Charging for content generates disdain, or worse, disinterest among Web users. When so much news and entertainment is freely available, the idea of getting charged for any of it seems like nothing more than corporate greed. But advertising-hating journalists, who dream of getting paid directly by readers, keep bringing up the idea. Dan Mitchell writes in his latest column that Internet users are slowly being conditioned to accept micropayments. The most noticeable example is our willingness to purchase songs off iTunes for 99 cents a pop. The argument is that we're willing to pay for things that we view as valuable — mainly music and videos, not, alas, the written word. So much for the dreams of ink-stained wretches.

From the mailbag: "The lobby of the new New York Times building smells of sulfur and ass. It's seriously disgusting. Just thought you should know." Did Pinch have burritos for lunch AGAIN? Ah, our source reports: "It was really more of a David Brooks ate curry for breakfast thing." Oh... God.

This week, Michael Winerip's New York Times Parenting column focuses on a wild phenomenon. It turns out that when you work at home, sometimes you actually have to, like, take care of the house! Crazy. (Seriously, this guy makes their online-life columnist Michelle Slatalla look like Frank Rich.) You remember Winerip; he's the Times writer exiled to the lonely Regionals section, where he can safely muse about the fact that his kids aren't getting into Harvard from his comfortable Long Island perch.

"The Ethicist" is Randy Cohen's long-running advice column in the New York Times. Each week, Gabriel Delahaye's "The Unethicist" will answer the same questions as "The Ethicist," with obvious differences.

The New York Times proves its digital knowhow with the public launch of MyTimes. Web users haven't enjoyed this kind of newsfeed personalization since, oh, say, Excite.com in 1998. [Techdirt]

How can we describe Alan Feuer's profile of Laura Albert in today's New York Times? It is misery. For one thing, we are told that the woman formerly known as JT Leroy is now reduced to living in a "San Francisco walk-up." You know what? If she was actually poor she'd move to Oakland like everyone else. And anyway, how many buildings shorter than six floors in quake country actually have an elevator? "Ms. Albert has veracity issues. Can she be trusted? What, in short, should be discarded? What believed?" That's fun, coming from a guy with a bullshit memoir. He then describes Atascadero, California as "a cheerless town of bedding stores," which is sad, as he might have enjoyed knowing that Atascadero is actually home to California's favorite all-male maximum security psychiatric facility, which employs a decent percentage of the town's residents. Boy he would have loved to torture that metaphor. Then they get to L.A. and David Milch shows up and gives her some cash and boy I bet he wish he'd kept that $500 bucks, now that, thank God, "John From Cincinnati" got shot in the face.

The New York Times, which has been slow to adapt its user technology to these newfangled "Mac" computers (not that any of us really wanted to use the PC-only Times Reader, but, you know, principles), learned yesterday that perhaps Macs are a good thing in one way.

Today the Times paid a visit to the Great Indiana State Fair, where a reporter discovered the heartening news that unhealthy food fried in oil that doesn't contain trans-fats still tastes good! Thank God. People can go on being fat, and their arteries will be a little less clogged! "Yes, Deep-Fried Oreos, but Not in Trans Fats," reads the headline. There's just one little thing, though: Oreos themselves contain trans-fats.

Poor Times deputy metro editor for regional news Jodi Rudoren is on the Talk to the Newsroom hot seat this week, in which readers query New York Times editors. But alas, no one has any questions for her! She is reduced to answering non-questions along the lines of "I saw your photograph today on www.nytimes.com and just thought I would say hello—I was in the Class of 1992 with you—I don't have a question to ask." What is this, Facebook? But we imagine Jodi's lowest moment came when she was forced to address this query: "Why no Modern Love this week? It's my favorite column." "This has nothing to do with me," Jodi admits, and then elaborates—along the way telling us that sex is the most searched for topic on NYT.com.

Times cologne critic Chandler Burr got accused of an ethical blunder. Last week a correspondent going by the name of Ellsworth Toohey sent around the following complaint, asking: "Is it ethical for New York Times perfume critic Chandler Burr to charge all comers a fee of $200 a head to have dinner with him — and for Mr. Burr to hand out a "goody bag" of perfumes to each guest — at the end of the evening? That is what Mr. Burr is now doing with a series of "scent dinners" he is holding at various luxurious Rosewood Hotels around the U.S., including recently at the Carlyle Hotel in New York and coming up at properties including the Mansion at Turtle Creek in Dallas."

If you're not an adherent of Balk's Law ("Anytime an article mentions 'Godwin's Law,' skip to the next page") you might find something interesting in this article about Wikipedia's "impolite side." Or this one, about a new site that lets you see just who's editing their own Wikipedia articles. The Times sure is fascinated by Wikipedia, huh?

Every darn week, the wedding announcements in the 'New York Times' asks you to celebrate all that is good and right in the world. Let our Intern Alexis remind you that love is like a grenade of happiness, tossing limbs of joy everywhere in a hot red spray of love-blood!

Have you not heard? No one is taking long vacations these days! (Um, except all of us here! Apparently we are shiftless and lazy.) The new trend, we hear, is for employees to take a few four- or five-day breaks, instead of a full week or two. Oh, and everyone brings their BlackBerries and "checks in" with the office while they're poolside. Wow! Sounds like such a great life! And the Times was so eager for us to hear about this new trend that they wrote two articles—one in Metro, one in Styles—about it this weekend.

IN the taxonomy of New York City, the mere mention of a certain neighborhood conjures an image of its local tribe: the Williamsburg hipster. The meatpacking district club-goer. The Park Slope Earth Mama. But whom does Union Square conjure?

Tomorrow's corrections today: "Mr. Rove, who is leaving the White House at the end of the month, didn't cut an especially heroic or villainous figure. The strategist who looms in the public imagination as a political mastermind and West Wing Svengali used a rare appearance on camera to deliver an exiting White House aide's most time-honored Washington message: mistakes were not made, and it's not my fault. He even denied responsibility for his hip-hop performance as a rapping 'M.C. Rove' at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in March." Rove was right to deny responsibility: The performance in question occurred at the Radio & TV Correspondents' Association dinner. [NYT]

"The Ethicist" is Randy Cohen's long-running advice column in the New York Times. Each week, Gabriel Delahaye's "The Unethicist" will answer the same questions as "The Ethicist," with obvious differences.

Wall Street Journal Health columnist Tara Parker-Pope is defecting to the New York Times to write a health blog and a consumer health column for Science Times. In telling her staff, Science Times head Laura Chang wrote in an email, "Please keep this under your hat until the announcement is posted" on Monday. Oops. Parker-Pope starts August 27; we presume that several in her newly Murdochian wake will follow.

NYTimes.com killing in website traffic. [E&P]

Circ may be down 17 percent (uh, controlled! right!), and they still have Joel Stein writing for them, but at least there's one thing going right at Time: The softball team beat the New York Times last night, 20 to 11, to win the championship in their cute little media softball league. The trophy will be on display on the 22nd and 24th floors today, so if you're in the building, head over and pay tribute, okay?

We thought "PEKEEP" might be some mysterious new free jazz expert that the Times was employing to write about the death of Max Roach, but it seems to just be some placeholder thing they forgot to take off. Anyway, we'll be referring to actual regular jazz expert Peter Keepnews as "PEKEEP" from now on. Oh: And now he's dead, by the way. Drum on.