Temperature Drop Quotes

My net search is finding only a Cadet Carswell Thorne, of the American Republic, imprisoned in New Beijing prison on—" "That's him," said Cinder, ignoring Thorne's glare. Another silence as the heat in the engine room hovered just upside of comfortable. The, "You're... rather handsome, Captain Thorne." Cinder groaned. "And you, my fine lady, are the most gorgeous ship in these skies, and don't let anyone ever tell you different." The temperature drifted upward, until Cinder dropped her arms with a sigh. "Iko, are you intentionally blushing?" The temperature dropped back down to pleasant. "No," Iko said. Then, "But am I really pretty? Even as a ship?" "The prettiest," said Thorne.

I love to feel the temperature drop and the wind increase just before a thunderstorm. Then I climb in bed with the thunder.

Icy glares from vampires are far icier than icy glares from people and when the vampire giving you an icy glare is originally from Iceland, you're confronted with the archetypal origin of the term, and you shouldn't be surprised if your core body temperature drops a few degrees.

Diversity is a survival factor for the community itself. A community of a hundred million species can survive anything short of total global catastrophe. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature drop of twenty degrees—which would be a lot more devastating than it sounds. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature rise of twenty degrees. But a community of a hundred species or a thousand species has almost no survival value at all.

He was lounging in a cubicle beside an outdated computer, hands shoved into the pockets of his faded jeans. A wavy lock of hair covered his forehead, brushing against thick lashes. His lips curled into a half smile. “I was wondering if you were ever going to find me.” He made no move to clear up any space in the tiny 6x6 hole. I dropped my bag outside the walls and hopped up on the desk opposite him. “Embarrassed someone would see you and think you’re capable of reading?” “I do have a reputation to maintain.” “And what a lovely reputation that is.” He stretched out his legs so that his feet were under mine. “So what did you want to talk about”—his voice lowered to a deep, sexy whisper—“in private?” I shivered—and it had nothing to do with the temperature. “Not what you’re hoping.” Daemon gave me a sexy smirk.

Years ago, in a motivational seminar by the master, Zig Ziglar, I heard a story about how mediocrity will sneak up on you. The story goes that if you drop a frog into boiling water, he will sense the pain and immediately jump out. However, if you put a frog in room-temperature water, he will swim around happily, and as you gradually turn the water up to boiling, the frog will not sense the change. The frog is lured to his death by gradual change. We can lose our health, our fitness, and our wealth gradually, one day at a time. It might be a cliché, but that’s because it is true: The enemy of “the best” is not “the worst.” The enemy of “the best” is “just fine.

Have you ever tried to demarcate the hours between the moment you thought you'd never fall asleep and the instant after opening your eyes, your bedroom flooded with the befuddling, sugary pink of dawn? Between point A and point B you exist, you are alive, your breath slowing, your body temperature dropping, the shadows cast by your furniture elongating and shrinking as the moon revolves through the sky above your flimsy house, if that's even where you really are. Every night, anything could happen, and you would never be the wiser. What I'm trying to say is that day, I learned that time doesn't belong to you. All you have is what you remember. A fraction; less.

In many places along this narrow, curving strand of pavement, the forest threads tree limbs overhead in a latticework canopy that leads one to think of the sacredness of cathedrals.  Once you enter this hallowed space, the temperature drops dramatically and a world of virtual silence wraps you in a cocoon of serenity and grace.  For Kate, it is a destination in and of itself, this magnificent temple of embracing trees, limbs arching overhead with long arms of wooded skin, reaching for their beloved partners on the other side of the road, seeking communion and the joining of lovers.

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.

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.

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.

More murders are committed at ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit than any other temperature. Over one hundred, it's too hot to move. Under ninety, cool enough to survive. But right at ninety-two degrees lies the apex of irritability, everything is itches and hair and sweat and cooked pork. The brain becomes a rat rushing around a red-hot maze. The least thing - a word, a look, a sound, the drop of a hair and - irritable murder. Irritable murder, there's a pretty and terrifying phrase for you. - Touched with Fire

The temperature of my blood dropped several degrees, and I took a step back. My heart quickened. "Storm?" I prompted, looking at the boxes on the dock labeled "non-perishable.

With temperatures dropping, how could men without shirts expect to fend off opponents so blatantly well equipped with outerwear that they were nicknamed the redcoats?

During an ordinary Quest day, a fifty-pound dog needs the caloric equivalent of twenty double cheeseburgers, and more if the temperature drops.

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.

Silence. All around him silence, wrapping up his spoken words and making them loud. Making them sharp in the stillness, like a movement, like a drop in temperature. Silence. There

Evening was deepening, and the fever of early summer, like the temperature of a dead giant, had dropped completely from the covering air.

Another silence as the heat in the engine room hovered just upside of comfortable. Then, “You’re … rather handsome, Captain Thorne.” Cinder groaned. “And you, my fine lady, are the most gorgeous ship in these skies, and don’t let anyone ever tell you different.” The temperature drifted upward, until Cinder dropped her arms with a sigh. “Iko, are you intentionally blushing?

What they had endured on the fold had connected them in some way, and he knew he would see Zoya when he turned- yet the sight of her struck like a sudden change in the weather. A drop in temperature, the crackle of electricity in the air, the feeling of a storm coming on.

Take one Naive Girl. Bring to room temperature in the Big City. Add three cups Academia. If in one cup Encouragement. Fold in two drop Love. Sprinkle with one teaspoon Adoration. Mix thoroughly. Spoon carefully into greased Pan of Matrimony. Bake in Desert Heat for 25. Test doneness with Careless Toothpick. Let cool on Wire Rack of Inertia. Serve with generous dollops of Benign Neglect.

the temperature dropped by ten degrees just because they were so fucking cool.

As the temperature drops, single voices—clear and hollow—replace the keening chorus: the ancient speech of frogs. One word becomes clear, as if spoken in English. "Hear! Hear! Hear! The world is more than your thoughtless commute. We, the collateral, are your wealth, your teachers, your security, your family. Your strange hunger for ease should not mean a death sentence for the rest of Creation.

No one spotted anything wrong with the pilot’s ID?” Mr Brown stepped closer and studied the corpse. “Interesting. Same modus as they used with Ms Hollister?” He stepped back to gain perspective and looked round. “Have forensics examined her?” “Yes, sir. Confirmed the use of a needle dart. They say it is difficult to put a time of death on her because the killer used a body coolant to drop the temperature and preserve it. One other thing, sir. Someone took a skin peel from her hands, and they made a face mould and took hair from her head.” “Professional then.” Mr Brown paused. “Very well, I’ll talk to the head of forensics. Inform next of kin and prepare a media release.” He ran a check. “If whoever killed her piloted the last shuttle to the surface and used her ID and passed the DNA check, that means the murderer is now on Mars.” Turning to go, he ordered, “Hold the next of kin and media release until I say otherwise. I don’t want anyone to know we’ve found her.”  

Don’t blame me for this one. I’m innocent.” I swear I felt a drop of snow as Hell suffered a sudden temperature drop at my stretching of the truth. Innocent wasn’t a word I could use often, unless unjustly accused. Again, a rare occurrence.

Yogasanas have often been thought of as a form of exercise. They are not exercises, but techniques which place the physical body in positions that cultivate awareness, relaxation, concentration and meditation. Part of this process is the development of good physical health by stretching, massaging and stimulating the pranic channels and internal organs. When yogasanas are performed, respiration and metabolic rates slow down, the consumption of oxygen and the body temperature drop. During exercise, however, the breath and metabolism speed up, oxygen consumption rises, and the body gets hot. In addition, asanas are designed to have specific effects on the glands and internal organs, and to alter electrochemical activity in the nervous system.

You can learn a lot about someone by his teeth. Or her teeth. Especially vampires. For some of us, hygiene goes out the window when our body temperature drops. We might not need much in the way of deodorant, but I swear—a little Listerine never hurt anybody.

You got the list?” Lewis asked. “What the hell is the deal with the temperature?” “Razel is not allowed to sweat,” Maximo answered. “If she does, fanatics will appear from nowhere like mischievous sprites and bottle each drop and then sell it on eBay for millions.

