Wednesday, October 12

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 8. For the Review Week, there are two surveys that I'd like you to fill out. You'll find the links in this week's assignments.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. I've read and replied to projects turned in on Sunday by 6PM, and I'll be working today on the projects turned in on Sunday evening. You can check the stack to make sure I received your assignment.

My schedule today. They may be doing work on the Internet service in my neighborhood, so I am not sure if I will be online as usual or not. I may be slow to respond, but I should be able to get back to any email inquiries by the end of the day.

OU BIT. As part of the enrollment/advising preparation that goes on every semester, I just learned about an OU service that I did not know about before: OU BIT. It's a way that you can access help for someone at OU (student, staff, faculty) that you think could be in trouble because of drugs, alcohol, untreated depression, or some other serious distress. Their phones are staffed 24/7, and you can find out more at the BIT website. I wanted to make sure to let everybody know about this service; perhaps you all know about it already, but it was new to me!

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Punctuation. I am a fan of the semicolon, so of course I was curious to read this Interview with a Semicolon. An unhappy Semicolon, as you can see:

Writing. Wise words from Natalie Goldberg: The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.

GrammarCatz. These guilty cats are having the usual LOLCat trouble with the English language. Find out more at the GrammarCatz blog, and there is more about the linguistics of LOLSpeak below too.

Featured Storybook. This project is from the Indian Epics class: Yama's Collected Souls. Yama himself explains: "In all my time of collecting souls, there are a few who stand out in my mind, whose deaths or lives were extraordinary. In truth, every soul I can remember. Certain souls…impress me more."

Free Book Online: Totkv Mocvse / New Fire: Creek Folktales by Earnest Gouge. See the Freebookapalooza blog for links and the table of contents. This marvelous book has audio recordings of the stories in Creek as read by Margaret Mauldin, founder of the Creek language program at OU.

Words of Wisdom: Today's saying is Fall down seven times, get up eight (a Japanese proverb). Find out more at the Proverb Lab. You never know how many times you will fall, but just call that "x" and then make sure you get up "x+1" times:

Today's Video: The Linguistics of LOLspeak. SRSLY! There really is a method to the madness of LOLspeak.

Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat is following some great advice from Neil Gaiman: Make glorious, amazing mistakes. You can find out more at the Growth Mindset blog.

Event on Campus: There will be a lecture by Prof. Shervin Malekzadeh at 3PM today in 145 Farzaneh Hall on the topic of women, schooling, and politics in post-revolutionary Iran (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

October 12: Yom Kippur. Sunset yesterday began the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the "Day of Atonement," which lasts until sunset this evening. You can read more about Yom Kippur at Wikipedia; the image below shows Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur, a painting by Maurycy Gottlieb (1878).

Check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day.