Cartoon Round Up

Veterinary Highlights: AAHA Puts An End To The Anesthesia-Free Dental Cleaning Dilemma?

According to the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) updated guidelines, anesthesia is necessary for all dental procedures, including cleaning.

New guidelines recommend regular examinations and dental cleanings under general anesthesia for all adult dogs.

These cleanings should take place annually starting at one year for cats and small-breed dogs, and at two years of age for larger-breed dogs.

Anesthesia-free dental cleanings sound like an attractive option. But are they a good choice?

Making teeth look good does not equal keeping them healthy.

There are numerous issues with such cosmetic approach, including your dogs well-being.

Anesthesia with intubation is necessary to remove plaque and tartar from the entire tooth, at least 60 percent of which is under the gum line, AAHA states in the release.

General anesthesia with intubation also facilitates pain-free probing of each tooth and provides the required immobilization necessary to take intraoral dental films. Without anesthesia, a veterinary professional can only partially clean the exposed crown, which is more cosmetic than therapeutic.

Source article:
Anesthesia Mandated for Dental Procedures by Leading Veterinary Organization, AAHA

Further reading:
AAHA Dental Care Guidelines
AAHA mandates dental anesthesia, intubation for accredited veterinary hospitals
Anesthesia-Free Dental Cleaning

Tonight's Shark Tank Show

One of the Best Shark Tank Episodes #402 Update

 

Shark Tank Season 4
Week 1
Episode 402

 Tonight's Shark Tank Show is perhaps one of the best episodes any Entrepreneur can learn a great deal from. What does is take to get all 5 Sharks interested in the same product that they all  invest together? How do you have a solid offer from a billionaire Shark and then somehow let him get away? In the featured update also happens to be one of Lori Greiner's simplest, yet one of the most successful product's she has invested in.

Buggy Beds

The Buggy Beds Bug Traps is a perfect example of what "to do" if you want to make a successful deal on the Shark Tank.  Maria Curcio and business partner Veronica Periongo came in prepared as anyone and managed to get all 5 Sharks interested in the bug trap business. Having already turned down a $5 million dollar offer, Maria and Veronica were convinced they had a true winner on their hands and wern't interested in negotiating as much as the Sharks would have liked them to. Staying calm, cool and collective, the pair made shark Tank History when they successfully secured a deal with all 5 Sharks who each have a 5 % stake in this multi-million dollar business.

Coat Chex

Read More Here-->>>

The Middle East's Peace of the Grave

By Alan Caruba

After both great wars of the last century nations got together to create organizations that would ensure that large conflicts would not occur again.

After World War I, it was the League of Nations. When Woodrow Wilson (who was reelected in 1916 after promising to keep the U.S. out of the war in Europe) tried to get the U.S. to sign on, membership in the League was rejected by Congress in the interest of retaining our national sovereignty. The Versailles Treaty that followed the defeat of Germany also set in motion all the elements of that led to World War II and the creation of colonies, new nation-states, in the Middle East by the French and British after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Even as World War II was winding down, Franklin D. Roosevelt had work begun on the creation of the United Nations.

In 2007, in response to a question from New York Times’ editors, then Senator Barack Obama explained how he would resolve the problems in Syria. “I would meet directly with Syrian leaders. We would engage in a level of aggressive personal diplomacy in which a whole host of issues are on the table…Iran and Syria would start changing their behavior if they started seeing that they had some incentives to do so, but right now the only incentive that exists is our president (Bush) suggesting that if you do what we tell you, we may not blow you up.” 

“My belief about the regional powers in the Middle East is that they don’t respond well to that kind of bluster. They haven’t in the past, there’s no reason to think they will in the future.”

So, naturally, the President is currently threatening Syria’s Bashar al-Assad with military action and, having decided to let Congress determine whether he should be granted permission to proceed, may be deterred if it votes to deny it.

George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 after putting together a “coalition of the willing” and going to the United Nations to secure a resolution permitting that action. His Secretary of State, Colin Powell, made a presentation to the Security Council in which he presented proof that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Obama’s Secretary of State has argued forcefully for U.S. intervention in Syria to rid the nation of Assad, but America currently has no international support, including longtime ally Great Britain.

