Thursday, January 31, 2008

slides are up...from this week

May have to "reload" or "refresh" remember...

Monday, January 28, 2008

book and movie assignments posted

The assignments for the book review and movie review are posted. They are not due until late April, but stuff will pile up, so don't put them off!

incredibly stupid

I laid them out...and then walked out of my house with out: the graded journals. Sorry.

Monday Movie

Tonight is a movie night and you have your choice:
. This is a Nova program about Edward Teller and the Manhattan Project. Many interviews with physicists about their participation. Or
. Another Nova program about Richard Feynman.
moviebestmind

Thursday, January 24, 2008

that was fast...lectures up.

The slides on greek astronomy and the middle ages are up.

journal reaction is up

I've posted the reaction question for the journal. Working on getting the slides up.
Warning
: I have modified the assignments page...you may need to "reload" or "refresh" it!

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Q and B spar in Postgame

...and I think I'm having trouble with the chipclass email address again. Experts have been called. In the meantime, if you need to get ahold of me during the game - too bad. I'll be at Jimmy's. If you need to get ahold of me after the game, better use my brock@pa.msu.edu account.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Plato and Aristotle slides are up

Like I said, "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em."

links fixed

The links to some internet readings in the Classical Representation lecture topics list have been fixed. You may have to reload your page to see them. Sorry 'bout that.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

interesting site

A set of 184 women mathematicians...from Pythagoras' wife to nearly the present day. I didn't know that Pythagoras' wife was a mathematician!
for your entertainment.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

quiz wednesday...

You'll notice on the calendar that we have a quiz. You'll be embarrassed at how simple this is. Try to contain your disappointment.

journal reaction up for next week

A little early, but I would like you to read a little Plato and think about it.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

slight change to uploaded lectures

The slides are uploaded as high-quality html files that you can cycle through like class. The pdfs are just too clumsy.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

tips on writing

Don't use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.
Don't use no double negatives. Don't never use no triple negatives.
No sentence fragments
Corollary: Complete sentences: important.
Stamp out and eliminate redundancy.
Avoid cliches like the plague.
All generalizations are bad.
Take care that your verb and subject is in agreement.
A preposition is a bad thing to end a sentence with.
Avoid those run-on sentences that just go on, and on, and on, they never stop, they just keep rambling, and you really wish the person would just shut up, but no, they just keep going, they're worse than the Energizer Bunny, they babble incessantly, and these sentences, they just never stop, they go on forever...if you get my drift...
You should never use the second person.
The passive voice should never be used.
Never go off on tangents, which are lines that intersect a curve at only one point and were discovered by Euclid, who lived in the sixth century, which was an era dominated by the Goths, who lived in what we now know as Poland...
As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "I hate quotations."
Excessive use of exclamation points can be disastrous!!!!!
Don't use question marks inappropriately?
Don't obfuscate your theses with extraneous verbiage.
Never use that totally cool, radically groovy out-of-date slang.
Avoid tumbling off the cliff of triteness into the black abyss of overused metaphors.
Keep your ear to the grindstone, your nose to the ground, take the bull by the horns of a dilemma, and stop mixing your metaphors.
Avoid those abysmally horrible, outrageously repellent exaggerations.
Avoid any awful anachronistic aggravating antediluvian alliterations.
This sentence no verb.

http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~phensel/grammar.html

added some information to the FAQ about writing assignments and other stuff...

Thursday, January 10, 2008

slides uploaded

Slides from Wednesday are uploaded.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

no quiz on 1/9!

I didn't say it explicitly, but we're not having a quiz tomorrow (1/9).

slides uploaded

A pdf file of the introductory lecture is posted in the resources/lectures/classical tab.