Careful readers will have noticed something strange about the New York Post, today: there's less copy on each page, and a disconcertingly wide margin at the top and bottom, as if someone made a mistake. It's not. Rupert Murdoch's New York tabloid is shrinking, tomorrow, in honor of Earth Day; but the dimensions of the printed area were adjusted a day ahead of the actual paper, hence all the the white space. Rewind a second. "In honor of Earth Day?" Corporate America may kowtow to the environmentalists, but the Australian media mogul's News Corporation remains a bastion of planet-destroying bravado, surely.

You'd think at some point, in a creative review meeting, some advertising exec would stand up and say, "Maybe the 9-11 picture's not such a good idea." Such a simple sentence. But no! The latest example of incorporating a nationally traumatic terrorist mass murder into an ad: this spot for SABC Radio [via AdScam], with the tagline "There's More To See On Radio." Such as the Twin Towers burning. So hey, listen to the radio! Click through for a larger image, and pictures of the five worst 9-11 ads we've covered in the past:

• Actually, we celebrated 4/20.

Eliot Spitzer's favorite call girl, Ashley Alexandra Dupre, has finally hired a PR firm. Why she waited so long, we have no idea. If she wanted help fending off media coverage, she would have done well to hire somebody as soon as the story broke; likewise, if she's planning on capitalizing on the scandal to build her own personal brand, she'll need to strike while the iron is hot. Which was about three weeks ago. The Daily News reported that she hired Susan Blond Inc., an entertainment-heavy NYC firm whose client list has included Ice Cube, Britney Spears, David Bowie, and Criss Angel, among many others. I smell a second-rate music career about to be launched! So who is Susan Blond? An Andy Warhol theory come to life.

Gossip Girl star Leighton Meester was spotted having dinner with a "hot male companion" at Lunetta on Broadway, according to Page Six. That's true, as far as it goes, but the report in the Post gossip column left out a few key facts: first, the actress' companion, Chris Rovzar, was a New York reporter working on the magazine cover story on the buzzed-about CW show; the delicate Rovzar, who used to date Patrick Healy of the New York Times, is gay, transparently gay; and the item was phoned in by a publicist for the show, as Rovzar revealed in the article.

The new "BrandZ" ranking of the world's most powerful brands is out, and it just helps to confirm that it's only a matter of time before China is running everything. China Mobile is the fifth most powerful brand in the world, ahead of names like IBM, Apple, and McDonald's. China's most powerful brands collectively gained more than 50% in value over the past year. And China and other emerging economies are the most powerful drivers of growth for all brands. Russia is also a fast riser. The takeaway: at least we are still killing all these foreigners through our strong American Marlboro brand (#10). Below, the top 25 brands in the world, and their added value to the company, so you can sound smart at your next branding party. Yes, Google is #1:

PETA, the animal rights group skilled at making potential supporters forget about its cause because of all the nude women writhing around at the anti-fur PR stunts, is putting up a million-dollar prize for the first researcher who comes up with a good way to make meat in test tubes. Ahhhhhh! Throwupthrowupthrowup. Intellectually, it's clear that test tube-bred animal tissue would be a good way to allow people to have their precious Slim Jims without actually killing cows, and would presumably be chemically similar to normal meat. But really, just the thought of eating "test tube meat"—god, it's painful to even type it. Can't wait for the marketing machine to get started on the euphemisms for that product (suggestions?). After the jump, two clips that sum up my feelings on this issue: The classic "Soylent Green" ingredients scene, and Jim Gaffigan's "Hot Pockets" routine—"How about we fill a pop tart with nasty (test tube) meat? You cook it in a sleeve thing. Dunk it in the toilet."

Hello, athletic young women: are you "weary of being separated from boys and men in sports?" And eager to prove yourself "on a larger stage?" Well you're not going to make the WNBA, that's for sure. So why not do what 2,507 of your wisest female peers did last year and join the Marines [NYT]? In this period of difficult recruiting, the Few, the Proud are even putting in some extra effort to make their ads seem good to chicks like you!

