It's McRib season, bitches! And this year there's more on the line than your annual intake of demoralized sad pigs and azodicarbonamide, which is used to make gym mats and shoes. This time, it's all about saving McDonald's bacon.

You know how we're still in that recession that Obama caused, because he is a commie? Well, even McDonald's is not immune. Profits are floundering. The head of U.S. operations stepped down. Between Taco Bell and Wendy's and etc., etc., etc., there's just a hell of a lot of fast food out there to sample and people are frickin' busy eating shit that's not McDonald's. So McDonald's is taking off the gloves, and they are fighting back the only way they know how: McRib style! Starting Dec. 17, you will be able to order this coveted cult sandwich again. Is this a great country or what?

The Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years, so it was very kind and ambitious of Buzzfeed contributor Mitchell Moffit to put together this claymation/magic marker video that compresses this lengthy history into a 24-hour period.

What's cuter than a monkey in a shearling coat running around an IKEA store in Toronto? The answer to that riddle is FUCKING NOTHING and if you don't believe me just look and then if you still don't look harder.

Louis C.K. was on Conan last year and his visit was much shared on Facebook and Twitter because he made the very good point that bitching about air travel is kind of stupid, considering that it used to take for fucking EVER to get anywhere. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, that we should all be sitting there in our seats not complaining about how small they are, and how little leg room we have, but marveling over the miracle of flight. Looking at these old maps of travel times, ranging from 1800 to 1930, I am rather inclined to agree with him. OK, yes, there's the whole thing where fast travel burns fossil fuels that will kill us all, but consider the alternative!

Duchess the elephant weighs 4.4 tons,  she only has one eye left (she lost the first to glaucoma) and the other one is riddled with cataracts. Lucky for Duchess she has a lot of nice people who care about her and want to help her and those people are giving her a cataract operation. It's only the second elephant cataract surgery ever performed.

Birds are very smart. They have always used aromatic plants like lavender and yarrow to deter certain insects from invading their nests, and in the modern age, they have come up with a repellant which is perhaps more toxic and less fragrant, but nonetheless effective: cigarette butts.

Everyone knows fresh vegetables are really good for you. The Chinese are not going to skimp on proper nutrition while colonizing the Moon and Mars, so they are trying to figure out how to grow vegetables there.

Do you have people in your life who tell you they don't believe in global warming? Maybe your mom or dad think it's a load of crap ... after all, it's already snowed up at the lake house this year! Or perhaps it is your representative in Congress who shrugs at such nonsense? Maybe it's even your yoga teacher -- he theorizes that the changes in climate are caused by solar flares and that the media's just hyping all this to scare us. That's why they have made it a law in Britain: Either learn the difference between climate change and weather or go to jail. This video explains.

This video of a guy who calls himself Earthman doing a Lite Rap about the planet's problems ("the Earth's in trouble / don't think I'm lying / just check out the way / the forests are dying!") is maybe the perfect way to make serious information palatable. It's like giving your dog pills by wrapping them in cheese. Watch as Earthman manages to make kids (and kid-like adults, perhaps) understand what's going on without scaring the crap out of them.

There was a three-day-long traffic jam in Russia over the weekend. That's not three hours. That is three days. There was a snowstorm on the M-10, a well-traveled road between St. Petersburg and Moscow. Now, one might think a country where everyone wears giant fur hats everywhere would know what to do when it snowed. You may imagine that they'd have some sort of long-term plan in effect to keep the road between their capital and one of their next-largest cities moving during inclement weather. Alas, what happened was a 125-mile traffic jam and probably some very pissed Russians.