The film is thus presented as a book, told in chapters, this being the first. This still might remind fans of the library book at the center of Anderson’s previous film, Rushmore.

The film also features several books within book, as several characters are authors as well.

More fully, Sic transit gloria mundi, meaning “Thus passes the glory of the world.”. The phrase possibly originates from a similar one in the Thomas à Kempis’s 1418 devotional book, The Imitation of Christ: “O quam cito transit gloria mundi.”

The line is later used in Max’s Vietnam play, spoken by a US Marine in parting with a comrade.

The nautical theme is important. Max “discovers” Miss Cross through an inscription in a library book about the famous oceanographer Jacques Cousteau:

When one person, for whatever reason, has a chance to lead an exceptional life, he has no right to keep it to himself.

The book was a gift from Miss Cross’s husband (Edward Appleby). Appleby drowned and she then gave it to the library. Max later convinces Mr. Blum to build an aquarium in Appleby’s honor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbPUiaRnQkU

Of course, Anderson further developed this nautical theme (and his obsession with Cousteau) in The Life Aquatic.

Both Coursera and Udacity developed out of online courses offered by Stanford University in 2011.

Over 100,000 student enrolled in Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun’s “Introduction Into AI” which lead to Thrun’s launching of Udacity. MOOCs taught by by Andrew Ng and Jennifer Widom were offered at the same. Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller then launched Coursera. Both are for-profit companies that now have major partnerships with prestigious universities.

The New York Times called 2012 “The Year of the MOOC.”

This is the year that Netscape browser released its source code for its Communicator suite (which included the browser Navigator). They did so at mozilla.org and created the Mozilla project, named after the original code name for Netscape Navigator.

A malapropism—humorous misuse of a word with a similar sound. Max mistakes Latin American for Latin.

Shakespeare’s Captain Dogberry from Much Ado About Nothing is one famous literary perpetrator of the malapropism to the point that a “Dogberryism” has become a synonym of the word.

An obvious attempt to impress Miss Cross. Max is in fact on “sudden death academic probation” because he is failing most of his classes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gc3RW0NHlg

The term commons can refer to any property, land or other natural resources, that is held publicly. In this case, the phrase aligns with new movements within the digital era that argue that information technology resources should be similarly held in “common.” Wikipedia is an example of digital commons.

The term “unalienable rights” is actually taken from another founding national document, the US Declaration of Independence.