Coffee and Provocation

• Is Your Veterinarian a Black Market Profiteer?  As I have noted in the past, the veterinary business is as crooked as a dog's hind leg, stretching from the manufacturing floor, through pharma sales teams, the AVMA, and straight into your local vet's office. Now some of the stink is coming out in a lawsuit filed by Bayer Animal Health against Lilly's Elanco Animal Health unit.  It turns out that Lilly has been running down Bayer in the form of a ‘Dear Doctor’ letter sent to vets.  The charge in the letter is that Bayer is selling more flea and tick meds directly to retailers in order to bolster their flagging profits. What? Bayer is selling directly to Costco and PETCO and PetSmart!  The horrors!  If people can get flea and tick preventives without an expensive veterinary visit, the entire veterinary dependency model will collapse. Run screaming in a panic!  Aaaaaaaaah!!!!  Of course veterinarians have been ordering skids of the drugs for years and years, tacking on huge profits, and then re-selling the flea and tick meds out the back door to PETCO and Costco and the like. Nothing new there!  Vets have been making a TON of money through such diversions at the expense of both the pharmaceutical companies and pet owners. Bayer's "crime" is to simply drop the charade, cut out the profiteering vets who have never been needed, and start selling their entirely legal product, that does not require a prescription, directly to stores themselves. And who benefits? Why you do, as you no longer need to pay that $80 veterinary fee for a simple tick and flea preventive.
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• Another rumor bites the dust: No, Navy SEAL Dogs Don’t Have Titanium Teeth.
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• A single tabloid newspaper in the UK has said a dog was used in the Bin Laden raid and now everyone else in the media is now repeating this story as if it were Gospel fact. I am a skeptic. That said, "canine commandos" are sometimes used by Special Forces (more pictures here).
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• Ultimate Tool or Expensive P.O.S.?  Pitched as the "Ultimate Survival Tool" the "Crovel" has a army-type folding shovel head on one end, and a crowbar hook on the other, and a whole myriad of tools in between to satisfy all of your shoveling, chopping, prying, hammering, and bottle-opening needs. As an additional bonus, the handle is wrapped in 15 feed of parachute cord in case you need to tie up some poles for a quick survival helter.  The price is $85 for a tool that is not a very good shovel, is not a very good crowbar, is not a very good knife, and is not a very good hammer or even a very good bottle opener. A shovel, a small hatchet and a decent knife will cost you less and do more.  And isn't that true for almost every multi tool?  You want the best multi-tool ever?  Your cell phone.  That's an awesome bit of kit!
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• We Kill all Zombies is our old rule, and it is a rule still in service, but we very much like these "commenting rules" over at the Stone Kettle blog.  "Don't be a dick" pretty much sums it up, I think. 
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• Detroit is a complete basketcase, and it's not just the real estate is it?  No, it turns out it's deeper than that:  Close to half of Detroit can't read!
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• "Puck" the Patterdale terrier got adopted two weeks.  Long may he run.
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• They may not call him "Lord of the Rings," but maybe they should.  Francis Metcalf, an occasional reader of this blog, got a very nice write-up for his dog training work centered on Mondio Ring or French Ring sports (or Belgian Ring sports if you prefer).  Ring is a bit like Schutzhund, but it does not have tracking.  Read the article, which also notes that Saint Rocco is the patron saint of pestilential illness, the falsely imprisoned, and dog trainers.  Perfect!
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• It cost me $85 to fill up my tank this morning.  The lady at the pump, sticker-shocked, asked if I had gone to the bank before coming to the pump. I smiled. "This is the price we pay," I said.  Irritated, she asked, "Price we pay for what?"  She figured I was making some crack about Iraq or Libya or perhaps even about not drilling for oil in Alaska. But I meant it in a larger context: "This is the price we pay for the Next Economy," I said. "This is the price we pay in cash because we did not get the message 40 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 year ago, or even 10 years ago when the Hippies said this stuff was going to run out and we needed to invest in alternative energy. There is no free lunch, no free fuel, and no free entrance to the next economy. This is the price we pay."  She grunted. I am not sure she got it.  It does not matter.  Her price tag for moving to the Next Economy was $92.
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• Part of The Next Economy can be seen in this video of morning rush hour traffic in Utrecht, Netherlands. Ultrecht is a city with a population of 300,000, and one third of all trips are made by bicycle. This video compresses 8 minutes of traffic into 2 minutes.  In the Next Economy we may be thinner with more muscle tone!
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• .Scientists created an all-female lizard species in one cross.  Parthenogenisis is not new, and I've written about it before with fish, lizards, snakes, chickens and turkeys, but now science is getting in on the act, and it turns out it's fairly easy thing to do if you get the rare, but right, players involved.
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• .V.S. Naipal has seven tips for young writers.  They are very good tips.  Another tip:  avoid long paragraphs. Most good writing has paragraphs that are only 1-4 sentences long.
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• Tostoy has 10 rules for life.  They are very good tips. Two more tips from this chair:  1) Follow directions;  2)  Live close to your moral code (and yes, have one).
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