For the love...

[From Gawker, natch]

Mary-Kate Olsen Gets A 'Times' Byline

Hey, j-schooled kiddies scrivening away at the Podunk Times-Picayune in the hopes of one day making it into the Gray Lady's bosom? Check this out!

And there's a snazzy bio, too.

I'd much rather work at the Onion than the Times.

Former Editor Can't Believe Shit College Newspaper Is Printing

NEW YORK—"It's clear the new people don't give a shit, and believe me, that kind of thing starts at the top," Troy Bartell said of the newspaper's lack of journalistic integrity.

Awesomely bad lede of the Day

I love the reference to "the internet world." And yes, I realize this is a translation. But still:

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia - A teen who wanted an apple Macintosh computer (mac) for Christmas after seeing one of the ubiquitous apple ads on the apple website, but instead got to inherit his father’s older Windows PC, finally got mad early Saturday morning and threw out the inherited Dell PC out of the window in a bizarre case of life imitating “the internet world”.

The 16 year old boy, Dam Enkhbayar, threw out the computer after it froze while he was downloading video files online. The boy said, “If this had been a Macintosh, I never would've had this problem."

Read the rest here (if you're masochistic)

Think You're Tired Now?

Something to think about -- that is, if you have enough brain cells left....


Missing out on sleep may cause the brain to stop producing new cells, a study has suggested.

A team from Princeton University working on rats found that a lack of sleep affected the hippocampus, a brain region involved in forming memories. A stress hormone causes the effect.

The researchers compared animals that were deprived of sleep for 72 hours with others that were not. They found those who missed out on rest had higher levels of the stress hormone corticosterone.

They also produced significantly fewer new brain cells in a particular region of the hippocampus.
When the animals' corticosterone levels were kept at a constant level, the reduction in cell proliferation was stopped. The results suggest that elevated stress hormone levels resulting from sleep deprivation could explain the reduction in cell production in the adult brain.

Sleep patterns were restored to normal within a week. However levels of nerve cell production (neurogenesis) were not restored for two weeks, and the brain appears to boost its efforts in order to counteract the shortage.

Writing in PNAS, the researchers led by Dr Elizabeth Gould, said that although the role of nerve cell production in adults remained unknown, "the suppression of adult neurogenesis may underlie some of the cognitive deficits associated with prolonged sleep deprivation. "

People who experience a lack of sleep experience concentration problems and other difficulties.

Story from BBC NEWS:http://news. bbc.co.uk/ go/pr/fr/ -/2/hi/health/

Free pizza for journalists!

Sree Entertains Bloggers at Conan

The Conan O'Brien studio audience seats were filled with about 130 bloggers as local news anchors, correspondents, the news director and other NBC brass stood on the show's set and soaked up the bloggers' wisdom and perspective, acknowledged ignorance about the most basic of Web concepts, and encouraged -- no, entreated -- the bloggers to send every little tip and scooplet and news break they had.

"How many people here have WNBC on your lists" when sending emails about scoops asked Sree Sreenivasan, newly minted tech guru for NBC's local news shows after jumping from ABC. No one raised a hand.


http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/tv/wnbc_discovers_blogs_52259.asp#more