Refund reminder: Monday is the last day. For those of you who are still deciding whether or not you want to stay in the class, Monday, February 2, is when you need to make that decision. You can still drop on Monday and get a full refund. After Monday, you can drop the class with a W on your transcript, but the university will be keeping your money.
Working on the weekend. As many of you discovered, it is sometimes hard to squeeze assignments for this course into your busy weekday schedule! So, you might want to consider doing all your work for this course over the weekend. To do that, just finish up the Week 2 assignments this weekend, and do the Week 3 Tuesday-through-Thursday assignments this weekend also. That way, you can take the week off, and then get back to work the next weekend, finishing up Week 3 and starting on Week 4. If you take this approach, not only will you find the workload easier to manage, you can get Early Bird extra credit for working ahead.
Week 2 Internet assignment: Publishing webpages. I'm available via email Friday to help you with any problems you run into as you publish your first webpages. Over the weekend, I am not as quick to answer email - so please make sure you get started on that assignment on Saturday at the latest. That way, if you run into trouble, you can contact me on Saturday and there will be time for me to send you a reply on Sunday, in time for you to finish up the assignment over the weekend.
Storybook assignments over the weekend. If you want to receive comments from me about a Storybook assignment before the weekend, please turn it in by noon on Friday. I always do my best to read and reply on Friday afternoon to all the assignments turned in before noon. If you turn in an assignment on Friday afternoon or over the weekend, I'll be updating the list again on Monday. So, on Monday morning, you can check the list of assignments in the Stack and you'll be able to make sure I received your assignment.
Friday, January 30: Assassination of Gandhi. On January 30 in 1948, Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated. The image below shows the memorial in New Delhi where Gandhi's body was cremated. Written on the stone you can see what were reportedly Gandhi's last words: "Hey Ram" (Oh Rama!) - his invocation of the god Rama will definitely mean something to the students in the Indian Epics class. Although it is a matter of some controversy as to whether those were Gandhi's last words, here is something he wrote in December 1947, just weeks before his assassination: "In the end it will be as Rama commands me. Thus I dance as He pulls the strings. I am in His hands and so I am experiencing ineffable peace." If you look closely at the photograph, you will see the words written in Devanagari script, gold letters on the black stone, just behind the burning stick of incense:
