made hours ago and held on station. Equally disturbing is the likelihood that the butter used in the hollandaise is melted table butter, heated, clarified, and strained to get out all the breadcrumbs and cigarette butts. Butter is expensive, you know. Hollandaise is a veritable petri-dish of biohazards.
Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly)
I guess the last remaining question is: What about the sombrero? It's still there, lying in the street but its temperature had returned to -24 degrees and fortunately for America it stayed there. Millions of tourists have walked all around it but not one of them has seen it, though it is in plain sight. How can you miss a very cold white sombrero lying in the Main Street of a town? In other words: There is more to life than meets the eye.
Richard Brautigan (Sombrero Fallout (Arena Books))
Windhoek has three temperatures: hot, mosquito, and fucking cold.
Ngamije, Rémy
Isolate her, and however abundant the food or favourable the temperature, she will expire in a few days not of hunger or cold, but of loneliness.
Laurie R. King (The Beekeeper's Apprentice (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #1))
I couldn't shed the cold; it clung to every bit of me.
Maggie Stiefvater (Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #1))
I'm not a stone-cold bitch, just a room-temperature one.
K.A. Harrington (Forget Me)
November. It was already getting cold in the Panhandle. I'm talking bone cold. Temperatures were sinking all the way to sixty-two degrees in some places.
Sean Dietrich (Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: A Memoir of Learning to Believe You’re Gonna Be Okay)
Would it be possible to get your teeth to such a cold temperature that they would shatter upon drinking a hot cup of coffee?
Randall Munroe (What If? 10th Anniversary Edition: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions)
For much of the twentieth century, American visitors to Britain found that everything was the wrong temperature: cold, drafty rooms; warm beer and milk; rancid butter and sweating cheese.
Bee Wilson (Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat)
The body is a multilingual being. It speaks through its colour and its temperature, the flush of recognition, the glow of love, the ash of pain, the heat of arousal, the coldness of non-conviction. It speaks through its constant tiny dance, sometimes swaying, sometimes a-jitter, sometimes trembling. It speaks through the leaping of the heart, the falling of the spirit, the pit at the centre, and rising hope. The body remembers, the bones remember, the joints remember, even the little finger remembers. Memory is lodged in pictures and feelings in the cells themselves. Like a sponge filled with water, anywhere the flesh is pressed, wrung, even touched lightly, a memory may flow out in a stream.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women Who Run With the Wolves)
Cold thermogenesis is a type of cold therapy that uses cold temperatures to create heat in your body. Different types of cold therapies have been around for ages. The ancient Romans took plunges in “frigidarium baths” (large cold pools) and the Norse cracked open icy lakes for a winter swim. Even applying ice to sore muscles is a form of cold therapy. So is finishing your shower with thirty seconds of cold water!
Dave Asprey (Head Strong: The Bulletproof Plan to Activate Untapped Brain Energy to Work Smarter and Think Faster-in Just Two Weeks)
Why do people automatically think that because you’re carrying extra weight you don’t feel the cold? I’m not a fucking walrus. My blubber is not that beneficial when it comes to staving off cold temperatures.
Nick Spalding (Fat Chance)
This concept is intuitive, and yet when we watch extremophiles, from emperor penguins braving the Antarctic chill to camels trekking over scorching sands, it’s easy to think that they are suffering throughout their lives. We admire them not just for their physiological resilience but also for their psychological fortitude. We project our senses onto theirs and assume that they’d be in discomfort because we’d be in discomfort. But their senses are tuned to the temperatures in which they live. A camel likely isn’t distressed by the baking sun, and penguins probably don’t mind huddling through an Antarctic storm. Let the storm rage on. The cold doesn’t bother them, anyway.
Ed Yong (An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us)
The Sun contains about a thousand times more mass than Jupiter. If it were cold, gravity would squeeze it a million times denser than an ordinary solid: it would be a 'white dwarf' about the size of the Earth but 330,000 times more massive. But the Sun's core actually has a temperature of fifteen million degrees-thousands of time hotter than its glowing surface, and the pressure of this immensely hot gas 'puffs up' the Sun and holds it in equilibrium.
Martin J. Rees (Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe (Science Masters))
What comes next will be trickier, of course. Snowfall and a drop in temperature, a world tilting, the suddenness of something new. Best to keep on, wherever this is possible. Best, in time, to swim back from a drowning place and continue, struggle back into dailiness, and to live with the icing-over of windows, the frozen pipes and bad wiring and increasing impossibility. Better, in whatever small way, to go on until it becomes too cold to do so. Better to hold one’s hands to whatever warmth there is, to kiss and talk and grieve and fuck and hold tight against the whitening of the sky.
Julia Armfield (Private Rites)
The summer of 1950 was the hottest in living memory, with high humidity and temperatures above 100 F. My mother had been washing every day, and she was attacked for this, too. Peasants, especially in the North where Mrs. Mi came from, washed very rarely, because of the shortage of water. In the guerrillas, men and women used to compete to see who had the most 'revolutionary insects' (lice). Cleanliness was regarded as un proletarian When the steamy summer turned into cool autumn my father's bodyguard weighed in with a new accusation: my mother was 'behaving like a Kuomintang official's grand lady' because she had used my father's leftover hot water. At the time, in order to save fuel, there was a rule that only officials above a certain rank were entitled to wash with hot water. My father fell into this group, but my mother did not. She had been strongly advised by the women in my father's family not to touch cold water when she came near to delivery time. After the bodyguard's criticism, my father would not let my mother use his water. My mother felt like screaming at him for not taking her side against the endless intrusions into the most irrelevant recesses of her life.
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
Sick" "I cannot go to school today," Said little Peggy Ann McKay. "I have the measles and the mumps, A gash, a rash and purple bumps. My mouth is wet, my throat is dry, I'm going blind in my right eye. My tonsils are as big as rocks, I've counted sixteen chicken pox And there's one more--that's seventeen, And don't you think my face looks green? My leg is cut--my eyes are blue-- It might be instamatic flu. I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke, I'm sure that my left leg is broke-- My hip hurts when I move my chin, My belly button's caving in, My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained, My 'pendix pains each time it rains. My nose is cold, my toes are numb. I have a sliver in my thumb. My neck is stiff, my voice is weak, I hardly whisper when I speak. My tongue is filling up my mouth, I think my hair is falling out. My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight, My temperature is one-o-eight. My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear, There is a hole inside my ear. I have a hangnail, and my heart is--what? What's that? What's that you say? You say today is. . .Saturday? G'bye, I'm going out to play!
Shel Silverstein
Speaking of cold... I shiver. "Has the temperature dropped, or is it just me?" "Here." Etienne unwraps the black scarf that had been tied loosely around his neck,and hands it to me. I take it, gently, and wrap it around mine. It makes me dizzy.It smells like freshly scrubbed boy. It smells like him. "Your hair looks nice," he says. "You bleached it again. I touch the stripe self-consciously. "Mom helped me." "That breeze is wicked,I'm going for coffee." Josh snaps his sketchbook closed. I'd forgotten he was here again. "You coming?" Etienne looks at me, waiting to see how I answer. Coffee! I'm dying for a real cup. I smile at Josh. "Sounds perfect." And then I'm heading down the steps of the Pantheon, cool and white and glittering, in the most beautiful city in the world. I'm with two attractive, intelligent,funny boys and I'm grinning ear to ear. If Bridgette could see me now. I mean,who needs Christopher when Etienne St. Clair is in the world? But as soon as I think of Toph, I get that same stomach churching I always do when I think about him now.Shame that I ever thought he might wait. That I wasted so much time on him. Ahead of mine,Etienne laughs at something Josh said. And the sound sends me spiraling into panic as the information hits me again and again and again. What am I going to do? I'm in love with my new best friend.
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
I waited, hesitant to go out into the cold again. It was one of those days that have no mercy on your toes, that are oblivious to the suffering of your ears, that are mean and determined to take a chunk of your nose. It was a day to remind you that you can shiver all you want, sniff all you want, the universe is still oblivious. And if you ask why the inhumane temperature, the universe will answer you with tight lips and a cold tone and tell you to go back where you came from if you do not like it here.
Rawi Hage (Cockroach)
During the winter much of Yakutia experiences a temperature inversion which results in an unusual phenomena. When the temperature dips below minus 53° Celsius, you can often hear a soft whooshing noise like the sound of grain being poured. It is caused by vapour in one’s own breath turning to ice crystals in the cold, dry air. The local Yakut people call this sound “The Whisper of the Stars.
Jonathan Safran Foer
When I woke, I was nestled on top of Ren’s chest. His arms were wrapped around me, and my legs were entwined with his. I was surprised I could breathe all night since my nose was smashed against his muscular torso. It had gotten cold, but my quilt covered both of us and his body, which maintained a warmer-than-average temperature, had kept me toasty all night. Ren was still asleep, so I took the rare opportunity to study him. His powerful frame was relaxed and his face was softened by sleep. His lips were full, smooth, and utterly kissable, and for the first time, I noticed how long his sooty lashes were. His glossy dark hair fell softly over his brow and was mussed in a way that made him look even more irresistible. So this is the real Ren. He doesn’t seem real. He looked like an archangel who fell to the earth. I’d been with Ren night and day for the past four weeks, but the time he was a man was such a small fraction of each day that he seemed almost like a dream guy, a real life Prince Charming. I traced a black eyebrow, following its arch with my finger, and lightly brushed the silky dark hair away from his face. Hoping not to disturb him, I sighed, shifted slowly, and tried to move away, but his arms tensed, restraining me. He sleepily mumbled, “Don’t even think about moving” and pulled me back to snuggle me close again. I rested my cheek against his chest, felt his heartbeat, and contented myself with listening to its rhythm. After a few minutes, he stretched and rolled to his side, pulling me with him. He kissed my forehead, blinked open his eyes, and smiled at me. It was like watching the sun come up. The handsome, sleeping man was potent enough, but when he turned his dazzling white smile on me and blinked open his cobalt blue eyes, I was dumbstruck. I bit my lip. Alarm bells started going off in my head. Ren’s eyes fluttered open, and he tucked some loose hair behind my ear. “Good morning, rajkumari. Sleep well?” I stammered, “I…you…I…slept just fine, thank you.” I closed my eyes, rolled away from him, and stood up. I could deal with him a lot better if I didn’t think about him much, or look at him, or talk to him, or hear him. He wrapped his arms around me from behind, and I felt his smile as he pressed his lips to the soft spot behind my ear. “Best night of sleep I’ve had in about three hundred and fifty years.
Colleen Houck (Tiger's Curse (The Tiger Saga, #1))
A quality that always amazed him about trees: the constancy of their temperature. In winter, trees are never cold to the touch, and in summer they give off no acquired solar heat. It spoke to their essential aliveness. They were not rocks growing warm in the midday sun or streams that froze over; they were as self-regulating as the human body. It was a small leap to imagine that trees had souls.
Jon Cohen (Harry's Trees)
Poker.” He nodded once, holding me in place with a clearly skeptical if not entertained expression. “Is it very cold? This place where you’re going to play poker?” Without me really noticing he’d crossed the room. I felt like one moment Quinn was at the far side by the window and the next moment he was standing directly in front of me, no more than three feet of air, and clothes, separated us. “N-no. Not necessarily. I just wanted to be prepared.” “Prepared for artic temperatures?” “Prepared for any eventuality.” “Like what? Poker in a freezer?
Penny Reid (Neanderthal Seeks Human (Knitting in the City, #1))
That beautiful glass of lemonade, so cold it made the glass sweat? It was colored water at room temperature, in a glass that had been sprayed with Scotch Guard, and misted with glycerin, so the “sweat” didn’t run down the glass before the photograph was taken. And the ice cubes were acrylic.
Jamie Lee Scott (Pasta Pinot & Murder (Willa Friday Food & Wine Mystery #1))
For example, I asked him how often the refrigerator was cleaned. He looked surprised. So I explained to him that many bacteria such as Listeria can easily grow at cold temperatures. I had quite a lot of data on it, but when I tried to share those data with Seth, he didn’t seem to be interested.
Freida McFadden (The Coworker)
Similar intermixing of the real and the metaphorical occurs with temperature sensation. In another study from Bargh’s group, the researcher, hands full with something, would ask a subject to briefly hold a cup of coffee for them. Half the subjects held warm coffee, half iced coffee. Subjects then read about some individual and answered questions about them. Subjects who held the warm cup rated the individual as having a warmer personality (without altering ratings about other characteristics). In the next part of the study, the temperature of a held object altered subjects’ generosity and levels of trust—cold hands, cold heart.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst)
For five days the city had wilted under a hard sky, sweltering in a temperature that stayed fixed in the middle nineties. Even at night there was no relief from the heat. Pyjamas and nighties stuck clammily to damp skin. Half-clad, self-pitying figures rose, exasperated by insomnia, to stumble through darkened rooms in search of a cooler plot than their bed, hoping that, all accidentally, they might waken any gross sleeper the house contained. Cold water ran hot from the taps, and the roads turned to tar.
Elizabeth Harrower (Down in the City)
I thought we’d start with cold temperatures because it’s a little less miserable than training for heat,” he explained as he pulled off her glove. “Though you’re probably still going to want to punch me when you dunk your arm in.” “My whole arm? Not just my hand?” “Yep. The colder you are, the more it’ll trigger your instincts.” “Of course.
Shannon Messenger (Flashback (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #7))
Imagine that you have an ice cube sitting on the table in front of you. The room is cold and you can see your breath. It is currently twenty-five degrees. Ever so slowly, the room begins to heat up. Twenty-six degrees. Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. The ice cube is still sitting on the table in front of you. Twenty-nine degrees. Thirty. Thirty-one. Still, nothing has happened. Then, thirty-two degrees. The ice begins to melt. A one-degree shift, seemingly no different from the temperature increases before it, has unlocked a huge change.
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
It is so cold. So cold that the Department of Temperature Acknowledgment and Regulation in your brain gets the readings and says, “I can’t deal with this. I’m out of here.
Maureen Johnson (Let It Snow)
A warm heart can heat us even in very low temperatures; a cold heart can frost us even in very high temperatures!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Chandra told me once about absolute zero, a temperature cold enough to bring the universe to a standstill. My heart feels like it's at absolute zero.
Padma Venkatraman (A Time to Dance)
Good breathers are not apt to "take cold," and they generally have plenty of good warm blood which enables them to resist the changes in the outer temperature.
William Walker Atkinson (The Complete Works of William Walker Atkinson (Unabridged): New Thought, Yogi Philosophy, and Occult Wisdom for Mind Power, Magnetism, and Spiritual Mastery)
Don't worry about negative temperatures because minus times minus equals plus. If you are not very good at Maths, then put some rum in the tea.
Ljupka Cvetanova (The New Land)
Cold didn’t worry him unduly. Given that his normal body temperature was way below human levels, the dip in the river had been no more than refreshing, certainly not deadly.
Marcus Sedgwick (The Spear of Destiny (Doctor Who 50th Anniversary E-Shorts, #3))
They who are at work abroad are not cold, but rather it is they who sit shivering in houses. As with temperatures, so with flavors; as with cold and heat, so with sour and sweet.
Henry David Thoreau (Wild Apples)
Cold demanded a sharper, simpler view of things: in those temperatures death hovered at the margins, offering clarity, providing precision.
Anthony Doerr (About Grace)
I stared at him. I felt my body begin to go cold, or perhaps hot. Something happened to the temperature of my body that didn't feel good.
Sally Rooney (Mr Salary)
Until one morning, one of the coldest mornings of the year, when I came in with the book cart and found Jean Hollis Clark, a fellow librarian, standing dead still in the middle of the staff room. "I heard a noise from the drop box," Jean said. "What kind of noise?" "I think it's an animal." "A what?" "An animal," Jean said. "I think there's an animal in the drop box." That was when I heard it, a low rumble from under the metal cover. It didn't sound like an animal. It sounded like an old man clearing his throat. Gurr-gug-gug. Gurr-gug-gug. But the opening at the top of the chute was only a few inches wide, so that would be quite a squeeze for an old man. It had to be an animal. But what kind? I got down on my knees, reached over the lid, and hoped for a chipmunk. What I got instead was a blast of freezing air. The night before, the temperature had reached minus fifteen degrees, and that didn't take into account the wind, which cut under your coat and squeezed your bones. And on that night, of all nights, someone had jammed a book into return slot, wedging it open. It was as cold in the box as it was outside, maybe colder, since the box was lined with metal. It was the kind of cold that made it almost painful to breathe. I was still catching my breath, in fact, when I saw the kitten huddled in the front left corner of the box. It was tucked up in a little space underneath a book, so all I could see at first was its head. It looked grey in the shadows, almost like a little rock, and I could tell its fur was dirty and tangled. Carefully, I lifted the book. The kitten looked up at me, slowly and sadly, and for a second I looked straight into its huge golden eyes. The it lowered its head and sank back down into its hole. At that moment, I lost every bone in my body and just melted.
Vicki Myron (Dewey the Library Cat: A True Story)
The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant 80 odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man’s frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on, it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man’s place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely 50 degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head.
Jack London (To Build a Fire)
An artist must regulate his life. Here is a time-table of my daily acts. I rise at 7.18; am inspired from 10.23 to 11.47. I lunch at 12.11 and leave the table at 12.14. A healthy ride on horse-back round my domain follows from 1.19 pm to 2.53 pm. Another bout of inspiration from 3.12 to 4.7 pm. From 5 to 6.47 pm various occupations (fencing, reflection, immobility, visits, contemplation, dexterity, natation, etc.) Dinner is served at 7.16 and finished at 7.20 pm. From 8.9 to 9.59 pm symphonic readings (out loud). I go to bed regularly at 10.37 pm. Once a week (on Tuesdays) I awake with a start at 3.14 am. My only nourishment consists of food that is white: eggs, sugar, shredded bones, the fat of dead animals, veal, salt, coco-nuts, chicken cooked in white water, mouldy fruit, rice, turnips, sausages in camphor, pastry, cheese (white varieties), cotton salad, and certain kinds of fish (without their skin). I boil my wine and drink it cold mixed with the juice of the Fuschia. I have a good appetite but never talk when eating for fear of strangling myself. I breathe carefully (a little at a time) and dance very rarely. When walking I hold my ribs and look steadily behind me. My expression is very serious; when I laugh it is unintentional, and I always apologise very politely. I sleep with only one eye closed, very profoundly. My bed is round with a hole in it for my head to go through. Every hour a servant takes my temperature and gives me another.
Erik Satie
The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
Water temperatures in this range do, in fact, cause physiological changes—one of which is known as the cold-shock response, a “series of reflexes that begin immediately upon sudden cooling of the skin following cold-water immersion.” During this reflexive response, “blood pressure, heart rate, and the workload of the heart all increase, making the heart more susceptible to life-threatening rhythms and heart attack. Simultaneously,” an online text explained, “gasping begins, followed by rapid and deep breathing. These reflexes can quickly lead to accidental inhalation of water and drowning. This rapid and seemingly uncontrollable over-breathing creates a sensation of suffocation and contributes to feelings of panic. It can also create dizziness, confusion, disorientation, and a decreased level of consciousness.
Sy Montgomery (The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness)
The birds do not sing, clouds remain of rubber, glass, steel. A stone has lodged in the engine block, the process of rusting has begun. And then darkness, a cold wind, a shred of clothing fluttering where it is snagged on one of the doors which, quite unscathed, lies flat in the grass. And then daylight, changing temperature, a night of cold rain, the short-lived presence of a scavenging rodent. And despite all this chemistry of time, nothing has disturbed the essential integrity of our tableau of chaos, the point being that if design inevitably surrenders to debris, debris inevitably reveals its innate design.
John Hawkes (Travesty)
The day I arrived in Yakutsk with my colleague Peter Osnos of The Washington Post, it was 46 below. When our plane landed, the door was frozen solidly shut, and it took about half an hour for a powerful hot-air blower- standard equipment at Siberian airports- to break the icy seal. Stepping outside was like stepping onto another planet, for at those low temperatures nothing seems quite normal. The air burns. Sounds are brittle. Every breath hovers in a strangle slow-motion cloud, adding to the mist of ice that pervades the city and blurs the sun. When the breath freezes into ice dust and falls almost silently to the ground, Siberians call it the whisper of stars.
David K. Shipler (Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams)
Now I am the killer AND the prey, a circle of a completely different kind, and my mouth has gone dry as the sterile air, my heart as cold: The temperature of true rage is absolute zero, and mine is deeper than the ocean, wider than the universe.
Rick Yancey
The strength of a balancing feedback loop is important relative to the impact it is designed to correct. If the impact increases in strength, the feedbacks have to be strengthened too. A thermostat system may work fine on a cold winter day—but open all the windows and its corrective power is no match for the temperature change imposed on the system. Democracy works better without the brainwashing power of centralized mass communications. Traditional controls on fishing were sufficient until sonar spotting and drift nets and other technologies made it possible for a few actors to catch the last fish. The power of big industry calls for the power of big government to hold it in check; a global economy makes global regulations necessary.
Donella H. Meadows (Thinking in Systems: A Primer)
He wanted me to know he thought I was getting away with something wrong. I thought about the time Billy was sick and said he wanted strawberries. How Paul asked him, "Do you want them cold or room temperature? Cooked down or raw? Narrow it down, because whatever you want, I'll get it for you." Anything Billy wanted, Paul got, whatever it took. And this pathetic excuse of a man had no idea what that kind of devotion meant, and he didn't deserve an answer. The denial of real love-- *that* was the perversion.
Ruth Coker Burks (All the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South)
Evaluation is relative to a neutral reference point, which is sometimes referred to as an “adaptation level.” You can easily set up a compelling demonstration of this principle. Place three bowls of water in front of you. Put ice water into the left-hand bowl and warm water into the right-hand bowl. The water in the middle bowl should be at room temperature. Immerse your hands in the cold and warm water for about a minute, then dip both in the middle bowl. You will experience the same temperature as heat in one hand and cold in the other.
Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
She dropped a withering glance at his crotch. "and you might want to take a cold shower. Looks like your budgie`s trying to escape". Twenty minutes after taking Piper´s advice and showering under a shrinkage-guaranteed temperature, West strolled into The Great Flat White café.
Tracey Alvarez (In Too Deep (Stewart Island, #1))
Out here, the deadly shit seeking your blood and meat is not confined to snakes and bears and weather. Other forces resent your presence too. Ghosts of long-gone wolves and buffalo and Indians and pioneers, dead in the service of implacable history. If you stop and camp early, while it's still early, while it's still daylight--claim your space, plant your flag, build your fire--you push them back into the past. But alone in the dark, the minute you sit your ass down they circle close around. Lie on the ground, and the cold seeps up as they try to equalize your temperature with theirs. Get quiet, and you hear the voices. A few words in English, but mostly in other languages. The ones that came before the Indians. Words the long-gone animals thought to one another. Words flowing against you. Wishing you ill. Yet, somehow, all gentle as an outbreath.
Charles Frazier
He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, nor wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
all shaking hands with Martin. Such varieties of hands, the thick, the thin, the short, the long, the fat, the lean, the coarse, the fine; such differences of temperature, the hot, the cold, the dry, the moist, the flabby; such diversities of grasp, the tight, the loose, the short-lived, and the lingering!
Charles Dickens (Martin Chuzzlewit)
Changed my thought. Let’s us go. Back my place, aye?” He was smiling, that smile she’d always loved, while his hands distracted her and his body warmed her through her clothes. Summer drew closer every day, and the temperatures reflected that, but it seemed like she was always cold when he wasn’t around. “C’mon.
Stacia Kane
When the child asks: "Why have the leaves turned red?" or "Why does it snow?" we launch into explanations which have no obvious connection with the question. Leaves are red because it is cold, we say. What has cold to do with colour? How is the child to know that we are talking of abstract connections between atmospheric conditions and leaf chemistry? And why should he care? The child has asked 'why,' not 'how,' and certainly not 'how much.' And why should he care the molecular structure of water is believed to be such that at low temperatures it forms rigid bonds which make it appear as ice or snow? None of these abstractions says anything about what the child experiences: the redness of leaves and the cool, tickling envelopment by snow. The living response would be quite different. 'Why are the leaves red Dad?" "Because it is so beautiful, child. Don't you see how beautiful it is, all these autumn colours?" There is no truer answer. That is how the leaves are red. An answer which does not invoke questions, which does not lead the child into an endless series of questions, to which each answer is a threshold. The child will hear later on that a chemical reaction occurs in those leaves. It is bad enough, then; let us not make the world uninhabitable for the child too soon.
Neil Evernden (The Natural Alien)
Sadie's hand were always cold. She held them to her face and blew on them. She exhaled and little puffs of smoke came out of her mouth even though it wasn't winter yet. It was winter out on the sea apparently. Perhaps the winter didn't have anything to do with temperatures. Perhaps it had to do with distance and loneliness.
Heather O'Neill (When We Lost Our Heads)
Meaning they can maintain a core temperature independently of the environmental temperature,” I reply. “That’s rather remarkable, and not what I’d expect.” “Like the dinosaurs, they can survive in waters as warm as the tropics or cold enough to kill a human in minutes.” “Certainly defies what I understand about reptiles.” I
Patricia Cornwell (The Bone Bed (Kay Scarpetta, #20))
The fear that binds killer to prey and the bullet connecting both as if by a silver cord. Now I am the killer and the prey, a circe of a completely different kind, and my mouth has gone dry as the sterile air, my heart as cold: The temperature of true rage is absolute zero and mine is deeper than the ocean, wider than the universe
Rick Yancey
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
The night before Ramona's funeral is the first really cold one of the autumn. Not the first when the temperature falls below freezing, nor even the first with snow, just the first one that can't really be described in words, no matter how many years you've experienced it: the first one when you're already accustomed to it, when the cold feels normal rather than the exception. Summer is long dead, but tonight is when we lose our memory of it, the last light slides away and a sack is pulled over the town. Tomorrow suddenly our fingers won't remember life without gloves, our ears can't quite remember the sound of birdsong, and the soles of our feed have forgotten all about puddles that don't crunch when we step on them.
Fredrik Backman (The Winners (Beartown, #3))
for even before the return of my parents, from this very evening, my seclusion was to begin. I caught sight of a huge bundle of carpets, still rolled up, and leaning against one end of the sideboard, and burying my head in it, swallowing its dust with my own tears, as the Jews used to cover their heads with ashes in times of mourning, I began to sob. I shuddered not only because the room was cold, but because a distinct lowering of temperature (against the danger and—I should add, perhaps—the by no means disagreeable sensation of which we make no attempt to react) is brought about by a certain kind of tears which fall from our eyes, drop by drop, like a fine, penetrating, icy rain, and seem as though never would they cease to flow.
Marcel Proust (In Search Of Lost Time (All 7 Volumes) (ShandonPress))
There’s language to the woods and it’s speaking to those capable of listening, to ears taught to decode meanings mild or malignant. Geese flying, bees buzzing. Howl of a wolf, height of the clouds, face of the moon, colour of the night and the morning sky, movement of game, snowfall heavy or light — things mostly lost on most people. Where others heard the winds in the maples, the trapper smelled the sap on the breeze. A wind veered northerly and where another might think the evening cold, he knew frost was coming early and the temperatures would stay cold for a week and the bears would feed heavily before the berry bushes died and the deer would be more active at dusk, at dawn. Inflections of the forest, cadence of the wilderness, language of the North.
Tom Stewart
Cold demanded a sharper, simpler view of things: in those temperatures death hovered at the margins, offering clarity, providing precision. But it blurred things, too: the border between dreams and wakefulness, the way it pulled life from fingers and toes, and released them reluctantly, temporarily. The way the wind came, like news from another, more tenuous world, and stirred the trees.
Anthony Doerr (About Grace)
Planck understood that Clausius was not simply stating the obvious, but something of deep significance. Heat, the transfer of energy from A to B due to a temperature difference, explained such everyday occurrences as a hot cup of coffee getting cold and an ice cube in a glass of water melting. But left undisturbed, the reverse never happened. Why not? The law of conservation of energy did not forbid a cup of coffee from getting hotter and the surrounding air colder, or the glass of water becoming warmer and the ice cooler. It did not outlaw heat flowing from a cold to a hot body spontaneously. Yet something was preventing this from happening. Clausius discovered that something and called it entropy. It lay at the heart of why some processes occur in nature and others do not.
Manjit Kumar (Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality)
I’ve always enjoyed sherry at room temperature on a summer afternoon. I’m not fond of cold drinks on hot days. I’ll take a drink of sherry and, a little later, lie down for a nap, and fall asleep before I know it. When I wake up, some of the day’s heat is gone. I hope I can die that way—drink a little sherry on a summer afternoon, stretch out on a sofa, drop off to sleep, and never wake up.
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
Who’s teasing? I’m telling him the truth. He ain’t going to have it. Neither one of ‘em going to have it. And I’ll tell you something else you not going to have. You not going to have no private coach with four red velvet chairs that swivel around in one place whenever you want ‘em to. No. and you not going to have your own special toilet and your own special-made eight-foot bed either. And a valet and a cook and a secretary to travel with you and do everything you say. Everything: get the right temperature in your hot-water bottle and make sure the smoking tobacco in the silver humidor is fresh each and every day. There’s something else you not going to have. You ever have five thousand dollars of cold cash money in your pocket and walk into a bank and tell the bank man you want such and such a house on such and such a street and he sell it to you right then? Well, you won’t ever have it. And you not going to have a governor’s mansion, or eight thousand acres of timber to sell. And you not going to have no ship under your command to sail on, no train to run, and you can join the 332nd if you want to and shoot down a thousand German planes all by yourself and land in Hitler’s backyard and whip him with your own hands, but you never going to have four stars on your shirt front, or even three. And you not going to have no breakfast tray brought in to you early in the morning with a red rose on it and two warm croissants and a cup of hot chocolate. Nope. Never. And no pheasant buried in coconut leaves for twenty days and stuffed with wild rice and cooked over a wood fire so tender and delicate it make you cry. And no Rothschild ’29 or even Beaujolais to go with it.” A few men passing by stopped to listen to Tommy’s lecture. “What’s going on?” they asked Hospital Tommy. “Feather refused them a beer,” said. The men laughed. “And no baked Alaska!” Railroad Tommy went on. “None! You never going to have that.” “No baked Alaska?” Guitar opened his eyes wide with horror and grabbed his throat.” You breaking my heart!” “Well, now. That’s something you will have—a broken heart.” Railroad Tommy’s eyes softened, but the merriment in them died suddenly. “And folly. A whole lot of folly. You can count on it.” “Mr. Tommy, suh,” Guitar sang in mock humility, “we just wanted a bottle of beer is all.” “Yeah,” said Tommy. “Yeah, well, welcome aboard.
Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon)
There is one in this tribe too often miserable - a child bereaved of both parents. None cares for this child: she is fed sometimes, but oftener forgotten: a hut rarely receives her: the hollow tree and chill cavern are her home. Forsaken, lost, and wandering, she lives more with the wild beast and bird than with her own kind. Hunger and cold are her comrades: sadness hovers over, and solitude besets her round. Unheeded and unvalued, she should die: but she both lives and grows: the green wilderness nurses her, and becomes to her a mother: feeds her on juicy berry, on saccharine root and nut. There is something in the air of this clime which fosters life kindly: there must be something, too, in its dews, which heals with sovereign balm. Its gentle seasons exaggerate no passion, no sense; its temperature tends to harmony; its breezes, you would say, bring down from heaven the germ of pure thought, and purer feeling. Not grotesquely fantastic are the forms of cliff and foliage; not violently vivid the colouring of flower and bird: in all the grandeur of these forests there is repose; in all their freshness there is tenderness. The gentle charm vouchsafed to flower and tree, - bestowed on deer and dove, - has not been denied to the human nursling. All solitary, she has sprung up straight and graceful. Nature cast her features in a fine mould; they have matured in their pure, accurate first lines, unaltered by the shocks of disease. No fierce dry blast has dealt rudely with the surface of her frame; no burning sun has crisped or withered her tresses: her form gleams ivory-white through the trees; her hair flows plenteous, long, and glossy; her eyes, not dazzled by vertical fires, beam in the shade large and open, and full and dewy: above those eyes, when the breeze bares her forehead, shines an expanse fair and ample, - a clear, candid page, whereon knowledge, should knowledge ever come, might write a golden record. You see in the desolate young savage nothing vicious or vacant; she haunts the wood harmless and thoughtful: though of what one so untaught can think, it is not easy to divine. On the evening of one summer day, before the Flood, being utterly alone - for she had lost all trace of her tribe, who had wandered leagues away, she knew not where, - she went up from the vale, to watch Day take leave and Night arrive. A crag, overspread by a tree, was her station: the oak-roots, turfed and mossed, gave a seat: the oak-boughs, thick-leaved, wove a canopy. Slow and grand the Day withdrew, passing in purple fire, and parting to the farewell of a wild, low chorus from the woodlands. Then Night entered, quiet as death: the wind fell, the birds ceased singing. Now every nest held happy mates, and hart and hind slumbered blissfully safe in their lair. The girl sat, her body still, her soul astir; occupied, however, rather in feeling than in thinking, - in wishing, than hoping, - in imagining, than projecting. She felt the world, the sky, the night, boundlessly mighty. Of all things, herself seemed to herself the centre, - a small, forgotten atom of life, a spark of soul, emitted inadvertent from the great creative source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of a black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and perish, her living light doing no good, never seen, never needed, - a star in an else starless firmament, - which nor shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor priest, tracked as a guide, or read as a prophecy? Could this be, she demanded, when the flame of her intelligence burned so vivid; when her life beat so true, and real, and potent; when something within her stirred disquieted, and restlessly asserted a God-given strength, for which it insisted she should find exercise?
Charlotte Brontë (Shirley)
There’s always room for error, but at an average temp of 72F, the body stays about the same temp for the first hour after death, then decreases 1-1.5 degrees per hour thereafter. I adjusted for when the cops arrived and the resultant decrease in ambient temperature when you guys left the doors open at around three. I took my own readings and compared them to the local weather station.” Math and death. Odd bedfellows.
Toni Anderson (Cold Hearted (Cold Justice, #6))
No other part of the human body comes close to matching the metaphorical richness of the human heart. Hearts sing, soar, race, burn, break, bleed, swell, hammer and melt. They can be won or lost, cut or trampled, and hewn from oak or stone or gold. They have a temperature – warm or cold – and can be squeezed, can sink or be thrown away. They are vessels filled not only with blood, but with our sorrows, hopes and fears.
Rachel Clarke (The Story of a Heart)
To illustrate how an individual can attain the goal of being submerged in physical reality while transforming it into holiness, we can use an analogy of a man who finds himself in a cold room. There are three ways that individual can maintain his body temperature: first, he can put on a warm coat; second, he can leave the room to go to a warmer environment; or third, he can light a fire. Similarly, if this individual finds himself in a "cold" environment, one which is detrimental to him, he can preserve his integrity through these three methods. First, he can put on a warm coat, which symbolizes strengthening himself inwardly so as not to be influenced by his surroundings. This however, is an incomplete victory, for if he were to relax his self-control he would capitulate. Second, he can leave the room, which implies separating himself from the negative influences surrounding him. Once again, this victory is only through removing himself from temptation and is, therefore, not permanent. He has not met the challenge by improving his surroundings. The third approach, lighting a fire, involves influencing the environment and raising it to a higher level. This is a complete triumph over one's surroundings for the dangers have not only been avoided, they have been entirely removed.
Chana Weisberg (Crown of Creation: The Lives of Great Biblical Women Based on Rabbinic & Mystical Sources)
He sucked in a harsh breath when she pressed her mouth to his, and she was fascinated by the way his eyes darkened and glittered with sexual hunger when their tongues melded together. It was cold, the temperature dropping little by little. It didn’t matter. Not when she could press her bare breasts against his chest to warm them, when his hands slid up her back and his arms were so engulfing and so hot she was encased in perfect heat.
Kay Stockham (The Sheriff's Daughter (North Star, Montana #3))
The first two days without a phone, my insides are jumpy and nauseated, a true withdrawal. My veins ache for information from the Internet, distractions from thought. I’m lonely. My neck, lungs, blood hurt like I’m getting a cold. The world happens without me because I’m exiled with no Wi-Fi. I wonder if my shoes have arrived yet. Maybe Lord is trying to reach me with news of his divorce. I have a parade of grotesque urges. I want to push little buttons quickly. I want information immediately. I want to post pictures of Ruth and me smiling into the sun. I want people to like me, like me, like me. I want to buy things without trying them on. I want to look at photos of drunk kids I knew back in high school. And I want it all in my hand. But my cyborg parts have been ripped out. What’s the temperature? I don’t know. What’s the capital of Hawaii? I don’t know anything. I
Samantha Hunt (Mr. Splitfoot)
We will become able to act naturally within heat and cold and withstand all the elements of nature without significantly impacting our core body temperature. And it’s amazing what kinds of health benefits stem from there. Not only is it good for our vascular system, which again is the transportation system for all of the vitamins, oxygen, and nutrients our cells need, it also relieves the cells of biological stress. With that comes peace. Deep peace.
Wim Hof (The Wim Hof Method: Activate Your Full Human Potential)
Death comes quickly in bitterly cold water from hypothermia. The lower the temperature, the faster the end. But there is always the chance that someone of whom you are not aware is watching and there is a possibility of rescue. This manner of suicide also leaves unanswered questions for survivors. Was it deliberate (if no note is left) or accidental? Will the body ever be found? Will there be an extensive search for the body, risking other people’s lives and a great deal of public expense?
Derek Humphry (Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying)
AUTHOR’S NOTE Dear reader: This story was inspired by an event that happened when I was eight years old. At the time, I was living in upstate New York. It was winter, and my dad and his best friend, “Uncle Bob,” decided to take my older brother, me, and Uncle Bob’s two boys for a hike in the Adirondacks. When we left that morning, the weather was crisp and clear, but somewhere near the top of the trail, the temperature dropped abruptly, the sky opened, and we found ourselves caught in a torrential, freezing blizzard. My dad and Uncle Bob were worried we wouldn’t make it down. We weren’t dressed for that kind of cold, and we were hours from the base. Using a rock, Uncle Bob broke the window of an abandoned hunting cabin to get us out of the storm. My dad volunteered to run down for help, leaving my brother Jeff and me to wait with Uncle Bob and his boys. My recollection of the hours we spent waiting for help to arrive is somewhat vague except for my visceral memory of the cold: my body shivering uncontrollably and my mind unable to think straight. The four of us kids sat on a wooden bench that stretched the length of the small cabin, and Uncle Bob knelt on the floor in front of us. I remember his boys being scared and crying and Uncle Bob talking a lot, telling them it was going to be okay and that “Uncle Jerry” would be back soon. As he soothed their fear, he moved back and forth between them, removing their gloves and boots and rubbing each of their hands and feet in turn. Jeff and I sat beside them, silent. I took my cue from my brother. He didn’t complain, so neither did I. Perhaps this is why Uncle Bob never thought to rub our fingers and toes. Perhaps he didn’t realize we, too, were suffering. It’s a generous view, one that as an adult with children of my own I have a hard time accepting. Had the situation been reversed, my dad never would have ignored Uncle Bob’s sons. He might even have tended to them more than he did his own kids, knowing how scared they would have been being there without their parents. Near dusk, a rescue jeep arrived, and we were shuttled down the mountain to waiting paramedics. Uncle Bob’s boys were fine—cold and exhausted, hungry and thirsty, but otherwise unharmed. I was diagnosed with frostnip on my fingers, which it turned out was not so bad. It hurt as my hands were warmed back to life, but as soon as the circulation was restored, I was fine. Jeff, on the other hand, had first-degree frostbite. His gloves needed to be cut from his fingers, and the skin beneath was chafed, white, and blistered. It was horrible to see, and I remember thinking how much it must have hurt, the damage so much worse than my own. No one, including my parents, ever asked Jeff or me what happened in the cabin or questioned why we were injured and Uncle Bob’s boys were not, and Uncle Bob and Aunt Karen continued to be my parents’ best friends. This past winter, I went skiing with my two children, and as we rode the chairlift, my memory of that day returned. I was struck by how callous and uncaring Uncle Bob, a man I’d known my whole life and who I believed loved us, had been and also how unashamed he was after. I remember him laughing with the sheriff, like the whole thing was this great big adventure that had fortunately turned out okay. I think he even viewed himself as sort of a hero, boasting about how he’d broken the window and about his smart thinking to lead us to the cabin in the first place. When he got home, he probably told Karen about rubbing their sons’ hands and feet and about how he’d consoled them and never let them get scared. I looked at my own children beside me, and a shudder ran down my spine as I thought about all the times I had entrusted them to other people in the same way my dad had entrusted us to Uncle Bob, counting on the same naive presumption that a tacit agreement existed for my children to be cared for equally to their own.
Suzanne Redfearn (In an Instant)
a transparent democratic process took place every few years in which they elected the Social Democrats, but as they slowly watched their rights and freedoms being eroded, and felt the long tentacles of the state rummaging around for any remaining tax kronor hidden in their underwear, did the Swedish people never once say “Enough is enough”? Or, were they like the proverbial frog in a pan of cold water, oblivious to the incremental temperature change as they were brought slowly to a rolling boil?
Michael Booth (The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia)
Run everything on a generator,” Haskel said. “Got to keep it a certain temperature for the stuff I carry. Not too cold. Not too hot. There’s shit in here, weather got wrong, it’d go off and blow our asses all the way to Mineola. Maybe out in the goddamned Gulf.” “I don’t like to travel that far unless I got plane tickets and a steward in my lap,” Leonard said. Haskel cut an eye toward Leonard. “You mean stewardess, don’t you?” “I don’t think so,” Leonard said, and let Haskel churn that one over.
Joe R. Lansdale
Greenland, the world’s largest island, is a cold and desolate place, all but a tiny coastal strip of which is covered by an ice cap 5,000 feet thick. In winter, with temperatures down to -9°F (-23°C), the sun does not rise until ten in the morning, and sets again at two in the after-noon. Few crops grow, and only a few sheep graze the scrubland in the extreme south. Storms with winds of up to 150 mph frequently sweep the frozen wastes, and it is often so cold that a man’s breath freezes on his beard.
Bernard Edwards (The Twilight of the U-Boats)
Just the basalt surface, plenty of cold, hard lava. And cold air, well below the line,’ Ash informed them. ‘We’d need suits to handle the temperature even if the air were breathable. If there’s anything alive out there, it’s tough.’ Dallas looked resigned. ‘I suppose it was unreasonable to expect anything else. Hope springs eternal. There’s just enough of an atmosphere to make vision bad. I’d have preferred no air at all, but we didn’t design this rock.’ ‘You never know.’ Kane was being philosophical again. ‘Might be something else’s idea of paradise.
Alan Dean Foster (Alien)
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
...All the environmental problems we have from climate change? That happened because the world's average temperature went up one and a half degrees That's it. Just one and a half degrees.' ... 'Earth's temperature could drop ten to fifteen degrees.' 'What'll happen?' Luther asked. 'It'll be bad. Very bad. A lot of animals- entire species- will die out because their habitats are too cold. The ocean water will cool down, too, and it might cause an entire food-chain collapse. So even things that could survive the lower temperatures will starve to death because the things they eat all die off.
Andy Weir (Project Hail Mary)
Amir took flight. Headlong into the seaborne sky, the roof of the great inverted world. In meeting him the water was not cold or concussive but warm and tranquil, its temperature the temperature of a body, the temperature of blood. With ease and without pain, he flew past the surface, past the depths, past the places where light and life surrendered and the domain of stillness began. And then lower, farther, past the crust of a million interlocking bodies who’d braved this passage before him and come to rest at the bottom, sick with the secrets of their own unallowed mourning. Past the smallest flour-white bones, past the world at the feet of the world. To the lowest deep, then a lower deep still. Until finally to a dry womb of a place in which were kept safe and unchanging everyone he had ever known, and everyone each of those had ever known, outward forever to encompass the whole of the living and the lived. And each of these the boy met, in their old lives and their new lives waiting, and from each drew confession and each he felt into as though there were no barrier between them, no silo of self to keep a soul waiting. What beautiful rebellion, to feel into another, to feel anything at all. —
Omar El Akkad (What Strange Paradise)
Here’s how to do it: First, sit down, get comfortable, and close your eyes. Make sure you’re in a position where you can freely expand your lungs. Wim suggests doing this practice right after waking up since your stomach is still empty. Warm up by inhaling deeply and drawing the breath in until you feel a slight pressure. Hold the breath for a moment before exhaling completely, pushing the air out as much as you can. Hold the exhalation for as long as you can, and then repeat this fifteen times. Next, inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth in short, powerful bursts, as if you’re blowing up a balloon. Pull in your belly when you’re exhaling and let it expand when you inhale. Do this about thirty times, using a steady pace, until you feel that your body is saturated with oxygen. You may feel light-headed or tingly, or you may experience a surge of energy that’s literally electric. Try to get a sense of which parts of your body are overflowing with energy and which ones are lacking it—and where there are blockages between these two extremes. As you continue breathing, send the breath to those blockages. When you’re done, take one more big breath in, filling your lungs to maximum capacity, and then push all of the air out. Hold this for as long as you can and try to feel the oxygen spreading around your body. When you can’t hold it anymore, inhale fully and feel your chest expanding. Hold it again, sending energy where your body needs it. Bonus points if you do what Wim had me do when we demonstrated this technique onstage at our Bulletproof conference—as you are holding your lungs empty, count how many push-ups you can do before you have to breathe again. I got to twenty! It seems impossible, but you can do it, and that short bit of low oxygen forces your body to better deal with lower-oxygen environments. I recommend you research Wim’s work and watch one of his many videos online demonstrating his breathing technique. I don’t think it works as well as mechanically filtering oxygen out of the air you breathe, but the Wim Hof technique is absolutely free, totally portable, and Wim is capable of things I could never do! His breathing method helps your body adapt to bursts of oxygen and puts you more in tune with the way your body uses your breath to create energy. It also makes you more resilient to cold temperatures, but there is evidence that cold temperatures themselves are good for your mitochondria.
Dave Asprey (Head Strong: The Bulletproof Plan to Activate Untapped Brain Energy to Work Smarter and Think Faster-in Just Two Weeks)
The waters of Skilak are notoriously cold and turbulent. It isn’t unusual to have water temperatures hovering around thirty-eight degrees, even in the summer. The mix of cold water and the glacial ice of the massive Harding Icefield, along with the high mountains that support it and work like a giant wind tunnel, make for a deadly combination that can turn a mirror-smooth lake into the frothing mouth of a monster in an instant. Within minutes, summer warmth combining with the cold can create winds that explode off the ice field in what Alaskans refer to as williwaws—strong gusts that tear down from glacial valleys, often wreaking havoc.
Jimmy Settle (Never Quit: From Alaskan Wilderness Rescues to Afghanistan Firefights as an Elite Special Ops PJ)
Just as our hunger is not that feeling of missing a meal, so our way of being cold has need of a new word. We say 'hunger', we say 'tiredness', 'fear', 'pain', we say 'winter' and they are different things. They are free words, created and used by free men who lived in comfort and suffering in their homes. If the Lagers had lasted longer a new, harsh language would have been born; and only this language could express what it means to toil the whole day in the wind, with the temperature below freezing, wearing only a shirt, underpants, cloth jacket and trousers, and in one's body nothing but weakness, hunger, and knowledge of the end drawing nearer.
Primo Levi (Survival in Auschwitz)
A decline in stocks is not a surprising event, it’s a recurring event—as normal as frigid air in Minnesota. If you live in a cold climate, you expect freezing temperatures, so when your outdoor thermometer drops below zero, you don’t think of this as the beginning of the next Ice Age. You put on your parka, throw salt on the walk, and remind yourself that by summertime it will be warm outside. A successful stockpicker has the same relationship with a drop in the market as a Minnesotan has with freezing weather. You know it’s coming, and you’re ready to ride it out, and when your favorite stocks go down with the rest, you jump at the chance to buy more.
Peter Lynch (Beating the Street)
The formula to determine standard office temperature was developed in the 1960s around the metabolic resting rate of the average forty-year-old, 70 kg man.1 But a recent study found that ‘the metabolic rate of young adult females performing light office work is significantly lower’ than the standard values for men doing the same type of activity. In fact, the formula may overestimate female metabolic rate by as much as 35%, meaning that current offices are on average five degrees too cold for women. Which leads to the odd sight of female office workers wrapped up in blankets in the New York summer while their male colleagues wander around in summer clothes.
Caroline Criado Pérez (Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men)
. . . waves of desert heat . . . I must’ve passed out, because when I woke up I was shivering and stars wheeled above a purple horizon. . . . Then the sun came up, casting long shadows. . . . I heard a vehicle coming. Something coming from far away, gradually growing louder. There was the sound of an engine, rocks under tires. . . . Finally it reached me, the door opened, and Dirk Bickle stepped out. . . . But anyway so Bickle said, “Miracles, Luke. Miracles were once the means to convince people to abandon reason for faith. But the miracles stopped during the rise of the neocortex and its industrial revolution. Tell me, if I could show you one miracle, would you come with me and join Mr. Kirkpatrick?” I passed out again, and came to. He was still crouching beside me. He stood up, walked over to the battered refrigerator, and opened the door. Vapor poured out and I saw it was stocked with food. Bickle hunted around a bit, found something wrapped in paper, and took a bottle of beer from the door. Then he closed the fridge, sat down on the old tire, and unwrapped what looked like a turkey sandwich. He said, “You could explain the fridge a few ways. One, there’s some hidden outlet, probably buried in the sand, that leads to a power source far away. I figure there’d have to be at least twenty miles of cable involved before it connected to the grid. That’s a lot of extension cord. Or, this fridge has some kind of secret battery system. If the empirical details didn’t bear this out, if you thoroughly studied the refrigerator and found neither a connection to a distant power source nor a battery, you might still argue that the fridge had some super-insulation capabilities and that the food inside had been able to stay cold since it was dragged out here. But say this explanation didn’t pan out either, and you observed the fridge staying the same temperature week after week while you opened and closed it. Then you’d start to wonder if it was powered by some technology beyond your comprehension. But pretty soon you’d notice something else about this refrigerator. The fact that it never runs out of food. Then you’d start to wonder if somehow it didn’t get restocked while you slept. But you’d realize that it replenished itself all the time, not just while you were sleeping. All this time, you’d keep eating from it. It would keep you alive out here in the middle of nowhere. And because of its mystery you’d begin to hate and fear it, and yet still it would feed you. Even though you couldn’t explain it, you’d still need it. And you’d assume that you simply didn’t understand the technology, rather than ascribe to it some kind of metaphysical power. You wouldn’t place your faith in the hands of some unknowable god. You’d place it in the technology itself. Finally, in frustration, you’d come to realize you’d exhausted your rationality and the only sensible thing to do would be to praise the mystery. You’d worship its bottles of Corona and jars of pickled beets. You’d make up prayers to the meats drawer and sing about its light bulb. And you’d start to accept the mystery as the one undeniable thing about it. That, or you’d grow so frustrated you’d push it off this cliff.” “Is Mr. Kirkpatrick real?” I asked. After a long gulp of beer, Bickle said, “That’s the neocortex talking again.
Ryan Boudinot (Blueprints of the Afterlife)
Thermoneutrality”: A hallmark of modern industrial life is spending most of our time indoors at relatively consistent ambient temperatures, a concept we’ll refer to as thermoneutrality. Interestingly, experiencing swings in temperature is great for mitochondrial function, as cold stimulates the body to generate more warmth by increasing mitochondrial activity and stimulates more ATP generation and use. Heat exposure has been shown to activate heat shock proteins (HSPs) within cells, which can protect mitochondria from damage and help to maintain their function. HSPs can also stimulate the production of new mitochondria and improve their efficiency in producing ATP.
Casey Means (Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health)
Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire, secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
It was that ocean heat that caused the First Pulse to pulse, and later brought on the second one. People sometimes say no one saw it coming, but no, wrong: they did. Paleoclimatologists looked at the modern situation and saw CO2 levels screaming up from 280 to 450 parts per million in less than three hundred years, faster than had ever happened in the Earth’s entire previous five billion years (can we say “Anthropocene,” class?), and they searched the geological record for the best analogs to this unprecedented event, and they said, Whoa. They said, Holy shit. People! they said. Sea level rise! During the Eemian period, they said, which we’ve been looking at, the world saw a temperature rise only half as big as the one we’ve just created, and rapid dramatic sea level rise followed immediately. They put it in bumper sticker terms: massive sea level rise sure to follow our unprecedented release of CO2! They published their papers, and shouted and waved their arms, and a few canny and deeply thoughtful sci-fi writers wrote up lurid accounts of such an eventuality, and the rest of civilization went on torching the planet like a Burning Man pyromasterpiece. Really. That’s how much those knuckleheads cared about their grandchildren, and that’s how much they believed their scientists, even though every time they felt a slight cold coming on they ran to the nearest scientist (i.e. doctor) to seek aid.
Kim Stanley Robinson (New York 2140)
Then there’s the standard office temperature. The formula to determine standard office temperature was developed in the 1960s around the metabolic resting rate of the average forty-year-old, 70 kg man. 1 But a recent study found that ‘the metabolic rate of young adult females performing light office work is significantly lower’ than the standard values for men doing the same type of activity. In fact, the formula may overestimate female metabolic rate by as much as 35%, meaning that current offices are on average five degrees too cold for women. Which leads to the odd sight of female office workers wrapped up in blankets in the New York summer while their male colleagues wander around in summer clothes.
Caroline Criado Pérez (Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men)
It was the scale, the extremity of things here that made an impression on her: the two beds in their double room that could comfortably sleep three people each; the throaty clunking of the machine down the corridor that ejected fat glinting ice cubes, tumbling like coins from a jackpotting fruit machine; the toothache temperature of the Cokes from the mini bar (she had never known drinks to be so cold); the improbable proportions of the cars on the freeway; the sleek gleefulness of the morning TV presenters with drawls so sassy they sounded put on; the enormity of the breakfasts and the people who ate them. America seemed souped-up to JoAnne, as though it had to be bigger, better, colder, hotter, cheerier, louder, just all-round “er” than everywhere else.
Tina Seskis (A Serpentine Affair: Are friendships ever forever?)
The first thing Rika felt was a strange breeze emanating from the back of her throat. The cold butter first met the roof of her mouth with a chilly sensation, contrasting with the steaming rice in both texture and temperature. The cool butter clashed against her teeth, and she felt its soft texture right down into their roots. Soon enough, just as Kaiji had said, the melted butter began to surge through the individual grains of rice. It was a taste that could only be described as golden. A shining golden wave, with an astounding depth of flavor and a faint yet full and rounded aroma, wrapped itself around the rice and washed Rika's body far away. It was, indeed, a lot like falling. Rika stared down intently at the bowl of rice with butter and soy sauce and let out a long sigh, feeling her breath rich and milky.
Asako Yuzuki (Butter)
On the 15th of May we were at the extreme south of the Bank of Newfoundland. This bank consists of alluvia, or large heaps of organic matter, brought either from the Equator by the Gulf Stream, or from the North Pole by the counter-current of cold water which skirts the American coast. There also are heaped up those erratic blocks which are carried along by the broken ice; and close by, a vast charnel-house of molluscs, which perish here by millions. The depth of the sea is not great at Newfoundland—not more than some hundreds of fathoms; but towards the south is a depression of 1,500 fathoms. There the Gulf Stream widens. It loses some of its speed and some of its temperature, but it becomes a sea. It was on the 17th of May, about 500 miles from Heart's Content, at a depth of more than 1,400 fathoms, that I saw the electric cable lying on the bottom.
Walter Scott (The Greatest Sea Novels and Tales of All Time)
Roosevelt wouldn't interfere even when he found out that Moses was discouraging Negroes from using many of his state parks. Underlying Moses' strikingly strict policing for cleanliness in his parks was, Frances Perkins realized with "shock," deep distaste for the public that was using them. "He doesn't love the people," she was to say. "It used to shock me because he was doing all these things for the welfare of the people... He'd denounce the common people terribly. To him they were lousy, dirty people, throwing bottles all over Jones Beach. 'I'll get them! I'll teach them!' ... He loves the public, but not as people. The public is just The Public. It's a great amorphous mass to him; it needs to be bathed, it needs to be aired, it needs recreation, but not for personal reasons -- just to make it a better public." Now he began taking measures to limit use of his parks. He had restricted the use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families in the first place, by limiting access to the parks by rapid transit; he had vetoed the Long Island Rail Road's proposed construction of a branch spur to Jones Beach for this reason. Now he began to limit access by buses; he instructed Shapiro to build the bridges across his new parkways low -- too low for buses to pass. Bus trips therefore had to be made on local roads, making the trips discouragingly long and arduous. For Negroes, whom he considered inherently "dirty," there were further measures. Buses needed permits to enter state parks; buses chartered by Negro groups found it very difficult to obtain permits, particularly to Moses' beloved Jones Beach; most were shunted to parks many miles further out on Long Island. And even in these parks, buses carrying Negro groups were shunted to the furthest reaches of the parking areas. And Negroes were discouraged from using "white" beach areas -- the best beaches -- by a system Shapiro calls "flagging"; the handful of Negro lifeguards [...] were all stationed at distant, least developed beaches. Moses was convinced that Negroes did not like cold water; the temperature at the pool at Jones Beach was deliberately icy to keep Negroes out. When Negro civic groups from the hot New York City slums began to complain about this treatment, Roosevelt ordered an investigation and an aide confirmed that "Bob Moses is seeking to discourage large Negro parties from picnicking at Jones Beach, attempting to divert them to some other of the state parks." Roosevelt gingerly raised the matter with Moses, who denied the charge violently -- and the Governor never raised the matter again.
Robert A. Caro (The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York)
There are two gradations of cold that are always acceptable: Mild Frost, which is preferable for reading and writing and any other activity done indoors, and Absolute Zero, which is the only temperature suitable for sleep. There is nothing more delicious than being swathed in a cocoon of blankets and awaking with a nose frosted over with rime, and once I do achieve vampiric heights and fall asleep with the mastery of a corpse lately dead, I am best left alone until I wake up at my usual time. I do tend to bite when rattled out of my flocculent coffin, and everyone in my building knows never to disturb me during the early morning hours. Authors, being crepuscular creatures, should never be roused before 11am: the creative mind is never turned off; it only dies momentarily and its revived by the scent of coffee at the proper time. Bacon is also an acceptable restorative.
Michelle Franklin (I Hate Summer: My tribulations with seasonal depression, anxiety, plumbers, spiders, neighbours, and the world.)
Now into the small ceramic pan I grate the block of couverture. Almost at once the scent rises, the dark and loamy scent of bitter chocolate from the block. At this concentration it is slow to melt; the chocolate is very low in fat, and I will have to add butter and cream to the mixture to bring it to truffle consistency. But now it smells of history; of the mountains and forests of South America' of felled wood and spilled sap and campfire smoke. It smells of incense and patchouli; of the black gold of the Maya and the red gold of the Aztec; of stone and dust and of a young girl with flowers in her hair and a cup of pulque in her hand. It is intoxicating; as it melts, the chocolate becomes glossy; steam rises from the copper pan, and the scent grows richer, blossoming into cinnamon and allspice and nutmeg; dark undertones of anise and espresso; brighter notes of vanilla and ginger. Now it is almost melted through. A gentle vapor rises from the pan. Now we have the true Theobroma, the elixir of the gods in volatile form, and in the steam I can almost see- A young girl dancing with the moon. A rabbit follows at her heels. Behind her stands a woman with her head in shadow, so that for a moment she seems to look three ways- But now the steam is getting too thick. The chocolate must be no warmer than forty-six degrees. Too hot, and the chocolate will scorch and streak. Too cool, and it will bloom white and dull. I know by the scent and the level of steam that we are close to the danger point. Take the copper off the heat and stand the ceramic in cold water until the temperature has dropped. Cooling, it acquires a floral scent; of violet and lavender papier poudré. It smells of my grandmother, if I'd had one, and of wedding dresses kept carefully boxed in the attic, and of bouquets under glass.
Joanne Harris (The Girl with No Shadow (Chocolat, #2))
When cold-blooded lizards are infected with a disease, they commonly find a hot rock on which to bask. This raises their body temperature, which combats the disease. Lizards that cannot find a warm place on which to perch are more likely to die. A similar relationship between body temperature and disease has been observed in rabbits. When given a drug to block fever, diseased rabbits are more likely to die (Kluger, 1991). Early in the 20th century, a physician named Julius Wagner-Jauregg observed that syphilis was rarely seen in places where malaria was common (Nesse & Williams, 1994). At that time, syphilis killed 99 percent of those who were infected. Wagner-Jauregg intentionally infected syphilis patients with malaria, which produces a fever, and found that 30 percent of those patients survived—a huge increase in survival. The fever from malaria apparently helped to cure the fatal effects of syphilis.
David M. Buss (Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind)
The universe appears to be a system of very low density wherever we look. This is no accident. The expansion of the Universe weds its size and age to the gravitational pull of the material that it contains. In order that a universe expands for long enough to allow the building blocks of life to form in the interiors of stars, by a sequence of nuclear reactions, it must be billions of years old. This means that it must be billions of light years in extent and possess a very small average density of matter and a very low temperature. The low temperature and energy of its material ensures that the sky is dark at night. Turn off our local Sun and there is just too little light around in the Universe to brighten the sky. The night is dark, interspersed only by pinpricks of starlight. Universes that contain life must be big and old, dark and cold. If our Universe was less of a vacuum it could not be an abode for living complexity.
John D. Barrow (The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe)
The TRPV1 sensor, which detects painful heat, is also tuned to the needs of its owners, and especially to their body temperatures. It activates at 45°C (113°F) in chickens, 42°C (108°F) in mice and humans, 38°C (100°F) in frogs, and 33°C (91°F) in zebrafish (which might have no use for a cold sensor but clearly benefit from a hot one). Each species has its own definition of hot. The temperature at which we live would be painful to a zebrafish. The temperature that would start to agonize a mouse wouldn’t bother a chicken. And even chickens are overshadowed by two species that have the least sensitive versions of TRPV1 thus far tested, enabling them to shrug off heat that other creatures can’t bear. For obvious reasons, one of these is the desert-dwelling Bactrian camel. Unexpectedly, the second is—drumroll, please—the thirteen-lined ground squirrel! The unassuming rodent that I held not only can cope with temperatures that are close to freezing but also can abide extreme heat.
Ed Yong (An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us)
Among the dead was Rob Hall, one of the most highly acclaimed mountaineers in the world. He ran out of oxygen attempting to rescue a stricken climber. He collapsed from a lethal combination of exhaustion, oxygen deprivation, and the cold. Somehow, as night fell and the thermostat plummeted, he managed to hold on. Rob endured a night at 28,700 feet with temperatures as low as minus fifty degrees centigrade. Then at dawn he spoke to his wife, Jan, from his radio, patched through to a satellite phone at base camp. She was pregnant with their first child, and those on the mountain sat motionless as he spoke to her. “I love you. Sleep well, my sweetheart. Please don’t worry too much.” They were his last ever words. The lessons were clear: Respect the mountain--and understand what altitude and bad weather can do to even the strongest of climbers. In addition, never tempt the wild, and know that money guarantees you nothing--least of all safety--when you climb a mountain as big as Everest.
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
Pastry for double-crust, 9-inch pie ¾ cup sugar 1 teaspoon nutmeg Enough pared and sliced apples to fill a 9-inch pie generously 1 ½ tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces ½ cup liquid honey 1 tablespoon grated orange rind Confectioners’ sugar Preheat oven to 425° F. Prepare pastry sufficient for a double-crust, 9-inch pie. Roll out half the dough and line the pie plate. Combine sugar and nutmeg; pour over apples, lifting and tossing with two forks until well combined. Pile fruit into pie pan, heaping to make a nice fat pie, and dot with butter. Roll out remaining pastry and cut into ½-inch strips. Arrange strips lattice fashion over apples, pressing edges down firmly. Bake 10 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 350°F. Bake 30–40 minutes more, or until apples are tender and crust is brown. Remove from oven. Combine honey and orange rind, and pour mixture through openings in lattice; return pie to oven and bake another 5 minutes. Cool to lukewarm and dredge with confectioners’ sugar. Serve warm or cold.
Sue Hubbell (A Book of Bees)
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self contained and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, nor wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely; and Scrooge never did.
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
The principal energy sources of our present industrial civilization are the so-called fossil fuels. We burn wood and oil, coal and natural gas, and, in the process, release waste gases, principally CO2, into the air. Consequently, the carbon dioxide content of the Earth’s atmosphere is increasing dramatically. The possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect suggests that we have to be careful: Even a one- or two-degree rise in the global temperature can have catastrophic consequences. In the burning of coal and oil and gasoline, we are also putting sulfuric acid into the atmosphere. Like Venus, our stratosphere even now has a substantial mist of tiny sulfuric acid droplets. Our major cities are polluted with noxious molecules. We do not understand the long-term effects of our course of action. But we have also been perturbing the climate in the opposite sense. For hundreds of thousands of years human beings have been burning and cutting down forests and encouraging domestic animals to graze on and destroy grasslands. Slash-and-burn agriculture, industrial tropical deforestation and overgrazing are rampant today. But forests are darker than grasslands, and grasslands are darker than deserts. As a consequence, the amount of sunlight that is absorbed by the ground has been declining, and by changes in the land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase the size of the polar ice cap, which, because it is bright, will reflect still more sunlight from the Earth, further cooling the planet, driving a runaway albedo* effect? Our lovely blue planet, the Earth, is the only home we know. Venus is too hot. Mars is too cold. But the Earth is just right, a heaven for humans. After all, we evolved here. But our congenial climate may be unstable. We are perturbing our poor planet in serious and contradictory ways. Is there any danger of driving the environment of the Earth toward the planetary Hell of Venus or the global ice age of Mars? The simple answer is that nobody knows. The study of the global climate, the comparison of the Earth with other worlds, are subjects in their earliest stages of development. They are fields that are poorly and grudgingly funded. In our ignorance, we continue to push and pull, to pollute the atmosphere and brighten the land, oblivious of the fact that the long-term consequences are largely unknown.
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
When she first arrived, Mi-ran was impressed. The dormitories were modern and each of the four girls who would share one room had her own bed rather than use the Korean bed mats laid out on a heated floor, the traditional way of keeping warm at night while expending little fuel. But as winter temperatures plunged Chongjin into a deep freeze, she realized why it was that the school had been able to give her a place in its freshman class. The dormitories had no heating. Mi-ran went to sleep each night in her coat, heavy socks, and mitten with a towel draped over her head. When she woke up, the towel would be crusted with frost from the moisture of her breath. In the bathroom, where the girls washed their menstrual rags (nobody had sanitary napkins, so the more affluent girls used gauze bandages while the poor girls used cheap synthetic cloths), it was so cold that the rags would freeze solid within minutes of being hung up to dry. Mi-ran hated the mornings. Just as in Jun-sang's school, they were roused by a military-style roll call at 6:00 A.M., but instead of marching off like proud soldiers, they shivered into the bathroom and splashed icy water on their faces, under a grotesque canopy of frozen menstrual rags.
