Class Procedures and Reminders
Project Stack. As always, you can check the stack to make sure I received your project. I replied to almost all the Friday items yesterday, and today I will finish Friday and hopefully make good progress on the projects people turned in on Saturday.
Extra credit anytime. Remember that you can do extra credit anytime! So if you finish up the Week 8 review posts all today (it makes sense to do them together), you could also use this as a chance to explore some of the extra credit options now; here's a link: Week 8 Extra. You can use this Progress Chart to see if you should try to do some extra credit now.
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Blog stream. From the blog stream, Cheyenne did the Progress post for this week already, and she has something that is progressing in the AMAZING way that such things do: a baby on the way! How exciting is that?! I always feel like it's a special blessing on the whole class when students become parents, and I am thinking good thoughts for Cheyenne as she gets ready for the big day soon!
Twitter stream. A gorgeous image via Twitter; it's the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, dating to around 800 BCE.
And something lovely from Public Domain Review about Hopi kachinas: Hopi Drawings.
Plus art from India: this Twitter user asked for help in identifying an image from the Ramayana. Answer: it's people trying to drag the immense bow of Shiva into the courtroom for Sita's swayamvara!
And yes, you really can do research by asking for help at Twitter; I often do that. On the subject of research, here's a cartoon from Tom Gauld: my research is often whimsical (larger view).
And we've all been there: it's dino-crastination from Dinoman:
Finally, a Crash Course video for your enjoyment: The Norse Pantheon. (Yes, that would include Thor!)
March 16: Ramanujan. Today marks the birthday in the year 1929 of R. K. Ramanujan, one of India's great scholars, famous as a folklorist and also as a poet (he died in 1993). You can read about his life and career at Wikipedia. He is the author of a brilliant essay entitled "Three Hundred Ramayanas," and he is also the author of this wonderful collection of Indian folktales: A Flowering Tree And Other Oral Tales from India, which you can read free online, thanks to the generosity of the University of California Press.
Here is a video featuring one of Ramanujan's poems: A River.
Check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day, or click here for past announcements.