Icy glares from vampires are far icier than icy glares from people. And when the vampire giving you an icy glare is originally from Iceland, you are confronted with the archetypal origin of the term, and you shouldn’t be surprised if your core body temperature drops a few degrees.

This much though I’m sure of: I’m alone in hostile territories with no clue why they’re hostile or how to get back to safe havens, an Old Haven, a lost haven, the temperature dropping, the hour heaving pitching towards a profound darkness, while before me my idiotic amaurotic Guide laughs, actually cackles is more like it, lost in his own litany of inside jokes, completely out of his head, out of focus too, zonules of Zinn, among other things, having snapped long ago like piano wires, leaving me with absolutely no sound way to determine where the hell I’m going, though right now going to hell seems like a pretty sound bet.

A sharp drop in global temperature 115 thousand years before the fall was the start of sporadic ice ages. The last glacial spell Earthers experienced ended only 12.5 TBF.

the temperature had dropped all the way from ‘chilly’ down to ‘colder than an alligator shifter’s titty.

The fact that someone understands is enough, even though one cannot understand oneself then the temperature drops and a certain quietness comes, and then perhaps the patient may also understand. Archetypal contents are sometimes far away and if the patient is not drawn to them in these terms you cannot get the meaning across, but the feeling that somebody else understands has a calming effect.

The dehydrator blows warm air on your food for hours, sometimes days. It reminds me of the temperature and intensity of dog's breath. So imagine a German shepherd exhaling on your fruit for a weekend.

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.

She’ll understand. I watched a lot of the Games with her and Prim. She won’t say no to you,” says Gale. “I hope not.” The temperature in the house seems to have dropped twenty degrees in a matter of seconds.

Most of the birds had died, though. I knew that parakeets and cockatoos wouldn’t last forever in Wisconsin, especially once Fall arrived and the temperatures dropped, but a fighting chance was better than no chance.

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.

As morning approaches, body temperature rises, then peaks during the day, dips for a time in early afternoon (when many people take siestas), and begins to drop again in the evening. Thinking is sharpest and memory most accurate when we are at our daily peak in circadian arousal. Try pulling an all - nighter or working an occasional night shift. You’ll feel groggiest in the middle of the night but may gain new energy when your normal wake - up time arrives.

Get in the car, Stella.” I got in the car. I told myself it was because the temperature had somehow dropped twenty degrees in the space of five minutes, but I knew that was a lie. It was the sound of my name in that voice, delivered with such calm authority that my body obeyed before I could protest.

The end-Permian extinction also seems to have been triggered by a change in the climate. But in this case, the change went in the opposite direction. Right at the time of extinction, 252 million years ago, there was a massive release of carbon into the air—so massive that geologists have a hard time even imagining where all the carbon could have come from. Temperatures soared—the seas warmed by as much as eighteen degrees—and the chemistry of the oceans went haywire, as if in an out-of-control aquarium. The water became acidified, and the amount of dissolved oxygen dropped so low that many organisms probably, in effect, suffocated.

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.

Iko fell silent. Cinder glanced around, sensing Iko all around her. The engine rotated faster for a moment, then reduced to normal speed. The temperature barely dropped. A light flickered in the hallway behind Thorne, who was stiff and uncomfortable in the doorway, looking like a poltergeist had just taken over his beloved Rampion.

Dazzling, explosive, pitch-dark and blinding light, like a steamroller, like a humming bird, in the body, in the atmosphere, in the currents of our blood, on the street corners, hidden in melodies, in smells and dropping temperatures and rising speed. In rooms we forgot we’ve inhabited, clothing we forgot we owned, touch we forgot we felt. Oh, Shame.

Within the first twenty-four hours of sleep deprivation, the blood pressure starts to increase. Not long afterward, the metabolism levels go haywire, giving a person an uncontrollable craving for carbohydrates. The body temperature drops and the immune system gets weaker. If this goes on for too long, there is a good chance that the mind will turn against itself, making a person experience visions and hear phantom sounds akin to a bad acid trip. At the same time, the ability to make simple decisions or recall obvious facts drops off severely. It is a bizarre downward spiral that is all the more peculiar because it can be stopped completely, and all of its effects will vanish, simply by sleeping for a couple of hours.

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.

soaking higher and higher on my jeans with every step I took. My heart pounded furiously. My lungs grew tight, about to collapse from exhaustion. The air dipped colder. Fog swirled everywhere. They were close, so close I could feel their icy breath down my neck. That’s what they do—they drop the temperature so drastically the air instantly bruises over with ice. And if they catch

Nevertheless, there was something extraordinary about it when a man so young, with so little experience in flight test, was selected to go to Muroc Field in California for the XS–1 project. Muroc was up in the high elevations of the Mojave Desert. It looked like some fossil landscape that had long since been left behind by the rest of terrestrial evolution. It was full of huge dry lake beds, the biggest being Rogers Lake. Other than sagebrush the only vegetation was Joshua trees, twisted freaks of the plant world that looked like a cross between cactus and Japanese bonsai. They had a dark petrified green color and horribly crippled branches. At dusk the Joshua trees stood out in silhouette on the fossil wasteland like some arthritic nightmare. In the summer the temperature went up to 110 degrees as a matter of course, and the dry lake beds were covered in sand, and there would be windstorms and sandstorms right out of a Foreign Legion movie. At night it would drop to near freezing, and in December it would start raining, and the dry lakes would fill up with a few inches of water, and some sort of putrid prehistoric shrimps would work their way up from out of the ooze, and sea gulls would come flying in a hundred miles or more from the ocean, over the mountains, to gobble up these squirming little throwbacks. A person had to see it to believe it: flocks of sea gulls wheeling around in the air out in the middle of the high desert in the dead of winter and grazing on antediluvian crustaceans in the primordial ooze. When

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.

Early naturalists talked often about “deep time”—the perception they had, contemplating the grandeur of this valley or that rock basin, of the profound slowness of nature. But the perspective changes when history accelerates. What lies in store for us is more like what aboriginal Australians, talking with Victorian anthropologists, called “dreamtime,” or “everywhen”: the semi-mythical experience of encountering, in the present moment, an out-of-time past, when ancestors, heroes, and demigods crowded an epic stage. You can find it already by watching footage of an iceberg collapsing into the sea—a feeling of history happening all at once. It is. The summer of 2017, in the Northern Hemisphere, brought unprecedented extreme weather: three major hurricanes arising in quick succession in the Atlantic; the epic “500,000-year” rainfall of Hurricane Harvey, dropping on Houston a million gallons of water for nearly every single person in the entire state of Texas; the wildfires of California, nine thousand of them burning through more than a million acres, and those in icy Greenland, ten times bigger than those in 2014; the floods of South Asia, clearing 45 million from their homes. Then the record-breaking summer of 2018 made 2017 seem positively idyllic. It brought an unheard-of global heat wave, with temperatures hitting 108 in Los Angeles, 122 in Pakistan, and 124 in Algeria. In the world’s oceans, six hurricanes and tropical storms appeared on the radars at once, including one, Typhoon Mangkhut, that hit the Philippines and then Hong Kong, killing nearly a hundred and wreaking a billion dollars in damages, and another, Hurricane Florence, which more than doubled the average annual rainfall in North Carolina, killing more than fifty and inflicting $17 billion worth of damage. There were wildfires in Sweden, all the way in the Arctic Circle, and across so much of the American West that half the continent was fighting through smoke, those fires ultimately burning close to 1.5 million acres. Parts of Yosemite National Park were closed, as were parts of Glacier National Park in Montana, where temperatures also topped 100. In 1850, the area had 150 glaciers; today, all but 26 are melted.

The first few dozen flight crews were soon too sick to continue working, having hovered 200m above the reactor in temperatures up to 200°C, dropping bags one by one by hand, and leaning out of the door to estimate the drop-point. The helicopter’s designers soon devised a clever system for dropping around 8 bags per flight by using a net hanging from beneath the fuselage, allowing them to release the whole payload via a lever in the cockpit.191

My eyes glue to him in fascination as he cleans his flogger. He’s shirtless since the room is above comfortable temperature. I watch as a drop of sweat creates a path down his back, gliding around all those perfect striated muscles. The drop disappears beneath his low-slung, leather pants. A shiver rocks my body at the thought of it sliding down the crack of his bitable ass. “Katya, snap your mouth shut, close the door, and have a seat,” Dexter commands and I listen.

