Angel >> MIT In an age when most institutions are trying to come up with clever ways to reap some financial reward from the Internet, MIT is opening up its electronic borders. Over the next 10 years, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will spend a reported $100-million to counter the "privatization of knowledge," creating a Web site that will offer free access to lecture notes, course outlines, readings lists and assignments for all of its curricula. MIT OpenCourse Ware hopes to have more than 500 courses up for grabs within the next two years.

Insect >> Bourque Now that a third-party audit tallied a mere 20,876 legitimate, Montreal-Island signatures on the pro-megacity petition, Bourque is left to defend his friendships with holy sons, dead presidents and dead Nazis--all of whom apparently lent their support to the cause and brought the total up to 50,000 signatures. Bourque, happy to wax indignant about the integrity of his $144,271 petition just weeks ago, greets these latest results with resounding silence--quelle surprise.