ANANDHAN SUBBIAH - INSPIRE AND INNOVATE

A horde of grisly evidence recently turned up in European stores, including a coat stitched together from 40 German shepherd puppies and a rug made from four golden retrievers. As shocking as this is, it shouldn’t be surprising. In addition to causing miserable lives and sadistic deaths for millions of fur-bearing animals, the fashion industry has a deadly secret. The secret is where fur comes from, and it’s not what most people think. Many of the fur items hanging in stores today are made from domestic dogs and cats.

Please help me end this unthinkable practice by making a secure online donation today. Mislabeled as Asian jackal, raccoon, or even rabbit, millions of dogs and cats are being killed for their fur—including some who are still wearing the collars that their loving guardians chose for them. This is the dirty secret of the Chinese fur industry and the international fur trade that supports it—one that we discovered in a daring undercover investigation. Our investigators went into an animal market in Southern China and found that cats and dogs were languishing—with 20 cats crammed into a tiny cage. Some had been on the road for days—transported without any food or water. There were dead and dying cats and dogs everywhere, some with open wounds. These are the animals who end up as fur collars on coats or as lining for winter boots or gloves. Their fur is sold to unsuspecting consumers in some of the best-known American and European stores. We must make this stop. We need to keep the pressure on the Chinese government as well as the fashion retailers who provide a market for dog and cat fur until they finally reject this abominable industry. Working together, I know that we can stop this cruel practice and save millions of animals each year. We’ve already convinced many top retailers and designers to take the fur-free pledge, and with dozens more taking initial steps toward compassion, I have seen how effective our campaigns can be. Now we need to address one of the most unimaginably cruel industries.

Please make as generous a tax-deductible donation as you can so we never have to witness the likes of that animal market ever again.

Original Source : PETA

On August 26, 2007, a PETA investigator filmed the slaughter of deer at Musicon, Inc., a deer farm and venison sales company in Goshen, New York.

Deer are high-strung, extremely nervous herd animals, so any handling—especially by humans in a loud, strange indoor environment—is frightening to them. Our investigator documented that a worker at Musicon was kneeling on frightened deer’s backs in order to restrain the animals and then yanking their heads back by their ears and antlers to expose their throats—which were then slit while the deer were still conscious. Some deer also had a restraint door slammed on their heads as they were bleeding to death. The animals remained conscious for up to a minute and a half after their throats were cut and in one instance, a deer was yanked from the restraint pen by the bleeding hole in her neck while still conscious.

Please e-mail Norman Schlaff, the owner of Musicon, urging him to switch to a business that doesn’t involve taking semi-wild, nervous animals and subjecting them to this type of trauma and suffering.

Original Article : http://getactive.peta.org/campaign/musicon_investigation
 

The Sandisk - Sansa e250R Rhapsody is a great product for any Rhapsody To Go subscriber. The configuration is not that easy but the player does deliver on the rhapsody integration. I had to try several times to finally get the whole thing to work.

This is all I had to do

1) Install the Rhapsody player ( I have the comcast Rhapsody which is free for every comcast.net user). I purchased the Rhapsody To Go subscription. This model allows you to download songs from Rhapsody ( you can’t burn them to a CD) and transfer them to Rhapsody compatible devices.

2) Plug in the player and the Rhapsody software will automatically detect it and display it in the left panel. You have to then authorize the device to transfer the songs.

3) You can configure the player to either automatically sync the songs or manually transfer them.

4) You can only transfer songs which are part of the “subscription” . The player has difficulty with purchased tracks.

The good news is that you don’t have to buy Audio CD’s anymore . You can download any song you like and transfer them to the Sandisk player or allow streaming and play it using the Roku Soundbridge anywhere in the house.

The Rhapsody software as such sucks big time. It does not work in vista and it crashes a lot in XP . The most weird behavior is the sign out issue , the player just signs you out for no reason.

You can connect the device to your car audio if it supports auxiliary inputs (Acura MDX 2007 with the entertainment package supports Auxiliary inputs). You can also buy the charger so the device is charged for the entire trip.

Personally I think the subscription mode for music is the way to go for the future. This will also help avoid piracy.

The major issue is with the Rhapsody software , it is too clunky and Real should really work on creating a more reliable experience for the user.