We cannot see the glacier but we can feel it. It extends a chill around itself, dropping the air temperature by five degrees or more. The place we have chosen to camp is over a mile from the calving face, but even there we are within the glacier’s aura. In the days we spend at the Knud Rasmussen, we become icy. We drink ice. We wash in ice. We sleep by and on the ice. Ice fills our ears and our dreams and our speech. Ice fills the water and the air and the rock. We enter the ice and the ice enters us.

I have spent these last two days in concentrated introspection," said Cutie, "and the results have been most interesting. I began at the one sure assumption I felt permitted to make.I, myself, exist, because I think-" Powell groaned, "Oh, Jupiter, a robot Descartes!" "Who's Descartes?" demanded Donovan. "Listen, do we have to sit here and listen to this metal maniac-" "Keep quiet, Mike!" Cutie continued imperturbably, "And the question that immediately arose was: Just what is the cause of my existence?" Powell's jaw set lumpily. "You're being foolish. I told you already that we made you." "And if you don't believe us," added Donovan, "we'll gladly take you apart!" The robot spread his strong hands in a deprecatory gesture, "I accept nothing on authority. A hypothesis must be backed by reason, or else it is worthless - and it goes against all the dictates of logic to suppose that you made me." Powell dropped a restraining arm upon Donovan's suddenly unched fist. "Just why do you say that?" Cutie laughed. It was a very inhuman laugh - the most machine-like utterance he had yet given vent to. It was sharp and explosive, as regular as a metronome and as uninflected. "Look at you," he said finally. "I say this in no spirit of contempt, but look at you! The material you are made of is soft and flabby, lacking endurance and strength, depending for energy upon the inefficient oxidation of organic material - like that." He pointed a disapproving finger at what remained of Donovan's sandwich. "Periodically you pass into a coma and the least variation in temperature, air ressure, humidity, or radiation intensity impairs your efficiency. You are _makeshift_. "I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing.

Were those pictures really for an art project?” Con asked when they were well away from the office. She turned to take the pieces of her broken camera back from him. “Yeah,” she replied, shoving the bits into her bag. “Are they gone forever?” “No, the memory card should be fine.” “Got any other cameras like that one?” “Nope, that was it.” There was an awkward silence. Well, Dulcie felt awkward. Con looked completely at ease. She was beginning to wonder if anything made him uncomfortable. “Thanks for the help,” he finally said. She shrugged. “You're welcome. Can I ask a question?” “Go for it.” “Why did you set someone's car on fire?” She thought maybe it would rattle him – her thinking he'd actually done it. But of course it didn't. He chuckled, and she was treated to a patented Masters grin. It started at one corner of his mouth and eventually moved to the opposite corner, slowly revealing perfect white teeth and a razor sharp smile. He leaned close to her, and as his lips pressed against her ear, she could've sworn the temperature dropped. “Because I thought it would be fun.

I wondered if I weren’t becoming a kind of monster. Carlyle said that the robe makes the priest and the uniform the soldier; perhaps the face makes the monster. A monster’s face brings loneliness, and the loneliness informs his heart. If the temperature of my freezing loneliness were to drop even slightly, I should become a monster, indifferent to my appearance, and break with a crash all the bonds which bind me to this world. In heaven’s name what kind of monster would I be, what would I do? Just trying to imagine it was so frightful I wanted to scream.

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.

...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.

Here am I, a little animal called a man--a bit of vitalized matter, one hundred and sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew, bones, and brain,--all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible, and frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ears and toes blacken and drop off. A few degrees the other way, and my skin blisters and shrivels away from the raw, quivering flesh. A few additional degrees either way, and the life and the light in me go out. A drop of poison injected into my body from a snake, and I cease to move--for ever I cease to move. A splinter of lead from a rifle enters my head, and I am wrapped around in the eternal blackness. Fallible and frail, a bit of pulsating, jelly-like life--it is all I am. About me are the great natural forces--colossal menaces, Titans of destruction, unsentimental monsters that have less concern for me than I have for the grain of sand I crush under my foot. They have no concern at all for me. They do not know me. They are unconscious, unmerciful, and unmoral. They are the cyclones and tornadoes, lightning flashes and cloud-bursts, tide-rips and tidal waves, undertows and waterspouts, great whirls and sucks and eddies, earthquakes and volcanoes, surfs that thunder on rock-ribbed coasts and seas that leap aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing humans to pulp or licking them off into the sea and to death--and these insensate monsters do not know that tiny sensitive creature, all nerves and weaknesses, whom men call Jack London, and who himself thinks he is all right and quite a superior being.

It is so rare to have a new tent appear that Celia considers canceling her performances entirely in order to spend the evening investigating it. Instead she waits, executing her standard number of shows, finishing the last a few hours before dawn. Only then does she navigate her way through nearly empty pathways to find the latest edition to the circus. The sign proclaims something called the Ice Garden. and Celia smiles at the addendum below which contains an apology for any thermal inconvenience. Despite the name, she is not prepared for what awaits her inside the tent. It is exactly what the sign described. But it is so much more than that. There are no stripes visible on the walls, everything is sparkling and white. She cannot tell how far it stretches, the size of the tent obscured by cascading willows and twisting vines. The air itself is magical. Crisp and sweet in her lungs as she breathes, sending a shiver down to her toes that is caused by more than the forewarned drop in temperature. There are no patrons in the tent as she explores, circling alone around trellises covered in pale roses and a softly bubbling, elaborately carved fountain. And everything, save for occasional lengths of whet silk ribbon strung like garlands, is made of ice. Curious, Celia picks a frosted peony from its branch, the stem breaking easily. But the layered petals shatter, falling from her fingers to the ground, disappearing in the blades of ivory grass below. When she looks back at the branch, an identical bloom has already appeared. Celia cannot imagine how much power and skill it would take not only to construct such a thing but to maintain it as well. And she longs to know how her opponent came up with the idea. Aware that each perfectly structured topiary, every detail down to the stones that line the paths like pearls, must have been planned.

What will happen at very low temperatures is indicated in Fig. 1-4: the molecules lock into a new pattern which is ice. This particular schematic diagram of ice is wrong because it is in two dimensions, but it is right qualitatively. The interesting point is that the material has a definite place for every atom, and you can easily appreciate that if somehow or other we were to hold all the atoms at one end of the drop in a certain arrangement, each atom in a certain place, then because of the structure of interconnections, which is rigid, the other end miles away (at our magnified scale) will have a definite location. So

I said, "I want to wear something funny and cool. Marjorie, could I wear your sparkly baseball hat?" The three of us looked at Marjorie. Now I remember thinking that her answer could change everything back to the way it was; Dad could find a job and stop praying all the time and Mom could be happy and call Marjorie shellfish again and show us funny videos she found on YouTube, and we all could eat more than just spaghetti at dinner and, most important, Marjorie could be normal again. Everything would be okay if Marjorie would only say yes to me wearing the sparkly sequined baseball hat, the one she'd made in art class a few years ago. The longer we watched Marjorie and waited for her response, the more the temperature in the room dropped and I knew that nothing would ever be the same again. She stopped twisting her spaghetti around her fingers. She opened her mouth, and vomit slowly oozed out onto her spaghetti plate. Dad: "Jesus!" Mom: "Honey, are you okay?" She jumped out of her seat and went over to Marjorie, stood behind her, and held her hair up. Marjorie didn't react to either parent, and she didn't make any sounds. She wasn't retching or convulsing involuntarily like one normally does when throwing up. It just poured out of her as though her mouth was an opened faucet. The vomit was as green as spring grass, and the masticated pasta looked weirdly dry, with a consistency of mashed-up dog food. She watched Dad the whole time as the vomit filled her plate, some of it slopping over the edges and onto the table. When she finished she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. "No, Merry. You can't wear my hat." She didn't sound like herself. Her voice was lower, adult, and growly. "You might get something on it. I don't want you to mess it up." She laughed. Dad: "Marjorie..." Marjorie coughed and vomited more onto her too-full plate. "You can't wear the hat because you're going to die someday." She found a new voice, this one treacly baby-talk. "I don't want dead things wearing my very special hat.

