Eideard

Refrigerator magnets
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Anticipating California voters will back a November ballot measure to legalize casual marijuana use, officials in Oakland have approved two tax rates on pot sales in their city, already a hub of the state’s medicinal marijuana scene.

Oakland’s city council…approved the rates — a 5 percent gross receipts tax on licensed marijuana growers and on businesses selling marijuana for medical purposes, and a 10 percent rate on sales of marijuana used for recreational purposes.

California voters in 1996 approved a measure allowing marijuana use for medical purposes and would legalize its recreational use if they approve Proposition 19 in November.

The measure would allow marijuana possession for personal use and would authorize local governments to issue permits for pot production and sales and to tax it under state law. Selling marijuana would remain illegal under federal law…

Federal authorities have not aggressively interfered with sales of medicinal marijuana sales in California.

Cripes. I’ll bet that even bible-thumper/stoners living in Oakland will vote for Prop 19. Sooner or later, enlightened self-interest has to overcome hypocrisy.

Only the “saved” who want to stick with alcohol for their highs and resent anyone having alternatives will fight to jail people for possession.

Ask Becks!

Odd things are happening in women’s bras. In recent years, the average British bra size has jumped from 34B to 36D, which means that while women’s backs have grown one size, breasts have jumped up two. Many department stores have increased the range of cup sizes on offer to meet the ballooning demand. In 2007 Marks & Spencer introduced the J cup. Earlier this year, Selfridges began stocking a K cup range, and its sales of D to G cups have risen by 50% year-on-year since 2005. Last week, Debenhams started stocking KK bras, which were previously only available in specialist stores.

In a country where one in three women is overweight, you’d think there was a simple, fat-related reason for this, but obesity alone doesn’t explain the jump in cup size, nor the biggest growth area in bra sales: smaller back size and bigger cup size. Judging by recent underwear figures, there are more slimmer women with larger boobs than ever before. Women are happy about this. Men are happy about this. But no one seems happy to explain why this is happening.

Do you know how to work out a bra size? As roughly 50% of the British population wear them, you’d have thought most of them would have an idea. But though a 2009 survey found that the average British woman owns 16 bras at any one time and buys four every year, fitting them is a surprisingly tricky activity. The traditional method reads like an A-level algebra problem. You take a tape measure and wrap it round your chest at the lowest point where a bra sits. You record this figure in inches. You add four to this measurement if the number is even, five if it’s odd – and the resultant number is your band size. Then you wrap the tape round again and measure the fullest part of the actual breasts. Next you subtract the band size from breast size to find your cup size. If the numbers are the same, you’re an A cup. If there’s an inch difference, you’re a B; two and you need a C cup and so on. Alternatively, and many bra experts say more accurately, you can weigh your breasts by dunking them into a full bowl of water and measuring the displaced liquid, with 1 litre of water equalling 1kg. It’s accurate but useless. You can do precisely nothing with this information, as no bra manufacturer measures boobs by the pound.

Unsurprisingly, as no one enjoys maths or physics homework, the modern way to find the correct fit is to go to a shop and get someone else to do it for you. Egged on by TV stylists, such as Gok Wan and Trinny and Susannah, who’ve long been rhapsodising over the merits of a well-fitted bra and the wonders they work on your shape and posture, more and more women are doing this. Previously they could go a lifetime buying new bras by guessing or simply choosing the size they’d always worn. They made do. But trained fitters can now be found in almost every lingerie department; instead of relying on water or tape they add an element of mystique to this already complicated process. Fitters are like boob whisperers, their pronouncements made on look and feel as well as measuring…

RTFA. Longish, interesting

Face it – everyone is interested in boobs one way or another, male or female, old or young. Even a few surprises.

You must have some quick and easy [or complex] tomato recipes.

Sharing is OK.

BTW – busy little bees in Argentina produce the most honey for export in the world
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The number of domesticated bees is on the rise worldwide despite declining numbers of wild honey bees in the United States and Europe.

“The honey bee decline observed in the USA and in other European countries including Great Britain, which has been attributed in part to parasitic mites and more recently to colony collapse disorder, could be misguiding us to think that this is a global phenomenon,” said Marcelo Aizen of Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Argentina.

“We found here that is not the case.”

He is one of the co-authors of a study, published in the US magazine Current Biology, which analyzed data from the Food and Agriculture Organization on the number of domesticated bee hives to examine whether we are heading for a world pollination crisis.

Researchers found that commercial domesticated bee hives have increased 45 percent in the past 50 years, to match growing demand for honey among a growing human population, but not necessarily for pollination purposes.

Most large farming operations for corn and rice do not depend on pollination by bees, the study noted. But demand for other popular crops such as fruit and nuts, which do depend on pollination by bees and other insects, has tripled in the past half century, raising doubts that there are enough insects to do the task.

These include such fruits as mangoes, cherries, plums and raspberries which are now found on almost all supermarket shelves…

An increased demand for agricultural land could also speed up the destruction of habitats that support hundreds or thousands of species of wild pollinators, which would in turn cause a drop in crop yield, he warned.

You have to give some concern to the extraordinary level of industrial pollution from the U.S. straight through Europe. The former Soviet Union was so huge the rural gaps may be large enough to offer some mediation. I tend not to accuse insecticide abuse – as reprehensible and needless as it may be – because I think that special chemical dependency is now global.