A meme is a concept or social issue that catches on and gets echoed across the media.

One busy meme these days is e-mail addiction and how to address it. You'll be hearing NPR do stories on it, you'll see a variety of online pubs providing solutions.

We noticed a New York Times story recently, in which was found a reference to the new (beta) Take a Break feature built-into Gmail.

The story noted the E-Mail Addict feature in Gmail is more a blunt instrument than a longterm solution.

To activate the feature, you go to your Gmail account and then click Settings. Go to the Labs tab and look for the E-mail addict option. Enable it.

Then when using Gmail, you can click on the upper frame "Take a Break" button. That shuts down Gmail for 14 minutes. The screen message reads: "Take a break, get some real work done, or have a snack. We'll be back in 14 minutes!"

I heard the NPR report yesterday - I loved one Microsoftian's description of e-mail "bankruptcy," where a couple times he's just deleted everything in his inbox and started fresh.

Once when I was at the Tacoma News Tribune I was piling up all the business section's mail on the floor of my cubicle in the absence of the editor; the custodian threw it all away. We never missed a beat. Not that I advocate ignoring either e-mail or snail mail; I'm just sayin'...