We are rapidly approaching a number of tipping points, beyond which even a dramatic drop in greenhouse gas emissions will not be enough to reverse the trend and avoid a worldwide tragedy. For example, as global warming melts the polar ice sheets, less sunlight is reflected back from planet Earth to outer space. This means that the planet absorbs more heat, temperatures rise even higher and the ice melts even faster. Once this feedback loop crosses a critical threshold it will gather an irresistible momentum, and all the ice in the polar regions will melt even if humans stop burning coal, oil and gas. Hence it is not enough that we recognise the danger we face. It is critical that we actually do something about it now. (page 77)

Remus,” said Hermione tentatively, “is everything all right . . . you know . . . between you and—” “Everything is fine, thank you,” said Lupin pointedly. Hermione turned pink. There was another pause, an awkward and embarrassed one, and then Lupin said, with an air of forcing himself to admit something unpleasant, “Tonks is going to have a baby.” “Oh, how wonderful!” squealed Hermione. “Excellent!” said Ron enthusiastically. “Congratulations,” said Harry. Lupin gave an artificial smile that was more like a grimace, then said, “So . . . do you accept my offer? Will three become four? I cannot believe that Dumbledore would have disapproved, he appointed me your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, after all. And I must tell you that I believe that we are facing magic many of us have never encountered or imagined.” Ron and Hermione both looked at Harry. “Just—just to be clear,” he said. “You want to leave Tonks at her parents’ house and come away with us?” “She’ll be perfectly safe there, they’ll look after her,” said Lupin. He spoke with a finality bordering on indifference. “Harry, I’m sure James would have wanted me to stick with you.” “Well,” said Harry slowly, “I’m not. I’m pretty sure my father would have wanted to know why you aren’t sticking with your own kid, actually.” Lupin’s face drained of color. The temperature in the kitchen might have dropped ten degrees. Ron stared around the room as though he had been bidden to memorize it, while Hermione’s eyes swiveled backward and forward from Harry to Lupin. “You don’t understand,” said Lupin at last. “Explain, then,” said Harry. Lupin swallowed. “I—I made a grave mistake in marrying Tonks. I did it against my better judgment and I have regretted it very much ever since.” “I see,” said Harry, “so you’re just going to dump her and the kid and run off with us?” Lupin sprang to his feet: His chair toppled over backward, and he glared at them so fiercely that Harry saw, for the first time ever, the shadow of the wolf upon his human face. “Don’t you understand what I’ve done to my wife and my unborn child? I should never have married her, I’ve made her an outcast!” Lupin kicked aside the chair he had overturned. “You have only ever seen me amongst the Order, or under Dumbledore’s protection at Hogwarts! You don’t know how most of the Wizarding world sees creatures like me! When they know of my affliction, they can barely talk to me! Don’t you see what I’ve done? Even her own family is disgusted by our marriage, what parents want their only daughter to marry a werewolf? And the child—the child—” Lupin actually seized handfuls of his own hair; he looked quite deranged. “My kind don’t usually breed! It will be like me, I am convinced of it—how can I forgive myself, when I knowingly risked passing on my own condition to an innocent child? And if, by some miracle, it is not like me, then it will be better off, a hundred times so, without a father of whom it must always be ashamed!

Sandbags caused the fire’s temperature to drop straight away, but radioactive particles in the air increased sharply because more and more dust and debris was kicked into the air from the heavy falling bags’ impact. After the first day, Major General Antoshkin proudly told Shcherbina that 150 tons had been dropped into the reactor. He responded, “150 tons of sand for a reactor like that is like a BB shot to an elephant.”192 The General, taken aback, arranged for far more soldiers and pilots to be brought to the Exclusion Zone. These young pilots each flew many times over the reactor, and soon took to placing lead plates underneath their cockpit seats to minimise radiation exposure. Despite their homemade preventative measures, many pilots were fatally contaminated and died.

We like to imagine that it's possible for life to be one eternal summer and that we have uniquely failed to achieve that for ourselves. We dream of an equatorial habitat, forever close to the sun, an endless, unvarying high season. But life's not like that. Emotionally, we're prone to stifling summers and low, dark winters, to sudden drops in temperature, to light and shade. Even if by some extraordinary stroke of self-control and good luck we were able to keep control of our own health and happiness for an entire lifetime, we still couldn't avoid the winter. Our parents would age and die; our friends would undertake minor acts of betrayal; the machinations of the world would eventually weigh against us. Somewhere along the line, we would screw up. Winter would quietly roll in.

Patients who develop ME/CFS often lose the natural antidepressant effect of exercise, feeling worse after exercise rather than better. Patients may have a drop in body temperature with exercise. Thus fatigue is correlated with other symptoms, often in a sequence that is unique to each patient. After relatively normal physical or intellectual exertion, a patient may take an inordinate amount of time to regain her/his pre-exertion level of function and competence. For example, a patient who has bought a few groceries may be too exhausted to unpack them until the next day. The reactive fatigue of post-exertional malaise or lack of endurance usually lasts 24 hours or more and is often associated with impairment of cognitive functions. There is often delayed reactivity following exertion, with the onset the next day, or even later.

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.

Here am I, a little animal called a man—a bit of vitalized matter, one hundred and sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew, bones, and brain,—all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible, and frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ears and toes blacken and drop off. A few degrees the other way, and my skin blisters and shrivels away from the raw, quivering flesh. A few additional degrees either way, and the life and the light in me go out. A drop of poison injected into my body from a snake, and I cease to move—for ever I cease to move. A splinter of lead from a rifle enters my head, and I am wrapped around in the eternal blackness.

Rookie Cinnamon Sugar Doughnuts* Parental supervision necessary for frying Makes 8 doughnuts and 8 doughnut holes Ingredients Vegetable oil 1 (8-count) tube of premade, large biscuit dough (found in the refrigerated dough aisle at supermarkets) ½ cup sugar ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon Directions 1. Fill a large saucepan with vegetable oil to a depth of 1 inch. 2. Heat oil over medium heat until it reaches 365°F. You can measure the temperature with a cooking oil thermometer. Or, drop a single kernel of popcorn into the oil as it’s heating. When the kernel pops, you’re ready to fry. 3. While the oil heats, open the biscuit tube and separate the rounds. Use a 1-inch-round cookie cutter to cut a hole in the center of each biscuit. Save the holes. 4. Mix the sugar and cinnamon in a large shallow bowl. 5. Add 2 doughnuts to the hot oil at a time. Cook, turning once, until golden brown—about 1 minute per side. 6. Drain on paper towels and immediately toss in the cinnamon sugar to coat. Cool on a wire rack. Repeat with the remaining doughnuts and holes.

This, in turn, has given us a “unified theory of aging” that brings the various strands of research into a single, coherent tapestry. Scientists now know what aging is. It is the accumulation of errors at the genetic and cellular level. These errors can build up in various ways. For example, metabolism creates free radicals and oxidation, which damage the delicate molecular machinery of our cells, causing them to age; errors can build up in the form of “junk” molecular debris accumulating inside and outside the cells. The buildup of these genetic errors is a by-product of the second law of thermodynamics: total entropy (that is, chaos) always increases. This is why rusting, rotting, decaying, etc., are universal features of life. The second law is inescapable. Everything, from the flowers in the field to our bodies and even the universe itself, is doomed to wither and die. But there is a small but important loophole in the second law that states total entropy always increases. This means that you can actually reduce entropy in one place and reverse aging, as long as you increase entropy somewhere else. So it’s possible to get younger, at the expense of wreaking havoc elsewhere. (This was alluded to in Oscar Wilde’s famous novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Mr. Gray was mysteriously eternally young. But his secret was the painting of himself that aged horribly. So the total amount of aging still increased.) The principle of entropy can also be seen by looking behind a refrigerator. Inside the refrigerator, entropy decreases as the temperature drops. But to lower the entropy, you have to have a motor, which increases the heat generated behind the refrigerator, increasing the entropy outside the machine. That is why refrigerators are always hot in the back. As Nobel laureate Richard Feynman once said, “There is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death. This suggests to me that it is not at all inevitable and that it is only a matter of time before biologists discover what it is that is causing us the trouble and that this terrible universal disease or temporariness of the human’s body will be cured.

