The "happy cows" advertisements sponsored by the California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB) always have me wondering if the state's agriculture department isn't colluding with the tourism department (those ads where California's famous residents complain about how hard they're working, as they surf and be glamorous and, you know, play governor on TV). Cows are happier in California? I'm sure Vermont's cows would beg to differ!

The New Zealand cows, soon, will have a say in the matter because the CMAB is bringing its production crews to Auckland, New Zealand, to shoot a new series of 10 commercials claiming that California cows are happier. That's right. New Zealand will stand in for California in a series of TV ads arguing that the Golden State's milk is superior.

It's popular, among the upstart coffee companies and the media which covers them, to portray anything that happens in the coffee world as an affront to Starbucks. And certainly, little is done in the industry without an ever-present consciousness of every move of the coffee giant. For the country's second-largest chain, Caribou Coffee (CBOU), sadly, its first TV advertisement is a volley lobbed directly at the Seattle-based leader; but misses entirely.

AdAge says of the television commercial launched Thursday, it's "an approach that pokes fun at its biggest rival, Starbucks (SBUX)." But for customers, that's hard to see. The ad shows two marionettes on a bench at the mall, drinking tiny coffee cups with circles on them (so subtly like Starbucks cups, you'd only know if you paused the commercial to stare), chatting about how "super-important" they're pretending to look. They're snobby and insufferable until an enormous cup of Caribou Coffee, topped with whipped cream and chocolate bits, sits down next to them

When it comes to comfort foods, chocolate milk ranks right up there with meatloaf and mac n' cheese. But a campaign to market the sweetened milk as a healthy choice for kids is leaving parent groups anything but comforted.

As we know, sugar may be a huge contributor to our obesity crisis and other chronic diseases. The American Heart Association in fact recently recommended children limit their intake of sugar to 16 grams a day. The association might, then, be surprised that pediatricians, dietitians, celebrities and a whole social media campaign are fighting the good fight for chocolate milk, calling it a healthy choice for kids.

How much added sugar, you ask, does eight ounces of chocolate milk contain? Four teaspoons, 16 grams, making one serving the maximum a child should consume every day.

IllyCaffè SpA may not have a company-owned store near you, but it's a good bet you know the company's coffee. Illy's espresso machines and coffee beans are available to purchase online at the company's website, on Amazon.com, and a wide variety of retail outlets. Its art-inspired cups are a favorite of Italiaphiles (a good friend whose husband is Milanese was my introduction to the designer series of tiny espresso cups and saucers). And, after three years of success in Italy, the company has expanded its Artisti del Gusto (Artist of Taste) certification to the U.S., with 28 shops around the country serving Illy coffee, and about 100 more planned by 2012.

In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, Illy is said to be using this strategy to compete with Starbucks (SBUX) through the "backdoor." It's a bit of a reach -- after all, 128 coffee shops is about 1.1 percent as far-reaching as Starbucks, and far less of a threat to market share than Dunkin' Donuts or McDonald's (MCD), both of which have challenged Starbucks with their low-priced, high-volume and ubiquitous coffee.

When a General Motors plant in Wilmington, Del. shut down this July, it left 550 people out of work. But the city isn't mourning the loss of Big Auto so much anymore because Very Little Electric Auto is taking its place. Fisker, maker of small plug-in hybrid cars, announced Tuesday it was buying the recently-shuttered GM plant in Wilmington, and in 2012 would have 2,000 people working there. By 2014, the plant could be making 100,000 cars a year and employ 2,500 workers.

Far from its roots building Pontiac, Saturn and Opel sports cars for GM, the factory will produce a car code-named "Project NINA," a family-oriented plug-in electric vehicle. The car will be targeted to a very different consumer for Fisker, which has yet to bring a product to market. Its first concept, a gorgeous-but-spendy plug-in sports car called the Karma, received raves for its beauty and shock for its impracticality when the company secured a $528 million Department of Energy loan in September. The company is taking pre-orders for the car, which should be delivered in 2010.

The decline in newspaper advertising and an upswing in medical marijuana sales are happening simultaneously. And if viewed together, they present an illuminating opportunity for a few daily papers, should their publishers take advantage of the opportunity.

The two industries are moving in opposite directions. We all know what's happening to newspaper ad sales: The Audit Bureau of Circulations released precipitous circulation figures on Monday, with a shocking average decline of close to 11 percent over the past six months for daily papers. Weed's having better luck. The Justice Department announced last week that it will no longer prosecute medical marijuana users, and instead leave enforcement up to individual states (only 13 of which permit marijuana as legal pain relief).

Sarah Palin titled her forthcoming memoir, Going Rogue, after an indictment by a member of the McCain presidential campaign ("She's begun to go rogue," a senior Republican put it). It's surely the favorite endorsement of the famously quick-triggered former vice-presidential candidate and Alaska governor. But is she really a Rogue, with a capital R?

Brett Joyce, president of the 21-year-old Rogue Brewery in Newport, Oregon, says the jury is out. "We already have an official writer," Joyce says. "He's the quintessential Rogue." That's Richard Marcinko, author of the Rogue Warrior books, including Red Cell, The Real Team, Echo Platoon, Lone Survivor, and Holy Terror. Key characteristics of a real Rogue, says Joyce: "a revolutionary, someone that doesn't follow the status quo." Joyce says he isn't sure Palin fits that description (although I'd certainly give her credit for the second part.)

An essay in Salon calls the practice of canning "haute," though dismisses it as an inappropriate source of nourishment for people with real day jobs, part of a too-precious do-it-yourself (DIY) craze. The New York Times says we're in the midst of a "canning renaissance" and is more eloquent, loving: "preserving offers primal satisfactions and practical results."

Last week, in The Wall Street Journal, a young reporter signs up for a private canning class with a Slow Food instructor and comes to a wide-eyed combination of the two conclusions: "Although home-canned goods are not exactly a bargain, their taste is dramatically better and, in my view, well worth the labor." Hobby, quasi-political act, the new (more productive!) dinner party, canvolution? How to explain the home-canning craze?

The cast of Fox's new sitcom Glee has gotten yanked from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade by a rival network. And if If nothing else good comes from that news, there's this: how else could the word "dweeby" have hit the lead paragraph in dozens of major papers this week? ("The gang behind Glee, the new Fox series about a dweeby high school glee club, is very sad," Lisa de Moraes wrote in the Washington Post.)

The culprit: NBC, which broadcasts the annual parade at significant cost to the network. "NBC told [Macy's] it did not want the Fox series... getting a big fat plug on NBC's parade broadcast," De Moraes writes. Winners from Fox's smash American Idol have been featured in past parades, although never the star of the current season's programming.

The eight-track tape never got a second chance. But things are looking up for instant film, which last year seemed destined to follow the sound-recording technology into the history books. A Polaroid licensee, the Summit Global Group, said Tuesday it would be re-launching Polaroid brand instant cameras. That proves The Impossible Project (that group of Polaroid employees who leased the Polaroid factory and purchased the company's equipment in the Netherlands) is now entirely achievable.

The licensee did not give a time frame for the relaunch. But The Impossible Project still says it is being commissioned to develop and launch a limited edition of Polaroid-branded film in mid-2010. "Large-scale production and worldwide sale of The Impossible Project's new integral film materials under its own brand will already start in the beginning of 2010 -- with a brand new and astonishing black and white Instant Film and the first color films to follow in the course of the year," says the press release.