From the expansive to the expensive to the free

Expansive. Star of Bethlehem. A cousin gave this DVD to my family this Christmas to watch. Rather astounding how he describes the movement of the stars and planets telling the story of Christ's conception, birth, and crucifixion as it happens. It seemed almost too amazing to be true, but I don't have the time or the resources at the moment to try to do any further study on the matter to see how accurate it is. Still, good enough that I'd recommend it to any interested in learning about what the magi were seeing! (Thanks, Eric and Sunny!)

Expensive. "Afterlife is Expensive for Digital Movies." (by Michael Cieply. NYTimes. 23 Dec 2007.) This New York Times article is based on a report released last month by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The report titled "The Digital Dilemma" looks at the challenges and costs the movie studios face in preserving the movies that are made in digital formats and are being preserved in digital formats. The costs for digital preservation are many times more than the cost for film preservation. Will digital films be lost to a future generation as many of the pre-1950 films have been lost? (Thanks, Cecilia.)

Expensive (or not?). "Harvard announces sweeping middle-income initiative." On December 10th, Harvard announced a new formula for determining the cost of tuition at this ivy-league school. The most dramatic announcement is sliding-scale rate of tuition is based on a family's income which they term the "Zero to 10 Percent Standard." For families with incomes of less than $60,000, they are expected to pay 0% of the tuition--a Harvard education is free. For families over $60,000, the amount of tuition due varies based on the family income, topping out at 10% for families with incomes in the $120,000-$180,000 range.

Free. "A Public Education: There's a lot you can learn free on the Internet--if you know where to look" ( by Vicky Hallet. US News & World Report. 20 Oct 2003?) and "Internet opens elite college material to all" (by Justin Pope. USA Today. 29? Dec 2007. AP.) Both of these articles highlight MIT's OpenCourseWare--which provides more than 1800 courses for free! Similar programs at other top colleges are mentioned in the articles. Sorry I don't have a free link to the US News article at the moment. (Thanks Linda and John Jaeger.)

Free. "Race to the Shelf Continues." (by Beth Ashmore and Jill E Grogg. Searcher. Jan 2008. 16(1)). Looks at two of the big players in digitizing and making books available online--Open Content Alliance and Amazon.com. (Thanks John Jaeger.)