Everyone! I was asked last week about when I plan to close the blog. I told the person who asked me I would do it on Friday. However, I had a change of heart. I’ve decided not to close the blog down at all. I’m going to leave it running for as long as anyone wants. As long as people are still posting sometimes, I’ll leave the page going. Of course, if everyone stops posting then I’ll close the blog down, to avoid spam comments. But for now, I’m going to leave it as it is. I like to imagine that some students will still be posting sometime later, maybe a year later, keeping in touch that way, and you’re very welcome to do so. But I don’t think right now is the right time to be posting, guys! It’s final exams, and I know you have work in other classes to do. The semester is over for this class, so please stop trying to do homework. In other words, anything from now on that is posted will not affect your grade. To be honest, whatever people posted since Friday won’t count for much either. The reason for this is simple: as always, everything depends on the PURPOSE of the blog. The blog is not just a place for you to post to get a better grade. The blog is a place to read others’ writing, to offer one another corrections or to discuss ideas. That’s why the grade for the blog section of the class is a “Blog Participation” grade. Just like with class participation, you cannot “make up for it” at the end of semester… or, like, with exercise, make up for not exercising for years by exercising like crazy for a month. (Something I’m unfortunately experiencing...

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Everyone, please go check them out!

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Hi there! So far, there are 101 posts on this site — this is #102. This isn’t a lot, really, considering that there are more than 20 people in the class. Some people are very active, and some people are not very active. You might consider how much the blog is worth in your grade, people! But I’m not going to nag you: you’re adults, and can be responsible for yourselves. I sent out an email the other day using the email addresses you used in your registration for this site. Did anyone receive it? In case it went into your spam filter, I thought I’d post here. Tuesday, May 1st, instead of our normal Composition class, Professor O’Sullivan and I will be giving a talk on preparing presentations. Regardless of your major, you are expected to attend. I think the room is N311, but you can confirm this by checking the posting on the message board outside D205. I think it will take me a week or more before I am able to let you see my comments on your midterm essays. I’m still grading exams from other classes so far! Once I have written feedback on your essays, we’ll meet and talk about how you did, and discuss grades. Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow!

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Hi everyone! The blog is going well! It’s very interesting to see your thoughts on all kinds of topics, and I’m having fun seeing it. I also think you’re probably enjoying one anothers’ writing. However, there’s one thing I want to mention. When you are quoting someone or something, you should use either quotation marks, like this: Gord says, “Homework is an important part of learning.” … or else you should use a blockquote, like this: Most edible eggs, including bird eggs and turtle eggs, consist of a hard, oval outer eggshell, the “egg white,” or albumen, the egg yolk, and various thin membranes. Every part of these eggs is edible, although the eggshell is generally discarded. To do this, select the text that is quoted in the editing window, when you are writing your post, and then click on the b-quote button: It’s also a good idea to give a link to the source. You can do this by selecting some text, like this: and then clicking the link button: A little window will open. Paste the link in that window and click on OK. Your result will be like this: The text above is quoted from this website. This way, you can show where you quoted something from. Keep blogging, everyone! You’re doing a good job.

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Hey everyone! I’ve uploaded a new random-headers program, and a few pictures from near campus, just to give the blog a friendlier, more familiar feeling. What do you think? (Press RELOAD or F5 to see a different header. There are about 6 or 7 different ones, for now.)

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Hi everyone! Well, here we are! It’s the first post of the blog, so it might as well be me who writes it. I’ll give you an idea of the kind of thing I’m expecting you to do when you do your own writing on this site. Lately, I just got a TV from another professor, who wanted to get it out of her office. This is great for me, because one of my Media English classes is very small, and we sometimes meet in my office. This way, we can watch programs together in the comfort of my office, where there’s a couch and a kettle and tea and so on. I find that meeting in my office allows students to relax and talk more freely, in a way that’s hard to do in a classroom. But I was watching some TV — for the first time in five years, I was actually paying attention to a TV at all! — and I noticed something. Everything on the TV was stupid. Now, it might be that this was because it was the AFN channel, the TV channel made for American soldiers in Korea, but it seemed to me like everything on the TV was designed with the assumption that the person watching was stupid. The problem was that not only did the programs fail to entertain me, they even insulted me. On the talks shows, people discussed everything in the most simplistic, uninteresting way. There’s usually more than two sides to every story, but they only focused on one side of any story. As for the dramas — daytime drama is made for people who can’t finish their own sentences, in my opinion! The acting is so obviously bad, the stories so obviously silly, and yet people watch...

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