(no subject)

84 today!! And then 70s tomorrow before we drop back down into the low sixties for...wait for it...more rain. *growls* I want summer already! B's not looking forward to it though since he was already sweating this weekend when it was in the 70s and he was in shorts! Mmmm...sometimes it pays to be a woman with a lower core temp.

I really really wanted to clean this weekend, but on saturday I got sucked into watching Rio Bravo. I'm sure I saw it before as a kid, but I didn't remember it much (though I believe I have seen one of the poorer remakes of it since -- and by that I mean the director and John Wayne both got together to remake it twice after the original. Why, I have no clue).

Sunday I finally went to brunch at the organic grocery store w/ B -- he loves it mostly because he gets all the eggs benedict he can eat. I'd have preferred my crabcake salad w/ a side of fried potatoes (sweet and regular!) as usual since there wasn't a ton of stuff that I could risk other than the fruit and the omelets. Ah well, the place does have the Boathouse Nectars so after a few grocery stops I made him go back so I could get some. Of course, I also forgot half the things that I needed while I was at it (oats, coffee filters), but oh well.

I was so tired when we got back that I lounged for a bit before heating something else to eat....not long after I started getting a sinus migraine. I think I need to stop eating the spinach pita pizzas from trader joes. :( As a result, not much got done...and I've managed putting off laundry for like ever....sigh. Late tonight or tomorrow morning it will have to be done finally. My kingdom for my own private washer and dryer.

( oh, shopping trip to the outlet mall )

A world without honey

It's not just the honeybees that are dying

Honeybees are not the only pollinators whose numbers are dropping.Other animals that do this essential job -- non-honeybees, wasps,flies, beetles, birds and bats -- have decreasing populations as well.

This is the first article that indicates that fungal and bacterial loads may be to blame for the colony collapses (the huge mite infection had been blamed in past years). One thing I haven't seen addressed is how long this disorder has been occuring (it only really peaked into the national media a couple of years ago) and whether that can be traced to temperature fluctuations, new technology, or some such. Although, perhaps it has been occuring much longer than anyone realizes on a lower level as I'm not sure exactly what prompted the great africanized bee craze of the 80s off the top of my head. This is very reminiscent of the great DDT disaster of the 60s and 70s for eagles and other predatory birds. However, the agricultural implications for pollinated crops -- including fruits, corn, and nuts -- is much larger. Not to mention the effects up the food chain of things that depend on flies and other insects for food.

One of the keys here is that for insects, we only understand the biology of parasites and infections in one: the drosophila fly. Honeybees and their like are much longer lived that the fruit fly and so one would hope they have a more robust immune system. ( Fruit flies depend mostly on antimicrobial peptides to combat infection long enough for them to reproduce, rather than actually eradicating the infection. )

Like the FDA doesn't have anything better to do..

I found out about this over at Daily Kos -- Apparently the chocolate manufacturing lobby is asking the FDA to let it make chocolate with fats other than cocoa butter. I'm not sure if this is a trans fat thing or what, but gah, NO! (mostly due to my own selfish knowledge that if this happens, there will be even less chocolate that I can eat since I bet I know which fat will get subbed in).

Don't Mess With Our Chocolate

You can go to the above website to register your disapproval with the FDA.