Not only do PETA folk get to help animals (of course), and get e-mails with subject lines like "Has anyone seen our giant bunny costume?"—they also get to share in the involvement of the super-cool rock legends (from Macca to Grace Slick to Chrissie Hynde) who throw their considerable weight behind our efforts to help animals.

Now the one-and-only Iggy Pop has joined PETA and students at Iggy's alma mater, the University of Michigan (U-M), in demanding that animals who are tormented and killed in a medical training course be replaced with the humane and educationally superior alternatives that are available. After learning that U-M abuses and kills cats and pigs in its Survival Flight course for nurses, Iggy fired off a letter on PETA's behalf, urging the university to drop these cruel and archaic animal labs and to switch to the sophisticated simulators that are already used to teach the same skills in other advanced U-M training courses.

Iggy writes, "It's common sense that cutting apart pigs and maiming cats isn't the best way to train people to treat humans. … U-M should not be harming animals when better alternatives are available and already in use on campus."

Written by Jeff Mackey

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Regular readers know that mulesing is a process whereby sheep farmers in Australia turn lambs upside-down and cut off the skin and flesh on their rumps with a pair of gardening shears and without any pain relief. Now there are reports that Australian Wool Innovation (AWI), in response to PETA's campaign to end mulesing, has developed another new mulesing alternative, but being hopeful of progress by AWI is something that makes me nervous to no end.

This alternative is an injection that smoothes out the animals' skin (when it's all full of folds, maggots can hatch and eat the sheep alive). The injection is not perfect—the animals are still stressed out from being handled—but it seems relatively painless, which is a huge step forward in embracing the concept that less pain doesn't equal no pain).

We won't break out the champagne yet. In 2004, AWI agreed to end mulesing by 2010, but they've been dragging their heels disgracefully. Then they developed a different (but still very painful) type of skin-removal technique called "clip mulesing," in which big clips are clamped onto lambs' bottoms so tightly that the flesh dies and falls off, and called it "humane." Rotting, dying skin. Ewe.

So we raised a ruckus in the clothing retail industry, causing companies like H&M, Perry Ellis, and Adidas to reject all wool from mulesed lambs (including those mulesed using the hideous clips).

The injection, however, just might be a most-welcome forward movement for all those Aussie lambs.

Written by Matt Prescott

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Did you hear? Dave Freeman, the author of 100 Things to Do Before You Die, has died, just like that, at 47! He fell and hit his head. Honestly!

It just goes to show that you have NO idea how long you've got. And to keep the cheery theme alive, consider all the people who have become paralyzed by falling off their mountain bikes, etc.

You can't lock yourself in your room, and even if you did, you could be hit by a chunk of toilet ice falling out of a plane and through your roof, struck by lightening as you took a shower, or … well, you get it. Life is fleeting. In fact, that's been a theme of mine for a while. In Making Kind Choices, I wrote about how amazing it would be to have a wristwatch that would tell you not what time it is now but how much time you had left so that you could know what's important to cram in. You'd look at it and see "40 days, 3 hours, and 2 minutes," and you'd think, "OMG! Better get a move on!"

So ask yourself: Are you putting off asking that special person for a date, telling your friend you are sorry for some remark that ended your friendship, or, most importantly … buying vegan groceries? Wouldn't you rather die than have your last meal on Earth cause animals fear, pain, and death?

Oh, and Dave Freeman took this stuff seriously (yes, he didn't fully "get it," seeing as how he went to Pamplona and ran with—shouldn't that be "against"?—the bulls), so he had made a will. Now some of his leftovers, including some useful money, will go to a children's charity. Good for him! Please follow his lead and put a charity—may I suggest PETA?—in your will, too, or else the state rather than animals will benefit from your death (and you know they'll only use the money to buy something stupid).

Written by Ingrid Newkirk