In November 2011, after received mounting complaints from pet owners who claimed their dogs had died after eating chicken jerky treats made in China, the FDA issued a cautionary update on dried chicken jerky, tenders, strips and treats made for dogs.

While the FDA investigated these complaints, it advised consumers on August 15 to feed their pets chicken jerky products only occasionally and in small quantities. Though 1000 dogs sickened or died, the agency failed to cite any specific brands of pet treats to avoid. NBC News was less bashful and announced the major brands that were tied to the complaints. Top of the list was Nestle Purina which was responsible for more than half of the FDA’s 22 “Priority 1” cases with its’ Waggin’ Train and Canyon Creek Ranch jerky treats that were actually manufactured by JOC Great Wall Corp. Ltd. of Nanjing, China.  (Priority 1 cases involve animals younger than 11 with documented illnesses.) Also named was the Del Monte Corp with three Priority Ones — dogs that had consumed their Milo’s Kitchen Home-style Dog Treats, also produced in China

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Want to know which seats on a plane are safest in the event of (eek) a crash? Me too. In answer to these queries, producers of a TV special program in the UK outfitted a 727 with crash test dummies, cameras and sensors and crashed the airplane in Mexico’s Sonoran Desert (see video).

The result? Things didn’t turn out so hot for first-class. The front of the plane hit with a force of 12G that ripped off the cabin front along with the first 11 rows of seats usually reserved for first-class and business-class. The rear section hit the ground with only 6G. Upshot – none of the first class passengers would have walked away. Seventy eight per cent of passengers seated further back, however, would have survived, with chances being better the further back in economy seats they sat.

A dummy in “brace” position wearing a seat belt fared best and survived the impact. Another dummy wearing a seat belt but not in the brace position would have suffered traumatic head injuries. And a third dummy minus the seat belt AND brace position would have been out of luck and died.

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First, do you know how many calories you should be consuming each day to maintain a healthy weight? According to the CDC, the normal weight for a 5’ 4″ female, depending on activity level, is between 108 and 145 lb. The Mayo Clinic calculates a 126-lb. woman should be eating about 1850 calories a day.  A 5’ 11″ male, weighing an average of 156 lb. should be putting away about 2300 calories.

Now, enter McDonald’s and their new national policy of listing calorie counts on their menus and menu boards. Surprisingly, the McDonald’s item with the highest amount of calories is not a burger. It’s a morning meal called Big Breakfast with Hotcakes (including large size biscuit) that contains a startling 1150 calories. If that Big Breakfast was polished off by our 126 lb. female, she would have wiped out more than half of her daily calorie allowance. Which means if she eats over 700 calories for the rest of the day, she’ll be stepping onto that rocky road leading more and more Americans to Fatland.

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Over the years I’ve traveled back and forth between self-employment and salaried jobs. Whenever I switched my self-employment hat for my nine to five job hat, I could count on eight definite advantages:

1. A salaried job meant a ringing alarm clock that couldn’t be ignored, which meant no more staying up half the night to watch movies or play computer games or check twitter or just generally fool around. Which further meant trading in bleary, black panda eyes for clear, fully awake, raring to go eyes. AND the gift of pleasant walks to work in the fresh morning air.
2. A job meant ditching baggy, scruffy, totally disreputable around-the-house duds that could double as dust rags for spiffy, au courant office outfits that would be a credit to any organization or mom.
3. And speaking of making moms proud, swapping a hanging-around-the-house-all-day work pattern for a straight job meant no more excuses for putting off showers and baths or forgetting to shampoo hair.
4. A job meant freedom from countless temptations lurking in the kitchen — those hourly snacks that “fueled” our work: cookies to energize, ice cream to refresh, coffee and tea and soda to perk things up. With the supply lines cut, excess pounds piled on during self-employment food binges would soon melt away.
5. A job meant paying close attention to personal grooming again. As in nails that didn’t resemble Howard Hugh’s late-life, jagged claws, hair that was cut more than twice a year, shoes that were polished and didn’t look as though they’d slogged through the Gobi.
6. A job meant patiently listening to other opinions, no matter how dopey. It meant compromising, cooperating and accepting (gasp) criticisms from colleagues. No longer being captain of the ship could be a good thing too. It meant the sharing of responsibilities that could be a burden for the self-employed to shoulder alone.
7. A salaried job meant getting out in the world and interacting with far more people. It meant tuning into what was happening on a wider scale, learning new stuff, stretching.
8. Happily there was lots more money to fling around too. Yes, extravagance could be fun. And, also — wasn’t it grand — there were no more worries about where that next buck was coming from.