On that fateful morning in April 1986, the explosion that blew off the reactor lid also dislodged special serpentine sand and concrete from within the thick walls surrounding the RBMK. In that same moment, a powerful shock wave forced the entire bottom half of the core assembly - including the lower biological shield - downward by several meters, into the space below. Over the following week, intense heat from the fire and radioactive decay increased until it reached temperatures sufficient to melt the fuel assembly, which poured out and bonded with the sand/concrete mix to form a kind of radioactive lava called corium. This lava then oozed through pipes, ducts and cracks in the damaged structure to the rooms beneath. The Elephant’s Foot was one offshoot of this lava, which had cooled into a glassy form. Melted fuel vacating the exposed reactor like this is probably what caused the sudden drop in temperature and emission levels in early May, 1986. A molten core is capable of burning through 30cm of concrete within hours, hence the scramble to prevent this from happening.246

DOLL FACE COOKIES Preheat oven to 375 degrees F., rack in the middle position. (THESE COOKIES HAVE NO EGGS) ½ cup melted butter (1 stick) 1 cup brown sugar, tightly packed ½ cup molasses*** 1 teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon lemon juice ½ cup milk 2½ cups flour (no need to sift) 1 cup (approximately) golden raisins, regular raisins, or currants to decorate Melt butter in a large microwave bowl. When the butter has cooled to room temperature, stir in the brown sugar and molasses. Add the soda, salt, and cinnamon and mix it all up. Mix in the teaspoon of lemon juice. Add half the flour to your bowl and mix it up. Slowly pour in the milk, a little at a time, and mix as you go. Add the rest of the flour and stir until it’s thoroughly incorporated. Drop the dough by rounded teaspoon onto UNGREASED cookie sheets, 12 to a standard-size sheet. Put three raisins on top of each cookie, two for the eyes and one for the mouth. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes at 375 degrees F. Let the cookies cool on the sheet for 2 minutes and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely. Yield: 4 to 5 dozen, depending on cookie size. Immelda Giese,

The shoot-to-kill order came through at zero one fifteen, relayed over a satellite radio. It’d been just three hours since the two-man reconnaissance team had reported the sighting. They lay in a shallow dugout on a windblown ridge, the leeward slope falling away steeply to an impassable boulder field. A desert-issue tarp all but covered the hole, protected from view on the flanks by thorny scrub. Shivering, they blew into their bunched trigger-finger mitts. The daytime temperature had dropped twenty degrees or more, and fine sleet was melting on their blackened faces. Darren Proctor extended the folded stock of his L115A3 sniper rifle. He split the legs of the swivel bi-pod and aligned the swivel cheek piece with the all-weather scope. Flipping open the lens cap, he glassed the terrain cast a muted green by the night vision. The tree line was sparse, a smattering of pines and cedars shuddering in the biting wind. Glimpsing movement on a scree slope fifty metres or so beyond, he focused in. The eyes of a striped hyena shone like glow sticks. He watched as the scavenger ripped at the carcass of an ibex or wild sheep. A second later it sniffed the air, ears pricked, and scampered off.

It appears that during the early years of the solar system Venus was only slightly warmer than Earth and probably had oceans. But those few degrees of extra warmth meant that Venus could not hold on to its surface water, with disastrous consequences for its climate. As its water evaporated, the hydrogen atoms escaped into space, and the oxygen atoms combined with carbon to form a dense atmosphere of the greenhouse gas CO2. Venus became stifling. Although people of my age will recall a time when astronomers hoped that Venus might harbor life beneath its padded clouds, possibly even a kind of tropical verdure, we now know that it is much too fierce an environment for any kind of life that we can reasonably conceive of. Its surface temperature is a roasting 470 degrees centigrade (roughly 900 degrees Fahrenheit), which is hot enough to melt lead, and the atmospheric pressure at the surface is ninety times that of Earth, or more than any human body could withstand. We lack the technology to make suits or even spaceships that would allow us to visit. Our knowledge of Venus’s surface is based on distant radar imagery and some startled squawks from an unmanned Soviet probe that was dropped hopefully into the clouds in 1972 and functioned for barely an hour before permanently shutting down.

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.

Catherine Marks came to stand on the other side of the doorway as if she were a fellow sentinel guarding the castle gate. Leo glanced at her covertly. She was dressed in lavender, unlike her usual drab of colors. Her mousy brown hair was pulled back into such a tight chignon as to make it difficult for her to blink. The spectacles sat oddly on her nose, one of the wire earpieces crimped. It gave her the appearance of a befuddled owl. "What are you looking at?" she asked tersely. "Your spectacles are crooked," Leo said, trying not to smile. She scowled. "I tried to fix them, but it only made them worse." "Give them to me." Before she could object, he took them from her face and began to fiddle with the bent wire. She spluttered in protest. "My lord, I didn't ask you to- if you damage them-" "How did you bend the earpiece?" Leo asked, patiently straightening the wire. "I dropped them on the floor, and as I was searching, I stepped on them." "Nearsighted, are you?" "Quite." Having reshaped the earpiece, Leo scrutinized the spectacles carefully. "There." He began to give them to her and paused as he stared into her eyes, all blue, green, and gray, contained in distinct dark rims. Brilliant, warm, changeable. Like opals. Why had he never noticed them before? Awareness chased over him, making his skin prickle as if exposed to a sudden change in temperature. She wasn't plain at all. She was beautiful, in a fine, subtle way, like winter moonlight, or the sharp linen smell of daisies. So cool and pale... delicious. For a moment, Leo couldn't move.

The date was November 23, 1965. One company was in contact. Machinegun fire rattled in the distance. Tom McEnry took pictures of artillery firing support for soldiers in the field. Just after eleven o’clock in the morning, McEnry complained about his light meter. “I can’t get a reading,” he said, shaking the small black instrument in front of him, banging it against his hand. At the same time, field commanders called in on their radios that something strange was happening. ‘I don’t know what it is,’ one officer called, ‘but it’s weird. It’s really gettin, uh, kinda eerie out here.’ The air became still. Insects went quiet. The artillery stopped firing. Radios were silent. The temperature, which had been about eighty-five degrees, dropped to around seventy or seventy-five. The light dimmed, though there were no clouds. The North Vietnamese broke contact. The war stopped. Someone said, ‘Look at the sun!’ Everyone looked up. A thin black disc appeared at the side of the white-yellow sun, obscuring part of it, blocking the light. ‘Far fucking out,’ a soldier said. ‘Would you believe it?’ said another. ‘A fucking ee-clipse? In fucking Veetnam?’ ‘I bet the VC think we done it,’ a GI said. ‘That’s why they took off.’ ‘Shee-it.’ Several minutes passed in near silence. The hand of an unseen presence seemed to move across the tropical savanna. No one spoke. Then the light brightened. The temperature warmed. Insects screeched. A few gunshots cracked. Field radios came alive with chatter and hiss. Artillery boomed. Helicopter blades whacked the air. The war, having skipped a beat, resumed as if nothing had happened.

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.

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.

This terrifying experiment has already been set in motion. Unlike nuclear war—which is a future potential—climate change is a present reality. There is a scientific consensus that human activities, in particular the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, are causing the earth’s climate to change at a frightening rate.7 Nobody knows exactly how much carbon dioxide we can continue to pump into the atmosphere without triggering an irreversible cataclysm. But our best scientific estimates indicate that unless we dramatically cut the emission of greenhouse gases in the next twenty years, average global temperatures will increase by more than 3.6ºF, resulting in expanding deserts, disappearing ice caps, rising oceans and more frequent extreme weather events such as hurricanes and typhoons.8 These changes in turn will disrupt agricultural production, inundate cities, make much of the world uninhabitable, and send hundreds of millions of refugees in search of new homes.9 Moreover, we are rapidly approaching a number of tipping points, beyond which even a dramatic drop in greenhouse gas emissions will not be enough to reverse the trend and avoid a worldwide tragedy. For example, as global warming melts the polar ice sheets, less sunlight is reflected back from planet Earth to outer space. This means that the planet absorbs more heat, temperatures rise even higher, and the ice melts even faster. Once this feedback loop crosses a critical threshold it will gather an unstoppable momentum, and all the ice in the polar regions will melt even if humans stop burning coal, oil, and gas. Therefore it is not enough that we recognize the danger we face. It is critical that we actually do something about it now. Unfortunately, as of 2018, instead of a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the global emission rate is still increasing. Humanity has very little time left to wean itself from fossil fuels. We need to enter rehab today. Not next year or next month, but today. “Hello, I am Homo sapiens, and I am a fossil-fuel addict.

