Author Archives: Scott Bowles

I Scream, You Scream

Fort Leonard Wood Double Dark Chocolate Keto Ice Cream (Ridiculously Good) - Keto Pots

http://childpsychiatryassociates.com/treatment-team Amid the pandemics and protests of the weekend, we failed to acknowledge National Chocolate Ice Cream Day. In recompense, this FactSlap column is dedicated to one of the nation’s leading causes of brain freeze:

The first known ice cream recipe was handwritten in the recipe book of Lady Anne Fanshawe in 1665, and it was flavored with orange flower water, mace, or ambergris – an intestinal slurry puked up by sperm whales.
The waffle cone was created at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis when Abe Doumar, a traveling salesman, encouraged an ice cream vendor to serve their ice cream on rolled waffles made by another nearby vendor when they ran out of paper dishes.
Chocolate ice cream was invented long before vanilla, and the first documented recipe for it appeared in the book The Modern Steward, published in Italy in 1692.
Vanilla ice cream may be the default flavor today, but it was quite exotic and rare in the late 1700s, as vanilla was difficult to acquire before the mid-19th century.
Many ice cream flavors popular in the colonial era in the United States are still mainstays – vanilla, strawberry, pistachio, coffee – but others, like oyster, parmesan, and asparagus – didn’t have staying power.
The Häagen-Dazs brand was established by two Americans – Reuben and Rose Mattus – and the name was made up to sound Danish and sophisticated. The Danish language does not actually use umlauts.
Ben & Jerry’s was the first company to sell chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in 1991, and the flavor was created based on an anonymous suggestion on a board in their Burlington, Vt., shop.
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavors are full of chunky mix-ins in part because co-founder Ben Cohen has no sense of scent, and a lot of his pleasure in ice cream comes from its texture.
Food photographers frequently use modified mashed potatoes as a stand-in for actual ice cream in photos.
An “ice cream headache” happens because the nerve endings on the roof of your mouth are not used to being cold, and they send a message to your brain signaling a loss of body heat.
Apple pie a la mode was invented at the Cambridge Hotel in New York when a customer named Professor Charles Watson Townshend regularly ordered ice cream with his apple pie. Another diner, Berry Hall, coined the dish’s name.
The sundae was invented when soda jerks in the late 1890s bowed to criticism from religious leaders for serving “sinfully” rich ice cream sodas on Sundays. They started serving the ice cream and syrups without soda water and called it a “sundae.”
Hawaiian Punch was originally created and marketed as a syrup intended as an ice cream topping, but it became more popular mixed with water as a drink.

The iPhone Paradox (or How America Built a Cognitive Immune System)

Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.

— Daniel 12:3

I’ve always been fascinated with immune systems.

When I was 13, I contracted diabetes after my immune system attacked and disabled my pancreas. My mother’s immune system attacked her eyes with bird shot retinapathy, rendering her nearly blind. After the transplant, my immune system had to be utterly muted, lest it reject the new organs.

Now, the nation has developed its own immune system — against logic, reason and science. Call it a Cognitive Immune System. And it comes courtesy of the Republican Party and its Dullard-In-Chief.

Trumptards and the man they worship have decided that the most effective defense of their long-held belief system — one largely scaffolded by religion — is to challenge the progress we’ve made as a species as progress at all.

They have even built up anti-bodies to protect their CIS, in the form of conspiracy theories, social media and, of course, religious idolatry. Even the notion of intellect has become a criticism of our elected officials. Why conspiracy theories on coronavirus have spread so quickly - Vox

It’s difficult to lay this at the feet of anyone but those on the political right. Consider: Anti-vaxxers, flat-Earthers, climate deniers, creationists — all are branches under the Republican umbrella. Name one anti-intellectual theory that does not belong to the right, which has somehow turned science into an ideology. Even in the midst of a global pandemic, protective masks have become a political statement. Is it any wonder the U.S. has nearly triple the coronavirus deaths of any country on the planet?

Now consider the most renown mouthpieces of the dimwitted, which have overtaken the helm of the GOP: Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Pat Robertson. Republicans began priming the dummy pump decades ago (remember when Ronald Reagan was largely dismissed as the bubble-headed co-star opposite a chimp in Bedtime for Bonzo?). GOP strategists struck electoral gold in that mine shaft, and increasingly fracked the political landscape with the likes of George W., Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin, Ben Carson, and on and on and on andonandonandon. They became the party too dumb to fail. Trump-Coalition-short.jpg Trump coalition - short list http://www ...

Even their media outlets have cornered the market on stupidity: Breitbart, The Sinclair Group, Fox News, not to mention the blogs, radio talk shows and news hours of the cognitively-challenged (Jeanine Pirro, anyone?). Their latest darling is Newsmax, which landed a Trump interview recently thanks to investigative gumshoe and cockholster Sean Spicer. Sean Spicer makes his 'Dancing with the Stars' debut

In conservatives’ defense, some have seen the mauling that has happened within the ranks. Washington Post columnist George Will made news — and enemies — for a recent piece in which he wrote that “Trump must be removed. So must his congressional enablers.” (By the way, George, your invitation to the National Prayer Breakfast must have gotten lost in the mail.) Conservative columnist George Will wins over liberals with ...

Unfortunately, Will & Co. have run smack-dab into The iPhone Paradox, which confounds at least 45% of the nation.

The iPhone Paradox is based loosely on Fermi’s Paradox, which posits that, given the billions of stars similar to the sun in our galaxy alone, we should have found intelligent life — or any life — somewhere in the universe. Yet that cupboard remains bare. The Fermi Paradox - Wait But Why

Similarly, we have managed to fit enough computing power (more than was aboard the Apollo 11 moon landing) into a candy bar-sized gadget to illuminate our brains to enlightenment. Yet we still doubt the credibility of scientists on everything from the Earth’s shape to its temperature — as we reach for an iPhone to give us our global positioning to find grandma’s house.

All that knowledge, at our fingertips. Yet it sits untouched in our back pocket.

Perhaps cognitive thinking is like alien life. We don’t really act like we’re interested in finding it. And if we’re not interested, why would it be interested in finding us?

To Boldly Go

Elon Musk: SpaceX makes investors believe Tesla will be a success ...

In honor of SpaceX’s successful launch this weekend, we offer FactSlaps, Orbital Edition:

You can’t cry on space because your tears won’t ever fall.
According to astronauts, space smells like seared steak, hot metal and welding fumes.
In 1962, the U.S. blew up a hydrogen bomb in space that was 100 times more powerful than Hiroshima.
Astronauts on the International Space Station witness around 15 sunrises and 15 sunsets every day.
The International Space Station is the most expensive object ever built, at $150 billion.
A sample of Sir Isaac Newton’s apple tree was sent into space to ‘defy gravity.’
In 1977, we received a signal from deep space that lasted 72 seconds. We still don’t know how or where it came from.
The International Space Station is as roomy as a five-bedroom house and travels at 17,500 mph.
Most astronauts become two inches taller in space.
There is a water reservoir floating in space that is equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the world’s ocean.