Barks

Dogs and their owners will unleash their inner grooviness Saturday when the 7 th Annual Balboa Barks: A Day of Peace, Love & Canine Companions kicks off in San Diego . The '60s-themed festival, in Balboa Park from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., will include activities, contests and food. Proceeds will benefit Canine Companions for Independence, a nonprofit Oceanside organization that provides assistance dogs to people with disabilities. The event, formerly called "Woofstock,"  will take place at the corner of Park Boulevard and Presidents Way. The entrance fee is $7, with parking free.

It's an environmental as well as a marketing achievement: using 100% agricultural waste to make a top-quality plastic bottle that can then be placed back in the existing recycling system. "It's closing the loop," said Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "It's the beginning of the end for petroleum-based plastic bottles. " PepsiCo announced Tuesday that it had "cracked the code," inventing what it calls the world's first plastic bottle made entirely from plant-based, fully renewable resources.

It's been a big week for glittery, over-the-top and slightly perplexing contests. First the Grammy Awards ceremony, with its requisite preening and prancing and bizarre outfits, then two evenings of the Westminster dog show, which offered more of the same. Not that the Leonberger or Finnish spitz showed up in a giant egg, as Lady Gaga did Sunday night. Nor did fans of the bearded collie, which was among the runners-up for best in show, take to defacing the Wikipedia page of the night's big winner, the Scottish deerhound, as Justin Bieber's fans did to the Esperanza Spalding page when she beat him for best new artist.

Have you ever heard of taking pine bark extract to lower your blood pressure and other risk factors for heart diease ? If not, it’s just as well. A study being published in Tuesday’s edition of Archives of Internal Medicine reports that it doesn’t work. There was reason to be hopeful. Apparently, the extract – derived from the bark of Pinus pinaster trees – contains lots of antioxidants . It's supposed ability to lower blood pressure had “biologic plausibility,” according to the study.

Dire warnings have accompanied the armies of bark beetles that bored their way across the Mountain West in the past decade: Millions of acres had turned into a tinderbox of scraggly, dead trees ready to explode in flames. But scientists are pouring water on that conventional wisdom. A new study in the lodgepole pine forests of the greater Yellowstone region concludes that rather than increasing the wildfire risk, beetle attacks reduce it by thinning tree crowns. "It's really counterintuitive," said University of Wisconsin ecology professor Monica Turner, coauthor of a paper that has been accepted for publication in Ecological Monographs.

Question: I live in the apartment next to a woman who is blind and has a seeing-eye guide dog. It barks for what seems to be hours at a time, especially late at night. I am losing sleep. Our manager says the woman is entitled to have a guide dog. He says he can't do anything about the dog's behavior because he would be sued for discrimination. Don't I have any rights in this situation? Answer: Your manager correctly understands that the fair housing laws protect tenants who have disabilities and who need service animals such as guide dogs to reasonably accommodate their disabilities.

That was some party in the right-field pavilion Saturday night — some 500 dogs in attendance, a minor league stunt in a major league venue. In order to enter the stadium, the dogs had to have proof of vaccinations, a requirement so successful that Dodger brass might one day extend it to the fans themselves. OK, let us get the obvious jokes out of the way: Yes, the dog days of August are upon us. Dodger dog, anyone? Now coaching third base, Larry Bow-wow. Sorry, couldn't resist, nor could I resist attending this oddly wonderful evening, dubbed "Bark in the Park," the Dodgers' first-ever bring-your-pooch event.

I wish I could say I spent my week off sunning on an exotic beach, sipping mango margaritas. Instead, I acquired my vacation tan sitting in a deck chair on my front lawn, sipping lemonade and tending a pair of shelter puppies that my family agreed to foster. Stocked with tennis balls for them and magazines for me, I spent hours each day watching them play. When I tired of reading about 15 ways to clear clutter or cook chicken or tone thighs, I reached for an old SkyMall catalog.

Inside a dimly lighted living room in the heart of the Javanese forest, Dede Koswara blankly examines his bulky hands, which have morphed to the size of catcher's mitts. He shuffles along on blackened, bloated feet, a prisoner of his own mutinous body. For years, the slender construction worker watched helplessly as his limbs broke out in a swath of grotesque bark-like warts that sapped his energy and limited his mobility. At one point, he seemed to sprout contorted yellow-brown branches 3 feet long.

The word "terrain" comes from the Latin "terranum," meaning "of the Earth." It's the same root for the word "terrier," which is a kind of dog. And that brings us to the GMC Terrain. A glitzed-up version of the AKC-registered Chevy Equinox, the GMC Terrain confronts all the bad old ways of GM -- the badge engineering where vehicle clones are sold under several brands, the redundant product planning, the weird fascination with shiny objects, the wheedling of customers -- and embraces them with open paws.