Your Brain Needs Downtime, Too
We Americans love our smart phones. We love our Internet, iPads and netbooks, too; but as cool as they are and as productive as they can make us feel, scientists say we may be hurting our brains with them in ways that we’re only beginning to understand. Researchers from the University of California-San Francisco have been studying the way rats learn, and they found that rats that experienced new and exciting things saw a surge of brain activity. However, unless their little rat-sized minds were able to have a bit of downtime—that is, if their brains took a break from all those new experiences, they weren’t able to learn from those experiences because the brain didn’t have time to translate the activity into new patterns. “Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university. He believes that when the mind is in constant stimulation, “you prevent this learning process.” This has interesting repercussions, considering the way we fiddle with our phones whenever we have even a moment of downtime. “People think they’re refreshing themselves, but they’re fatiguing themselves,” said University of Michigan neuroscientist Marc Berman. (New York Times)

Move Over, Brangelina: Teen Moms Find Celebrity
The supermarket tabloids, always awash in celebrity, have found a new obsession: teen moms. Some experts say that’s bad news for youth.
 In the last month, Us Weekly, People and OK! each have run cover stories about celebrity teen mothers from reality shows such as “Teen Mom” and “16 and Pregnant.” Some experts say that sends the wrong message to teens, already steeped in a culture where fame is so desirable. “The media here is being extremely irresponsible by glamorizing teen pregnancy,” says psychologist Nancy Irwin. “We can look forward to a reality show in about 18 years based on these children growing up fatherless, as the cause of mommy’s fame. Teens by their very nature are self-centered; where does that leave the baby? Knowing you were only born to pole vault your mother to fame is not the healthiest psychological base for a child.” (Fox News)

Zombieology 101
You wouldn’t think most college students would need a primer on shambling, moaning and looking half-dead after a long, long weekend; but the University of Baltimore’s “Media Genres” will provide one, nevertheless. The course focuses its lens on zombies, particularly how they’re portrayed in the popular culture. “I pitched them the idea of doing a course in zombies as one of the most perfect single reflections in our media of what we’re thinking of at any given point as a culture, as individuals and as a nation,” says professor Arnold Blumberg. “It wasn’t too difficult to explain why this would have some potency. “Certainly in this era more than any other, we’re inundated 24/7 with media from every direction,” he added, “and it certainly behooves us to give students the tools they need to sift through all those messages and see what the meaning is.” Youth will watch 16 classic zombie flicks and do some outside reading during the course, with students writing a paper or script for their final grade. (AOL News)

Quote
“I’m sorry Taylor.”—rapper Kanye West, tweeting a belated apology to country singer Taylor Swift for interrupting her acceptance speech last year during MTV’s video music awards. West has become one of the most popular celebrities on Twitter, largely because of his stream-of-consciousness missives. On Sept. 4, 2010, the date of his apology, the notoriously egocentric artist was feeling rather pensive. “When I woke up from the crazy nightmare, I looked in the mirror and said GROW UP KANYE,” West tweeted earlier, again referring to last year’s MTV awards. “I take the responsibility for my actions.” (Time)