Here’s a cozy recipe for Hot Caramel Apple Cider, perfect for fall or a chilly evening, combining the tartness of apple cider with sweet, buttery caramel.
Ingredients:
4 mug’s worth of apple cider
1 mug’s worth of caramel vodka
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/4 cup brown sugar
Directions:
Mix all of the ingredients above in a large pot.
Heat over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally until liquid just begins to steam (don’t over heat or else the alcohol will burn off).
While cider is warming up, take your mugs or glasses and rim them with brown sugar.
Pour cider into your rimmed glasses, serve and enjoy!
This Cider is a warm, sweet, and spiced drink that captures the essence of autumn. Enjoy!
Here’s a simple and versatile Buttercream Frosting recipe that’s creamy, smooth, and perfect for cakes, cupcakes, or cookies. This classic American buttercream is quick to whip up and easily customizable.
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons heavy whipped cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup butter, unsalted and softened
3 cups icing sugar
Directions:
Using hand mixer, beat the butter until light and fluffy
Adding vanilla & whisk again
Begin adding powder sugar, ½ cup at time to incorporate without lumps
Adding heavy whipping cream & beat to totally combined
Fill piping bag & frost your cake
Tips:
Butter: Use softened (not melted) butter for best texture. If too soft, the frosting may be runny; chill briefly if needed.
Consistency: For piping, keep frosting thicker (less liquid). For spreading, add more cream for a smoother texture.
Storage: Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 week or freeze for up to 3 months. Bring to room temperature and re-whip before using.
Make Ahead: Prepare up to 2 days in advance and refrigerate; let soften and re-beat for best results.
Gluten-Free: Naturally gluten-free, but check powdered sugar for additives if needed.
Variations:
Chocolate: Add 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder or 4 oz melted, cooled dark chocolate.
Flavors: Swap vanilla for almond extract, lemon zest, or coffee for different profiles.
Colors: Add gel food coloring for vibrant hues without thinning the frosting.
Fruit: Mix in 1/4 cup pureed strawberries (like from our Strawberry Frozen Yogurt recipe) for a fruity twist, but reduce liquid slightly.
Why It’s Great:
This buttercream is quick, uses basic ingredients, and holds up well for decorating while staying creamy and delicious.
Enjoy your Buttercream Frosting! If you need a specific variation (e.g., vegan, low-sugar, or for piping), tips for pairing with your desserts (like the Peach Cobbler or Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies), or exact quantities for a project, let me know in the comments below.
Can the science really be settled? Over recent years we’ve heard more and more arguments about how settled the science might be according to one’s own perspectives, data sets, and ideological inclinations.
Science is supposed to be challenged, questioned, tested, and scrutinized.
That’s the entire point.
If that isn’t permissible and the basic lines of inquiry are censored or taboo, then it’s not science, but secular dogma.
The science is settled is an unscientific statement.
Without challenge and disagreement science never advances. Newton, Einstein, and Galileo are all good examples of pushing against the so-called settled science.
The people who think questioning the science is wrong or hateful, are the same people who bought into the bill of goods we’ve all come to know as science fiction.
It’s all right that we ignore those people. Newton, Einstein, and Galileo didn’t listen to them, and neither should we, because Newton, Einstein, and Galileo have already proven that the science can never be settled.
Even Newton’s law of viscosity was challenged:
As an example of non-settled science, there were those who continued the scientific process by questioning Newton’s law of viscosity.
A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid that does not follow Newton’s law of viscosity, i.e. viscosity is not constant and it’s a function of the stress applied.
Although the concept of viscosity is commonly used in fluid mechanics to characterize the shear properties of a fluid, it can be inadequate to describe non-Newtonian fluids. They are best studied through several other rheological properties that relate stress and strain rate tensors under many different flow conditions—such as oscillatory shear or extensional flow—which are measured using different devices or rheometers. The properties are better studied using tensor-valued constitutive equations, which are common in the field of continuum mechanics.
As we progress, we may even discover that the current climate sciences of the day might be inadequate to describe the actual climate processes that surround us and as with any other discipline (Newton’s law of viscosity), climate science should be challenged in order to bring a better understanding of just how dynamic our earth can really be.
Often we use terms today that no one ever really gives a second thought to.
Here are a few of those terms and their original medieval uses.
Dirt poor
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt – hence the saying “dirt poor.” The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing.
Thresh hold
As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until when you opened the door it would start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance way, – hence the saying a “thresh hold.”
Of particular note
The average medieval houses were extremely small and housed the entire family. They rarely had completed floors, many of them having dirt or straw floors that added to the dampness. Most homes only consisted of a couple of rooms in which the entire family resided. This was not only their sleeping quarters, but their cooking, resting, and area in which they had family time.
