Marijuana In Colorado, An Alternative to Milk, and One More Thing Not To Do With Raisins

Today I Learned:
1) ...a couple of facts about the marijuana industry in Colorado. Firstly, there are some interesting conflicts between Colorado law (which allows the growth and sale of marijuana) and federal law (which prohibits it). One of the effects of this is that national banks generally won't touch marijuana sales, which means that the industry is currently a cash-only business, which has led to a large influx of cash (as in physical bills) to the state.

One unfortunate effect of the industry is that a ton of warehouses have opened up for growing the stuff, which has spiked energy demand and screwed over Colorado's plans to get some percentage of their energy budget from renewable resources. Instead of powering the state off of solar energy, Colorado uses more fossil fuels to *produce* solar energy for a rather different green industry.

2) A very tasty alternative to milk in ceral is a bowl of microwaved frozen blueberries.

3) Apparently a pretty common accident among young children is for them to stick raisins up their nose, which over the course of hours or days swell to something more like the size of a grape and get stuck. I'm not joking.

Also, soaking raisins in warm water does cause them to swell up, but not as quickly as I would have thought. Warm or hot water seems to speed the process considerably. It also works for craisins. Banana chips not so much.