From the New York Review of Books, "Trapped in the Virtual Classroom"—the text of David Bromwich's speech at the Yale Political Union on the topic of MOOCs (massive open online courses):

The authoritative MOOC on any subject aspires to be accepted as a uniform convenience. And yet, we lose something when we shut out the human contact whose elimination makes for the convenience. Might it not turn out to be antiseptic—deadening, even—to complete a two-year or a four-year-long succession of educational requirements in the frictionless setting of the virtual classroom? And if we think of uniformity as a gain—millions of pupils imbibing a familiar doctrine from the same learned authority—what shall we say of the consequent loss of variety? Good teaching has more than one master, one method, and one style.

Both from the New York Times: a short photo essay about a community of cloistered nuns in New Jersey, and a time-lapse video of the painting of a massive mural of Pope Francis on the side of a high-rise building near Penn Station.