What a long, strange trip it's been.

Hi everybody. The Secretary hopes everybody is safe and sound this mild Friday afternoon. I'm a little delayed in posting today's Daily Links because I slept till noon. I slept till noon because I didn't get to bed until 7 am. And I didn't get to bed until 7 am because I was caught swirling in a vortex of twitter, reddit, facebook, and news media websites, trying to figure out if missing Brown student Sunil Tripathi was one of the Boston bombers. HE IS NOT. But for a few hours last night, thanks to the strange echo chamber of scoop-hungry tech users that characterizes our modern-day "news event," even I was sure that he was. There was one reddit thread in particular that, even as an army of police continued to search for an armed and dangerous man on the loose, erupted in self-congratulations for putting together the pieces and solving the crime. But they were wrong.

Meanwhile, the manhunt continues, and large areas of Boston are either on lockdown. We know that many in the Brown grad student community either live in Boston or have close connections there. So, before getting on with the day, the Secretary and his elves just want to say we hope you and yours are okay, and that we see a speedy resolution to this whole mess.

• That said, all I could muster was another couple of links on MOOCs. Am I obsessed? Or could it be that everyone else is? Should we just start calling this feature the "Daily MOOC Report"? Today's developments: Amherst says "thanks but no thanks," bucking the trend. (The comments section is great on that one). And Brown launches its own MOOCS for high school students. NYT takes notice.
• Are you doing any teaching this summer? Grad Hacker's here to help you out.

Please, by all means, if you have any other interesting news pertinent to being a grad student, bring it on. Otherwise, just try to have a fun weekend.