Just as the two of them finished their plump white asparagus spears in white sauce, they were served a selection of grilled vegetables. To think that onions could become so sweet and rich simply by grilling them! Rika had never been a fan of shishito peppers, but the ones on the plate in front of her were fragrant, with a gentle taste. Before she knew it, she'd devoured many more vegetables than she had the other night in that Japanese bistro, just a few dozen meters from here. She was fairly sure that the red meat being cooked on a section of the hotplate not far from where they were sitting was for them. Eventually, clear juice began oozing from its surface. Even the smell of the melting fat was appealing and mild--- not aggressive or meaty. She watched transfixed as the red turned to pale pink, as the white fat grew translucent. The meat was cut up and served to them in pieces. Rika imagined it would be steaming hot, but when she brought one of the chunks to her lips, she found it to be just the right temperature. The comfort it brought was that of a warm, affectionate tongue entering her mouth. When she bit into the aromatic seared surface of the meat, the juice from the moist, rare sections came seeping out, making the lining of her cheeks tremble. A blood-colored filament flickered across her vision. 'Apparently the garlic-butter rice here is truly out of this world. They use plenty of butter, as well as the leftover meat juices.' Rika was looking at the rice cooking on the hotplate as she spoke. Cloaked in their mantle of amber butter, the grains shimmied and danced before her eyes. There was a sizzle as the chef poured on some soy sauce, and then the short, spirited tango was over. Bowls of the glistening bronze rice appeared before them. Swathed in meat juice and butter, each and every grain shone potently. The rich, heady aroma of the soy sauce stoked Rika's appetite. The garlic singed to a deep brown unleashed a perilous bitterness and astringency across her palate. Slippery with fat, the rice slid across the plane of her tongue and down her throat. The meat she'd eaten before had been fantastically flavorsome, but this rice that had absorbed its juices was truly formidable in its taste. With each movement of her jaw, she felt a new lease of power surging up her body. The sense of fullness brought on a comfortable lethargy, and Rika felt she could happily drop off right at that moment.

With the introduction of radio, we now had a superfast. convenient, and wireless way of communicating over long distances. Historically, the lack of a fast and reliable communication system was one of the great obstacles to the march of history. (In 490 BCE, after the Battle of Marathon between the Greeks and the Persians, a poor runner was ordered to spread the news of the Greek victory as fast as he could. Bravely, he ran 26 miles to Athens after previously running 147 miles to Sparta, and then, according to legend, dropped dead of sheer exhaustion. His heroism, in the age before telecommunication, is now celebrated in the modern marathon.) Today, we take for granted that we can send messages and information effortlessly across the globe, utilizing the fact that energy can be transformed in many ways. For example, when speaking on a cell phone, the energy of the sound of your voice converts to mechanical energy in a vibrating diaphragm. The diaphragm is attached to a magnet that relies on the interchangeability of electricity and magnetism to create an electrical impulse, the kind that can be transported and read by a computer. This electrical impulse is then translated into electromagnetic waves that are picked up by a nearby microwave tower. There, the message is amplified and sent across the globe. But Maxwell's equations not only gave us nearly instantaneous communication via radio, cell phone, and fiber-optic cables, they also opened up the entire electromagnetic spectrum, of which visible light and radio were just two members. In the 166os, Newton had shown that white light, when sent through a prism, can be broken up into the colors of the rainbow. In 1800, William Herschel had asked himself a simple question: What lies beyond the colors of the rainbow, which extend from red to violet? He took a prism, which created a rainbow in his lab, and placed a thermometer below the color red, where there was no color at all. Much to his surprise, the temperature of this blank area began to rise. In other words, there was a "color" below red that was invisible to the naked eye but contained energy. It was called infrared light. Today, we realize that there is an entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, most of which is invisible, and each has a distinct wavelength. The wavelength of radio and TV, for example, is longer than that of visible light. The wavelength of the colors of the rainbow, in turn, is longer than that of ultraviolet and X-rays. This also meant that the reality we see all around us is only the tiniest sliver of the complete EM spectrum, the smallest approximation of a much larger universe

We went to dinner that night and ordered steak and talked our usual dreamy talk, intentionally avoiding the larger, looming subject. When he brought me home, it was late, and the air was so perfect that I was unaware of the temperature. We stood outside my parents’ house, the same place we’d stood two weeks earlier, before the Linguine with Clam Sauce and J’s surprise visit; before the overcooked flank steak and my realization that I was hopelessly in love. The same place I’d almost wiped out on the sidewalk; the same place he’d kissed me for the first time and set my heart afire. Marlboro Man moved in for the kill. We stood there and kissed as if it was our last chance ever. Then we hugged tightly, burying our faces in each other’s necks. “What are you trying to do to me?” I asked rhetorically. He chuckled and touched his forehead to mine. “What do you mean?” Of course, I wasn’t able to answer. Marlboro Man took my hand. Then he took the reins. “So, what about Chicago?” I hugged him tighter. “Ugh,” I groaned. “I don’t know.” “Well…when are you going?” He hugged me tighter. “Are you going?” I hugged him even tighter, wondering how long we could keep this up and continue breathing. “I…I…ugh, I don’t know,” I said. Ms. Eloquence again. “I just don’t know.” He reached behind my head, cradling it in his hands. “Don’t…,” he whispered in my ear. He wasn’t beating around the bush. Don’t. What did that mean? How did this work? It was too early for plans, too early for promises. Way too early for a lasting commitment from either of us. Too early for anything but a plaintive, emotional appeal: Don’t. Don’t go. Don’t leave. Don’t let it end. Don’t move to Chicago. I didn’t know what to say. We’d been together every single day for the past two weeks. I’d fallen completely and unexpectedly in love with a cowboy. I’d ended a long-term relationship. I’d eaten beef. And I’d begun rethinking my months-long plans to move to Chicago. I was a little speechless. We kissed one more time, and when our lips finally parted, he said, softly, “Good night.” “Good night,” I answered as I opened the door and went inside. I walked into my bedroom, eyeing the mound of boxes and suitcases that sat by the door, and plopped down on my bed. Sleep eluded me that night. What if I just postponed my move to Chicago by, say, a month or so? Postponed, not canceled. A month surely wouldn’t hurt, would it? By then, I reasoned, I’d surely have him out of my system; I’d surely have gotten my fill. A month would give me all the time I needed to wrap up this whole silly business. I laughed out loud. Getting my fill of Marlboro Man? I couldn’t go five minutes after he dropped me off at night before smelling my shirt, searching for more of his scent. How much worse would my affliction be a month from now? Shaking my head in frustration, I stood up, walked to my closet, and began removing more clothes from their hangers. I folded sweaters and jackets and pajamas with one thing pulsating through my mind: no man--least of all some country bumpkin--was going to derail my move to the big city. And as I folded and placed each item in the open cardboard boxes by my door, I tried with all my might to beat back destiny with both hands. I had no idea how futile my efforts would be.

