There we were this week, doing a bit of research and writing for IMT readers -- innocently enough -- when we stumbled across a rather sobering headline -- In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop -- that was immediately picked up by the Columbia Journalism Review, Media Bistro and SmallBizTrends.com, among others, and re-titled Blogging Kills and Death by Blog and the like.

Symptoms of toxic blogging, the NYT informs us, include "sleep disorders," "exhaustion" and -- heads I win, tails you lose -- "weight loss or gain." The number affected is "unclear," but "surely several thousand and maybe even tens of thousands."

Now, we're not kidding ourselves that any sit-behind-a-computer type of work ranks high among dangerous professions. The deadliest jobs in the country, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, give us some sense of proportion.

Nonetheless, the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet has this blogger thinking about the dangers of his work style . . . and noticing a tingle in his throat, a panging in his head, heavy eyelids and, frankly, feeling a little podgy in the midsection.

So forgive us if this Light Friday is a little dark.

Fired for Doing the Right Thing?
In a post this week, we wondered whether respect-driven employee engagement would/should create company-wide culpability/whistleblowing (We still aren't sure.). In response, IMT reader Aaron asked, "[Does] anyone agree that it should be titled doing your job?" before going on to say it is simply "good people looking out for what's important ... thieves and liars."

Good question, and simple enough. This seems totally, rationally acceptable.

Unfortunately, sometimes "doing your job" and being a "good person looking out for thieves and liars" creates such a paradox as this recent news item: A Target security guard was recently fired for a confronting a teenage girl who was stealing some booze from the store.

The guard violated a Target policy that says only certain store personnel are supposed to stop shoplifters. None of them were there that day, so the guy intervened, showed her a picture he had of her taking the alcohol, got her to take the tequila out of her bag and then called her dad.

He was fired for doing it. He wasn't supposed to do what seemed to be the right thing, because lower-ranking employees apparently are not entrusted with doing the right thing.

Didn't See Hear That One Coming
It seems we now have a bill before Congress that would address one of the biggest problems with electric cars: They're too quiet.

Blind people aren't the only ones who have to worry. An ongoing study from the University of California at Riverside has found that even slow-moving hybrids can get 40 percent closer to any pedestrian than a combustion-engine car before they are detected. This is also a problem for bicyclists, who rely on their hearing to place traffic around them, according to the Associated Press.

The bill before Congress would require the Transportation Department to establish safety standards for hybrids and other vehicles that make little discernible noise, including an audible alert.

Scientists Doping Up
The journal Nature this week released results of an online survey in which 20 percent of the 1,427 respondents, largely drawn from the scientific community, admitted to using brain-enhancing drugs like Ritalin and Provigil.

Sixty-two percent of the scientists who had taken drugs used Ritalin while 44 percent reported using Provigil and only 14 percent had tried beta blockers like propranolol.

The most popular reason for taking the drugs was to improve concentration. Improving focus for a specific task (admittedly difficult to distinguish from concentration) ranked a close second and counteracting jet lag ranked fourth, behind "other" which received a few interesting reasons, such as "party," "house cleaning" and "to actually see if there was any validity to the aforementioned article."

The survey came after a winter article by two behavioral neuroscientists who had surveyed their colleagues on the use of drugs that purportedly enhance focus and attention. The pair touched off a storm of feedback, and so Nature ran its own informal online survey.

Evolutionary biologist Jonathan Eisen, of the University of California, Davis, even successfully spread an April Fools' rumor that the National Institutes of Health was planning to regulate the use of brain "steroids" as a condition of funding scientists.

Say No to Drugs ... for the Environment
Cocaine is an environmental crime whatever your views on drug use, scientists declared last month.

A panel of scientists meeting at the Natural History Museum in London recently detailed how the production of the drug and its trafficking affect biodiversity and contribute to climate change, notes The Register.

To produce just one kilogram of cocaine, 200 kilograms of environmentally harmful chemicals have to be used. Moreover, the production of one gram of cocaine means the destruction of four square meters of Colombian forest, they said.

How To Make a Hamburger -- in Only 156 Steps!
The Purdue Society of Professional Engineers recently beat six other collegiate teams from across the country -- including last year's champions from Ferris State University -- when the team came away with first prize in the 2008 national Rube Goldberg Machine Contest.

The annual event challenges university teams to come up with machines to perform simple tasks in as many steps as possible. This year's goal was to assemble a hamburger -- with at least one precooked patty, two vegetables and two condiments -- sandwiched between two buns.

Purdue's machine took 156 steps.

Texas A&M University placed second. The University at Buffalo from New York finished third.

Cheers.