Barbara Demick (Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea)
If you do not take baths or you tend to take more showers, you can use the same ritual in the shower. Set the water temperature so that it is cool but not cold (just below body temperature). Adjust the showerhead so the water hits you at the base of the skull and the water runs as evenly as possible over the back and front of your body. It is important to ensure that the water runs down the back of the neck because this is where many people tend to develop a lot of tension (in the shoulders). As the water flows, run your hands down your body to bring the excess Fire energy down to your feet. Use the same glowing heating coil visualization as with the bathtub ritual. See the excess Fire energies being soaked up by the water, and flowing with the water down the drain. At the same time, choose one of the litanies given previously and say it aloud with power and authority. Keep repeating the litany until you feel a change in your state. You may feel less physical pain, a lessening of anxiety, or a sense of peace in your mind. If you have a lot of mind chatter and you suddenly notice that your mind is quiet, then you know that the ritual has been effective. At this point, you may stop saying the litany and consider the ritual a success!
G. Alan Joel (Learn How to Do Witchcraft Rituals and Spells with Your Bare Hands (Witchcraft Spell Books, #1))
How is his temperature?” “He needs to go up one more degree.” “The devil I do,” West said. “With that fire stoked so high, the room is an oven. Soon I’ll be as brown as a Christmas goose. Speaking of that… I’m famished.” “The doctor said we can’t feed you until you’ve reached the right temperature,” Pandora said. “Will you take another cup of tea?” Cassandra asked. “I’ll have a brandy,” West retorted, “along with a wedge of currant pie, a plate of cheese, a bowl of potato and turnip mash, and a beefsteak.” Cassandra smiled. “I’ll ask the doctor if you may have some broth.” “Broth?” he repeated indignantly. “Come along, Hamlet,” Pandora said, “before West decides he wants bacon as well.” “Wait,” Kathleen said, frowning. “Isn’t Hamlet supposed to be in the cellars?” “Cook wouldn’t allow it,” Cassandra said. “She said he would find a way to knock over the bins and eat all the root vegetables.” She cast a proud glance at the cheerful-looking creature. “Because he is a very creative and enterprising pig.” “Cook didn’t say that last part,” Pandora said. “No,” Cassandra admitted, “but it was implied.” The twins cleared the dogs and pig from the room and left. Helen extended the thermometer to West. “Under your tongue, please,” she said gravely. He complied with a long-suffering expression.
Lisa Kleypas (Cold-Hearted Rake (The Ravenels, #1))
There are many examples where species share common plastic traits. What appears to be convergence may just be the plastic response of the organism to its environment. Examples include the following: Limbs that protrude from an animal’s body have more surface area per unit mass than the rest of the body. In cold weather the animal loses more heat per unit mass from these limbs than from other parts of the body. In many species the tails and legs are shorter for those living in colder climates and larger for those in warmer climates. Gulls’ wings are shorter in cold climates than in warm. Hares and foxes also have shorter ears in cold climates than in warm. Eskimos have shorter arms and legs than do people living in warmer climates. . . . Jodan’s rule: Many species of fish tend to have more vertebrae when they live in cold water than do the same species living in warm water. These differences have been shown to depend on the temperature at which the fish have been reared. What these rules show is not convergence. They show that different species adopt the same anatomical strategies when they have to cope with the same environmental conditions. We have seen that these strategies cannot come from random mutations. It is much more reasonable to say they come from environmental cues acting on the genetic program.
Lee Spetner
My mouth dropped open. 'You're naked!' 'I am,' Kieran replied. And he was. Like completely naked, and I saw way too much tawny-hued skin. Way too much. I quickly spun around, my wide eyes clashing with Casteel's. 'You should see your face right now,' Casteel gripped the arrow in his stomach. 'It looks like you've been sunbathing.' 'Because he's naked,' I hissed. 'Like, super naked.' 'What do you think happens when he shifts forms?' 'The last time his pants actually stayed on!' 'And sometimes they don't.' Casteel shrugged. 'Those pants were looser, I suppose,' Kieran stated. 'There's no need to be embarrassed. It's only skin.' What I saw was not only skin. He was... well, his body was a lot like Casteel's. Lean, hard muscle and... I wasn't going to think about what I saw. At a loss for what to say, I blurted out in a whisper. 'He has to be cold!' 'Wolven body temperatures run higher than normal. I'm just a little chilled,' Kieran commented. 'As I'm sure you noticed.' Casteel smirked. 'I doubt she knows what you're referencing.' I inhaled deeply through my nose and exhaled slowly. 'I know exactly what you're referencing, thank you very much!' 'How do you know that?' Casteel lifted his brows, and I noticed that his pupils seemed to have returned to their normal size. 'If you know what that means, than someone has been very naughty.
Jennifer L. Armentrout (A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire (Blood and Ash, #2))
You've had hot coffee before, and in the hands of a skilled maker, coffee can be amazing. But the fact is that coffee is one of the hardest things to get right in the world. Even with great beans and a great roast and great equipment, a little too much heat, the wrong grind, or letting things go on too long will produce a cup of bitterness. Coffee's full of different acids, and depending on the grind, temperature, roast, and method, you can "overextract" the acids from the beans, or overheat them and oxidize them, producing that awful taste you get at donut shops and Starbucks. But there is Another Way. If you make coffee in cold water, you only extract the sweetest acids, the highly volatile flavors that hint at chocolate and caramel, the ones that boil away or turn to sourness under imperfect circumstances. Brewing coffee in cold water sounds weird, but in fact, it's just about the easiest way to make a cup (or a jar) of coffee. Just grind coffee -- keep it coarse, with grains about the size of sea salt -- and combine it with twice as much water in an airtight jar. Give it a hard shake and stick it somewhere cool overnight (I used a cooler bag loaded with ice from ice camp and wrapped the whole thing in bubble wrap for insulation). In the morning, strain it through a colander and a paper coffee filter. What you've got now is coffee concentrate, which you can dilute with cold water to taste -- I go about half and half. If you're feeling fancy, serve it over ice.
Anonymous
While Dr. Weeks attended to Devon’s injuries, Kathleen went to visit West. Even before she reached the open door of his room, she heard noise and laughter drifting into the hallway. She stood at the threshold, watching with a touch of fond resignation as she saw West sitting up in bed, regaling a group that included a half-dozen servants, Pandora, Cassandra, both dogs, and Hamlet. Helen stood beside a lamp, reading the temperature of a glass thermometer. Thankfully West no longer appeared to be shivering, and his color had improved. “…then I glimpsed a man wading back out into the river,” he was saying, “toward a half-submerged railway carriage with people trapped inside. And I said to myself, ‘That man is a hero. Also an idiot. Because he’s already been in the water for too long, and he won’t be able to save them, and he’s about to sacrifice his life for nothing.’ I proceeded to climb down the embankment and found Sutton. ‘Where is the earl?’ I asked.” West paused for dramatic effect, relishing the rapt attention of his audience. “And where do you think Sutton pointed? Out to the river, where that reckless fool had just saved a trio of children, and was wading after them with a baby in one arm and a woman on the other.” “The man was Lord Trenear?” one of the housemaids gasped. “None other.” The entire group exclaimed with pleasure and possessive pride. “Nothing to it, for a bloke as big as his lordship,” one of the footmen said with a grin. “I should think he’ll be put in the papers for this,” another exclaimed. “I hope so,” West said, “if only because I know how he would loathe it.
Lisa Kleypas (Cold-Hearted Rake (The Ravenels, #1))
STUFFIN’ MUFFINS Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. 4 ounces salted butter (1 stick, 8 Tablespoons, ¼ pound) ½ cup finely chopped onion (you can buy this chopped or chop it yourself) ½ cup finely chopped celery ½ cup chopped apple (core, but do not peel before chopping) 1 teaspoon powdered sage 1 teaspoon powdered thyme 1 teaspoon ground oregano 8 cups herb stuffing (the kind in cubes that you buy in the grocery store—you can also use plain bread cubes and add a quarter-teaspoon more of ground sage, thyme, and oregano) 3 eggs, beaten (just whip them up in a glass with a fork) 1 teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon black pepper (freshly ground is best) 2 ounces (½ stick, 4 Tablespoons, pound) melted butter ¼ to ½ cup chicken broth (I used Swanson’s) Hannah’s 1st Note: I used a Fuji apple this time. I’ve also used Granny Smith apples, or Gala apples. Before you start, find a 12-cup muffin pan. Spray the inside of the cups with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray OR line them with cupcake papers. Get out a 10-inch or larger frying pan. Cut the stick of butter in 4 to 8 pieces and drop them inside. Put the pan over MEDIUM heat on the stovetop to melt the butter. Once the butter has melted, add the chopped onions. Give them a stir. Add the chopped celery. Stir it in. Add the chopped apple and stir that in. Sprinkle in the ground sage, thyme, and oregano. Sauté this mixture for 5 minutes. Then pull the frying pan off the heat and onto a cold burner. In a large mixing bowl, combine the 8 cups of herb stuffing. (If the boxed stuffing you bought has a separate herb packet, just sprinkle it over the top of the mixture in your frying pan. That way you’ll be sure to put it in!) Pour the beaten eggs over the top of the herb stuffing and mix them in. Sprinkle on the salt and the pepper. Mix them in. Pour the melted butter over the top and mix it in. Add the mixture from your frying pan on top of that. Stir it all up together. Measure out ¼ cup of chicken broth. Wash your hands. (Mixing the stuffing is going to be a lot easier if you use your impeccably clean hands to mix it.) Pour the ¼ cup of chicken broth over the top of your bowl. Mix everything with your hands. Feel the resulting mixture. It should be softened, but not wet. If you think it’s so dry that your muffins might fall apart after you bake them, mix in another ¼ cup of chicken broth. Once your Stuffin’ Muffin mixture is thoroughly combined, move the bowl close to the muffin pan you’ve prepared, and go wash your hands again. Use an ice cream scoop to fill your muffin cups. If you don’t have an ice cream scoop, use a large spoon. Mound the tops of the muffins by hand. (Your hands are still impeccably clean, aren’t they?) Bake the Stuffin’ Muffins at 350 degrees F. for 25 minutes. Yield: One dozen standard-sized muffins that can be served hot, warm, or at room temperature. Hannah’s 2nd Note: These muffins are a great accompaniment to pork, ham, chicken, turkey, duck, beef, or . . . well . . . practically anything! If there are any left over, you can reheat them in the microwave to serve the next day. Hannah’s 3rd Note: I’m beginning to think that Andrea can actually make Stuffin’ Muffins. It’s only April now, so she’s got seven months to practice.
Joanne Fluke (Cinnamon Roll Murder (Hannah Swensen, #15))
Spinach Quiche Preheat oven to 375 degrees F., rack in the middle position   This is my recipe. It can be served as an appetizer if you cut it into thin slices and arrange them on a platter. It can also be served as an entrée.   One 9-inch unbaked pastry shell 1 beaten egg yolk (reserve the white in a small dish) 10-ounce package frozen chopped spinach ½ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon pepper (freshly ground is best) 3 Tablespoons horseradish sauce 2 ounces shredded Jarlsberg (or good Swiss cheese) 4 eggs 1½ cups Half & Half (or light cream) 1/8 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg (freshly ground is best)   Beat the egg yolk in a glass with a fork. Brush the inside of the unbaked pastry shell with the yolk. Set the shell aside to dry. Cook and drain the spinach. Squeeze out as much moisture as you can and then blot with a paper towel. In a bowl, combine the spinach with the salt, pepper, and horseradish sauce. Spread it in the bottom of the pastry shell. Sprinkle the top with the grated cheese. Beat the 4 whole eggs with the reserved egg white. Add the Half & Half, salt, and cayenne pepper. Mix well and pour on top of cheese. Sprinkle the top with nutmeg. Bake at 375 degrees F. for 40 minutes, or until a knife inserted one inch from the center comes out clean. Let cool for ten minutes and then cut into wedges and serve. This quiche can be served warm or at room temperature. I’ve even been known to eat it cold, straight out of the refrigerator. It’s perfect for a fancy brunch or a lazy, relaxed breakfast on the weekend. Yield: Serves from 12 to 18 as an appetizer. Serves six as an entrée if they only have one piece.
Joanne Fluke (Joanne Fluke Christmas Bundle: Sugar Cookie Murder, Candy Cane Murder, Plum Pudding Murder, & Gingerbread Cookie Murder)
St. Lawrence River May 1705 Temperature 48 degrees The dancing began. Along with ancient percussion instruments that crackled and rattled, rasped and banged, the St. Francis Indians had French bells, whose clear chimes rang, and even a bugle, whose notes trumpeted across the river and over the trees. “Mercy Carter!” exclaimed an English voice. “Joanna Kellogg! This is wonderful! I am so glad to see you!” An English boy flung his arms around the girls, embracing them joyfully, whirling them in circles. Half his head was plucked and shiny bald, while long dark hair hung loose and tangled from the other half. His skin was very tan and his eyes twinkling black. He wore no shirt, jacket or cape: he was Indian enough to ignore the cold that had settled in once the sun went down. “Ebenezer Sheldon,” cried Mercy. “I haven’t seen you since the march.” He had been one of the first to receive an Indian name, when the snow thawed and the prisoners had had to wade through slush up to their ankles. Tannhahorens had changed Mercy’s moccasins now and then, hanging the wet pair on his shoulder to dry. But Ebenezer’s feet had frozen and he had lost some of his toes. He hadn’t complained; in fact, he had not mentioned it. When his master discovered the injury, Ebenezer was surrounded by Indians who admired his silence. The name Frozen Leg was an honor. In English, the name sounded crippled. But in an Indian tongue, it sounded strong. The boys in Deerfield who were not named John had been named Ebenezer. That wouldn’t happen in an Indian village. Each person must have a name exactly right for him; something that happened or that was; that reflected or appeared.
Caroline B. Cooney (The Ransom of Mercy Carter)
HEXAGON Snowflakes descend purposefully or wistfully but, surrounded by their tiny peers, each is confident they together will soon hide the meadows, driveways, roofs, fences, the stripped gardens. A speck of dust or pollen lofted to the top of the sky encountered a water drop that in the celestial cold adhered and froze, forming an ice crystal which, now weightier than the air it floated on, began to waft downwards, adding water particles as it traveled, six spikes or arms creating a filigree all its own as it passed through differing temperatures and amounts of dampness. Its delicate white intricacy, though, contains an inner space also unique. One offers a forest of snowy evergreens where, as afternoon light dims, a man wearing a homespun hooded garment and bent under a sack thrown over a shoulder plods along a footpath winding uphill between firs and pines. With each step, his breath appears like smoke until he and his burden are lost from view, and a chill wind sways the thin twigs of bushes emerging from drifts beside the track. In that flake is preserved an era in which the body endures and welcomes the simple opposites: icy cold against face skin and eventually a fire’s warmth, sodden feet and, at last, these dried once more, while the eye registers an omnipresent starkness —white fields, white roads, white trees— which, like a minor key, can please the mind. Here is the past returned to Earth by the water that changes form but does not die. In this vision, each frozen tuft among the millions that lower to the ground is a memento mori that affirms: No life is useless or pointless, since each in its turn advances the future. Yet all are swiftly forgotten in the beauty of the falling snow.
Tom Wayman
Only recently has it been discovered that sneezes are a much more drenching experience than anyone thought. A team led by Professor Lydia Bourouiba of MIT, as reported by Nature, studied sneezes more closely than anyone had ever chosen to before and found that sneeze droplets can travel up to eight meters and drift in suspension in the air for ten minutes before gently settling onto nearby surfaces. Through ultra-slow-motion filming, they also discovered that a sneeze isn’t a bolus of droplets, as had always been thought, but more like a sheet—a kind of liquid Saran Wrap—that breaks over nearby surfaces, providing further evidence, if any were needed, that you don’t want to be too close to a sneezing person. An interesting theory is that weather and temperature may influence how the droplets in a sneeze coalesce, which could explain why flu and colds are more common in cold weather, but that still doesn’t explain why infectious droplets are more infectious to us when we pick them up by touch rather than when we breathe (or kiss) them in. The formal name for the act of sneezing, by the way, is sternutation, though some authorities in their lighter moments refer to a sneeze as an autosomal dominant compelling helio-ophthalmic outburst, which makes the acronym ACHOO (sort of). Altogether the lungs weigh about 2.4 pounds, and they take up more space in your chest than you probably realize. They jut up as high as your neck and bottom out at about the breastbone. We tend to think of them as inflating and deflating independently, like bellows, but in fact they are greatly assisted by one of the least appreciated muscles in the body: the diaphragm. The diaphragm is a mammalian invention and it is a good one. By pulling down on the lungs from below, it helps them to work more powerfully.
