The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

See, that's the great thing about advertising: It paints an enticing picture of the opposite thing that will happen if you buy a particular product. Forget about all those other cars remaining motionless while you zoom along: You're the one who's going nowhere.

4. McNuggets of Wisdom

Speaking of advertising, we often wonder why we're wasting away our career at the research lab when we could be out gathering hard-hitting financial news stories like this one about McDonald's (MCD Quote):

But then we head over to the vending machine to get a bag of potato chips. And by the time we get back to our desk, all those ambitions have melted away.

5. To Ryanair Is Human

On TheStreet.com's sister site RealMoney.com, ace columnist Peter Eavis has been keeping an eye on discount Irish air carrier Ryanair (RYAAY Quote).

Well, now it's our turn.

Peter's objection nowadays is a subsidy he suspects Ryanair is receiving to operate out of Brussels-Charleroi airport. Ours is a lot more frivolous than that.

See, as the British newspaper The Sun pointed out this week, Ryanair performed plastic surgery on its airplanes. That is, Ryanair redesigned the "angel" silhouette logo that appears on the company's aircraft to give the previously androgynous figure a clearly female profile. (Click here to see the before-and-after pictures.)

We're talking breast enlargement. Hooters Air gone Irish. Another case of inflated corporate figures, if you will.

We had all sorts of important questions to ask the folks from Ryanair. When did they change the logo? Why did they do it -- as in, was there any more to the change than the adolescent fixations of Chief Executive Michael O'Leary (who dressed up in a French maid's uniform for Ryanair's recent annual report)?

'O'Leery?' Busting on Ryanair

How much, if anything, is this costing Ryanair shareholders? And is it an angel anyway? (To our eye, she looks more like the singing harp from the Mickey Mouse version of Jack and the Beanstalk.)

The spokespeople from Ryanair ignored our questions. Which may have been the most intelligent thing the company has done all year.