Form and Content

Blog your thoughts on the following:

In the first presidential debate between Obama and McCain, each were given 2 minutes to respond to each main question and then they had 5 minutes for the moderator to ask follow-ups and/or the candidates to offer clarification.  Each question had a total of 9 minutes between the candidates.

In the vice-presidential debate between Biden and Palin, each were give 90 seconds to answer each question with 2 minutes together for rebuttal and follow-up.  Each question had a total of 5 minutes between the candidates.

Given what you saw of the debates, how did the format of the debate affect the various candidates?  Did it help or hurt them collectively and individually?  What did it do for the quality of the debate?

If the blog isn’t working, go ahead and write your analysis on paper.

Weekend Homework

As Mr. Kile undoubtedly told you, your homework is to complete the Exploring the Text questions on page 935 of your text concerning the essay you discussed in class by Oliver Goldsmith entitled National Prejudices. I hope this essay from 1760 provided some fodder for discussion as we navigate the competing definitions of patriotism in our own country.

Please blog your answers to these questions.

Sorry for any problems the long outage caused any of you.  It's working as of Sunday afternoon, but if you did your homework earlier in the weekend on paper, that is fine.  If you are doing it now, blog it.  

Me like the faster blog....

Have a wonderful weekend and remember that the blog will have some downtime on Saturday for some hardware upgrades.

Scheduled Maintenance: [new time] Saturday 4th October from 8AM CST US (6 AM PST US / 11PM Saturday Australia) we're going to be upgrading the hardware that Edublogs runs on. The site will be unavailable for a few hours from that time. Apologies in advance for any inconvenience.

For those interested in reaction to the vice-presidential debate, here are a couple editorials:

New York Times

USA Today

Local viewing party reactions brought to you by the Tacoma News Tribune. Oddly, there's also a review of a film festival on the same page right after the write-ups on the two viewing parties.

What is going on out there?

Tomorrow is all about two things:  a practice timed write and learning a bit about what's going on in the world.  To that end, we'll be writing an analysis question timed write and reading and sharing from The Week.  No homework tonight, but make sure you bring your book to class on Friday!!!

If I don't get a post up for Friday, Mr. Kile has instructions for you.  Also, if you haven't seen the notice from Edublogs, here it is:

Scheduled Maintenance: Overnight on Friday 3rd October from 8PM EST US (5PM PST US / 10AM Saturday Australia) we're going to be upgrading the hardware that Edublogs runs on. The site will be unavailable for a few hours from that time. Apologies in advance for any inconvenience.

New hardware?  That's got to mean this blog will run faster.  Hip hip hooray!!!

Have a great weekend!