And thanks to the imploded economy, this one on Sunday may be the all-time pressure cooker. The decision to spend $3 million — $100,000 a second — to air a 30-second Super Bowl ad seems almost indefensible.

It is a particularly sticky wicket after a week in which 70,000 layoffs were announced and labor statistics set a couple of firsts: Unemployment was up in every state in December, and people getting unemployment benefits has hit a record. The quiet question: How many jobs could be saved by not running a Super Bowl spot?

“This is the first Super Bowl of the Great Depression 2.0,” says Steve Hayden, vice chairman at Ogilvy Worldwide perhaps best known as the co-writer of the “1984″ Apple ad that set off the Super Bowl ad frenzy 25 years ago. “Being on the Super Bowl this year is like driving around in a Duesenberg in 1929.”

Don’t tell that to 30-some brands that bought the 33.5 minutes of ad time in the NBC game broadcast, including veterans such as Budweiser, Pepsi and Coke and first-timers such as Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, Pedigree pet food and Denny’s.

The common goal: $100,000-a-second worth of ad buzz. Buzz means Web hits after the game and, in good times anyway, that translates into sales.

There’s no telling what it means in the worst of times, which is why NBC had two ad slots left Thursday. “I’m not going to tell you it hasn’t been a tough slog,” Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Sports, said early this week. “But we have not crashed price in any way, shape or form.”

Advertisers who bought in are rethinking what to air. They’re doing more research. They’re focusing on hallmarks such as heritage. They are even alluding to the economy — some seriously, some with a chuckle.

“The biggest danger every Super Bowl advertiser faces is being ignored,” says advertising research guru Don Bruzzone.

More Below:

Marketers face pressure to deliver with Super Bowl ads – USATODAY.com.

What was the name of that guy with that stuff in that place with those things? Don’t you remember?

Scientists have found mechanisms for how the brain creates short-term and long-term memories.

We all suffer occasional lapses in memory. Some people suffer severe neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer’s, that rob them of their ability to form memories or remember recent events.

Three new studies shed light on the way the brain forms, stores and retrieves memories. Experts say they could have implications for people with certain mental disorders.

When did it happen?

Newly born brain cells, thousands of which are generated each day, help “time stamp” memories, according to a computer simulation by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, and the University of Queensland in Australia. The research was published in the journal Neuron.

These cells do not record an exact, absolute date — such as January 28, 2009 — but instead encode memories that occur around the same time similarly. In this way, the mind knows whether a memory happened before, after or alongside something else.

Neuroscientists believe that if the same neurons are active during two events, a memory linking the two may be formed. Complete article on CNN below…

How memories form, fade, and persist over time – CNN.com.

Google Maps and Google Earth are the centerpiece of NYCGo, a new information and reference project launched by the New York City government to provide resources to both visitors and locals. Wednesday’s launch announced the debut of NYCGo.com, a Google Maps-fueled local search and reference site, as well as the unveiling of the renovated New York City Information Center a few blocks north of the tourist-heavy Times Square district.

NYCGo.com contains not just Google map and search data, but also travel deals from Travelocity and local content from what-to-do powerhouse Time Out New York, nightlife culture magazine Paper, the New York Observer, and eco-living guide Greenopia.

The information center, located on Seventh Avenue between 52nd and 53rd streets, is equally Googly. The city’s technocratic mayor, Michael Bloomberg, even contributed a guest post to the official Google blog to announce it: “The Information Center features interactive map tables, powered by the Google Maps API for Flash, that let you navigate venues and attractions as well as create personalized itineraries, which can be printed, emailed or sent to mobile devices,” the blog post explained. “Additionally, there’s a gigantic video wall that utilizes Google Earth to display a 3D model of New York City on which you can map out personalized itineraries.”

Bloomberg has been aggressive about promoting tech initiatives during his time in office, from a wind power plan (part of the much bigger “GreeNYC” project) and a city-run venture firm. Under his watch, the Mountain View, Calif.-based Google opened its New York satellite office, taking over several floors of the historic former Port Authority building downtown.

A side note: the video provided by Google shows the “interactive map tables” in the new information center, and they look a whole lot like Microsoft Surface units. But they aren’t, a representative from NYCGo tells us. They’re custom-made.

Google powers new NYC information hub | Webware – CNET.

Putting your thoughts in 140 characters and sharing them with the world is shaping up to be more popular than “digging” your favorite news. According to new market share numbers from Hitwise, Twitter, the popular microblogging service, is now more popular than Digg’s social news aggregation service. Hitwise compared both sites in a report released Tuesday and is basing the market share ranking by page views.

Unfortunate events such as the Hudson River plane crash and also more fortunate ones like Obama’s Inauguration, led to more mainstream exposure for Twitter and moved it above one notch above Digg in Hitwise’s hierarchy – Twitter is now ranked at 84, with Digg at 85.

When the US Airways Flight crashed into the Hudson River late last week, the first reports of the incident appeared on Twitter, including amateur photographs that later made headlines around the world and transformed Janis Krums into a celebrity of the moment. Hitwise confirmed the fact that this event was one of the main factors of Twitter surpassing Digg in visits market share.

The Numbers