Closing a few tabs.

* Scientific American considers the cognitive advantages of depression.

* Marginal Revolution has a nature/nuture post on educational outcomes in adoptees.

* Dark Stores of the American recession. More at MeFi, including the British counterpart.

* The Beatles, remastered in mono. Reviews are positive.

* ...last fall, for the first time in 15 years, Ms. McNeill, 42, did not assign “Mockingbird” — or any novel. Instead she turned over all the decisions about which books to read to the students in her seventh- and eighth-grade English classes at Jonesboro Middle School in this south Atlanta suburb.

Among their choices: James Patterson‘s adrenaline-fueled “Maximum Ride” books, plenty of young-adult chick-lit novels and even the “Captain Underpants” series of comic-book-style novels. You had me until "Captain Underpants." (via Vu)

* Smells of New York.

A judge on Tuesday ruled that a strict Florida law that blocks gay people from adopting children is unconstitutional, declaring there was no legal or scientific reason for sexual orientation alone to prohibit anyone from adopting. Yes, yes, yes. No moral reason, no practical reason, no good reason, no reason, period.