Bill Bryson (The Body: A Guide for Occupants)
ROASTED BEET AND QUINOA SALAD When beets are bad, they are really fucking gross. But roasted, these mother fuckers get sweet and delicious. Trust. MAKES ENOUGH FOR 4 AS A SIDE DRESSING 1 shallot or small onion, diced (about 2 tablespoons) 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard 3 tablespoons white wine, balsamic, or champagne vinegar ¼ cup olive oil SALAD 3 medium beets, peeled and chopped into small chunks (about 1½ cups) 1 teaspoon of whatever vinegar you used for the dressing 2 teaspoons olive oil Salt and ground pepper 2 cups water 1 cup quinoa, rinsed 1 cup kale, stems removed, sliced into thin strips ¼ cup diced fresh herbs* 1 Crank your oven to 400°F. Grab a rimmed baking sheet and have it on standby. 2 Make the dressing: Pour all the ingredients together in a jar and shake that shit up. 3 For the salad: In a medium bowl, toss the beets together with the vinegar, olive oil, and a pinch of salt. Your hands might get kinda red and bloody looking from the beets. Don’t worry about that shit; it will wash off, so quit complaining. Pour the mixture onto the baking sheet and roast for 20 minutes, stirring the beets halfway through. 4 While the beets roast up, bring the water to a boil in a medium pot. Add the quinoa. Once that shit starts boiling again, cover, and adjust the heat to low. Cook the quinoa at a slow simmer until it is tender, about 15 minutes. Just taste it and you’ll figure that shit out. Drain any extra water that remains in the pot and scoop the quinoa into a medium bowl. Fold the kale into the hot quinoa and then add the dressing. Add the fresh herb of your choice and mix well. 5 When the beets are done, fold those ruby red bitches right in to the quinoa. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve this salad at room temperature or refrigerate until cold. * Dill, basil, and parsley all work well here. Use whichever of those you’ve got hanging out in the fridge
Thug Kitchen (Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck)
TIO TITO’S SUBLIME LIME BAR COOKIES Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. ½ cup finely-chopped coconut (measure after chopping—pack it down when you measure it) 1 cup cold salted butter (2 sticks, 8 ounces, ½ pound) ½ cup powdered (confectioners) sugar (no need to sift unless it’s got big lumps) 2 cups all-purpose flour (pack it down when you measure it)   4 beaten eggs (just whip them up with a fork) 2 cups white (granulated) sugar cup lime juice (freshly squeezed is best) cup vodka (I used Tito’s Handmade Vodka) ½ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking powder ½ cup all-purpose flour (pack it down when you measure it) Powdered (confectioners) sugar to sprinkle on top Coconut Crust: To get your half-cup of finely-chopped coconut, you will need to put approximately ¾ cup of shredded coconut in the bowl of a food processor. (The coconut will pack down more when it’s finely-chopped so you’ll need more of the stuff out of the package to get the half-cup you need for this recipe.) Chop the shredded coconut up finely with the steel blade. Pour it out into a bowl and measure out ½ cup, packing it down when you measure it. Return the half-cup of finely chopped coconut to the food processor. (You can also do this by spreading out the shredded coconut on a cutting board and chopping it finely by hand.) Cut each stick of butter into eight pieces and arrange them in the bowl of the food processor on top of the chopped coconut. Sprinkle the powdered sugar and the flour on top of that. Zoop it all up with an on-and-off motion of the steel blade until it resembles coarse cornmeal. Prepare a 9-inch by 13-inch rectangular cake pan by spraying it with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray. Alternatively, for even easier removal, line the cake pan with heavy-duty foil and spray that with Pam. (Then all you have to do is lift the bar cookies out when they’re cool, peel off the foil, and cut them up into pieces.) Sprinkle the crust mixture into the prepared cake pan and spread it out with your fingers. Pat it down with a large spatula or with the palms of your impeccably clean hands. Hannah’s 1st Note: If your butter is a bit too soft, you may end up with a mass that balls up and clings to the food processor bowl. That’s okay. Just scoop it up and spread it out in the bottom of your prepared pan. (You can also do this in a bowl with a fork or a pie crust blender if you prefer.) Hannah’s 2nd Note: Don’t wash your food processor quite yet. You’ll need it to make the lime layer. (The same applies to your bowl and fork if you make the crust by hand.) Bake your coconut crust at 350 degrees F. for 15 minutes. While your crust is baking, prepare the lime layer. Lime Layer: Combine the eggs with the white sugar. (You can use your food processor and the steel blade to do this, or you can do it by hand in a bowl.) Add the lime juice, vodka, salt, and baking powder. Mix thoroughly. Add the flour and mix until everything is incorporated. (This mixture will be runny—it’s supposed to be.) When your crust has baked for 15 minutes, remove the pan from the oven and set it on a cold stovetop burner or a wire rack. Don’t shut off the oven! Just leave it on at 350 degrees F. Pour the lime layer mixture on top of the crust you just baked. Use potholders to pick up the pan and return it to the oven. Bake your Sublime Lime Bar Cookies for an additional 30 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and cool your lime bars in the pan on a cold stovetop burner or a wire rack. When the pan has cooled to room temperature, cover it with foil and refrigerate it until you’re ready to serve. Cut the bars into brownie-sized pieces, place them on a pretty platter, and sprinkle them lightly with powdered sugar. Yum! Hannah’s 3rd Note: If you would prefer not to use alcohol in these bar cookies, simply substitute whole milk for the vodka. This recipe works both ways and I can honestly tell you that I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like my Sublime Lime Bar Cookies!
Joanne Fluke (Blackberry Pie Murder (Hannah Swensen, #17))
The Man-Moth Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for “mammoth.” Here, above, cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight. The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat. It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on, and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon. He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties, feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold, of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers. But when the Man-Moth pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface, the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings. He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky, proving the sky quite useless for protection. He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb. Up the façades, his shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind him he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage to push his small head through that round clean opening and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light. (Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.) But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt. Then he returns to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits, he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly. The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed, without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort. He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards. Each night he must be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams. Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window, for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison, runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers. If you catch him, hold up a flashlight to his eye. It’s all dark pupil, an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids one tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips. Slyly he palms it, and if you’re not paying attention he’ll swallow it. However, if you watch, he’ll hand it over, cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.
Elizabeth Bishop (The Complete Poems 1927-1979)
WALKING WITH ANGELS IN THE COOL OF THE DAY A short time later I felt someone poke me hard in the left arm. I turned to see who it was, but there was no one there. At the time, I dismissed it and returned my attention to my thoughts. After a minute I was poked again, only this time the poke was accompanied with an audible voice! The Holy Spirit said, “I want to go for a walk with you in the cool of the day.” I jumped up totally flabbergasted. I quickly left the room and grabbed my coat, telling everyone that I was going for a walk in the “cool of the day.” It just happened to be minus 12 degrees Fahrenheit (or minus 24 Celsius)! The moment I walked out the door, the presence of the Holy Spirit fell upon me, and I began to weep again. The tears were starting to freeze on my cheeks, but I did not mind. God began to talk to me in an audible voice. I was walking through the streets of Botwood in the presence of the Holy Ghost. I could also sense that many angels were accompanying us. The angels were laughing and singing as we strolled along the snow-covered streets. It was about 8:00 A.M. The Holy Spirit led me along a road which was on the shore of the North Atlantic Ocean. For the first time since leaving the house, I began to notice that it was very cold. However, it was worth it to be in the presence of the Lord. I was directed to a small breezeway that leads out over the Bay of Exploits (this name truly proved to be quite prophetic) to a tiny island called Killick Island. As we were walking across the breezeway, the wind was whipping off the ocean at about 40 knots. Combined with the negative temperature, the wind was turning my skin numb, and my tears had crystallized into ice on my face and mustache. THE CITY OF REFUGE I said, “Holy Spirit, it is really cold out here, and my face is turning numb.” The Lord replied, “Do not fear; when we get onto this island, there will be a city of refuge.” I had no idea what a city of refuge was, but I hoped that it would be warm and safe. (See Numbers 35:25.) The winter’s day had turned even colder and grayer; there was no sun, and the dark gray sky was totally overcast. Snow was falling lightly, and being blown about by a brisk wind. As we walked onto Killick Island, it got even colder and windier. The Holy Spirit whispered to me, “Do not fear; the city of refuge is just up these steps, hidden in those fir trees.” When I ascended a few dozen steps, I saw a small stand of fir trees to the left. Just before I stepped into the middle of them, a shaft of brilliant bright light, a lone sunbeam, cracked the sky to illuminate the city of refuge. When I entered the little circle of fir trees, what the Holy Spirit had called a “city of refuge,” I encountered the manifest glory of God. Angels were everywhere. It was 8:50 A.M. As we entered, I walked through some kind of invisible barrier. Surprisingly, inside the city of refuge, the temperature was very pleasant, even warm. The bright beam of sunlight slashed into the cold, gray atmosphere. As this heavenly light hit the fresh snow, there appeared to be rainbows of colors that seemed to radiate from the trees, tickling my eyes. Suddenly, the Holy Spirit began to ask me questions. The Lord asked me to “describe what you are seeing.” Every color of the rainbow seemed to dance from the tiny snowflakes as they slowly drifted
Kevin Basconi (How to Work with Angels in Your Life: The Reality of Angelic Ministry Today (Angels in the Realms of Heaven, Book 2))
Meditation + Mental Strength An emotion is our evolved biology predicting the future impact of a current event. In modern settings, it’s usually exaggerated or wrong. Why is meditation so powerful? Your breath is one of the few places where your autonomic nervous system meets your voluntary nervous system. It’s involuntary, but you can also control it. I think a lot of meditation practices put an emphasis on the breath because it is a gateway into your autonomic nervous system. There are many, many cases in the medical and spiritual literature of people controlling their bodies at levels that should be autonomous. Your mind is such a powerful thing. What’s so unusual about your forebrain sending signals to your hindbrain and your hindbrain routing resources to your entire body? You can do it just by breathing. Relaxed breathing tells your body you’re safe. Then, your forebrain doesn’t need as many resources as it normally does. Now, the extra energy can be sent to your hindbrain, and it can reroute those resources to the rest of your body. I’m not saying you can beat whatever illness you have just because you activated your hindbrain. But you’re devoting most of the energy normally required to care about the external environment to the immune system. I highly recommend listening to the Tim Ferriss’s podcast with Wim Hof. He is a walking miracle. Wim’s nickname is the Ice Man. He holds the world record for the longest time spent in an ice bath and swimming in freezing cold water. I was very inspired by him, not only because he’s capable of super-human physical feats, but because he does it while being incredibly kind and happy—which is not easy to accomplish. He advocates cold exposure, because he believes people are too separate from their natural environment. We’re constantly clothed, fed, and warm. Our bodies have lost touch with the cold. The cold is important because it can activate the immune system. So, he advocates taking long ice baths. Being from the Indian subcontinent, I’m strongly against the idea of ice baths. But Wim inspired me to give cold showers a try. And I did so by using the Wim Hof breathing method. It involves hyperventilating to get more oxygen into your blood, which raises your core temperature. Then, you can go into the shower. The first few cold showers were hilarious because I’d slowly ease myself in, wincing the entire way. I started about four or five months ago. Now, I turn the shower on full-blast, and then I walk right in. I don’t give myself any time to hesitate. As soon as I hear the voice in my head telling me how cold it’s going to be, I know I have to walk in. I learned a very important lesson from this: most of our suffering comes from avoidance. Most of the suffering from a cold shower is the tip-toeing your way in. Once you’re in, you’re in. It’s not suffering. It’s just cold. Your body saying it’s cold is different than your mind saying it’s cold. Acknowledge your body saying it’s cold. Look at it. Deal with it. Accept it, but don’t mentally suffer over it. Taking a cold shower for two minutes isn’t going to kill you. Having a cold shower helps you re-learn that lesson every morning. Now hot showers are just one less thing I need out of life. [2] Meditation is intermittent fasting for the mind. Too much sugar leads to a heavy body, and too many distractions lead to a heavy mind. Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination, journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit.
Eric Jorgenson (The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness)
The traditional hospital practice of excluding parents ignored the importance of attachment relationships as regulators of the child’s emotions, behaviour and physiology. The child’s biological status would be vastly different under the circumstances of parental presence or absence. Her neurochemical output, the electrical activity in her brain’s emotional centres, her heart rate, blood pressure and the serum levels of the various hormones related to stress would all vary significantly. Life is possible only within certain well-defined limits, internal or external. We can no more survive, say, high sugar levels in our bloodstream than we can withstand high levels of radiation emanating from a nuclear explosion. The role of self-regulation, whether emotional or physical, may be likened to that of a thermostat ensuring that the temperature in a home remains constant despite the extremes of weather conditions outside. When the environment becomes too cold, the heating system is switched on. If the air becomes overheated, the air conditioner begins to work. In the animal kingdom, self-regulation is illustrated by the capacity of the warm-blooded creature to exist in a broad range of environments. It can survive more extreme variations of hot and cold without either chilling or overheating than can a coldblooded species. The latter is restricted to a much narrower range of habitats because it does not have the capacity to self-regulate the internal environment. Children and infant animals have virtually no capacity for biological self-regulation; their internal biological states—heart rates, hormone levels, nervous system activity — depend completely on their relationships with caregiving grown-ups. Emotions such as love, fear or anger serve the needs of protecting the self while maintaining essential relationships with parents and other caregivers. Psychological stress is whatever threatens the young creature’s perception of a safe relationship with the adults, because any disruption in the relationship will cause turbulence in the internal milieu. Emotional and social relationships remain important biological influences beyond childhood. “Independent self-regulation may not exist even in adulthood,” Dr. Myron Hofer, then of the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, wrote in 1984. “Social interactions may continue to play an important role in the everyday regulation of internal biologic systems throughout life.” Our biological response to environmental challenge is profoundly influenced by the context and by the set of relationships that connect us with other human beings. As one prominent researcher has expressed it most aptly, “Adaptation does not occur wholly within the individual.” Human beings as a species did not evolve as solitary creatures but as social animals whose survival was contingent on powerful emotional connections with family and tribe. Social and emotional connections are an integral part of our neurological and chemical makeup. We all know this from the daily experience of dramatic physiological shifts in our bodies as we interact with others. “You’ve burnt the toast again,” evokes markedly different bodily responses from us, depending on whether it is shouted in anger or said with a smile. When one considers our evolutionary history and the scientific evidence at hand, it is absurd even to imagine that health and disease could ever be understood in isolation from our psychoemotional networks. “The basic premise is that, like other social animals, human physiologic homeostasis and ultimate health status are influenced not only by the physical environment but also by the social environment.” From such a biopsychosocial perspective, individual biology, psychological functioning and interpersonal and social relationships work together, each influencing the other.
Gabor Maté (When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress)
Stick to a sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. As creatures of habit, people have a hard time adjusting to changes in sleep patterns. Sleeping later on weekends won’t fully make up for a lack of sleep during the week and will make it harder to wake up early on Monday morning. Set an alarm for bedtime. Often we set an alarm for when it’s time to wake up but fail to do so for when it’s time to go to sleep. If there is only one piece of advice you remember and take from these twelve tips, this should be it. Exercise is great, but not too late in the day. Try to exercise at least thirty minutes on most days but not later than two to three hours before your bedtime. Avoid caffeine and nicotine. Coffee, colas, certain teas, and chocolate contain the stimulant caffeine, and its effects can take as long as eight hours to wear off fully. Therefore, a cup of coffee in the late afternoon can make it hard for you to fall asleep at night. Nicotine is also a stimulant, often causing smokers to sleep only very lightly. In addition, smokers often wake up too early in the morning because of nicotine withdrawal. Avoid alcoholic drinks before bed. Having a nightcap or alcoholic beverage before sleep may help you relax, but heavy use robs you of REM sleep, keeping you in the lighter stages of sleep. Heavy alcohol ingestion also may contribute to impairment in breathing at night. You also tend to wake up in the middle of the night when the effects of the alcohol have worn off. Avoid large meals and beverages late at night. A light snack is okay, but a large meal can cause indigestion, which interferes with sleep. Drinking too many fluids at night can cause frequent awakenings to urinate. If possible, avoid medicines that delay or disrupt your sleep. Some commonly prescribed heart, blood pressure, or asthma medications, as well as some over-the-counter and herbal remedies for coughs, colds, or allergies, can disrupt sleep patterns. If you have trouble sleeping, talk to your health care provider or pharmacist to see whether any drugs you’re taking might be contributing to your insomnia and ask whether they can be taken at other times during the day or early in the evening. Don’t take naps after 3 p.m. Naps can help make up for lost sleep, but late afternoon naps can make it harder to fall asleep at night. Relax before bed. Don’t overschedule your day so that no time is left for unwinding. A relaxing activity, such as reading or listening to music, should be part of your bedtime ritual. Take a hot bath before bed. The drop in body temperature after getting out of the bath may help you feel sleepy, and the bath can help you relax and slow down so you’re more ready to sleep. Dark bedroom, cool bedroom, gadget-free bedroom. Get rid of anything in your bedroom that might distract you from sleep, such as noises, bright lights, an uncomfortable bed, or warm temperatures. You sleep better if the temperature in the room is kept on the cool side. A TV, cell phone, or computer in the bedroom can be a distraction and deprive you of needed sleep. Having a comfortable mattress and pillow can help promote a good night’s sleep. Individuals who have insomnia often watch the clock. Turn the clock’s face out of view so you don’t worry about the time while trying to fall asleep. Have the right sunlight exposure. Daylight is key to regulating daily sleep patterns. Try to get outside in natural sunlight for at least thirty minutes each day. If possible, wake up with the sun or use very bright lights in the morning. Sleep experts recommend that, if you have problems falling asleep, you should get an hour of exposure to morning sunlight and turn down the lights before bedtime. Don’t lie in bed awake. If you find yourself still awake after staying in bed for more than twenty minutes or if you are starting to feel anxious or worried, get up and do some relaxing activity until you feel sleepy.
Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep The New Science of Sleep and Dreams / Why We Can't Sleep Women's New Midlife Crisis)
In a small saucepan, gently melt the coconut oil and ghee over medium-low heat until completely liquefied. Combine the hot sauce, vinegar, and garlic in a medium mixing bowl and whisk until thoroughly blended. While whisking, drizzle in the melted coconut oil and ghee. The sauce should have a smooth, consistent texture. Store this sauce in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 7 days. (Note, the coconut oil and ghee will solidify in the cold, so pull it out of the fridge, let it come back to room temperature before serving, and gently stir to reblend.) ✪Buffalo Wings For the perfect buffalo wings, fire up the grill! Preheat the grill to medium-high heat (400°F). Add a pound of wings to the grill and close the lid. Turning the wings every few minutes, cook until lightly charred and the skin starts to bubble, 15 to 20 minutes. Toss the wings with the buffalo sauce in a large bowl immediately after removing them from the grill—then let them sit in the sauce for a few minutes before serving with a side of celery and carrots and our Ranch Dressing. (You can also preheat the oven to 375°F and, following the same technique, have golden, crispy wings in about an hour.)
Melissa Urban (The Whole30: The 30-Day Guide to Total Health and Food Freedom)
The bright flash from the CSI camera illuminated the darkened garden. The temperature had dropped along with the last of the sunlight and there was a chill in the air. Morgan couldn’t take her gaze away from Olivia Potter; even in death she looked beautiful. Despite trying for the last hour Harrison hadn’t been able to make contact with Bronte. Ben had asked for a PNC check of all vehicles listed for the address and it had come back with two: a brand new Jaguar F-Pace, in white, and a slightly older Mercedes C-Class. The Mercedes was parked in the garage, its engine cold, but there was no sign of the Jag. An ANPR marker had been placed on the vehicle to find out where it was last seen. It was strange that they couldn’t find anyone to notify about Olivia, but it happened.
Helen Phifer (One Left Alive (Detective Morgan Brookes, #1))
she wondered why she found this particular temperature so charming; and decided that it was because, on a day like this, she came nearer than usual to losing her sense of separate identity. Extremes of heat and cold she enjoyed too, but it was with a tense, belligerent enjoyment. When they beat against the irregular frontiers of the skin, with all its weak angles and vulnerable salients, they made her acutely conscious of her own boundaries in space. Here, she would find herself thinking, is where I end and the outside world begins. It was exciting, but divisive: it made for loneliness.
Jan Struther (Mrs. Miniver)
Being too cold is just as bad as being too hot.
A.D. Aliwat (In Limbo)
In the early 1900s a Serbian scientist named Milutin Milanković studied the Earth’s position relative to other planets and came up with the theory of ice ages that we now know is accurate: The gravitational pull of the sun and moon gently affect the Earth’s motion and tilt toward the sun. During parts of this cycle—which can last tens of thousands of years—each of the Earth’s hemispheres gets a little more, or a little less, solar radiation than they’re used to. And that is where the fun begins. Milanković’s theory initially assumed that a tilt of the Earth’s hemispheres caused ravenous winters cold enough to turn the planet into ice. But a Russian meteorologist named Wladimir Köppen dug deeper into Milanković’s work and discovered a fascinating nuance. Moderately cool summers, not cold winters, were the icy culprit. It begins when a summer never gets warm enough to melt the previous winter’s snow. The leftover ice base makes it easier for snow to accumulate the following winter, which increases the odds of snow sticking around in the following summer, which attracts even more accumulation the following winter. Perpetual snow reflects more of the sun’s rays, which exacerbates cooling, which brings more snowfall, and on and on. Within a few hundred years a seasonal snowpack grows into a continental ice sheet, and you’re off to the races. The same thing happens in reverse. An orbital tilt letting more sunlight in melts more of the winter snowpack, which reflects less light the following years, which increases temperatures, which prevents more snow the next year, and so on. That’s the cycle. The amazing thing here is how big something can grow from a relatively small change in conditions. You start with a thin layer of snow left over from a cool summer that no one would think anything of and then, in a geological blink of an eye, the entire Earth is covered in miles-thick ice.
Morgan Housel (The Psychology of Money)
Of course, I’m talking about what most people know as “brain freeze.” Scientists identify it as a stimulus headache, or sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia for all you science nerds. You may be surprised to learn that serious studies have been conducted on brain freeze at major institutions such as Harvard University. These studies have shown that brain freeze happens when an extremely cold substance quickly hits the roof of the mouth, causing the capillaries to constrict, followed by an equally quick rewarming when warm air is reintroduced to the mouth. This warming causes vasodilation, or a widening of the blood vessels. The rapid changes in temperature in the upper mouth lead to this painful sensation. Most of this is standard knowledge, but a study by Dr. Jorge Serrador revealed that there is a correlation between brain freeze and migraine sufferers. His research found that those suffering from migraines are more likely to get brain freeze, which suggests that there may be similar biological processes at work. Understanding how the contraction and widening of blood vessels in the brain take place may help scientists develop better headache medicines.
Bill O'Neill (Interesting Stories For Curious People: A Collection of Fascinating Stories About History, Science, Pop Culture and Just About Anything Else You Can Think of)
Stop doubting my amazing stripping skills, dude,” Roxy teased as she continued to struggle with her buttons. I was about to force my eyes away from her when she cursed and yanked on her shirt hard enough to rip every button off of it. Beneath it she was wearing a gold push up bra which accentuated her perfect tits and made her look like something out of a Dragon’s wet dream. She tossed her head back with laughter, taking a playful bow for her friends but her foot slipped and she tumbled off of the table instead. I took a few running steps towards her before I could stop myself but the guy had leapt up to catch her before she could hit the ground. “Tory?” he asked as she slumped against him, seeming to have fallen unconscious. “Oh, shit! Help me.” The girl Roxy had called Sofia scrambled to help him with her and they struggled to move her towards one of the cushioned chairs close to where they’d been sitting. I shook my head to clear it of the image of her in that gold bra and spun on my heel, striding towards the exit and quite possibly a cold shower. Just as I made it to the door, a loud scream halted me. I turned back to see Roxy’s friends backing away from her in a panic as a thick sheet of ice spread across the ground away from her, tinting everything in its path a frosty blue. “Wake up, Tory!” Sofia yelled desperately. “Maybe you should run for a teacher,” the boy said. “I’ll try to get through to her.” Sofia turned to run for the exit and her eyes widened in panic as she found me striding towards her instead. “What’s wrong with her?” I asked, my tone clipped. “She err...” Sofia hesitated, clearly not wanting to trust me with her friend’s condition while battling against the inclination to do whatever I told her. “She passed out and now she’s using magic in her sleep and we can’t get close to help her.” Roxy whimpered behind her and I stepped around Sofia to inspect the damage for myself. I’d dealt with this kind of thing with the other Heirs once or twice when our powers had first been Awakened. We were just so powerful that if we got too drunk, sometimes we’d lose control over our magic in our sleep and Roxy had seemed wasted to me. “It’s fine, we’ll look after her,” the boy said firmly but I ignored him as I walked closer to Roxy where she was slumped in the chair. Ice crunched loudly beneath my boots while the temperature around me plummeted and I hadn’t even gotten close to her yet. I drew on my fire magic, pushing it against the ice and melting some of it but Roxy’s power fought back as she whimpered again. “Roxy,” I growled as I made it to stand before her. The ice was still spreading and thickening. She was trembling in the chair and I noticed a few tears sailing down her cheeks. “Not again,” she breathed, her fists balling as she curled in on herself. “Roxy, wake up!” I snapped, moving forward to grab her arm and shake her. She didn’t wake but the ice around me thickened even more and her friends cried out as they were forced to back up again. My breath rose before me and I dropped the six pack beside her chair, crouching down before her so that I could shake her more firmly. She started coughing and water burst from her mouth like she’d been drowning. I pulled her forward, slapping her back to help her get it all up and the tremors rocking her body reverberated through mine as she pressed against my chest. More cold water flooded from her, drenching her as she cried out in panic and I pulled her against me more firmly. (Darius POV)
Caroline Peckham (The Reckoning (Zodiac Academy, #3))
Why’re you still here?” She yawned. “Go away. Jared will be here any moment, and I’ll be nothing but an unfortunate memory.” I should go. Pivot and leave. To my relief, I started doing just that. The echo of my footsteps bounced on the bare walls. I did not look back. Knew that if I caught a glimpse of her again, I’d make a mistake. This was for the best. It was time to cut my losses, admit my one mistake in my thirty-one years of life, and move on. My life would return to normal. Peaceful. Tidy. Noiseless. Unexpensive. My hand curled around the doorknob, about to push it open. “Hey, asshole.” I stopped but didn’t turn around. I refused to answer to the word. “What do you say—one last time for the road?” I glanced behind my shoulder, knowing I shouldn’t, and found my soon-to-be ex-wife propped on the hood of my Maybach, her dress hiked up her waist, revealing she’d worn no panties. Her bare pussy glistened, ready for me. A dare. I never shied away from those. Throwing caution to the wind (and the remaining few brain cells she hadn’t fried with her mindless conversation), I marched to her. When I reached the car, she lifted her hand to stop me, slapping her palm against my chest. “Not so fast.” It is going to be fast and a half, seeing as I’m about to come just from watching you like this. I arched an eyebrow. “Cold feet?” “Nah, low temperature is your thing. Don’t wanna steal your thunder. Either we go all the way, or we go nowhere at all. It’s all or nothing.” It infuriated me that each time I gave her a choice, she fabricated another. If I gave her an option, she swapped it with one of her creation. And now, on the heels of my ultimatum, she’d dished out her own. And like a doomed fool, I chose everything. I chose my downfall. We exploded together in a filthy, frustrated kiss full of tongue and teeth. She latched on to my neck, half-choking me, half-hugging me. I fumbled with the zipper of my suit pants, freeing my cock, which by this point gleamed with precum, so heavy and so hard it was uncomfortable to stand. My teeth grazed down her chin, trailing her throat before I did what I hadn’t done in five fucking years and pushed into her, all at once. Bare. My cock disappeared inside her, hitting a hot spot, squeezed to death by her muscles. Oh, fuck. My forehead fell against hers. A thin coat of sweat glued us together. Never in my life had anything felt quite so good. I wanted to evaporate into mist, seep into her, and never come back. I wanted to live, breathe, and exist inside my beautiful, maddening, conniving, infuriating curse of a wife. She was the one thing I never wanted and the only thing I craved. Worst, still, was the fact that I knew I couldn’t deny her a single thing she desired, be it a frock or piece of jewelry. Or, unfortunately, my heart on a platter, speared straight through with a skewer for her to devour. Still beating and as vibrant red as candied apples. I retreated, then slammed into her harder. Pulled and rushed back in. My fingers gripped her by the waist, pinning her down, wild with lust and desire. I drove into her in jerky, frenzied movements of a man starved for sex, fucking the ever-living shit out of her. Now that I’d officially filed a restraining order against my logic, I grabbed the front of her throat, sinking my teeth onto her lower lip. My spearmint breath skated over her face. The hood of the car warmed her thighs, still hot from the engine, jacking up the temperature between us even further. Small, desperate yelps fled her mouth. The only sounds in the cavernous space came from my grunts, our skin slapping together, and her tiny gasps of pleasure. The car rocked back and forth to the rhythm of my thrusts... (chapter 44)
Parker S. Huntington (My Dark Romeo (Dark Prince Road, #1))
After it turned so cold, it snowed enormous quantities of snow. I have no recollection of the number of inches or the temperature recorded, but it was much colder than in the Twin Cities, which we thought were semi-tropical by our standards.
William H. Hull (All Hell Broke Loose: Experiences of Young People During the Armistice Day 1940 Blizzard)
Outside was bitter cold, December having hit Buffalo hard. The streets were empty. The snow and freezing temperatures had driven even the panhandlers and criminals inside. For a brief moment, Kade longed for a cigarette. Despite having kicked the habit years ago, the cravings lingered. He slipped into his car, the engine of the Mercedes coming to life easily despite the weather. Kade’s watch signaled
Tiffany Snow (Turn to Me (Kathleen Turner, #2))
The story, then, seems rather simple: when iron is cold, the forces of order win out; when hot, the battle goes the other way and chaos rules. But this leaves out the juiciest detail. At some intermediate temperature, the forces of order and chaos must fight to a stalemate. This is the critical point, and in iron, it occurs at 770 degrees Celsius. What happens to the army of arrows at this point? What does it mean for something to be neither organized nor disorganized, but somehow perched on the delicate boundary between the two? The answers to these questions are rather more elusive.
Mark Buchanan (Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen)
He did not mention the Thiokol engineers’ concerns about temperature—a decision with which A1 McDonald agreed—because no systematic data were yet available that proved the association between the cold and the damage found on STS 51-C. Only “solid engineering data” were admissible in FRR presentation. Recall Boisjoly’s comment that the visual evidence of the black grease at disassembly was not considered “concrete evidence” and McDonald’s comment about “no hard data.
Diane Vaughan (The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA)
In addition to metformin and exercise, the temperature in the environment can also play a role in hormesis. When you expose fruit flies to a high temperature for a short period, they live longer.184That could also be a reason why an occasional sauna or cold shower can have a healthy effect on the body. Heat is infrared radiation, but there is another kind of radiation that may have a hormetic effect too; namely, radioactivity. When crickets and mice undergo a small amount of radioactive radiation, they live longer.185 Something similar may be true for people. A report of the Atomic Energy Commission in the United States found that people living in the six states with the most radioactive background radiation had a 15 percent lower risk of dying of cancer compared to the other states.186
Kris Verburgh (The Longevity Code: Slow Down the Aging Process and Live Well for Longer: Secrets from the Leading Edge of Science)
So black holes emit heat, like a stove, and Hawking computed their temperature. Radiated heat carries away energy. As it loses energy, the black hole gradually loses mass (mass is energy), becoming ever lighter and smaller. Its horizon shrinks. In the jargon we say that the black hole “evaporates.” Heat emission is the most characteristic of the irreversible processes: the processes that occur in one time direction and cannot be reversed. A stove emits heat and warms a cold room. Have you ever seen the walls of a cold room emit heat and heat up a warm stove? When heat is produced, the process is irreversible. In fact, whenever the process is irreversible, heat is produced (or something
Carlo Rovelli (White Holes)
But abuse, though it can seem to happen all at once, is cumulative. I was like a lobster in a pot of cold water, the temperature being raised bit by bit before I realized I was in danger. Every apology I made to Griffin chipped away at my soul, brought me closer to being boiled alive, because I gave up a little more of myself. And a little more. And a little more.
Luanne Rice (The Shadow Box)
[My father’s] survival was his way of saying ‘Mulen Labe’ to his oppressors and murderers of his family. His people. In the Krakow Ghetto, in the camps of Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna Monowitz, Buchenwald. The ability to fight was within him. In his blood. The challenge chose him. No spartan training. How did Dad confront the Nazi terror with no Spartan warrior to mentor him? The frustration and choked cries of rebellion were already internalised in his soul. Later, the frustration and choked back screams resonated in my soul as well when nourished by the relentless, gruelling training. When I was growing up coming my father told me a few stories that stayed with me through the long marches and along the IDF service. His story of the death March from Buna Monowitz to Gliviz through deep snow and freezing cold. It began January 17 and ended the night of January 22, 1945. The night of January 21 was especially cold. There was no place to get warm. As night fell, my father found a bare wooden door and covered himself with it. A little after midnight the freezing temperatures woke him. He attempted to wake up the people around him, shouting at them, “Wake up, wake up. You're going to freeze to death if you don't move.” A few woke up and joined him in stepping in place to warm up. Others remained unmoving and perished. That night thousands froze to death. The next morning, which was the 6th day of the death march, my father got up with a piercing pain in his hip. He could not take even one step, he told me the ball of the hip bone ground against the hip socket “like sandpaper”. When he asked to be left alone, his friends didn't listen and insisted on carrying him. He argued, “I will cause you to fall behind”. They were adamant. With their last ounce of energy, they put his arms over their shoulders, lifted him up and began to look forward. Supported by his two friends, he moved in a line with the rest of the dead. He continued to beg them to abandon him and they refused, insisting on helping him. After a few hundred yards, his joints warmed and he was able to leap forward on his own. Marching as part of the endless column of human suffering. So they marched, supporting each other, until they arrived that night at the train in Gliviz that was to take them to Buchenwald. When he told me this story, I felt immense gratitude to his friends. How did he do it? The hopeless atmosphere, the scant odds of surviving, inability to control your fate, the deep frustration, the desire to defeat a cruel enemy. All of these feelings are part of me. I tapped into them during my training with the Unit…. I recall after finishing very difficult marches, asking my father to tell me about the Death March. Time and again, everything fell into perspective. Each time I understood that no matter what hardships we endured, we would never come close to measuring up to the strength and courage of my dad and his friends.
Ouri Tsafrir (Along the Trail)
Surfer’s ear An overgrowth of bone can cause benign tumors to form in the ear canal. These tumors can get big enough that they block the ear canal and trap earwax and water. Ear infection also may develop. This condition is known as surfer’s ear because it develops in many people who surf. The growths are associated with long-term exposure to water and wind. The colder the water temperature, the higher the risk. That’s because cold-water surfers are more likely to develop these tumors than are warm-water surfers. Treating surfer’s ear The tumors seen in surfer’s ear grow slowly and often don’t cause problems.
Jamie M. Bogle (Mayo Clinic on Hearing and Balance, Hear Better, Improve Your Balance, Enjoy Life)
TWO STYLES OF REASONING: PRINCIPLES-FIRST VERSUS APPLICATIONS-FIRST Principles-first reasoning (sometimes referred to as deductive reasoning) derives conclusions or facts from general principles or concepts. For example, we may start with a general principle like “All men are mortal.” Then we move to a more specific example: “Justin Bieber is a man.” This leads us to the conclusion, “Justin Bieber will, eventually, die.” Similarly, we may start with the general principle “Everything made of copper conducts electricity.” Then we show that the old statue of a leprechaun your grandmother left you is 100 percent copper. Based on these points, we can arrive at the conclusion, “Your grandmother’s statue will conduct electricity.” In both examples, we started with the general principle and moved from it to a practical conclusion. On the other hand, with applications-first reasoning (sometimes called inductive reasoning), general conclusions are reached based on a pattern of factual observations from the real world. For example, if you travel to my hometown in Minnesota one hundred times during January and February, and you observe every visit that the temperature is considerably below zero, you will conclude that Minnesota winters are cold (and that a winter visit to Minnesota calls for a warm coat as well as a scarf, wool hat, gloves, and ear warmers).
Erin Meyer (The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business)
body of water, no matter how vast, will not produce motive power unless it can flow downhill. So, too, even a prodigious quantity of heat will not create motive power if there’s no temperature difference it can “flow down.
Paul Sen (Einstein's Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe)
At its heart are three concepts—energy, entropy, and temperature. Without an understanding of these and the laws they obey, all science—physics, chemistry, and biology—would be incoherent.
Paul Sen (Einstein's Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe)
For a sense of Carnot’s reasoning, think of a water mill. For a given flow of water, the maximum power it can produce is limited by the height by which the water drops. No amount of cunning design can improve on this limit. The only way to up the power of the mill is to increase the height that the water drops. Analogously, for any heat engine, the power it can produce from a given flow of heat is limited by the temperature difference between its furnace and sink. The only way to up this is to increase this temperature difference. Conversely, reducing the temperature difference will reduce the power output.
Paul Sen (Einstein's Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe)
This logic told Carnot that the real steam engines of his day had to be woefully wasteful. The hottest temperature the steam reached as it expanded and pushed a piston was, Carnot reckoned, a little over 160°C. The coldest it fell to as it condensed was around 40°C. That meant steam engines were extracting motive power from a temperature drop of around 120°C. But the temperature in the engine’s furnace in which the coal was burning was over 1,000°C, and that meant a much-larger temperature drop—of 900°C or more—was being wasted.
Paul Sen (Einstein's Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe)
Air has another advantage—it has a lower “specific heat” than steam. That means, roughly, that the same amount of heat can raise the temperature of a quantity of air by a greater amount than an equivalent quantity of steam. In turn that implies that the same flow of heat can drive an air-based engine between greater temperature differences than a steam-based one. Thus, even more efficiency is achieved.
Paul Sen (Einstein's Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe)
This prediction was borne out in the late nineteenth century by the arrival of the internal combustion engine, a device that burns petrol or diesel to raise the air temperatures in its cylinders to well over 1,000°. Rudolf Diesel, who published his theories on how to build such an engine in 1893, was inspired by Carnot’s ideas.
Paul Sen (Einstein's Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe)
(A few decades later, scientists redefined the calorie to mean the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water, rather than one kilogram of water, by one degree Celsius, which means that one of Clément’s calories is equivalent to one thousand calories now.)
Paul Sen (Einstein's Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe)
A bedroom temperature of around 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18.3°C) is a reasonable goal for the sleep of most people, assuming standard bedding and clothing. This surprises many, as it sounds just a little too cold for comfort. Of course, that specific temperature will vary depending on the individual in question and their unique physiology, gender, and age. But like calorie recommendations, it’s a good target for the average human being. Most of us set ambient house and/or bedroom temperatures higher than are optimal for good sleep and this likely contributes to lower quantity and/or quality of sleep than you are otherwise capable of getting.
Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams)
Sleep was our deadliest enemy. Every mountaineer knows that if you allow yourself to be taken down by that cold, it is a one-way ticket to death. There are no exceptions. Your core temperature plunges until your heart stops. So we yelled at each other, and hit each other and kicked each other. Anything to remain awake.
Beck Weathers (Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest)
think of temperature as a measure of how hot something feels.
Paul Sen (Einstein's Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe)
Heat is much trickier to understand. Place the same two vessels on a stove, and the temperature of the water they contain goes up as “heat” is released from the burning gas. But to get the same hike in temperature, you must place the larger vessel on the stove for a much longer time than the smaller one. These observations imply that the effect of heat on a substance is to raise its temperature by an amount that depends on the quantity of the substance. But what is heat? What is emanating from the burning gas that makes things hotter?
Paul Sen (Einstein's Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe)
at a healthy temperature of around 97°F, human bodies emit detectable infrared waves.
Paul Sen (Einstein's Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe)
property surveyed by an arborist, so the county could be certain Dan didn’t clear cut the lot, thereby ruining the ecosystem by increasing the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, destroying the ozone layer, and setting off cataclysmic events dooming all humanity to higher temperatures and certain skin cancer.
Robert Dugoni (A Cold Trail (Tracy Crosswhite, #7))
Any Palestinian prisoner will tell you that the bosta journey is one of the most difficult parts of their experience of being incarcerated. To call it hell on wheels is an understatement. To help you picture it, imagine a bus divided into narrow cells. The interior is all metal, including the seats. Many of the cells, like the one I was in, are barely big enough to fit one person. My cell was essentially as wide as the seat I was in, making it impossible for me to move at all. Never mind the fact that I was also shackled at the wrists and ankles. The cell was so tight that my knees hit the metal door in front of me, and if the driver accelerated or swerved, my body would bang into the sides. Other than forcing prisoners to sit in an extremely uncomfortable physical position for hours, the bosta was poorly ventilated, and its odors were revolting. It often reeked of vomit from passengers who had thrown up on themselves or of urine from inmates who had peed themselves, unable to hold it in any longer. The stench of the police dogs who patrolled the bus was also always in the air. The temperature in the bosta was another major hardship. In the winter, which is when I was arrested, it was freezing. The cold metal chair made it feel like I was sitting on a giant block of ice—for hours. I later learned that layering two pairs of pants, three shirts, and a jacket would help me survive, and I began to dress accordingly. But despite all the layers, each time I returned to the prison, my hands would be swollen and blue and it would take hours for them to regain normal sensation.
Ahed Tamimi (They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom)
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas in the Earth's atmosphere that traps the sun's heat. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air has risen steadily since the nineteenth century and is now at it's highest levels in 800,000 years. As a result, global temperatures are also rising: 2020 was one of the hottest years on record. But the planet is not warming evenly. The polar regions are heating up five times faster than anywhere else on Earth. As a result, polar habitats are changing dramatically. Snow covers the Arctic for fewer days each decade, and the glaciers over Greenland and Antarctica are melting away. Sea ice is changing, too, getting thinner and covering less ocean. Polar bears depend on Arctic summer sea ice for hunting and traveling, but within a few decades, there might be none left. Changes in climate and habitat have other consequences for polar animals. Some adaptions that supported survival are becoming unhelpful or even harmful. For example, blubber keeps marine mammals warm in cold water (see page 13). As temperatures continue to rise, the same blubber could cause those animals to overheat. When days get longer, ptarmigan turn brown for camouflage when the snow melts (see page 20). If warmer spring temperatures melt snow before the days lengthen, birds that are still white will be more visible to predators. As climate chance continues, these and other polar species may find it harder to persist.
L.E. Carmichael (Polar: Wildlife at the Ends of the Earth)
At least I was doing something, unlike Max, who seemed fairly committed to doing absolutely nothing, ever. On a particularly cold day, he stepped outside, shivered, looked up at the sky, and declared, “I’m not made for this,” before wandering back into the house. I quickly learned that Max was apparently only “made for” an exceptionally narrow set of environments, temperatures, activities, and interactions
Carissa Broadbent (Daughter of No Worlds (The War of Lost Hearts, #1))
Come back to me,” he says. But Wren is silent and still. Oak let’s go of his power, cursing himself. He glanced up o helplessly at Jude, who looks back at him and shakes her head. “I’m sorry.” It is a very human thing for her to say. He lets his head fall forward until his forehead his touching Wren’s. Gathering her in his arms, he studies the hollowness of her cheeks and the thinness of her skin. Presses a finger to the edge of her mouth. Oak thought his magic was just finding what people wanted to hear and saying it in the way they wanted, but since he’s let himself really use the power, he discovered that he can use it to find truth. And for once, he needs to tell her the truth. “I thought love was a fascination, or a desire to be around someone, or wanting to make them happy. I believed it just happened, like a slap to the face, and left the way the sting from such a blow fades. That’s why it was easy for me to believe it could be false or manipulated or influenced by magic. Until I met you, I didn’t understand to feel loved, one has to feel known. And that, outside of my family, I had never really loved because I hadn’t bothered to know the other person. But I know you. And you have to come back to me, Wren, because no one gets us but us. You know why you’re not a monster, but I might be. I know why throwing me in your dungeon meant there was still something between us. We are messes and we are messed up and I don’t want to go through this world without the one person I can’t hide from and who can’t hide from me. Come back,” he says again, tears burning the back of his throat. “You want and you want and you want, remember? Well, wake up and take what you want.” He presses his mouth against her forehead. And startles when he hears her drawn in a breath. Her eyes open, and for a moment she stares up at him. “Wren?” Bex says, and smacks Oak on the shoulder. “What did you do?” Then she pulls the prince into her arms and hugs him hard. Jude is staring, hand to her mouth. Bogdana stays back, glowering, perhaps hoping that no one noticed she rent her garments with her nails as she watched and waited. “I’m cold,” Wren whispers, and alarm rings through him like the sound of a bell. She could walk barefoot through the snow and not have it hurt her. He had never heard her complain of even the most frigid temperatures. Oak stands, lifting Wren in his arms. She feels too light, but he is reassured by her breath ghosting across his skin, the rise and fall of her chest. He still cannot, however, hear the beat of her heart. With the storm stopped, it seems that all of Elfhame has forded the distance between Insear and Insmire. There are boats aplenty, and soldiers. Grima Mic’s second-in-command is barking orders. Bex scavenges a blanket from one of the tents, and Oak manages to bundle Wren in it. Then he Carrie’s her to a boat and commandeers it to take him across so he can bring her to the palace. The journey is a blur of panic, of frantic questions, plodding steps. Finally, he carries her into his rooms. By then, her body is shivering, and he tries not to let terror leak into his voice as he speaks to her softly, explaining where they are and how she will be safe. He puts Wren in his bed, then pushes it close by the fire and piles blankets on top of her. It seems to make no difference to her shuddering.
Holly Black (The Prisoner’s Throne (The Stolen Heir Duology, #2))
Come back to me,” he says. But Wren is silent and still. Oak lets go of his power, cursing himself. He glances up helplessly at Jude, who looks back at him and shakes her head. “I’m sorry.” It is a very human thing for her to say. He lets his head fall forward until his forehead is touching Wren’s. Gathering her in his arms, he studies the hollowness of her cheeks and the thinness of her skin. Presses a finger to the edge of her mouth. Oak thought his magic was just finding what people wanted to hear and saying it in the way they wanted, but since he’s let himself really use the power, he discovered that he can use it to find truth. And for once, he needs to tell her the truth. “I thought love was a fascination, or a desire to be around someone, or wanting to make them happy. I believed it just happened, like a slap to the face, and left the way the sting from such a blow fades. That’s why it was easy for me to believe it could be false or manipulated or influenced by magic. Until I met you, I didn’t understand to feel loved, one has to feel known. And that, outside of my family, I had never really loved because I hadn’t bothered to know the other person. But I know you. And you have to come back to me, Wren, because no one gets us but us. You know why you’re not a monster, but I might be. I know why throwing me in your dungeon meant there was still something between us. We are messes and we are messed up and I don’t want to go through this world without the one person I can’t hide from and who can’t hide from me. Come back,” he says again, tears burning the back of his throat. “You want and you want and you want, remember? Well, wake up and take what you want.” He presses his mouth against her forehead. And startles when he hears her drawn in a breath. Her eyes open, and for a moment she stares up at him. “Wren?” Bex says, and smacks Oak on the shoulder. “What did you do?” Then she pulls the prince into her arms and hugs him hard. Jude is staring, hand to her mouth. Bogdana stays back, glowering, perhaps hoping that no one noticed she rent her garments with her nails as she watched and waited. “I’m cold,” Wren whispers, and alarm rings through him like the sound of a bell. She could walk barefoot through the snow and not have it hurt her. He had never heard her complain of even the most frigid temperatures. Oak stands, lifting Wren in his arms. She feels too light, but he is reassured by her breath ghosting across his skin, the rise and fall of her chest. He still cannot, however, hear the beat of her heart. With the storm stopped, it seems that all of Elfhame has forded the distance between Insear and Insmire. There are boats aplenty, and soldiers. Grima Mic’s second-in-command is barking orders. Bex scavenges a blanket from one of the tents, and Oak manages to bundle Wren in it. Then he carries her to a boat and commandeers it to take him across so he can bring her to the palace. The journey is a blur of panic, of frantic questions, plodding steps. Finally, he carries her into his rooms. By then, her body is shivering, and he tries not to let terror leak into his voice as he speaks to her softly, explaining where they are and how she will be safe. He puts Wren in his bed, then pushes it close by the fire and piles blankets on top of her. It seems to make no difference to her shuddering.
Holly Black (The Prisoner’s Throne (The Stolen Heir Duology, #2))
In its stable state air is invisible, but when it is moved and condensed it becomes first wind and then cloud and then water, and finally water condensed becomes mud and stone. Rarefied air became fire, thus completing the gamut of the elements. In this way rarefaction and condensation can conjure everything out of the underlying air. In support of this claim Anaximenes appealed to experience, and indeed to experiment — an experiment that the reader can easily carry out for herself. Blow on your hand, First with the lips pursed, and then from an open mouth: the First time the air will feel cold, and the second time hot. This, argued Anaximenes, shows the connection between density and temperature.
Anthony Kenny (Ancient Philosophy)
The butter should still be cold. Remove it from the fridge just before. Superior-quality butter should be eaten when it's still cold and hard, to truly luxuriate in its texture and aroma. It will begin to melt almost immediately with the heat of the rice, but I want you to eat it before it melts fully. Cool butter and warm rice. First of all, savor the difference in their temperatures. Then, the two will melt alongside one another, mingle together, and form a golden fountain, right there inside your mouth. Even without seeing it, you just know that it's golden--- that's the way it tastes. You'll sense the individual grains of rice coated in butter and aromatic fragrance as if the rice were being fried will ascend to your nose. A rich, milky sweetness will spread itself across your tongue...
Asako Yuzuki (Butter)
The cold air hit him like a door. It was freezing. That wasn’t what was supposed to happen in deserts, was it? Deserts were all hot sand and camels and . . . and . . . he struggled for a while, as a man whose geographical knowledge got severely cramped once you got off paved road . . . camels, yes, and dates. And possibly bananas and coconuts. But the temperature here made your breath tinkle in the air.
Terry Pratchett (Jingo (Discworld, #21))