It isn't that I was having a particularly bad day. I wasn't throwing up--like I'd done the last two Fridays and Saturdays. I wasn't as tired as I'd been the day before, when I'd had to take two different naps. There was no pain to address. I just felt generally icky....

Coming as I do from a state below the Mason-Dixon line, we have humid, hot summers...and so, love our air-conditioners. But where did these things come from, and when? Did the words always mean devices that cool us? Nope! When the terms air-conditioning and...

Why? It's one of the most fundamental questions. And any parent knows that on the lips of a small child, it's a sign of curiosity, of a desire to soak in and understand the world. I know when my kids entered the "why" phase, it was by turns delightful and frustrating....

When we think of a cooler, we think of a portable, insulated box that keeps things cold, right? That's certainly the most common use these days, anyway. But when cooler first joined the English language in the 1570s, it was instead referring to a vessel in which you'd...