Topic #5 (of a sort) Commentary

Thank you all for your honest and well, spirited answers to the last topic. I'd like to give us a chance to digest what we have here, and for people who have fallen behind to catch up (Please do feel free to post late blogs), so this week, there will be no new blog topic. Instead, your assignment is to respond to the past weeks: you must go to the first week and answer everyone's question, and then for each of the following weekly topics, you must post at least two substantive comments -- TOTAL, not for every post. Substantive means that your comment must add something to the discussion; "I agree" or "lawlz" does not add anything to the discussion, but "I agree because my experience has been similar: I have often eaten Skittles, but I have never tasted the rainbow. Perhaps the taste of the rainbow is a spiritual experience, rather than merely a physical one." is substantive -- it is on topic, and it has substance. Your comment doesn't need to be long, but it should have a point.
Two per week: that's two on Truth and Lies, two on Totems, and two on School Spirit, once you have answered all of the class's questions. You don't need to answer my question. You are, of course, welcome to comment on more than two posts, or more than once on the same post as a discussion develops. A comment on your own post, that responds to another comment, will count as a comment for the assignment.

If you have already answered the class questions, and/or commented at least twice per week's topic, you are done for the week. Feel free to comment more, as you like.



A few mechanical tips:

• The blog shows 7 posts per page initially, but if you click on one of the links in the list of the blog archive on the left-hand side, it will change that: click on a specific post title, and only that post will be shown; click on the month (September or October) and it will show every post for the month on a single page. Click on 2009 and it will give you every single post to date on one page.

• To comment on a post, click on the "Comment" link at the end of the post; a second window will pop up and show all of the previous comments (If your browser is like mine it will give you a dialog box that asks about secure and non-secure items in the window; this is because people have avatar pictures that come from "insecure" links. Say yes or no, it only changes how many pretty pictures you see). The window has a box for entering new comments, which you will make use of. You must close this window before opening a new comment window; you cannot simply bring the main blog page to the front and then click on a Comment link again. Doing this makes the machine cry. Not really, but wouldn't that be funny?

• If you simply must use html tags, they will work on the comments -- but nothing complicated. You can use italics, bold, underlining, that sort of thing. You do this by typing i, b, or u in angle brackets <> at the beginning of what you want to have italicized or in bold face, and then the same letter with a slash before it in angle brackets at the end of what you want to have italicized. /i, /b, /u.