Sunday, February 3

Today is Sunday of Week 3. If you have not finished up the Week 3 assignments, today is the day to do that! Here is a link to the Week 3 assignments, and Week 4 is ready to go too.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Extra credit now for midterms. Some of you will probably have midterm exams starting up in a couple of weeks in your other classes. If you  do some extra credit now, you can build up your points so that you can take a week off in this class when things get intense in your other classes. This Chart shows how your week by week progress works in this class.

Call me Laura. As I mentioned earlier in the semester, please just call me Laura! I'm on a first-name basis with all of you (plus I am also a student in the Indian Epics class this semester), so it just makes sense for you to use my first name too. Really!

Project Stack. I'll update the stack periodically today so you can check the stack to make sure I received your email. The sooner you turn in your project today, the sooner you'll get comments back from me. Also, advance warning: next week is going to be a really hectic week for me because I'm traveling. I'll have more to say about that in next week's announcements.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. Here's another one of those growth acronyms, this time from Anhthu's blog: Goals. Reality. Options. Will.

Free Book Online. Today's free book is Hindu Fairy Tales by Florence Griswold. The fairy tales here are actually ancient jataka tales from India, like the famous story of the monkeys and the canes:

Free Audiobook. Today's free audiobook is A Book of Fairy-Tale Foxes by Clifton Johnson. (As you may have guessed from my use of fox avatars for my identity online, I am a fan of fox stories!)

Featured Storybook. This Storybook from last semester is an Indiana-Jones-Indian-Epics mash-up: The Mythic Arms Race. The Indian epics tell us about weapons of mass destruction: what would happen if those weapons were re-discovered in modern times? It's up to Indiana Jones to keep those weapons out of the hands of the Nazis.

India Video. And here's an Epified video about parallels between the Indian Epics and the Rowling novels: Harry Potter Meets Hindu Mythology.

Myth Video. And from the Mediterranean world, here is another Crash Course video: Pantheons of the Ancient Mediterranean.

Myth Item. This proverb, like many English proverbs, comes from an Aesop's fable: Be not made a cat's paw. Some of you in Myth-Folklore may have read the fable of the monkey, the cat, and the chestnuts from Aesop's fables last week.

Writing. This cat offers some grammar humor: Claws and Clauses.

Growth Mindset Cats. Meanwhile, this cat knows that to write well, you must practice.

And here's a fun video from Shakira about practice and making mistakes: Try Everything.

Reading. Looking for a place to study? Bizzell is open until 2AM on Sunday nights (details). I am a great fan of libraries! This is a Library.

Event on Campus. The OU Symphony Orchestra will be giving a matinee concert this afternoon at 3PM in the Sharp Concert Hall (details).

Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

February 3: Setsubun. Today is the Shinto holiday known as Setsubun, the "Bean-Throwing Day," which is part of the spring festival season. You can read more about this holiday at Wikipedia. The image below shows the holiday bean-throwing at Kobe in Japan:

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