Word: icing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2010-2019
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What would you say to the standard piece of advice about staying away from talk about religion and politics? I think it's better to go very gently out onto thin ice if you don't know your context. If there's a chance that you may offend, I suggest that religion and politics - religion especially these days - is an arena of conversation that should be entered very gingerly...
Sports-shoe manufacturers would do well to take a lesson from the old rickshaw runners (called jiin-riki) in Japan. They wore tabis, or mittens for the feet, with treaded rubber soles, which provided protection against stones, glass and nails in the road, as well as traction on ice or in mud. The snug fabric portion provided support and prevented chafing. Most modern sport shoes are too heavy and become uncomfortably hot, causing the feet to swell...
Itching for a good after-school science experiment? Researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey have created a homemade bedbug trap using a plastic cat-food dish, an insulated jug and some dry-ice pellets. According to Wan-Tien Tsai, who reported her findings in December at the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America, the dry-ice-and-thermos combo captured the bloodsucking critters in an infested apartment just as effectively as, if not more so than, equipment used by professional exterminators. (See the fascinating, frightening world of insects...
...most important part of this MacGyverized contraption is an insulated one-third-gallon jug - like the kind sold in camping-supply stores - filled with 2½ lb. of frozen carbon dioxide, which costs about $1 per lb. (and should be handled only with gloves). As the dry-ice pellets slowly evaporate, the open thermos spout lets the CO2 - which falsely signals bedbugs that a breathing, blood-filled meal is nearby - seep out overnight. That's usually enough time to entice the nocturnal insects into the other key component of the trap: the overturned food-and-water dish on which the thermos...
Speak to enough good people from the Netherlands, however, and you begin to appreciate their love of the sport. Ice-skating began more than 1,000 years ago, on the frozen canals and waterways of Scandinavia and Holland. By the 1600s, speed skating became a useful form of transportation for the Dutch, who used their blades to travel between villages. The Netherlands doesn't get much snow, and there are no mountains, so skiing is out of the question. But it gets cold, and the county's frozen winter waterways offer ample opportunities for outdoor skating. "In Holland, kids learn...