Rose petal-covered road in Pakistan

The petals have been spread out to dry.  Wow.

Photo credit AP, via The Telegraph's Pictures of the Day.

"Teacup dogs"

Found while writing that post about white tigers, but I didn't want to blog too many depressing things in one day.  I had not heard of these dogs before (though our household does have one tiny "runt" cat.

The word "Teacup" has been used to merely describe the size of a puppy, meaning it is very small and will probably be under the standard size which is 4 to 7 pounds for the Toy Group, Yorkshire Terrier breed. We cannot imagine anyone wanting anything smaller than that! Their bones are VERY fragile and can be broken by jumping off of a couch, falling off of a bed, being stepped on or worse.

Many breeders, while tacking a whooping price on a puppy, "claim" to breed so called "teacups" as if they were a breed all their own. Don't be fooled! They are NOT a breed of their own. If a breeder says they specialize in "teacups" RUN, RUN, RUN for the hills! Most "TEACUP" puppies are in reality, a premature puppy.

Most females are bred on the ninth through the fifteenth day of their heat cycles. Eggs can be fertilized for up to 72 hours after any of these breedings. Therefore, it is possible to have puppies conceived up to a week or so younger than the puppies first conceived in a litter. However, when the first puppies conceived are mature and ready to be born, labor starts and all the puppies will be born, no matter when they were fertilized.

Some of the problems that may be encountered are both genetic and congenital in these tiny babies and the list is a long one...

There is no such thing as a "tea cup" Yorkshire Terrier, Maltese, Poodle, or any other breed for that matter. They simply do not exist. "Tea-cup" is just a marketing ploy given by unethical and unscrupulous breeders to drive up the price of their puppies!

So called "Teacups" fetch anything from $1000 to $10,000! This is ridiculous and shameful! There are a lot of chronically, unhealthy puppies because unscrupulous breeders and puppy mills are inbreeding... They take the little teeny, tiny Yorkies and they breed 2 1/2 pounders with 3 pounders ... well, they’re playing with genetics. You should NEVER breed a female of any breed less than 5 pounds.

PLEASE educate yourselves before buying a tiny puppy whether it is a Yorkie or any other breed. You could be in for months or years of heartbreak not to mention staggering veterinarian bills!

More information at Bark Rescue.

p.s. - if you Google teacup puppies for sale, you get over a half-million hits...

Watch out if your daddy likes physics...

From the weekly compilation of cartoons at The New Yorker.

Japanese tsunami debris heading toward the United States

The image above shows the calculated distribution of debris two years from now; a series of six images are at Good's environmental blog.  The International Pacific Research Center offers a nice animation of the process.

What might be in the debris?  How about strongboxes full of money?

Safes are washing up along the tsunami-battered coast, and police are trying to find their owners — a unique problem in a country where many people, especially the elderly, still stash their cash at home. By one estimate, some $350 billion worth of yen doesn’t circulate...

As workers and residents pick through the wreckage, they are increasingly stumbling upon cash and locked safes... Goto couldn’t specify how many safes his department has collected so far, saying only that there were “several hundreds” with more coming in every day.

World military expenditure, 2010

In all of the posturing and arguing about American "bankruptcy" and the need for economic restraint and the austerity and cutting the budget, I have yet to hear any leader in either party give one single speech about trimming military expenditures.

Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, via The Dish.

World military expenditure is estimated to have been $1630 billion in 2010, an increase of 1.3 per cent in real terms. This represents the slowest annual rate of increase since the surge in global military expenditure that began after 2001. Between 2001 and 2009, the annual increase averaged 5.1 per cent in real terms.

The increase in 2010 is almost entirely down to the United States, which accounted for $19.6 billion of the $20.6 billion real-terms increase. Excluding the USA, the total in the ‘rest of the world’ barely changed in 2010, increasing by a statistically insignificant 0.1 per cent...

Even in the face of efforts to bring down the soaring US budget deficit, military spending continues to receive privileged treatment. President Obama’s FY2012 budget announced a 5-year freeze on non-security-related discretionary expenditure, but military spending, along with other security spending such as intelligence and Homeland Security is exempt.

Reptile trafficking

Acting on a tip-off, police intercepted the bus in a northern province bound for Buenos Aires... "A passenger came onboard with 40 snakes, plus what he had in the boxes" in the bus luggage hold, said ranger Daniel Chersich, warden of Santa Fe province... The trafficker had loaded them with 444 boas, vipers and other snakes; 186 endangered tortoises; 40 lizards, and an armadillo. The smuggler, who was arrested, boarded the bus in Santiago del Estero, where he had spent three months trapping various species in the bush with the intent of selling them.

Source, via Nothing To Do With Arbroath.

Skyscrapers reach above the clouds

Not Seattle.  Not San Francisco.  Answer in the comments or at the photo source.

Photo credit trexcali, via Reddit.