Since the launch early last year of […] two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete.

After a few weeks wandering the mountainous jungle terrain, we gave up our survey and declared the area not plottable.

Others more truly explain it of Hesiod, who lived in Kyme, a city of Asia, and, like the Sibyl, wrote the succession of the reigns of the gods and said that there were diverse heavenly sovranties; first came that of Saturn, which was golden, then that of Iuppiter, which was of silver, next of Neptune, which was bronze, and finally of Apollo, which was of iron.

But if councils were still run part-time by engine drivers — not self-regarding, pious Guardianistas — at the very least we'd get our dustbins emptied once a week.