Bush’s intervention in Iraq, March 2003 to April 2009, led to casualties whose estimates range from 110,600 by the Associated Press to more than a million by the Opinion Research Business Survey. The intervention in Libya in 2011 had estimates of casualties of protesters, armed belligerents, and civilians ranging from 2,000 to 30,000.

Even a “limited” military action in Syria would inflict more casualties, adding to the 100,000 that Assad has already slaughtered and is likely to expand the war into Lebanon, home to Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, as well as Jordan and possibly Turkey. Americans are telling their representatives in Congress not to engage our military.

Writing in The Weekly Standard on September 6, Reuel Marc Gherecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a contributing editor, dissected the problems posed by Syria and Iran, along with al Qaeda. “When it comes to the Middle East, Obama’s presidency has largely been predicated on two ideas: A hegemonic America is a bad thing, and the second Iraq war was a serious mistake.”

“Time has been unkind to Obama,” said Gherecht. “The withdrawal from Iraq has not left that country better off…al Qaeda now boasts, along with Iran and its militant Iraqi allies, that it drove the Americans out of the country.” Hardly a week has gone by since American military forces left that bombs by Sunni militants have not killed Shiite Iraqis.

In Syria, as Assad’s forces have been unable to quell the rebellion, he has turned to the use of poison gas.

In Egypt, Obama originally backed the Muslim Brotherhood’s overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and in Syria in August 2011 he had told Assad he had to go. It took action by the Egyptian military to remove the government led by the Muslim Brotherhood. Libya remains in a chaotic state between its tribal factions. The civil war in Syria rages on.

“Barack Obama,” says Gherecht, “is now the American everyone in the region loves to hate.”

Worse than that, warning of the need to intercede in Syria, he said “That so many in the West don’t see this, and are unwilling to go to war to stop such an atrocity—to send a clear signal to tyrants elsewhere—only shows how far we’ve come since 9/11. The Middle East’s power politics have again, hit us head on. We are, perhaps, too ‘fatigued’ this time round for the challenge.”

The only peace in the Middle East is the peace of the grave and the region threatens to erupt into a wider conflagration in much the same way World War II followed in the wake of the World War I.

International organizations, the United Nations, the European Union, NATO, the Arab League, and others have proven themselves incapable of a diplomatic resolution to the self-interest of Middle East dictators and monarchies, and the growing tide of Islamic fanaticism.

Barack Obama, with his pathological narcissism, believed that his Muslim upbringing and his Marxist ideology held the key to bringing peace to the Middle East. He has been proven wrong in the same way his domestic policies are bankrupting America and his foreign policies are dragging it into a war he desperately wanted to avoid and now feels compelled to pursue.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

Creative Solutions And An Incidental Product Review

For her unhappy foot, Cookie got antibiotics and we were to do 20 minute foot soaks in Epsom salt, twice a day.

Sometimes things are easier said than done.

Administering the medication was easy, Cookie does accept pills hidden in food. We utilize the method recommended by Dr. Marty Becker, of using three treats, with only the middle one hiding the pill. Cheese did the job just fine and the whole experience was enjoyed.

With the footsie soaks, though, it was not such easy going.

Cookie, half-wild girl she is, has trouble with some of the things civilization brings, such as foot soaks.

First we tried putting her foot into the Epsom salt solution in a jar. Fail. Cookie was quite freaked by that idea.

Then we tried applying a poultice with  Epsom salt paste in a freezer bag. Fail. This lasted a bit longer, but all in all about one minute.

What were we to do?

Doing it in the tub would probably work fine, except she's never seen a bath tub, never mind getting into one. And because we do want to be able to give her a bath when she needed in the future, we wanted her to get used to that idea slowly, so it could be a positive experience. Kiddie pool probably wouldn't be any different. We considered all kinds of ideas.

We didn't want to freak Cookie out too much, being new to our family and urban living but we did want to take care of the foot.

We figured that maybe if we just drenched the foot with the solution for 20 minutes, she might be ok with that and perhaps this would do the job. We knew that Cookie didn't mind having her foot sprayed, as we did try using DermaCool on it the first day.

After confirming with our vet that this should do, we needed to figure out how exactly we'd do this.

A bunch of towels to soak up the excess liquid?

Then I got the bright idea that maybe we could use the puppy pee pads instead.

