Conditions in Factory Farms are universally deplorable and a lot of people are starting to figure it out. You can tell this is true by the recent spike in references to Food Inc. in your Facebook newsfeed and the number of Colbert Report appearances by Michael Pollan and Jonathan Safran Foer.

Luckily scientists are hot on the trend and may have a solution, one ingeniously dependent on genetic modification of animal brains:

Recently, scientists have learned to genetically engineer animals so that they lack certain proteins that are important to the [sensation of pain.] When these mice encounter a painful stimulus, they withdraw their paws normally, but they do not become hypersensitive to a subsequent painful stimulus, as ordinary mice do.

I love science so much but this is one of those fundamentally flawed, fundamentally American approaches to problem solving:

AMERICANS: Man, I feel really bad about the horrible conditions for animals in factory farms.
COMMON SENSE: Yeah man, I feel you. Maybe we should stop eating them.
AMERICANS: Ehhhhhhh, I dunno. What if we spend millions of dollars genetically modifying their brains such that they’re physically incapable of sensing pain?
COMMON SENSE: Dude, seriously?
AMERICANS: SCIENCE!

Why solve problems elegantly with simple and responsible changes to our own behavior when we can use well funded science and comic book dreams to dramatically refashion sentient brains?

People really really love to love hating PETA, which is probably why PETA remains one of the more effective non-profits around.

In an especially tortured post yesterday, Best Week Ever’s Dan Hopper explains why he simply cannot post the lastest controversial ad from PETA, recently barred from appearing during the Super Bowl:

I didn’t want to post PETA’s REJECTED SUPER BOWL AD OMGGGG SO CONTROVERSIALLLLL!!!! because it’s obviously a calculated attempt by PETA to say “check out this commercial we made that THE MAN refused to air,” even though they clearly had no intention to actually pay for Super Bowl airtime.

Needless to say, he posted the ad.

He concludes with some impassioned non-profit existential crisis-bait:

Why does PETA still exist? This is nonsense.

But it’s easy: PETA still exists because Dan Hopper still posted that ad, even though he didn’t want to.

Don’t look now! PETA owns you.

Who (other than, apparently, The Fixx) knew the Toyota “Saved By Zero” commercials were based on an actual, true-to-existence pop song*?

As an aside; I never realized how annoying those Toyota ads were until a lot of other people started pointing out how annoying those Toyota ads were.

And herein lies the moral dilemma: who is higher on the stink list, the marketing folks who created the ads, or the nit-pickily culture-conscious types who first pointed out the obnoxiousness?

* Embedding of the video has been disabled for some mysterious reason. And not just embedding of that one solitary YouTube video, but of every YouTube version of The Fixx’s “Saved By Zero” music video, across multiple users. Which is weird. Because The Fixx is…who the eff is The Fixx? And why would they care to disable embedding of their kitschy music video? Obviously they’re ok with it being on YouTube, otherwise the video would just be yanked. So why the beef with frustrated bloggers made ranty by their irritating pop song chorus?

I’m having a hard time figuring out whether or not these Brooke Shields VW ads are deliberately riffing off her well-publicized struggle with postpartum depression:

Women everywhere are having babies just to get a new Volkswagen minivan.

It’s a joke, yes, and, har har, potentially a funny were it presented by, I dunno, Lori Loughlin. But Brooke Shields had a very public struggle with a terrible disease, a debilitating depression centered around the overwhelming feeling that having a baby ruined her life.

I highly highly doubt these ads are intended to be taken in this way, but, then…why Brooke Shields?

I just can’t stop thinking about it: the horror of her condition, the sadness of the isolation, all brought to bear by the televised dramatization of Brooke Shields’ postpartum thoughts, as she stared aimlessly out the window, day in and day out, contemplating suicide and wrestling with immense self-loathing and a frightening indifference to her newborn child.

Man, I really shouldn’t have had a baby just to get a new Volkswagon.

Drawing attention to and normalizing postpartum depression was certainly a wonderful thing for Brooke Shields to do (as was making Tom Cruise look like a total dweebus). So good on Brooke for that.

