That’s right. It’s officially the Year of the Rat today, and in honor of the new year’s murine mascots, PETA is asking people to, um, be a bit nicer to them. For regular folk, doing that could be as simple as looking into humane options for dealing with rats who may end up in their home. And for people like the executives at Mars Candy, it would probably mean discontinuing those experiments where they torture and kill the little guys. This recent demonstration outside a Mars factory in Chicago helped to drive that point home (at the expense of some completely frozen protesters):

Meanwhile, the folks in PETA Asia Pacific have been busy as hell bringing in the New Year with demonstrations aimed at encouraging people to stop buying glue traps. You can see some pics from those demos here.

So, a very happy Year of the Rat to everyone! Hopefully it’ll be a good year for rats, too. It’s about time they caught a break.

PETA's 'Year of the Rat' Pack

Deflocked, baby. Deflocked.

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I got a story the other day through my “Super Bowl” Google alert that kind of surprised me. The story is about legendary San Francisco 49er QB Joe Montana having high blood pressure, but check out his great quote: "I would never have ordered a veggie burger before, but I just love a good veggie burger now," he says. "It's strange how your tastes change when you put your mind to it."

Some people do it to stop cruelty to animals, some for the environment, and others to fight world hunger. And some eat veggie meals purely out of self interest. Whatever, I still think it’s pretty cool that Joe Cool is eating veggie burgers these days.

Here are some of our favorites, Joe.

Are you as psyched as I am for Live Earth this weekend? Mad props to the organizers of this amazing event, which is actually nine concerts rolled into one huge global event to draw attention to the global warming crisis facing the world. What an undertaking . . .

Now don’t get me wrong, anytime Snoop Dogg and Snow Patrol play the same event, I’m all for it, no matter what the cause. But let’s be real here. Because the meat industry emits massive quantities of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, selling meat at Live Earth would be like selling cigarettes at an anti-cancer fundraiser. And that’s exactly the message we sent in a letter to George Zoffinger, the guy in charge of Giants Stadium, the venue for the US portion of the event. Check out the letter here.

While it might be an Inconvenient Truth, for some at first, the reality is that what people eat is far more important than anything else they do—like, more important than switching from a Hummer to a Prius even—in determining greenhouse gas emissions, so making the concert venue vegetarian for the day is really the least the organizers can do. And the single most important step any of us can take to alleviate global warming is to simply go vegetarian.

In any event, enjoy the show, and if you’re looking for something to keep you awake while Madonna and Sheryl Crow perform, check out our “Live For the Earth” contest to win a $50 iTunes gift card.

Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation opens tomorrow. Just like the book, the film promises to get a lot of people thinking about whether they really want to be eating stuff that shady corporations have made out of processed animal parts. This makes me happy, because it's like someone else is doing my job for me. In fact, I think I might just take the day off tomorrow.

To celebrate the release of the film, we sat down with Richard Linklater and members of the cast, including Paul Dano and Esai Morales, for some exclusive interviews. We also made this extremely addictive Fast Food Nation game, which has slowed productivity around the office to a crawl. Check it out. Then find someone you love, or—failing that—someone you feel you can stand to take in a movie with, and go watch Fast Food Nation tomorrow night. It’s going be pretty damn good.