Before we continue, an announcement: NPR Music is video webcasting live jazz twice next week. Tuesday, we've got Mark Turner's quartet at the Village Vanguard. Wednesday, is the debut of The Checkout: Live From 92Y Tribeca, with Dan Tepfer, hosted here on A Blog Supreme. Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming:

It's never too late to go back and get a college degree, at least not for 99-year-old Leo Plass of Redmond, Ore.

Plass enrolled at Eastern Oregon Normal School in 1929 to become a teacher. He lost his savings in a bank failure, and in 1932, Plass' friend offered him a job with a logging company.

"I needed the money to live on," Plass said. He took the job and dropped out just three credits shy of a degree.

We all know that some animals seem to display emotions. If you've ever had a dog, for example, you can tell when they're feeling down and scientists have found that mammals and birds can exhibit pessimism.

Last December, pianist Arturo O'Farrill and his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra left New York City for Cuba, along with O'Farrill's mother, his wife and his two teenage sons. The orchestra headlined the Havana International Jazz Plaza Festival, which was dedicated to O'Farrill's father, the legendary New York bandleader Chico O'Farrill.

Perhaps Mitt Romney's greatest vulnerability is the sense many voters and journalists have of him that his values are situational, that he'll take one position on an issue when it helps him politically and the opposite stance when that's advantageous.

The ideal competitor to a frontrunner with that kind of record then, would arguably be one who could boast of his consistency.

Tim Pawlenty may eventually be able to make that claim. But consistency isn't exactly the word that comes to mind right now with Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor.

GOP White House hopefuls debate in New Hampshire. Tim Pawlenty seems to back off his "Obamneycare" comment. Newt Gingrich's senior staff decamps, many head to Rick Perry's corner. Plus: Rep. Weiner takes the hint and resigns. Obama and House Speaker John Boehner to talk budget between bogeys.

The influential consulting firm McKinsey & Company caused quite a stir when it published an article last week predicting that nearly a third of employers "will definitely or probably stop offering" health insurance to their workers after 2014.

Kentucky public colleges and universities are already compiling their capital project wish lists.   They're getting ready for next year's legislative session.  A $33 million Engineering-Physics building tops the projects list at Murray State University, but President Randy Dunn says the school also badly needs a new $62 million library.

Keith Mularski doesn't look like someone with a lot of secrets. He has this aw-shucks demeanor, like an overgrown kid in a business suit.

But back in 2005, his first assignment with the cybercrime division at the FBI was to hang out on the underground sites where stolen credit cards are bought and sold. By 2006, he would be running one of the biggest underground sites on the Internet.

The Boston Early Music Festival has a rhythm all its own. For those who want to dive in at the deep end, there's the centerpiece opera of the festival — invariably grand, Baroque, obscure and wonderful. The next day, the concerts begin in earnest: afternoons, early evenings, after dinner and even a series at Emmanuel Church in the Back Bay that starts each night at 11:15. Oh, and did I mention the Young Performers' Series and the Boston Early Music "Fringe" concerts?