It was hot last week.  We can all agree on that.  But since I'm cheap and have a high tolerance for discomfort, my home air conditioner was used sparingly.  What can I say?  I didn't have air conditioning growing up.  You're too hot?  Stop moving.  These and many other ineffective temperature control solutions were the things I learned as a child. 

It seems to me that now that we've invented the iPhone and are colliding particles in the Large Hadron Collider, maybe we could come up with a way to make my house slightly cooler than the surface of the sun.  Here are a few ideas that would be cheap and easy, if I only knew something about electricity and air movement: 

1. Solar-powered fan.  The sun produces heat.  The sun also produces solar energy, which can be converted into electricity.  Why can't we put these two things together?  I don't need a battery or a charger or a backup supply of energy.  I just want a fan that blows air through my house whenever the sun is shining.  How hard is that?
2. Circulated basement air.  The basement smells weird.  But it's like 50°F in the summer, even when it's 90°F outside.  I don't know how this works or understand why our bedroom isn't located here (besides the smell ... and the bugs, the large, meat-eating bugs), but it seems like it would be pretty trivial to run a pipe from the basement to the upstairs, and just have a little fan blow some cold air up to the warm area.  You could even put a little air freshener in front of the fan to cut down on the musty basement scent.
3. Cold air storage.  This is the easily the stupidest idea of the three.  But I seem to remember writing just a few months ago that it was right around 100 degrees colder than right now.  Why can't we store some cold air for later, and then blast our houses with a tank of stored frozen air?  And why couldn't we do just the opposite in the winter and use a bunch of hot air stored in the attic to heat the house a little?  It's stupid, yes, but honestly, somebody has to come up with these stupid ideas so that someday someone can come up with better ones.

Steve Jobs, help!  Give us the iFan.