Monday, December 4

Today is Monday. Week 14 is now over... and Week 15 has begun, a.k.a. Dead Week. If you need some points to make up for missing assignments earlier on, there is a full week's worth of assignments for Week 15. Just make sure you are aware of the special schedule: the class is over on Friday at noon. Find out more at the Class Calendar.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Finishing up the class. When you get the points you need to be done with the class (410/A, 360/B, 320/C), you can fill out the form to let me know you are done. Congratulations to everybody as you finish up!

Project Stack. There are a lot of assignments in the stack, and I'll be working through them in the order they were turned in. While you are waiting on comments back from me about your Project assignment, you can check the stack to make sure I received your email.

Evaluations. (repeat announcement) The course evaluations are still available at eval.ou.edu, so if you have not filled those out yet, I hope you will take a few minutes to do that before the end of the semester. I really value your feedback... and you might even win an iPad as part of the eval.ou.edu giveaway!

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Class Twitter. From yesterday's Twitter @OnlineMythIndia, here is Painting with Excel. Find out more here: 73-Year-Old Man Creates Magnificent Paintings Using Nothing But Excel (you can download some of his Excel files yourself).

Words. You've probably heard of palindromes that are the same backwards-and-forwards letter-by-letter ("nurses run"), and there are also word-unit palindromes, like this one: Mind your own business: Own your mind.

Storybook Archive. This project is from the Myth-Folklore class: The Stolen Princess. The fairies have taken the princess and raised her as their own. What will happen when she grows up and starts wondering just how she came to live among the fairies?

Free Book Online: Today's free book is Mighty Mikko - Finnish Tales by Parker Fillmore. See the Freebookapalooza blog for links and the table of contents. The illustrations are by Jay van Everen.

Story of the Day. Today's story is from Aesop's fables: The Wolf and the Well-fed Dog. This is a fable about the value of freedom.

Video: The video for today is Ravi Shankar on the Dick Cavett show back in 1971. You can find out more about the late great Ravi Shankar at Wikipedia.

Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat is learning new things all the time: You are capable of more than you think. You can find out more at the Growth Mindset blog.

Event on Campus: Come to the Lightwell Gallery in the Fred Jones Jr. Art Center to see Phantasma, an annual sci-fi and fantasy art exhibition curated by Professor Sohail Shehada (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

December 4: Omar Khayyam. Today marks the death in the year 1131 of the great Persian poet and scholar, Omar Khayyam. He is best known in the West for his collection of poems called the Rubaiyat, and he is also renowned as a mathematician and astronomer. You can read more about Omar Khayyam's remarkable life and career in this Wikipedia article, and you can also see this wonderful statue of Khayyam on the OU campus at Farzaneh Hall:

Check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day, or click here for past announcements.