Most family time was extremely limited since most of the homes of peasants contained both the parents and the children, the whole family worked in order to help support the entire family. This meant that it was generally early to bed and early to rise, and left little time in between to try and work on their schooling or bond with their family.
I always enjoyed watching Carl Sagan. He had a way of presenting science in new and interesting ways. He imagined the possibilities.
You go talk to kindergartners or first-grade kids, you find a class full of science enthusiasts. They ask deep questions. They ask, “What is a dream, why do we have toes, why is the moon round, what is the birthday of the world, why is grass green?” These are profound, important questions. They just bubble right out of them. You go talk to 12th graders and there’s none of that. They’ve become incurious. Something terrible has happened between kindergarten and 12th grade. – Carl Sagan
Kids these days aren’t taught to imagine the possibilities.
They aren’t taught to question.
They aren’t taught to think.
Our modern society has turned daydreaming into a medical condition that requires the dispensing of drugs in order to benefit the bottom line of big pharma.
Our modern society has turned free thinking into some bizarre sort of political angst that only the government can solve with more money.
Carl Sagan was brilliant, and I’m pretty sure that he would be turning in his grave if he were to see what our modern society has turned his beloved science into these days.
Education (as well as science) these days has been polluted with opinions, ideologies, and the never ending diatribe of political discourse.
Like Carl Sagan, I too went to school, 1st-12th grade, without the influence of the Department of Education. The Department of Education was created by President Carter as more of an afterthought … because he owed unions a favor.
Carl Sagan, like most of us pre-Dept of Ed, noticed the decline in education, and spoke out about it fairly frequently.
Carl Sagan wasn’t a prophet … he was a scientist. His science was such that saw what was coming, and he wrote about it.
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
– Carl Sagan
Sagan continues:
“The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. As I write, the number one video cassette rental in America is the movie Dumb and Dumber. Beavis and Butthead remains popular (and influential) with young TV viewers. The plain lesson is that study and learning – not just of science, but of anything – are avoidable, even undesirable.”
– Carl Sagan
Sagan chides mainstream media for their role in social engineering. The media has the greatest influence on our society, and it is in the ivory towers of media executives where the direction is set for our national intellect. They are the captains of our collective rational and emotional destiny, and Sagan’s comment condemns their fruitful efforts to turn young minds away from reason and towards stupidity.
Carl Sagan was a classical liberal — It was important to him that people got along and played nice. It’s most unfortunate that classical liberalism has gone the way of science and education in this country.
Classical liberalism, science, and education have suffered irreparable harm over the past 30 years, and it won’t be long ’till we’re staring the dark ages square in the face.
Carl Sagan, in an effort to keep things in perspective always seemed to look at the bigger picture (I might suggest that we do the same), and with that, I’ll leave you with his Pale Blue Dot — Listen to the words carefully and thoughtfully:
Astronomer Carl Sagan graduated from the University of Chicago, where he studied planets and explored theories of extraterrestrial intelligence. He was named director of Cornell’s Laboratory for Planetary Studies in 1968 and worked with NASA on several projects. An anti-nuclear activist, Sagan introduced the idea of “nuclear winter” in 1983. He wrote one novel, several books and academic papers and the TV series Cosmos, which was reborn on TV in 2014.
Can the science really be settled?
Can the science really be settled? Over recent years we’ve heard more and more arguments about how settled the science might be according to one’s own perspectives, data sets, and ideological inclinations.
Science is supposed to be challenged, questioned, tested, and scrutinized.
That’s the entire point.
If that isn’t permissible and the basic lines of inquiry are censored or taboo, then it’s not science, but secular dogma.
Without challenge and disagreement science never advances. Newton, Einstein, and Galileo are all good examples of pushing against the so-called settled science.
The people who think questioning the science is wrong or hateful, are the same people who bought into the bill of goods we’ve all come to know as science fiction.
It’s all right that we ignore those people. Newton, Einstein, and Galileo didn’t listen to them, and neither should we, because Newton, Einstein, and Galileo have already proven that the science can never be settled.
Even Newton’s law of viscosity was challenged:
As an example of non-settled science, there were those who continued the scientific process by questioning Newton’s law of viscosity.
See video below:
A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid that does not follow Newton’s law of viscosity, i.e. viscosity is not constant and it’s a function of the stress applied.
Although the concept of viscosity is commonly used in fluid mechanics to characterize the shear properties of a fluid, it can be inadequate to describe non-Newtonian fluids. They are best studied through several other rheological properties that relate stress and strain rate tensors under many different flow conditions—such as oscillatory shear or extensional flow—which are measured using different devices or rheometers. The properties are better studied using tensor-valued constitutive equations, which are common in the field of continuum mechanics.
As we progress, we may even discover that the current climate sciences of the day might be inadequate to describe the actual climate processes that surround us and as with any other discipline (Newton’s law of viscosity), climate science should be challenged in order to bring a better understanding of just how dynamic our earth can really be.