Saturday, February 22

Happy Weekend, everybody! Today is Saturday of Week 6. Here is a link to Week 6, and to Week 7 also for those of you who are working ahead.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. On Friday, I replied to all the Week 5 projects in the stack, with just a few Week 6 and Week 7 projects I did not get to, so those will be at the top of the stack on Monday. Meanwhile, you can check the stack to make sure I received your projects; I'll update the stack periodically over the weekend.

Project Feedback. Now that the Portfolios and Storybooks are in place, the project feedback can really get started. When you get to the Week 6 Feedback assignment, you'll see a new randomizer: instead of randomizing the blogs, it randomizes the Storybooks and Portfolios. For Week 6, you will just be using the randomizer to see which projects to read and respond to (and then in Week 7 it will be a combination of the randomizer and free choice too).

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. I really like seeing the Wikipedia Trail posts pop up in the stream, and here is a cool one from Clara that starts in India and ends up in Rome: From Nagas to the Roman Empire. Here's the Roman Empire as it extended around 100 C.E>:

Twitter Stream. Friday was the Shiva festival of Maha Shivaratri, and I saw this really nice Shiva graphic at the Amar Chitra Katha Twitter feed (larger version):

Indian Epics Today. We have reached the last of the gods who father the heroes of the Mahabharata: the twin Ashwins, divine fathers of the Pandava twins Nakula and Sahadeva. More about the Ashwins. Plus a related Epified video: The Greatest Twins.

Storybooks. This Storybook is about Rubezahl, a trickster who is famous in Germany and Poland: Tales from Silesia.

Myth-Folklore Video. Gearing up for the Africa units coming up, here's a Crash Course video: African Pantheons.

100-Word Stories. Today's story is a fable from India: The Donkey and the Tiger-Skin (click title for more info).

Words. This is one of my favorite words that comes to English from India: SERENDIPITY, from the fabled island of Serendip, an old name for Sri Lanka; details here.

H.E.A.R.T.. If you had a hard week, here's some advice from Molly Hahn of Buddha Doodles:

Mindset Cats. And mindset cat reminds you to always trust yourself.

Event Deadline. This is not an event, but instead an announcement about an upcoming event deadline: Feb. 24, Monday, is the deadline to submit your research for Undergraduate Research Day. It's for both research and creative work! (details)

February 22: Rashi. Today marks the birthday in the year 1040 of the great French rabbi Rashi,  author of one of the most important commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. His name, Rashi, is an acronym: from Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, we get the nickname R-SH-I (it's kind of like the way we use the acronym names JFK or LBJ). You can read about his career in at Wikipedia. The image below comes from The Rothschild Miscellany:

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