Monday, April 20

Today is Monday. Week 13 is now over... and Week 14 has begun. Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you did not finish the final Week 13 assignments. This week's topic in the Myth-Folklore class is European stories again, and in Indian Epics you'll be finishing up Buck's Mahabharata or reading some more from the UnTextbook. I hope you will enjoy the last week of readings! (Next week, Week 15, is a review week.)

Update: The Project Nominations are done, which means the ballot is ready in D2L, and the Week 14 and Week 15 Project commenting assignments are also ready to go. Thanks to everybody for you input!

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. As always on Monday, I will have a huge bunch of assignments in the stack that were turned in over the weekend. The first thing I will do on Monday morning when I get to work is to update the list of items in the Project stack. So, after 9AM or so on Monday, you will be able to check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment.

Week 13 Project Commenting assignment. After people finish turning in their Project nominations for the Week 13 Project Comment assignment today at noon, I'll prepare a ballot with the most-nominated Projects for you to vote on. I'll update these announcements when it's ready, with voting to take place this week, and results to be announced on Friday. Thanks to everybody who turned in nominations!

Finishing the semester. (repeat announcement) Now that there are just three weeks of the semester left (Weeks 14 and 15), it is really important that you have a plan for finishing up with the points you need for the grade you want (410 for an A, 360 for a B, 320 for a C). You can use the D2L Gradebook to see what points you could use to reach your goal, and if you have any questions about that, please ask me now!

Week 15. (repeat announcement) Week 15 is a review week (like Week 8), and there are some review blog posts in that week where I would really like to get your thoughts and feedback about the course. So, if you are close to finishing and want to jump ahead to the Week 15 review week, those assignments are available now. I would be really glad if those of you who are close to finishing want to use those review assignments to get the points you need!

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Writing Resource: Are Emoticons the Future of Language?. You all have probably noticed that I use the smiley :-) a lot when I write. This YouTube video offers some thoughts about emoticons by Ben Zimmer, a linguist and one of my favorite language commentators.

Indian Words in English: Today's Indian word in English is BRAHMIN, which refers to a Hindu priest. For details, see this blog post.

Featured Storybook: Lions of Aesop. Grandfather Lion is sharing lessons learned with the little cubs of the pride .... and you get to listen in!

FREE eBook: The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. This blog post provides additional information about the adventures of Mowgli.

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Waste not, want not (an English proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. This is "want" in the sense of "to lack, be wanting for something."

Mahabharata Image: Today's Mahabharata image is Draupadi and the Pandavas as Aswatthaman departs; you can see that he is bleeding after the precious gem has been removed from his forehead.

Monday Event on Campus: There will be an OU Symphony Band and Concert Band concert in Sharp Concert Hall at 8PM (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

April 20: Odilon Redon. Today marks the birthday of the French symbolist painter Odilon Redon in 1840. If you have never seen his paintings, take a look: they are marvelous! You can see a gallery at Wikipedia. Here is his painting called The Cyclops:

Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed, and you can check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day.