diabola in musica

Every Friday, I used to post links that I found during the week that I haven’t yet posted. Then my summer jobs started, and my time slowly turned more to research than feeds. I’m nearing the end of my research, so I’ve had some time to collect interesting news. So here’s to Fridays.

(You can also be sure that most of these came from Laurie.)

• State of the Web: Summer 2008. A hilarious pictorial look at the Internet. Because we Internet junkies live off Twitter and Firefox and Facebook and our iPhones.
• Meet Yoda, the four-eared cat. Kitty’s doing well and is perfectly healthy, but his ears still look like a bad Photoshop job.
• Magpies are self-aware. There is evidence with mirror tests that magpies are aware of their own bodies.
• White supremacists hope an Obama win will prompt racial backlash. There is a small population in the United States that believe a “white revolution” is long overdue, and Obama is just the trigger for it.
• In a generation, minorities may be the majority. America is growing more ethnically diverse due to higher birth rates among minorities and immigration. (Those poor, poor white supremacists.)
• Paris Hilton responds to McCain’s campaign ad. McCain said that you shouldn’t elect celebrities for president, like Barack Obama or Paris Hilton. Let’s see what Paris has to say about that. (McCain, you have been p4wn3d!)
• Russian judge rules sexual harassment okay because it ensures humans to breed. I thought that sexual harassment prevents future generations.
• The United States take third place in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). The IMO is an annual event for pre-collegiate students. The US team has done well in the past but often competes closely with China and Russia. That said, first and second place this year go to China and Russia, respectively. (Those math problems remind me of those fond high school days.)
• Growth factor receptor governs neurogenesis and sensitivity to antidepressants. There is a direct link between a receptor found on the hippocampus and the effectiveness of certain antidepressants—SSRIs and tricyclics—that exert their influence through neurogenesis. This study may change the view on depression as an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. If the symptoms of depression can be alleviated with neurogenesis, then depression may be a mild degenerative disease.