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Based on completely unscientific polls and research, here are ten reasons why adults love Halloween to the tune of spending 80 billion dollars yearly:

1. Sex (from men’s angle). The big interest for men on Halloween seems to revolve around female costumes. Getting downright droolly on the Internet, one male commented he liked Halloween because he liked French maids and nurses in miniskirts. Another fellow chimed in with a list of HIS favorite female rigs which included “Hookers, Little Red Riding Hood, Catholic School girls, Cat-women, Wonder Women, Police women, Playboy bunnies, Elviras, Cheerleaders (oh man, those pom-poms).”
2. Sex (from women’s angle). Contrary to our more modest past, women’s Halloween costumes now require ultra push-up bras, mini skirts, fishnet stockings and form fitting spandex. “Hot” and “sexy” describe today’s most popular female costumes.
3. Escapism. For those trapped in rigid schedules and mundane lives, masks and costumes allow flights into scary, distant, exciting worlds normally only dreamed about.
4. Nostalgia. Decorating pumpkins and houses and handing out candy to cute little witches, princess, pirates and cowboys invokes memories of earlier Halloweens in  freer, more innocent times.
5. Fun. Halloween allows people to drop their everyday, controlled demeanor and act as weird or as goofy or as totally nut-so as they want without restraint or criticism.
6. An Affinity with the dark side. Eric Wilson, author of “Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck: Why We Can’t Look Away,” says that humans have a fascination with the macabre — with blood and vampires and gore and ghouls and ghosts. Halloween puts them in touch with their inner monsters.
7. No relatives. Unlike Christmas and Thanksgiving, Halloween festivities don’t include relatives. People can drink and party without stress or long-simmering resentments popping up.
8. No cooking. Pretty much in line with #7. With the added attraction of cooks being freed from hot kitchens and preparing meals that will be unmercifully critiqued and compared to prior family shindigs
9. Fascination with the supernatural. Two out of three Halloween lovers not only believe in ghosts, but 33% say they have actually encountered one. And 28% believe people can put curses on others that will be successful. (Voodoo dolls and pins anyone?)
10. The final festival of autumn. As one forum reader wrote, Halloween is the last refuge of childhood before the darkness of winter.

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At last — the weekend! Relaxed in your comfiest togs, you’re stretched out on the couch, feet up, with a great movie to watch and a big bag of buttery popcorn popping in the microwave. Bliss, right? Wrong. There’s trouble steaming in that popcorn bag if it contains an artificial butter called diacetyl, a chemical flavoring agent that imparts a buttery flavor to packaged popcorn. This fake butter has just cost three companies $7.2 million, the amount a jury awarded to 59-year old Wayne Watson who contracted bronchiolitis obliterans, a serious lung disease (AKA popcorn lung) after eating 2 bags of microwave popcorn every day for 10 years. Or to be more precise, after innocently INHALING the warm buttery vapors escaping his newly opened popcorn bags.

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On New York City streets, enterprising musicians, dancers and artists have always been able to make a quick buck by showing off their stuff to passing pedestrians. But what if you want to make some fast money and your talents and training are limited? What to do?

Well, if you follow the resourceful young man here, you get yourself two tree branches, attach some string in a triangular shape and cart yourself and a pail of soapy water to some busy city spot with tons of foot traffic. (Like here, in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art just before Sunday closing time). There, wearing a snappy outfit (when’s the last time you saw knickers with striped socks?) you dip your sticks in the suds and proceed to create gigantic bubbles with wondrous, ever-changing shapes and colors.

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This ski season, the snow making machines at Arizona Snowbowl Resort will be spraying treated wastewater (100% sewage effluent) on their slopes to make “snow.” The United States Forest Service approved the plan in 2005, but lawsuits brought by environmentalists and resident Indian tribes delayed its implementation until February of this year when a federal appeals court ruled in its favor. Though an appeal is still pending, that hasn’t stopped the government and Snowbowl from chopping down trees and laying pipe along the 15 mile sewer-water route up the mountain.

Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity, an appeal plaintiff, called the plan,  “a disaster, culturally and environmentally.” His main worries are the impact on the mountain’s unique alpine tundra and human health should any tumbling skiers ingest some of the sewage “snow.”

Indians from 12 tribes say the project will ruin a mountain they consider sacred ground, a place where they pray, conduct ceremonies and gather herbs, many for medicinal purposes. Even with their plan approval, the Forest Service acknowledges “the tribal perspective of the effects of ‘scarring’ on the sacred landscape and the associated spiritual and cultural impacts may in fact be considered irreversible in nature.”

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Every time I turned around last week, there was another bride sailing into Central Park trailed by one, two or even three wedding photographers.

Here, the bridal party poses in front of Bethesda Fountain with its brilliant backdrop of autumn foliage. This practical bride is wearing a warm jacket, unlike all the others I saw who braved cold temps in bare shoulders while park goers were bundled to the ears.

Echoing what seems to be a more casual wedding theme these days, all the males in her bridal party sported athletic shoes.

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Left: Opera exterior and Interior. Right: Unicat exterior, interior

With winter closing in, it will soon be time to start dreaming about warm summer days and driving off into idyllic landscapes, maybe in your very own Recreational Vehicle. If you’re an American dreamer, you will probably expect certain civilized amenities in those RVs to coexist with your forays into the rustic life

This CNBC slide collection of extreme, off the beaten track RVs starts with the smallest vehicle and soars into grand, opulent spaces that dwarf my apartment.

The smallest, coolest, most inventive RV is the Opera, a compact trailer that amazingly turns into a “mini-Sydney Opera House.” Created in the Netherlands, It features heat, a teak veranda, hot running water, a fridge, ceramic toilet and low-energy LED lighting.

Praised in the international press, Its unique design has won numerous awards. Perhaps, however, the striking design was too ahead of its time or priced too low at $41,165, because the Opera could not sustain a profit and production was halted in April.

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