"if you're at the top, you shouldn't scroll up,"

Why not? If I don't know I'm at the top, my only choice is to scroll up. You don't give any visual clues as to where I am vertically - it's impossible to tell if I'm at the most recent headline. If I want to go back to the very top, my only choice is to scroll up until I can't any more. Ideally if I'm already at the top and I scroll up and nothing happens, that tells me I'm at the very top of the window.

Assuming the user knows he's at the top and so then 'shouldn't scroll up' seems like a bad assumption.

Things you should never tell your users: "You shouldn't do this, you should do that."

If users are doing what they shouldn't do, it's your fault.

I second the scrolling problem. Once I scrolled down, trying to scroll back to the top was ridiculously impossible. I think that I might have reached the top, but then the list changed directions (?) and started scrolling on it's own. It feels like overkill to me. Just give me a scroll bar and hard stops at the top and bottom of the list.

This reminds me of those adverts with a big red button and some uninformative text. Give someone a button and they're going to press it.

If the reaction they get isn't what they expected they may well hold it against you.

How do you know you're at the top? There's no scrollbar to tell you ;)

If thats the case I shouldn't be able to. I also might add a up button and a down button (like the left/right buttons you have on the top) so the user is aware the list scrolls. Similar to the Google Reader Widget for iGoogle.