We could have just done it outside but we needed to be able to be comfortable enough to do this for the whole 20 minutes. Indoors seemed like a more sensible option. So the decision has been made to try to work with the pee pads and see how it works.

They were nice enough at the pet store to sell us individual pieces, as we didn't need the whole huge package. The product we got is called Puddles Puppy Pads.

I can't really tell whether they are better than other similar products, as we never use any of these for their intended purpose and until now for anything else either.

But I can tell you that the amount of fluid these pads can hold is enormous.

The whole idea worked well and we were able to drench Cookie's foot for almost the 20 minutes without getting anything wet. The pads held their own. And we could take care of Cookie's foot without freaking her out.

Yay for creative thinking and puppy pee pads.

***

Related articles:
From The End Of A Lead Line To Casa Jasmine: Meet Cookie, Our New Adoptee
And So It Begins Again(?) Our First Health-Related Heart Attack With Cookie 
I Didn't Know I Could Fly: Why Cookie Wears A Harness Instead Of A Collar
C.E.T. Oral Hygiene Chews For Dogs CAN Be A Choking Hazzard 
Our First Health-Related Heart Attack With Cookie: The Knee Or The Foot? 

Will Australians Vote to End the Carbon Tax?

By Alan Caruba

There’s an election in Australia on Saturday, September 7, and while the economy is of the greatest concern, it is a carbon tax that has driven up costs and put businesses into closure that is the issue that will determine the outcome. Meanwhile, in the U.S., imposing a carbon tax remains a top priority of the Obama administration.

A carbon tax is really a tax on the use of energy. Diehard environmentalists oppose any form of energy use. The code words are “greenhouse gas emissions”, meaning carbon dioxide (CO2) that the Greens constantly tell us will cause the Earth’s temperature to rise, but the Earth is not cooperating, having been in a natural cooling cycle going on 17 years now. Nor are the apocalyptic predictions about CO2 anything more than lies given the fact that it is a minimal element of the Earth’s atmosphere. That said, without it, all life on Earth would die because all vegetation depends on it.

In “Taxing Air: Facts and Fallacies About Climate Change”, Bob Carter and colleagues dismember green claims and, addressing Australia’s carbon tax, note that “price increases will cascade through the economy, and for most of them no compensation will be proposed. At the bottom of the pile, to whom the accrued costs will be passed, lies the squashed citizen and consumer.”  Those citizens will be voting on Saturday.

As an article in The Guardian, a British daily, noted, a conservative coalition led by Tony Abbott is likely to win, ending six years of Labor (socialist) rule that included a battle within the Labor party for its leadership, the result of its having passed a carbon tax after the then-Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, had promised not to impose it. Kevin Rudd challenged and replaced her. Now he and the Labor party are expected to be defeated.

“Having built his standing as opposition leader on the contention that Labor’s carbon tax would destroy jobs and hurt households,” the Guardian article noted, “Abbott has promised his first legislative act as prime minister will be to repeal it.”

What has occurred in Australia is a case history example of what happens when greens get their way. They always manage to destroy the economy. A recent study of Australia’s carbon tax by the Institute for Energy Research yielded the following findings:

# In the year after Australia’s carbon tax was introduced, household electricity prices rose 15%, including the biggest quarterly increase on record. 

# Currently 19% of the typical household’s electricity bill is due to Australia’s carbon tax and other "green" programs such as a renewable energy mandate.

# The job market had previously been stable, but after Australia’s carbon tax, the number of unemployed workers has risen by more than 10%.

# Because Australia's exports are relatively emissions intensive, the practical result of the Australian carbon tax serves as a tax on exports and import-competing industries.

# Australia’s carbon tax was accompanied by income tax increases for 2.2 million taxpayers.

# Due to fiscal gaps that exist between carbon tax revenues and increased government spending that accompanied the scheme, Australia's budget bottom line will worsen as higher deficits and greater public debt increase.

# Carbon dioxide emissions have actually increased, and will not fall below current levels until 2043, according to the Australian government. 

Viv Forbes, chairman of the Carbon Sense coalition in Australia, an opponent of the carbon tax and other green proposals, says “The growing failure of green energy in Europe should warn Australia to abandon bi-partisan policies dictating targets, mandates and subsidies for ‘green’ energy.”

