Over the weekend, a university in Michigan decided to dismiss its entire student body. An email was sent to all students registered at Eastern Michigan University with the words:

As a result of your Winter 2012 academic performance, you have been dismissed from Eastern Michigan University.

Yikes. That's a lot dummies in one college. The only problem is that the failed students were actually victims of an epic email fail.

If you had to give up the internet for a day, could you do it? How about a week? A month? A whole freakin’ year? (Please note that I’m asking this hypothetically, knowing full well that I can’t even half figure out where I am or what time of day it is without hopping on Google, so I know I couldn’t do any of the above. Maybe a day, if a really good Titanic-length movie or marathon of some favorite show was on. But then I always want to learn more about something and head straight to the web, so never mind.)

Anyway, you and I don’t have to do it. The ever-so-brave Paul Miller, a technology blogger and senior editor at tech news site The Verge, officially gave up the internet for a year starting at midnight yesterday, so we can just shudder vicariously through his re-acclimation to actually having conversations on the phone (ack!) and letting his fingers do the walking (le sigh). 

For most of the past month, my wife has been reading her Nook in our newborn baby's room, squinting at the e-ink screen in the near darkness. Luckily, something just came along that is going to make her life - and a lot of mommies' lives - better: the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight.

The Simple Touch has the same screen as the Nook and the entry-level Kindle models. But when you hold down a button, the screen lights up with a bright white glow. The backlit screen is easily readable in the dark and the black text on white background is easier on the eyes than a bright tablet screen.

I've never questioned where my precious white iPhone came from. I guess after going to one-too-many Apple stores, I envisioned a similar operation on a larger scale, based in China, where the workers are happy, playing with iPhones all day, and wearing matching royal blue T-shirts. Thanks to ABC's Nightline, I now know I was very wrong. Tuesday night Nightline correspondent Bill Weir took viewers on the first-ever tour of Foxconn -- the plant where Apple products are made. It was anything BUT the Apple utopia of my dreams.

In the factory, thousands work 12-hour shifts. They're overtired and get paid $1.78 an hour. Most of the Apple products are handmade, and it takes five days and roughly 325 sets of hands to assemble one iPad. What's worse? Outside of Foxconn, there are suicide nets.

Horrifying? Yes. Did it make me think the company needs to improve its working conditions? Of course. However, knowing about Foxconn doesn't make me want to stop being a dedicated Apple customer.

I still remember playing my Gameboy in the back of the family station wagon, the black and white screen almost impossible to see in the after-school gloom of a winter evening. But kids these days are lucky: They have stuff like the PlayStation Vita to tinker with instead. They're gaming consoles that have huge, bright screens and enough computing power to put a man on the moon.

The Vita is Sony's latest game machine, built from the ground up to act as a handheld console, a multimedia movie and music player, and, most interestingly, a mini web-browsing device. In short, it's really cool and I assure you there's a youngster in your house who has his or her eye on one. 

The question, then, is should you pick one up?

Forget the Super Bowl commercials. The best ad you're going to see is already out, and it showed up on Craigslist of all places. An industrious dude from Indianapolis is selling his version of Super Bowl tickets on the online classifieds listing spot, and you too can get in on the action ... if you have a large-screen TV that is.

For the low, low price of $1,600 (about half what a cheap seat was going for at Lucas Oil Stadium), the Craigslister was willing to let a group of folks take over his living room to take advantage of his brand new hi-def Samsung 55" 3D TV. Of course he was!

I guess it was inevitable: In the wake of The New York Times expose on the horrifying working conditions for Apple-product factories, people are talking about a boycott. The LA Times, Forbes, Daily Beast, and other major media outlets are daring to ask the question, should we be boycotting Apple?

So far the boycott has been mostly talk. The only organized effort I've found so far is this Boycott Apple Facebook page. Any other efforts to boycott have been too small and under-the-radar to make much of a difference, yet. But for those of us who are deeply concerned about these working conditions, is a boycott even the best strategy?

This expose The New York Times is doing on working conditions for people who make Apple products is totally killing my iBuzz. For those of us who adore Apple products, there's a visceral thrill in using them: They're aesthetically refined, intuitive, almost seamless ... oh listen to me. If this sort of ga-ga Apple worship is gross, just skip on ahead to where I talk about the horrible iPad factory explosion.

Sigh. So remember when Apple computers used to all come with that cute "Made in Cuptertino, California" note? Now most Apple products are made in China -- and in what reporters are saying are grim mega-factories of the sort Americans would never tolerate. It's so gruesome, it's sapping my enjoyment of using the Apple products we own.