Complex Numbers

Cool It

A certain comedy site has trained me to see numbered lists in countdown order, and also to expect comedy from them. This, however, is not Cracked, but Mental Floss. Consequently, I'll have to supply my own comedy.

    9 Creative Ways People Kept Cool Before Air Conditioning  
People have tried everything from funky fan chairs to enormous ice chambers to survive a sweltering summer day.

Full disclosure: the house where I spent my childhood was located in one of the hottest and most humid parts of the mid-Atlantic (Chesapeake Bay area), and did not have air conditioning; plus, it was located about 100 meters from a massive swamp. This might have "built character," as my dad would have put it, but it did not; it ensured that I would never, ever go without air conditioning, ever again.

Not going to quote all of them here.

1. Fan Chairs

At first I thought of those movies and stage plays where the important person sits in a chair while servants wave giant feather fans. The important person stays cool; the servants get hotter. Basic thermodynamics.

People used their feet to operate the fan that moved above their head, much like someone would power an old sewing machine.

What? No servants? That de-feets the purpose.

2. Sleeping Porches

Also known as "baby disposal chutes." (For the full effect, go to the article; there are pictures.)

Another president interested in keeping cool was William Howard Taft, who had a “sleeping porch” erected on the roof of the White House in 1910.

He must have had servants reinforce the roof, or it would have collapsed. Taft made Chris Christie look like Kate Moss.

4. DogTrot Homes

The cats can just fend for themselves.

On a more serious note, one wonders why this architectural innovation is featured here, but the shotgun house is not. Despite the name, these have nothing to do with firearms, but were designed to funnel any breeze through the home's three rooms. My childhood home, noted above, started out as a shotgun.

Oh, right, because that style is associated with servants' dwellings.

5. Punkahs

These hand-operated ceiling fans have their origins in colonial India. Each year, thousands of poor seasonal workers were contracted, or otherwise compelled, to spend monotonous days pulling a cord that swept a piece of fabric back and forth across a room for the country’s elite.

AHA! I knew we'd get to the servants. "Otherwise compelled," my ass.

6. Drinking Buttermilk

EW! I'll just sit here and sweat, thanks.

The Indian subcontinent gave the world another refreshing idea for keeping cool in the searing heat: drinking buttermilk.

I guess it worked in the long run; they just landed a robot on the moon. We now have two worlds known to be inhabited entirely by robots, with just one known to be inhabited by carbon-based biological life.

Robots, incidentally, are okay to use as servants. For now.

9. Not Stressing About the Heat

How did I handle the oppressive heat and humidity when I was a kid? Well, there was a giant body of water in my front yard, and I learned how to swim.

No servants required.