This mirrors the same problems here in America where billions in loans to so-called green energy companies can be added to the list of Obama administration scandals as one after another went out of business. Solar and wind power is proving to be as great a hoax as “global warming” and a very costly one at that. How long has it being going on? Jimmy Carter had solar panels placed on the roof of the White House. Ronald Reagan had them removed. Barack Obama has had them installed.

Fifteen million registered voters in Australia will go to the polls and render their judgment on September 7. It is a vote that should be reported upon in the United States, but it more likely to be ignored or buried.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

X-Events by John Casti - Book review

X-Events

Complexity Overload and the Collapse of Everything

By: John L. Casti, Ph.D.

Published: March 12, 2012
Format: Paperback, 336 pages
ISBN-10: 0062088297
ISBN-13: 978-0062088291
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks













"X-events of the human - rather than nature-caused - variety are the result of too little understanding chasing too much complexity in our human systems", writes pioneer of complexity science and systems theory, Senior Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, John L. Casti, Ph.D.,in his provocative and thought provoking book X-Events: Complexity Overload and the Collapse of Everything. The author describes the challenge of understanding and evaluating extremes risks to human society due to the increasingly unsustainable complexity of the systems.

John Casti recognizes the inherent fragility of our exponentially growing ever more complex society. For the author, this growing complexity is not only unsustainable, but that the various systems are interlinked and interdependent upon one another. The dependence on ever more technology to maintain the many intertwined systems multiplies their vulnerability to collapse due to some random and unexpected event.

John Casti presents these unexpected and outlier events as very real possibilities that would have a profound effect on civilization and on humanity itself. The author also points out that these unusual extreme events, that he calls X-events, are not well studied or examined. As a result, John Casti proposes the establishment and development of a the theory or this risk and potential disastrous shock to the systems.

John Casti (photo left) understands that as systems grow in size and complexity, they also become more fragile and vulnerable to collapse. While most people don't consider the possibility of catastrophic disasters, and usually consider technology to be the best solution, John Casti posits that complex technological systems are the problem. Indeed, the author is not describing a localized and readily containable disaster of the type with which people are familiar.

John Casti is providing risk analysis of calamities affecting civilization on a global scale. While each of the potential catastrophic events seems remote in isolation, when taken together and considered as interlinked components of an overall system, the risk factor grows exponentially. The author points out that to compensate for systemic flaws and weaknesses, the usual prescription is to apply more technological solutions, and increasing the susceptibility to planet wide disaster even more.

John Casti proposes the following catastrophic disaster scenarios which could set back human civilization by centuries or even by millennia. None of the possibilities are impossible or flights of fancy. All are very real possibilities, with the only difference being in their level of probability. The disaster scenarios are as follows:

* A long-term, widespread failure of the internet
* Breakdown of the global food supply system
* Continent-wide electromagnetic pulse destroys electronics
* A collapse of globalization
* Destruction of Earth through the creation of exotic particles
* Destabilization of the nuclear landscape
* Drying up of world oil supplies
* A global disease pandemic
* Failure of the electrical power grid and clean water supply
* Intelligent robots overthrow humanity
* Global deflation and collapse of world financial markets

For me, the power of the book is how John Casti combines a complete overview of the susceptibility of the many global systems, with a series of very credible scenarios that could set back human civilization for at least many decades. The author provides a powerful wake up call for those who believe that our complex and interconnected worldwide systems are safe from catastrophe. In fact, the author provides compelling evidence that this very complexity, that was designed and created to avoid system wide failure, is what makes the systems vulnerable in the first place.

John Casti doesn't go the doom and gloom route, that many other books do in the apocalyptic genre, despite his warnings of potential systemic failure. The author is not trying to scare people. He is seeking ideas and solutions to the challenges faced by an ever more complex set of systems. The primary goal of the book is to discover new ways of assessing and evaluating risk in areas where statistical analysis and probability theory are inadequate. By examining these possibilities, in a realistic and systems based format, the author creates a new field of study in the form of X-events theory.

I highly recommend the real world focused and systems analysis based book X-Events: Complexity Overload and the Collapse of Everything by John Casti, to any business leaders, global theorists, political leaders, public policy makers, engineers, scientists, academics, environmentalists, and anyone else seeking a clear and concise assessment of the risks inherent in the complexity of modern systems. This book will guide you toward realistic analyses of risk and risk management, and some real solutions to those challenges as well.