​Now that the weather here in Paris has gotten a bit warmer, I've got vacation on my mind. Here's a slide show about things to see and do in the US that you probably haven't heard of before. They all sound good to me!

"The competition, called 100&Change, is open to organizations in any field, anywhere in the world, as long as the proposal identifies a problem affecting people, a place, or the entire planet and comes up with a way to fix it.... Even if you don't win, the application process, the foundation said, is designed to provide feedback and visibility, so the proposals that do not win the MacArthur award might still attract backing or other forms of support... Registration must be completed online by Sept. 2..."

The MacArthur Foundation (also) awards $625,000, no-strings-attached fellowships to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential. ​

Meet the 2015 MacArthur Fellows - 24 in all:
education entrepreneur, environmental engineer, journalist, environmental health advocate, urban sociologist, chemist, tap dancer and choreographer, painter, photographer and video artist, writer, set designer, playwright-composer-performer, classicist, computational biologist, computer scientist, historian, community leader, neuroscientist, adaptive designer and fabricator, puppetry artist and director, poet and more.

This list of vocabulary words is aimed at middle schoolers (native speakers ages 11-14) – that means that none of these words is "fancy". Click on any word on the list to go to its sound button and make sure you can pronounce it correctly. If you don't know the word, use this great tool to learn it. Check out the definitions, usage examples from the press, word families, synonyms and antonyms. You can even choose to view usage examples by sector such as business, sports, science, technology, arts and culture.

Tell me, what percentage (25-50-75-100) of these words do you already know and use? What percentage have you never seen, but can understand thanks to the context and your native language? (Hurray for Greek and Latin roots!)

If you don't know at least 75% well, you're not reading enough in English. More on this later.