Friday, February 14

HAPPY FRIDAY! And Happy Valentine's Day too! Today is Friday of Week 5... which means the semester is already one-third over. Incredible, but true! Here is a link for finishing up Week 5 and, for those of you working ahead, here is Week 6.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. If you turned your project in on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. I'll finish the rest of the Week 4 project assignments that are in the stack today for sure, and I will reply to as many of the Week 5 and Week 6 assignments as I can. As always, you can check the stack to make sure I received your project. (Anything left in the stack at the end of the day Friday will be at the top of the stack for Monday.)

Project Feedback. You've seen that the Week 2-3-4-5 Feedback assignments have been gearing you up to get ready for giving feedback to people on their projects starting in Week 6. I think there may be enough Storybooks and Portfolios ready for feedback that I'll be able to get the Week 6 project randomizer ready to go today too. Fingers crossed! Update: The Week 6 Feedback is ready to go for those of you who are working ahead.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. Here's another Twine experiment! This one is from Rhys; I can't embed it in the blog post here, but this is a screenshot and you can play the game at his blog: The Run Around. Here's a screenshot of how it starts:

Twitter Stream. The Merriam-Webster Twitter feed is a fun one, and I enjoyed this new article which I found there: Literally Everything You'll Ever Need To Know About Semantic Bleaching. A very special article about 'very' (and 'actually', 'really', 'ultimately'...)

Storybooks. From Myth-Folklore a few years ago, here's a fun Storybook: The Adventures of Office Medved the Bear.

Indian Epics Today. The character of the day is Ravana's virtuous brother, Vibhishana. This painting shows him joining Rama's side during the war:

India Video. You can learn more about Vibhishana in this Epified video: Virtuous Demons.

Myth-Folklore. Some of you encountered genies in the Myth-Folklore readings from the Middle East this week, so I thought I would share this brilliant Cyanide and Happiness cartoon:

Writing. And in addition to magical lamps, here are some other magical objects that can come in handy: Magical Items for Fantasy Writers from Tom Gauld.

Mindset Cats. Today's mindset cat knows that being different can give you power.

And it was this great graphic from Sylvia Duckworth that inspired me to create that cat meme: 10 Things We Can Learn From Superheroes.

Event on Campus. Do you know about the FORUM Magazine at OU? They are hosting an event today in the Union from noon to 2PM where you can come learn more about their work and plans for the next issue about decolonization (details). You can also find out more at their website.

Valentine's Day: Green M-and-M Legend. In honor of Valentine's Day, here is a Valentine's Day Legend from Snopes.com. Back in 2008, the Mars Candy Company promoted the distribution of packages of all-green M-and-M candies because the green candies are supposedly an aphrodisiac — true or false??? Well, Snopes.com tells us that is true that Mars promoted the green candies for Valentine's Day, but as to whether the green M-and-Ms really are an aphrodisiac, Snopes.com is not saying!

Meanwhile, that word "aphrodisiac" is from the Greek name of the goddess of love, mighty Aphrodite... and here's a lovely vase painting with Aphrodite riding on a swan:

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