In this link roundup: the all-inclusive DSM-IV, more on student debts, mapping the internet, Kundera on e-books, the Aurora shooting and the first anniversary of the 2011 Norway attacks, gene therapy, and instructions by David O. Selznick for projecting Gone With The Wind (1940).

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• COSMOS magazine: “Is crazy the new normal?” by Ola Jachtorowicz, July 9, 2012.

  There have been several studies showing rapid increases in diagnoses worldwide, explains Frances, now an emeritus professor at Duke. A 2010 study reported in Psychological Medicine, for example, followed a cohort from Dunedin, New Zealand, and found that half reported at least one anxiety disorder by the age of 32.

  A similar study done by Frances’ colleagues at Duke University, epidemiologists E. Jane Costello and Adrian Angold, and published in 2011 in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, tested young people for symptoms several times between the ages of 9 and 21. They found that 83% of participants had met criteria for a disorder by 21.

  “Either the criteria are way too loose and we’re including people who have the normal aches and pains of growing up,” says Frances, “or everyone’s real sick.”

  

• The Huffington Post: “The Ones We’ve Lost: The Student Loan Debt Suicides” by C. Cryn Johannsen, July 2, 2012.

  His mother, of course, saw it differently. While she was preparing for Jason’s funeral, student debt collectors were still phoning her about the money her son owed. As reporter David Newbart wrote in a 2007 article for Chicago Sun Times, she was gruff when confronted by these calls. “You are part of the reason he took his own life,” she told them and then hung up the phone.

  

• Nicolas Rapp: “Mapping the internet” July 9, 2012. Nicolas Rapp is the Graphics Director at Fortune Magazine.

  If the internet is a global phenomenon, it’s because there are fiber-optic cables underneath the ocean. Light goes in on one shore and comes out the other, making these tubes the fundamental conduit of information throughout the global village. To make the light travel enormous distances, thousands of volts of electricity are sent through the cable’s copper sleeve to power repeaters, each the size and roughly the shape of a 600-pound bluefin tuna.Once a cable reaches a coast, it enters a building known as a “landing station” that receives and transmits the flashes of light sent across the water. The fiber-optic lines then connect to key hubs, known as “Internet exchange points,” which, for the most part, follow geography and population.

  

• La république des livres: “L’angoisse de Milan Kundera” by Pierre Assouline, July 17, 2012. Assouline provides an excerpt from a recent public discourse where Kundera explains why there’s a clause in each of the contract he signs forbidding his books to be published in electronic formats:

  Ce mot donne, au prix que vous avez la bonté de m’accorder une étrange note nostalgique ; car il me semble que le temps qui, impitoyablement, poursuit sa marche, commence à mettre les livres en danger. C’est à cause de cette angoisse que, depuis plusieurs années déjà, j’ajoute à tous mes contrats, partout, une clause stipulant que mes romans ne peuvent être publiés que sous la forme traditionnelle du livre. Pour qu’on les lise uniquement sur papier, non sur un écran.

  

• Bart&Co. photostream on FLickr: The Bart&Co. Historic Clip Art Collection, 89 photos of vintage clip art illustrations. Great for playing around in Illustrator.

  

• Wall Street Journal: “Obama on Shooting: ‘Such Evil Is Senseless’” by Carol E. Lee, July 20, 2012.

  “Such violence, such evil is senseless. It’s beyond reason,” he said. “If there’s anything to take away from this tragedy it’s a reminder that life is fragile… and what maters at the end of the day is not the small things, it’s not the trival things… Ultimately it’s how we choose to treat one another and how we love one another.”

  By now we’re all aware of what happened in the early morning of July 20th, in a small theater in the City of Aurora (Colorado) during the premiere of Christopher Nolan’s film The Dark Knight Rises (2012). The shooting ―which has been qualified the worst mass shooting in the United-States by a single individual (taking into consideration both injuries and deaths)― happened just two days before the first anniversary of the 2011 Norway attacks (which happened on July 22, 2011). See the related story by GQ writer Sean Flynn: “Is he coming? Is he? Oh God, I think he is.” (August 2012).

• The New York Times: “European Agency Backs Approval of a Gene Therapy” by Andrew Pollack, July 20, 2012.

  After more than two decades of dashed expectations, the field of gene therapy appears close to reaching a milestone: a regulatory approval.The European Medicines Agency has recommended approval of a gene therapy to treat a rare genetic disease, according to the agency’s Web site. If the European Commission follows the advice, as it usually does, this would be the first regulatory approval of a gene therapy drug in the Western world. That could give a boost to the field, which at times has struggled for credibility and financing.

  

• Reddit: “Behold the original instructions for projecting “Gone With The Wind”.” by Reddit user DiMyDarling, July 21, 2012. Link to imgur.com (for photos of the instructions). To go along similar instructions by Terrence Malick, David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick (previously here: Actual Copy of Terrence Malick’s Notice to Projectionists)