But these ads just make me sad and somewhat panic-stricken. Which is totally not the mood I tend to be in before I buy cars.

(It probably would have been more effective for Shields to riff off of Suddenly Susan, thus leaving viewers feeling nostalgic and slightly annoyed, a much more consumeristic state of mind.)

When an aversion to corporate influence leads to comments like this:

There’s no such thing as an iPod. The word “iPod” is a marketing tool for a hard drive with software that plays mp3s. Yeah, doesn’t sound so sexy now, does it you chimps?

Stupid evil corporations and their incessant naming of things!!!!!! Who are they to attach words to products?!?!?!? Where does the greed end?!?!

You chimps!!!!!!!

Prosecute more incidents of prison masturbation.

Andrew Sullivan highlights some “good news about smoking,” touting a new study that shows smoking may reduce one’s risk of Parkinson’s. Sullivan quotes David Harsanyi, who asks:

My only question is how many major news organizations will give this politically incorrect fact the attention it deserves? If eating tofu lowered your risk of Parkinson’s by 54 percent would it be a front-page story? Should it be a front-page story if tobacco does the trick?

I recently heard cutting off your head is a sure-fire way to prevent brain cancer. I wonder why I haven’t seen this on the front-page..

The Onion’s on the case of a widespread MySpace friendship meltdown:

The outage, which occurred late Saturday night, is believed to be the result of a complicated wallpaper upload for the page of a former VH1 I Love New York contestant, which triggered a chain reaction of web browser crashes and server shutdowns.

Saturday Night Live Animal Sketches:

This list includes write-ups for animal-themed recurring sketches that appeared on Saturday Night Live. The sketches are listed chronologically.

Just reading the encyclopedic descriptions can be funny:

Dog Show was an aptly titled parody of an Animal Planet show featuring people who are more than enamored with their dogs. It was hosted by Miss Colleen (Molly Shannon) and Mr. David Larry (Will Ferrell)…

The sketch would open with David Larry banging on a snare drum, followed by the two hosts shouting “DOG SHOW!” The hosts would then introduce their dogs, “Mr. Rocky Balboa” and “Mr. Bojangles”…Often the hosts would have their dogs participate in things such as seances and weddings.

Or Brian Fellow’s Remarks on Animals:

On a tarantula: “That’s one fuzzy bug!…If I had a bug like that, I’d make a coat out of him!”…

On a pig: “Why does that pig hate Jewish people?”

Foxy Brown was once a cashier at my grocery store.

CNN gets down to the nitty gritty with some hard hitting news:

Two airliners had to circle for 18 minutes and a plane ferrying human lungs for transplant was briefly delayed Friday while an airport’s lone air traffic controller took a bathroom break, the controller’s union said.

It’s gotta be pretty harsh to have CNN publish the length of your poo right there on their website.

Wikipedia runs a pretty solid Featured Article of the Day program, but sometimes the best entries don’t really make the cut. For that reason, I think it’s appropriate to begin highlighting some of wikipedia’s unsung heroes.

This week’s article: a comprehensive list of Fictional US Presidents. I stopped counting once I got to over 60 and I was still in the Ds, but I’m guessing there’s over 300 characters listed here, everyone from Jed Bartlett to Pete Ross.

A sample:

President Johnny Cyclops

President in: Whoops Apocalypse (television, 1982)

Qualities/attributes: A former screen actor, recently lobotomised. Hated at home and desperate to regain popularity. With other world leaders, starts World War III and resulting nuclear holocaust. Often depicted as being a puppet controlled by his security advisor, the Deacon. Possibly based on Ronald Reagan, as he is a Republican and he has a bad relationship with his son.

Played by: Barry Morse

Party: Republican

Wikipedia tends to get dumped on as some sort of illegitimate information resource (criticism which is 1000% lame bullshit). But these types of articles are what the site is made for; no other information resource would ever come close to even approximating the depth of this information.

Go ‘head Mr. Wikipedia!