A redesigned Wall Street Journal launched this morning and is described a juicy Newsweek story on Rupert Murdoch, which includes a nugget about how the News Corp. chief has been working overtime, including on Easter. He has become "a regular and jarring presence in the Journal newsroom" and scared staffers are working Sundays to keep him happy. Murdoch is no doubt motivated to live up to a somewhat bitter letter he sent a chagrined Arthur Sulzberger Jr. at the Times, which included the phrase "Let the battle begin!" Here is quick list (modeled and partly based on this one) of current and planned changes to the Journal, which basically amount to making it less business focused:

CBS honcho Les Moonves had a week from hell. It started with a Times highlighting how his salary keeps going up while revenues at his beleaguered company keep going down. Then he had to answer to news department staff about leaks that made Katie Couric look like a lame duck in the anchor chair at CBS Evening News. Now he's said by Nikki Finke's sources to be "royally screwed" after fumbling negotiations with Viacom, a sibling company in the Sumner Redstone media empire. Moonves had been trying to cut the amount CBS' Showtime was paying for Paramount movies, but Paramount said "screw this" and decided to form its own cable channel along with studios MGM and Lionsgate. Here's why the whole situation is especially awkward, according to the Times:

So how are you celebrating 4/20? Why not catch a screening of comedian Doug Benson's stoner documentary Super High Me, in which the funny man spends a month zonked out of his gord? 1350 screenings have been set up for today. Click here to find one near you! A trailer for the flick, which features a few celebrity cameos, after the jump. [via The Comic's Comic]

"'I grabbed her ass,' one young woman exclaimed to her friends after snapping a picture with her arm around the former first daughter."

"MOTEGI, Japan-Danica Patrick became the first female winner in IndyCar history Sunday, taking the Indy Japan 300 after the top contenders were forced to pit for fuel in the final laps." [LAT] On Sunday? Like today? Is Japan in space? Whatev... More pics of the IndyCar champ after the jump.

Aww... It's the class of 2008! All growed up and coming to NYC for that awesome career and super apartment like in Friends or Sex and the City? Sorry, little camper, we don't serve your kind! "The thousands of new graduates who will be driving the engine of the city's rental market from now until September will quickly learn that renting in New York is not like renting anywhere else. The second shock is likely to be how small a Manhattan apartment can be. It is not uncommon in New York, for example, to shop for a junior one-bedroom or a convertible one-bedroom, neither of which is a true one-bedroom at all but really a studio that already has or can have a wall put up to create a bedroom."

An adorable little blonde person ventured out to the East New York home of former Gawker advice columnist Tionna Smalls to ask her what she thinks about Internet fame. "It's all a lot of fun of games in the beginning." But. "If people think you're getting more burns off their site than they are, they'll get rid of you. It's jealousy."

The prospect of having the Internet suddenly disappear, leaving us in a wasteland of masturbating to our own lame imaginations, isn't just the basis for a hilarious South Park episode. It's coming! So says one biased goon for the horrible, horrible AT&T. "U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010. Speaking at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, warned that the current systems that constitute the Internet will not be able to cope with the increasing amounts of video and user-generated content being uploaded."

"At a small closed-door fundraiser after Super Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton blamed what she called the 'activist base' of the Democratic Party- and MoveOn.org in particular-for many of her electoral defeats, saying activists had 'flooded' state caucuses and 'intimidated' her supporters, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by The Huffington Post. Clinton's remarks depart radically from the traditional position of presidential candidates, who in the past have celebrated high levels of turnout by party activists and partisans as a harbinger for their own party's success-regardless of who is the eventual nominee-in the general election showdown."

I don't know about you, but I can't imagine a better way to start a glorious spring weekend than watching every single instance of Star Trek's Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy pronouncing some poor sucker dead compiled in one nifty clip. The grim-faced over-acting that barely concealed actor DeForest Kelley's seething hatred of William Shatner after the jump.

Embattled anchor Katie Couric (legs!) of the long-withering CBS Evening News got a vote of confidence from network boss Les Moonves yesterday, but it was probably just a bunch of meaningless hoo-ha. Moonves said at a staff meeting that Couric "is my anchor today, tomorrow and in the future." Aw, sweet. "But the public display does not change the reality that Couric is likely to relinquish the anchor chair after the election, according to two top network executives who declined to be named discussing a private meeting."

60 Minutes dinosaur Mike Wallace has brought together sixty (see what he did there?) of the world's smartest smarties for a collection of essays called The Way We Will Be 50 Years From Today. Global warming? Alzheimer's? Ant overlords? Forget that crap. Gasoline will be water and we'll all live for freaking ever! "The consensus view is that we'll muddle through many of the issues that vex us today - including climate change and terror threats. And we'll hit upon so many medical and technological wonders that today's 50-year-olds will have a fair chance of finding out firsthand how the world will look in 2058."