A massive open online course (MOOC) is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web.  In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings and problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for the students, professors, and teaching assistants (TAs).  MOOCs are a recent development in distance education.  Although early MOOCs often emphasized open access features, such as open licensing of content, open structure and learning goals and connectivism, to promote the reuse and remixing of resources, some notable newer MOOCs use closed licenses for their course materials, while maintaining free access for students.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course 

See complete MOOC list at http://www.mooc-list.com/ 

QUOTE  Your assumptions are your windows on the world.  Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.  attributed to both Isaac Asimov, professor and author, born Isaak Yudovick Ozimov (1920-1992) and Alan Alda, actor and director (b. 1936) 

"Primrose" is derived from the French primerole, itself derived from the Latin primula.  It's been the accepted name for several flowers over the years, including the cowslip, daisy, and wild rose; the current Primula classification includes over 425 species.  Since the 1400s, "primrose" has also been used metaphorically to refer to the first or best of something (primrose is popularly but erroneously thought to derive from prima rosa, "first rose"); so a "primrose path" is not necessarily simply one lined with primroses--given their metaphorical meaning, it can be seen as a description of the ultimate in loveliness.  The current connotation of "primrose path," however, come from the old wordsmith himself, Shakespeare.  Never one to use an old cliché when he could coin a new one, in the 1600s he first used the term to refer to a pleasant path to self-destruction.  In Hamlet (published in 1600-1), Act I, Scene III, these words are spoken by Ophelia:

I shall the effect of this good lesson keep,
As watchman to my heart.  But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1948/whats-the-origin-of-primrose-path

"recks not his own rede" means does not take his own advice 

DREAMING AT THE LIBRARY  Learning Dreams keeps taking new shapes and changing lives. Now a new partnership with libraries is taking off.  Andre came into the library after school.  What he wanted to know, he said, was how to make his own archery bow.  The reply went beyond the call number for a book.  As it happens, a craftsman in the neighborhood makes bows.  A few weeks later, Andre (not his real name) was working beside Riley Harrison at the Hack Factory, making his dream come true.  Such connections are the magic of Learning Dreams.  At the library, Andre talked to a librarian who sent him to a Learning Dreams staff member.  Learning Dreams located the craftsman and engaged Andre’s mother, who checked out the craftsman and gave her okay.  Along the way, Andre’s mom got the chance to talk about her own learning dreams.  Learning Dreams is a concept or approach more than a program.  It focuses on connecting families with the whole local learning ecosystem beyond schools—community centers, libraries, museums, businesses, employment centers and more.  Now nearing its twentieth year, Learning Dreams continues to evolve, shape-shifting to meet current needs and opportunities.  Its latest collaboration is with Hennepin County Library. As libraries everywhere are changing, they are becoming curators of learning as well as books.

Gayla Marty  http://www.cehd.umn.edu/Connect/2013Spring/LearningDreams.HTML 

Nov. 25, 2013  Sherman Alexie challenged his fellow authors to do something for the independent bookstores that have done so much for them, and they took him up on it.  On Nov. 30, hundreds of authors across the country will participate in the Indies First movement as part of Small Business Saturday.  They'll go to independent bookstores and volunteer as "booksellers for a day," helping out on one of the busiest shopping days of the season.  They've been promoting the event through social media for weeks, and many have placed the indie "buy" button in the top position on their websites.  "Now is the time to be a superhero for independent bookstores," Alexie wrote in a letter released through the American Booksellers Association and addressed to "you gorgeous book nerds."  The Seattle author said "grassroots is my favorite kind of movement, and anyway there's not a lot of work involved in this one."  Across Oregon, dozens of authors have signed up to help their local independent bookstore on Saturday.   Jeff Baker  http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2013/11/post_36.html 

Nov. 26, 2013  A tiny book of psalms from 1640 has become the world's most expensive printed book as it was auctioned in New York for $14.2m (£8.8m).  The Bay Psalm Book is the first known book to be printed in what is now the United States.  It was published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by the Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  The book was meant to be a faithful translation into English of the original Hebrew psalms.  But it is not the most expensive book ever - that title goes to a handwritten Leonardo da Vinci notebook which sold for $30.8m in 1994.  The Bay Psalm Book is one of 11 copies known to remain in existence out of about 1,700 copies originally printed.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25115524

Nitrogen narcosis is a condition that occurs in divers breathing compressed air.  When divers go below depths of approximately 100 ft, increase in the partial pressure of nitrogen produces an altered mental state similar to alcohol intoxication.  Nitrogen narcosis, commonly referred to as "rapture of the deep," typically becomes noticeable at 100 ft underwater and is incapacitating at 300 ft, causing stupor, blindness, unconsciousness, and even death.  Nitrogen narcosis is also called "the martini effect" because divers experience an effect comparable to that from one martini on an empty stomach for every 50 ft of depth beyond the initial 100 ft. 

http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Martini's+law 

Every fifty feet down hits the human brain like one dry martini . . .two hundred feet down, the lake usually has the last laugh.

Gossip is inherent in a closed community.  

There are miles of road between "qualified" and "ready."

Paraphrases from A Superior Death by Nevada Barr