The Midnight Game The "Midnight Game" is an old pagan ritual, used mainly as punishment for those who have broken the laws of the pagan religion in question.  While it was mainly used as a scare tactic to not disobey the gods, there is still a very existent chance of death to those who play the Midnight Game.  There is an even higher chance of permanent mental scarring. It is highly recommended that you DO NOT PLAY THE MIDNIGHT GAME.   However, for those few thrill seekers searching for a rush, or for those delving into obscure occult rituals, these are simple instructions on how to play. Do so at your own risk...   WARNING: I have played this game. People have died. Do not play this game. He will always be watching.   Instructions   PREREQUISITES:   It must be exactly 12:00 AM when you begin performing the ritual. Otherwise, it will not work.   MATERIALS:   You will need a candle, a piece of paper, a writing implement, matches or a lighter, salt, a wooden door, and at least one drop of your own blood. If you are playing with multiple people, they will need their own of the aforementioned materials and they will have to perform the steps below accordingly.   STEP 1:   Write your full name (first, middle, and last)on the piece of paper. Put at least one drop of blood on the paper. Allow it to soak into the paper.   STEP 2:   Turn off all of the lights in the place you are doing this. Go to your wooden door, and place the paper with your name on it in front of the door. Now, take out the candle and light it. Place it on top of the paper.   STEP 3:   Knock on the door twenty-two times. The hour must be 12:00 AM upon the final knock. Then, open the door, blow out the candle, and close the door. You have just allowed the "Midnight Man" to enter your house.   STEP 4:   Immediately relite your candle.   This is where the game begins. You must now lurk around your now completely dark house, with the lit candle in your hand. Your goal is to avoid the Midnight Man at all costs, until 3:33 AM. Should your candle ever go out, that means the Midnight Man is near you. You must relight your candle in the next ten seconds.   If you are not successful in doing this, you must then immediately surround yourself with a circle of salt. If you are unsuccessful in both of your actions, the Midnight Man will create a hallucination of your greatest fear, and rip out your organs one by one. You will feel it, but you will be unable to react.   If you are successful in creating the circle of salt, you must remain in there until 3:33 AM.   If you are successful in relighting your candle, you may proceed with the game. You must continue to 3:33 AM, without being attacked by the Midnight Man, or being trapped inside the circle of salt, to win the Midnight Game. The Midnight Man will leave your house at 3:33 AM, and you will be safe to proceed with your morning.   ADDITION:   Indications that you are near the Midnight Man will include sudden drop in temperature, seeing a pure black, humanoid figure through the darkness, and hearing very soft whispering coming from an indiscernible source. If you experience any of these, it is advised that you leave the area to avoid the Midnight Man.   DO NOT turn any of the lights on during the Midnight Game.   DO NOT use a flashlight during the Midnight Game.   DO NOT go to sleep during the Midnight Game.   DO NOT attempt to use another person's blood on your name.   DO NOT use a lighter as a substitute for a candle. It will not work.   AND DEFINITELY DO NOT attempt to provoke the Midnight Man in ANY WAY.   Even when the game is over, he will always be watching

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.

Geographically the island had dramatic coastline of secret coves and forests. It was surrounded by water of turquoise color and reef. It had rich, fertile lands and a very hot temperature all year round. All year the temperature averaged 105 degrees. It got a bit cooler at night but people could still sleep under the stars and sky. It had very little rainfall and no snow or frost. Temperatures dropped a little in the winter”.

Always preheat the oven unless stated otherwise. Though not stated in the directions of my recipes, oven temperatures are in Farenheit. Make sure the oil in the fry pan is hot before starting to fry, for less fat is absorbed by the food you are cooking when the oil is hot. To test if the oil is hot enough, slightly wet a finger with water and sprinkle a few drops on the fry pan. If it sizzles, the pan is ready.

PRE- AND POST-SLEEP ROUTINES: SEVEN STEPS TO SLEEP SMARTER Pre- and post-sleep routines directly affect the quality of your sleep and waking day: value them as the important activities they are, and you’ll be more efficient all day and night. Take technology breaks during the day as a reward and training for body and mind. Post-sleep is vitally important for PMers if they want to keep up with the AMers – don’t forgo this in favour of the ‘snooze’ button. Don’t text drunk! Raise your alertness before you reach for your phone. Moving your body from warm to cooler helps trigger the natural drop in body temperature – a quick warm rinse under the shower and a cooler sleeping environment will achieve this. Declutter your environment and mind and download your day before bed, so you don’t lie awake thinking when you could be asleep. Pre-sleep is about shutting down – nose-breathing, relaxing, light to dark – while post-sleep is about starting up in an unrushed way: these periods belong to you and no one else.

However, there have been close calls where we were extremely lucky that there was a human in the loop. On October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, eleven U.S. Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph had cornered the Soviet submarine B-59 near Cuba, in international waters outside the U.S. “quarantine” area. What they didn’t know was that the temperature onboard had risen past 45°C (113°F) because the submarine’s batteries were running out and the air-conditioning had stopped. On the verge of carbon dioxide poisoning, many crew members had fainted. The crew had had no contact with Moscow for days and didn’t know whether World War III had already begun. Then the Americans started dropping small depth charges, which they had, unbeknownst to the crew, told Moscow were merely meant to force the sub to surface and leave. “We thought—that’s it—the end,” crew member V. P. Orlov recalled. “It felt like you were sitting in a metal barrel, which somebody is constantly blasting with a sledgehammer.” What the Americans also didn’t know was that the B-59 crew had a nuclear torpedo that they were authorized to launch without clearing it with Moscow. Indeed, Captain Savitski decided to launch the nuclear torpedo. Valentin Grigorievich, the torpedo officer, exclaimed: “We will die, but we will sink them all—we will not disgrace our navy!” Fortunately, the decision to launch had to be authorized by three officers on board, and one of them, Vasili Arkhipov, said no. It’s sobering that very few have heard of Arkhipov, although his decision may have averted World War III and been the single most valuable contribution to humanity in modern history.38 It’s also sobering to contemplate what might have happened had B-59 been an autonomous AI-controlled submarine with no humans in the loop.

Usually we halted our formation prior to marching onto the dock, but when we did, all of us pounded our feet making as much noise as we could. Besides my feet were getting colder and I wished I had worn thicker socks. The pounding helped some as we marched along the edge. I should have known better, but my mind was on other things when I suddenly felt the cadets on my right side crush into me with a force that I wasn’t expecting. Shit! In a flash I knew what was happening. The few became the many as my classmates broke ranks and pushed me off the dock. Everything was happening in slow motion and there was nothing I could do about it. I was resolutely being nudged off the pier! Forgetting how cold I was, I had just enough time to reach into my pocket and pull out my wallet, which I hummed up towards the dock, just an instant before I hit the water. I braced myself expecting it to be frigid, but to my surprise the water actually felt warm. Not warm like the water along a tropical beach but certainly warmer than the air, or what I would have expected if I had had the time to consider the water temperature. The drop had to have been a good 15 feet or more and when I hit, I continued down in a mass of bubbles until my frantic actions and natural buoyancy reversed my direction. Popping back up to the surface, I had to endure the embarrassing, jubilant laughter of my classmates. To my surprise, I noticed that two others, who had taken part in the effort, had themselves become victims of this lark and were spewing water as much as I was.

Have you heard anything about the murder?” she asked Luca. “Dreadful, that poor maid floating up in the canal.” Luca had the crumbling dessert halfway to his lips. He placed it neatly back on his plate and rubbed both hands on his napkin. His whole body seemed to tense up. Cass set her fork down. She stared at Luca as she waited for him to speak. “I have actually heard rumors,” he said slowly. “There was some gossip in the city about it. There is talk of a gang roving the cemeteries at night…” The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. Agnese finished the second half of her pastry and chased it with a big swallow of wine. “Satanists, if you ask me,” Luca added. Agnese bobbed her head in agreement. “The girl was strangled and then cut up like a chicken, they say. I’m not even sure San Domenico is safe anymore.” “I don’t see why everyone is suddenly so concerned,” Cass said. Even to her own ears her voice sounded strained. “Venice has always had more than her share of murders.” “Drunken brawls and knife fights,” Luca said. He stared back at her. Was it her imagination, or did she see a challenge in his eyes? “But not murders of this kind. And of innocent women.” Cass’s throat felt as though she had swallowed a chicken bone. “Why so interested, Luca? Don’t you have other, more important duties to which you should attend?” She downed half a glass of wine in one swallow. Her mind flooded with terrible thoughts. Did Luca somehow know about Falco? Had he been spying on her?

In a study in Metabolism Journal, researchers found that a drop of 1 degree Celsius in body temperature would lower metabolic rate by 10–13 percent. Therefore, if you are consuming 2,000 calories (kcal) to maintain your weight and are running a cool 36 degrees C (97 degrees F) through the day, you have dropped your caloric expenditure by 10–13 percent, or 200–230 kcal/day.

