About a week after the controversial announcement was made that Carson Daly would cross his writers on the picket line and return to Last Call, the highest-rated late-late night talk show among graveyard-shift convenience store clerks looking for a break from watching closed circuit video feeds of their empty parking lots, the embattled host finally returned to the airwaves Monday.

You may have missed it, occurring as it did during the holiday break, but those stalwart defenders of morals at the Times offered up an Editorial Observer column from one Lawrence Downes which posited the immemorial question, What's the matter with kids these days? Downes sets the scene thusly:

An earlier post where we wondered whether or not we should provide a suicidal reader precise information as to how many Ambien one needs to take to finally draw down the curtain on this life provoked some interesting responses. Mostly, you don't want us to have any fun. A sampling of the responses we received can be found after the jump, along with our final decision as to dispensing the advice in question. See you on the other side.

We're not afraid to be servicey here at Gawker: We're all about bringing our readers important information that they might not be able to obtain in their otherwise busy lives. Certain requests for illumination, however, put us in an odd place, ethics-wise. Take the following query: