Friday, March 13

It's Friday of Week 9. And yes... it's Friday the 13th. Not what we needed right now: ouch! But I'll wish you a good Spring Break, no matter what the calendar says! Here is a link to Week 9 and also Week 10 for those of you who want to take a chance to work ahead.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Mega-Grace Period and Flex Week. I sent around an email yesterday about making this class more manageable by expanding the grace period and giving everybody a week off (points-wise) so that you can take care of yourselves. You can review that here in yesterday's announcements.

Project Stack. I'll keep working my way through the stack today, and I hope to get to everything that was turned in on Monday and  as much of the rest of the stack as I can get to. As always, you can check the stack to make sure I received your project.

Spring Break. Because my Spring Break travels got upended, I'll be working half-days during the Break, so I'll keep working on the stack during the Spring Break week, and if you end up with time on your hands next week (maybe some of you are also looking at canceled travel plans), I'll be available!

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. This is not actually a blog post but a project page: Camille is doing Epic Cooking, and not only did she write an epic story about Ganesha and his modaks, she actually made modaks: Modak for the Modakapriya.

Twitter Stream. I hope everybody has been learning about how we need to flatten the curve, so of course I was delighted by this tweet: catten the curve.

Indian Epics Today. Today's epic character is Abhimanyu, the heroic son of Arjuna who died trying to fight his way out of the battle formation known as the Chakravyuha. More about Abhimanyu, and here's an attempt to illustrate the labyrinthine battle formation:

A Bigger Bookshelf. Today's book is Suriname Folklore by Melville J. Herskovits and Frances S. Herskovits. This is remarkable book of stories which you can read free online at Hathi Trust, and you can read more about the tiny South American nation of Suriname at Wikipedia.

Storybooks. Here's a Shakespearean Storybook for your reading pleasure: Making a Murderer: Lady Macbeth.

India Video. And for your listening pleasure, a TED talk Bobby Singh with Damini Darbar on the tabla and the tanpur.

Proverbs. Some wise words from the ancient Indian Hitopadesha: The waters of the ocean cannot be heated by a torch of straw.

Writing. Here's a fun language game: word-unit palindromes! For example: Mind your own business: Own your mind.

.

HEART Video. And on the subject of owning your mind, here's Daniel Goleman on mindfulness meditation.

Mindset Cats. Today's mindset cat is pondering life beyond the comfort zone.

Event on Campus. Campus events have been canceled, so I wanted to share here today a really useful link to bookmark for future reference: Learn Anywhere, with a nice easy-to-remember URL: ou.edu/learnanywhere. You can find more information here about the plans to move all classes to online format after Spring Break.

March 13: Friday the 13th superstitions are labeled as tris-kai-deka-phobia, the fear (phobia) of the number thirteen (tris-kai-deka, three-and-ten). Here's a cartoon from Wikimedia, and here's the Wikipedia article: Triskaidekaphobia.

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