Blog till you drop ... literally

NYT says blogging can be deadly 5

There's a story in The New York Times in which a journalist uses the recent death of two bloggers from heart attacks to cobble together a fairy tale that links blogging to myocardial infarction. Ah, the lay press ... entertainment for the masses -- or better yet, the art of turning nothing into advertising revenue.

My real name is Russ Finley. I live in Seattle, married with children. Suffice it to say that although I am trained and educated as an engineer, my passion is nature. I very much want my grandchildren to live on a planet where lions, tigers, and bears have not joined the long and growing list of creatures that used to be. In an attempt to minimize the workload on Grist editors responsible for turning my submissions into intelligible articles, I will also be posting on a seperate blog called Biodiversivist, which will contain articles in addition to those submitted to Grist.

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  1. jkratz Posted 3:47 am
    07 Apr 2008

    Did you read the same story I did?Are you sure you aren't trying to turn your post into ad revenue?  Because that is not the conclusion in the NYT story at all. In fact the story itself says as much:
    To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.
    The story is not talking about blogging in general...its talking about the world of paid blogging centered around the tech industry and reading the stories of the people who did die (and the guy who had the heart attack but lived) their blogging career certainly did not contribute to their health.
    Before pointing your nose up in the air at the "lay media" why not actually read the story with more than a cursory glance?
  2. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 4:35 am
    07 Apr 2008

    I seeYou think I thought they were saying that "blogging in general" causes heart attacks. When in reality, they were saying that only "paid blogging centered around the tech industry" causes heart attacks, or were they saying "their blogging career certainly did not contribute to their health."
    Note: Heart disease causes heart attacks. They could just as well have been insurance salesmen sitting in office cubicles.
    http://www.medicinenet.com/heart_attack/article.htm
    "While heart attacks can occur at any time, more heart attacks occur between 4:00 A.M. and 10:00 A.M. because of the higher blood levels of adrenaline released from the adrenal glands during the morning hours."



    In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
  3. jkratz Posted 2:16 am
    08 Apr 2008

    WhateverI suspect you know exactly what the article was saying and are being obtuse about it.  That's fine if that's how you want to play it.
    Note: heart disease is not the only thing that causes heart attacks.
  4. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 2:31 am
    08 Apr 2008

    Admittedly, I was being obtuseWhat fun is it to spell everything out?
    You cannot make a heart stop pumping unless it is compromised by some degree of disease or a birth defect. I have run uncounted long distance races. My heart was maxed out in most of them and limited how well I could do. I was incapable of pushing my heart past its limits. By brain would have protected itself by going unconscious had I tried but my heart would have gone on pumping. As we age, our arteries clog. That clogging is heart disease. A person who has a heart attack while sitting at a keyboard, blogger or insurance salesman, has advanced heart disease.

    In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
  5. amazingdrx Posted 3:52 am
    08 Apr 2008

    Quality not quantityObserve the difference.
    Fewer articles and posts, more thought behind them, better quality.
    So post the same articles all over the web, no one is stopping us.  It gets the word out about our cause.  Curing GHG destruction.
    Slow down, take a run, bike, walk, ski, swim...and cogitate.  Inspiration will find you, especially if you are immersed in nature.  There's the mother earth power to fight the good fight.  
    Heart attack?  Yow.  As in as serious as?  Humor is our most effective rhetorical weapon.  
    The NYT?  And mass media in general?  Mass delusion.

    http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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