37. Be Kind Enthusiasm, ability and aptitude all have to be on someone’s CV before I’ll take them into a life or death situation, but when I am putting a team together for an expedition, there’s one other quality I’m always looking out for - kindness. Expeditions into jungles or across deserts or raging oceans are never easy. However much we might romanticize the lives of explorers, when you are in the middle of an inflatable boat with 50-foot waves all around, you haven’t slept for three days, or you have been struggling with an injury in silence for a week, it is the little things that count. What you really want from the people you are with is that they are kind - to know that they are on your side when the chips are down. Let me give you a couple of examples: once you get above 25,000 feet (7,500 metres) on a mountain, and the temperature drops to minus 45°, if you don’t get a headache - the kind that grips your head like a nut in a pair of pliers - then you’re not human. Part of this is the altitude, part is the inevitable dehydration that comes from the thin air. So working hard 24/7 to keep hydrated is essential. The only way to get water, though, is to melt the ice. But at that height, at that temperature, melting enough snow and ice to drink can take hours. The good expedition member is the one who gives their buddies the first sip or the last swig of that precious water. In the extremes it is the little things that stand out. So try and look at all those sorts of moments as chances to distinguish yourself - and it is the kind, unselfish mountaineer who is loved and is often the real bedrock of a great team.

I've focused on the 1,000 coins so as to offer a specific example, but the link between entropy and information is general. The microscopic details of any system contain information that's hidden when we take account of only macroscopic, overall features. For instance, you know the temperature, pressure, and volume of a vat of steam, but did an H2O molecule just hit the upper right-hand corner of the box? Did another just hit the mid-point of the lower left edge? As with the dropped dollars, a system's entropy is the number of yes-no questions that its microscopic details have the capacity to answer, and so the entropy is a measure of the system's hidden information content.

They pause, almost but not quite clutching each other, with their ears cocked. The hideous dried-out croak is drawing inevitably closer – apparently, whether by some quirk of the architecture, the type of stone in the masonry perhaps or the curious way the corridor bends, from both directions at once. The boys gibber at each other helplessly. With every passing instant now the temperature drops precipitously, the grey light wanes; the ghastly voice chants its message, necrotic and Latin, over and again, as though doomed to repeat it, doomed for eternity, a doom that any second now they will be sharing, when the voice’s owner comes around that corner, or the other corner, or possibly even both corners, to find them quaking before her –

Prologue               It started with rain. A torrential downpour that began around midnight and waged throughout the next day. Occasionally it would ease off for a few minutes, only to come back even stronger.               Step two was the temperature drop. Rapid and even, it took only a matter of hours for the mercury to dip below freezing. Once it did, the rain gave way to heavy, wet snowflakes.               Dr. Hardy Nicks stood just outside the front door of the Vanderbilt Medical Center. He checked his watch repeatedly while hopping up and down on the balls of his feet, hoping to stay warm. A plume of vapor extended from of his mouth, each breath hanging like a cloud in front of him.               As an attending surgeon at the center, Hardy had been on the floor for twenty hours straight. Enormous bags hung beneath each eye and his thinning hair was plastered to his head from being smashed beneath a surgical cap. He hadn't bothered to change out of the light blue scrubs he'd been wearing all day, the shapeless togs doing little to hide his slight frame.               An airlock released behind him.

When you have a fever, you feel a chill. As your body temperature rises, your mind tells you that the outside temperature is dropping... It's colder outside than yesterday. But maybe it isn't really. Maybe I'm just getting warmer.

Steve knew just how and when to find them. We headed out early the next morning, before there was wind. The temperature was exactly right at eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit. Steve got a faraway look in his eye, as though he was concentrating or communicating. Then he headed off. Ten minutes later, we were on the trail of a fierce snake. “Would you like to tail one?” Steve asked. “Are you kidding?” I said. “I don’t know how to catch a fierce snake.” Steve had already “tailed” one of the snakes. Gently grabbing the end of its tail, he could hold it at arm’s length and examine it. During this procedure, snakes would often defecate, and we could get some clue about what they’d been eating. Steve would tail a snake, put it in a bag, release it, and keep what remained. “You grab the next one,” Steve said. He spotted a four- or five-foot-long fierce snake. It glistened in the sun like glass, brilliantly shiny and sleek. “It’s warming up now,” Steve said as we approached. “You’re going to have to be quick.” Yes, Terri, I said to myself, please be quick so as not to get struck by the most venomous snake on earth. If you get bitten out here, you’re in a load of trouble. We crept up behind the fierce snake. I got close enough to grab it, but the snake suddenly and violently swung its head around, directly at me, poised and ready to strike. I backed off abruptly. Time and again I approached the snake just as I’d seen Steve do it: Walk up behind the snake as it started to slither away, and grab it by the tail. I knew what to do, but I couldn’t do it. Every time I reached down, the snake would swing around and I would jump a mile. We wandered farther and farther on the trail of the snake. I could see our truck way in the distance. I sweated profusely. I kept thinking the same thought. If I get bitten by this snake, I’m dead. Then I would try to push that thought away. Stop thinking, just grab the snake. Steve wouldn’t ask you to do something that you couldn’t do. But the whole process was becoming ridiculous. “What am I doing wrong?” I wailed. “You are too bloody scared,” Steve said. “Oh,” I said. Then I reached down and picked up the snake. It was magic. Once I had the nice, soft, supple body in my hands, it was as though the snake and I had a connection. Its skin was warm to my touch from sitting in the sun. I suddenly understood exactly how to hold on so it wouldn’t get away, and yet not squeeze it so tightly that it would get angry. The snake naturally kept trying to move off. I let the front part of its body stay on the ground and held the tail up. I felt such triumph--not that I had dominated the snake, but that it had let me pick it up. Steve held out the catch bag, and I carefully dropped the snake in. He tied a knot in the bag. We looked at each other and grinned. Then we both whooped and hollered and jumped in the air. He hugged and kissed me. “I’m proud of you, Terri,” he said. Once again I marveled at Steve’s instincts. He knew that this particular snake would be okay for me to pick up. He never hesitated, he never yelled at me or coached me--until I asked for help. Then he simply told me what to do.

Squaring her shoulders, Megan stepped out into the hall and her bare foot was almost flattened by a remote-control car. She jumped out of the way just in time and watched the thing zip down the hall and hop a makeshift ramp. Megan’s eyes widened in horror as she saw what was at the other end of the jump. Oh…my…God! The car slammed into a mountain of wrapped tampons, which exploded all over the hallway at impact. Ian raced past her, laughing maniacally, wielding the controls. Doug came out of his room to check out the commotion, picked up one of the tampons, and smirked. “Super-absorbency?” he said, just as Evan and Finn emerged from their rooms on opposite sides of the hall. “What’s super-absorbency?” Ian asked, his forehead wrinkling. “I don’t even want to know,” Doug replied, chucking the tampon in Megan’s direction. She caught it, feeling like her body temperature could singe a hole in the rug. Doug laughed and took off down the stairs with Ian barreling after him. “Ignore him. We all do,” Evan said with a groggy smile. “Uh…dude,” Finn said, glancing down at Evan’s boxers, which were covered in cartoon frogs and gaping open. Then Finn glanced over at Megan. Then Evan went back into his room and closed the door. No shame whatsoever. “Here, I’ll…help you clean this up,” Finn said, dropping to the floor and picking up a few tampons. “No!” Megan lurched forward and Finn fell back from his knees to his butt. She grabbed the tampons from his hands. “I’d really rather you didn’t.” “But I can--” “No. Just…I’m fine,” Megan said, awkwardly gathering up the slippery wrappers in her arms. “Thanks.” “Okay,” Finn said. He stood and hovered for a second, prolonging Megan’s mortification. Finally Finn walked into the bathroom and shut the door. Left alone, it was all Megan could do to keep from bursting into tears. They had been in her room. They had gone through her stuff. And Evan had seen her tampons. This was definitely the worst morning of her life. Megan stood up, clamped her things to her chest, walked into her room, and dropped everything on her bed. Okay, get a grip, she told herself. It could have been worse. Somehow.