While I appreciate heated drinks, I might suggest that the hard button would be better devoted to the human holder than the beverage holder.
Heating drinks with a red-hot poker — sometimes called a loggerhead, or flip-dog — predates modern bartending.
So if you really want to beat the heat, drink a slushie on the way to exercise and then keep drinking very cold liquids while you exercise.
Re "To Beat the Heat, Drink a Slushie First" (Personal Best, April 27): I'm a mountain biker, and we have been carrying 100-ounce camelbacks packed with cold water and ice on our hot summer rides for many years.
Heat: You can become dehydrated without being thirsty, so, when hanging out in the heat, drink lots of cold water.
To feel heat, drink hot chocolate, wear warm clothes, snuggle with someone, or take a hot bath/shower.
The iron carmelizes the sugars, heats the drink, and produces a potent and warming libation.
The days are filled with a unique tapestry of art, conversation, and, if your body can handle it in the exceptional heat, drinks.
And the –nog of eggnog is an old name for strong ale or beer, which in turn probably comes from an old Scots word, nugg, for a drink heated up by putting a red-hot poker into it.
Every contingency -- power, communications, navigation, medical support, hydraulics, climate control, safety -- has been met with state-of-the-art technology (there are heated and cooled drink holders next to the driver's seat and 1,900 lights).
Move on to another scene in the novel when the Rev Elton, heated to irreverence by drink, manoeuvres himself into a tête-à-tête in the coach back from the Westons' Christmas party and Emma is appalled to find him "actually making violent love to her".
