www.petinsurance.ie backs upcoming March 23rd Dublin anti-fur protest.

Over 50 million animals are killed for their fur in a given year.
Shockingly, even Ireland has a secret fur trade - there are currently 5 mink farms in the country.
Another campaign is also now underway to ban the importation and sale of real fur in Ireland. I really hope it goes ahead and is successful. A number of councils have already offered their support of this. I personally want the fur industry banned.
The stress of the cages environments on fur farms cause stress of confinement, and results in erratic psychosis - dangerous behaviour, and cannibalism among the captive Mink. It just isn't fair. For Mink specifically - At six months of age, they are gassed to death, usually by carbon dioxide or monoxide poisoning. 40 odd mink at a time. It is a horrible thought. On the other hand, Cats & dogs are used in fur farms and many of them are skinned alive and live for moments after their skinning in what must be pure agony.

Tom Gunning attributes human fascination with photographs, not to camera data cables, but to the sense of the relationship between reality and photographs. However, the “perceptual richness and nearly infinite detail” of the image itself, something which one cannot so readily attain from looking at the real world as it is always transient, means that the image becomes even more important than the knowledge of its indexicality. One loses interest in the fact that it portrays reality and is instead enthralled by its infinite detail. Thus Bazin’s believe that photography has an “irrational power to bear away our faith” has no bearing. Yet an appreciation for the photograph does not forbid a simultaneous appreciation for the relationship between the photograph and reality. Susan Sontag goes so far as to relate the development of certain human practices with the prevalent belief in photography’s ability to capture reality. Sontag argues that the act of taking photographs has become essential to the experience of world travel as a photograph bestow upon an event “a kind of immortality (and importance) it would never otherwise have enjoyed”.

LED Christmas lights are becoming more popular than ever, in part thanks to the recognition received from large cities. To give you an idea of just how much electricity and tax-payer money can be saved by switching to LED Christmas lights, we thought we’d look at the Rockefeller Centre Christmas tree. Just last year, NYC announced that the famous tree would switch from the antiquated incandescent lights to LED lights. Now, this Christmas tree is massive and has about 5 miles of lights! There will be about 30,000 LED Christmas lights on it. With so many lights, the Rockefeller tree really sucks up energy – about 3500 kw per day. But the LED Christmas lights will only use a fraction of this energy at about 1300 kw per day. The Rockefeller Christmas tree is scheduled to be up from the end of November to January 6th, making a total of 38 days. At an energy savings of about 2200 per day, the LED Christmas lights will save New Yorkers about 83,600 kw for the season! These savings could power a 2000 sq. foot home for over a month! With LED Christmas lights saving so much power (and money!), it is no surprise that they are appearing in cities across the country.

The language of flowers book was extremely popular in Victorian England, America, and France. A literary tradition, the language of flowers is based on a combination of the plant’s physical characteristics, literature, folklore, mythology, and religion. The Victorian language of flowers books had many sources for the flower associations contained within. Symbolic flower associations were sourced in Japanese, Chinese, Greek, Middle Eastern, and Roman cultures, religions, and mythologies. Literature, such as Shakespeare’s, contained many flower associations; books on herbs also recorded the lore of plants in addition to their virtues; the Turkish language of flowers; and the distinguishing features of the plants themselves, were the sources of many of the flowers. The impetus to attribute meanings to flowers is universal and as a result there were many sets of meanings attributed to the same flower by different cultures. It is important to recognise that the language of flowers was not used frequently as a means of communication, if you were to send a bouquet via flower delivery manchester, it is not guaranteed your recipient would understand the implied meanings.

Before there were gu10 light bulbs, humans had to rely upon fire for light. We tend to take fire for granted nowadays, but it is important to know what exactly is fire? Fire is basically the oxidation of material in the chemical process of combustion. Combustion leads to the release of both light, heat, and other reaction products, a rather useful chemical process after all. The flame consists of glowing hot gases and is the visible portion of the fire. The gases can become ionized and produce plasma if hot enough. The colour of the flame and the intensity of the fire differ depending upon both the presence of external impurities, and what substance is alight. Across the globe, fire is a pivotal process which affects ecological systems. Fire stimulates growth and thus maintains many ecological systems. Fire also has proved very useful for humans who use it for generating heat, propulsion, signalling, cooking, and other such purposes. Fire has a negative side however, in that it can cause soil erosion, water contamination, hazard to human life, and atmospheric pollution.