Plus and Minus

• Via Mercury Rising, the Digital Bodleian (Oxford) Library collections.  (I don't know how accessible it is because I haven't figured out how to use it yet.  Also, the links are a bit slower than their appearance, if that makes sense.  Also also, it continues to crack me up that Hebrew manuscripts are classed as "Oriental.")
• Zandar excerpts a long piece from the Washington Post on the gradual dismanatling of public education in North Carolina.  It's ugly.

  That’s right–our state government has maimed public schools so it can offer tax dollars to for-profit charters and private schools with totally inadequate government oversight from the same systems that declared public schools inadequate in the first place.
  
  [...]
  
  ... With an unassailable, veto-proof majority, North Carolina Republicans seized control of this state and unleashed a devastating blow to public schools.
  
  They have systematically pared budgets to the bone. They have insulted, antagonized, and demoralized teachers through stingy salary offerings–and they’ve muted the organization that had for many years protected them.
  
  As a result, public schools have suffered, and Republicans went the extra mile to design a new school rating system that exploited every weakness. It became the perfect excuse to bring private schools and for-profit operators into the mix, diverting critical taxpayer dollars from public schools into the deep pockets of companies like Pearson, sometimes without even a competitive bid process.
  
  And now? What’s happening today?

  Research Triangle slowly becomes an island?