Valleywag: Health

MessageDance trying to cash in on "blogging kills" scare

Jackson West — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:20:00 PDT

While exploiting tragic deaths and blogger heatlh problems for a trend piece in the New York Times is bad, trying to gin up new customers by jumping on the bandwagon is yet worse, but that's just what MessageDance is doing with their latest email direct marketing campaign: "Power blogging minus the heart attack!" Especially since it seems to imply that making it easier to post updates anywhere and anytime will somehow relieve the pressure to constantly stay on top of the news.

Publicity-starved Portland doctor pimps Asperger's symptoms as Internet addiction

Jackson West — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:00:00 PDT

"Dr. Block says about 86 percent of Internet addicts have some other form of mental illness, but that unless a therapist is looking for it, Internet addiction is likely to be missed." By "other form of mental illness," we're guessing Asperger's sufferers like BitTorrent's not-so-adorably quirky founder Bram Cohen. [Canada.com] (Photo by Irina Slutsky)

Now we're even more addicted to the Internet

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:20:02 PDT

Jerald Block, M.D., writes in the American Journal of Psychiatry that excessive use of the Internet — Internet addiction — results in a loss of a sense of time and the neglect of basic drives. But his report isn't all good news.

According to the Guardian, Block uncovers symptoms of Internet addiction including:

Withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible;

The need for better computers, more software, or more hours of use;

Negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation and fatigue.

Not sure any of this is really bad. At least not for us. More arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation and fatigue, please! Some of us need pageviews.

Om Malik recovering from heart attack

Owen Thomas — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:26:39 PST

No laughing matter: GigaOm blogger Om Malik reports that he had a heart attack last week at the age of 41. At Business 2.0, where we both worked before going blog, Malik and I teased each other constantly about our weight. At one point, he and I lined up with two other rotund members of the staff for a photo. The four of us totaled nearly half a ton. The photo was meant to kick off a weight-loss contest that never really happened. The origins of the name GigaOm, in fact, were not in broadband, but in a broad waist. As Malik has told many friends, his mom gave him the nickname when he returned to India enlarged by his sojourns in the West. I say this not to make light of the situation, but to hammer home a point as serious as an infarction: Maintaining your wetware requires a large portion of your bandwidth. Best wishes for a fast recovery, Om. (Photo by zippy)