Christmas time is here again! We are all so busy, as usual! And, as usual, money is tight, but our desire to give that special gift to family members is not, so let’s write down what we’d like to get, and Santa’s elves will shuffle up the names and secretly stuff a name in your email box, if you’d like to participate. Then, on Christmas day, we will exchange gifts and open up that special gift from our family members to see who secretly received our name from Santa’s elves. You can either publicly post your wish list below for all to see, or secretly send your wish list to Santa’s Elves at mesontag@gmail.com and it will get randomly distributed to one of the relatives participating in the Wish Tree present exchange this year, and you will randomly receive the wish list of one of the other relatives partcipating in the exchange this year. So include your email address when you respond to this post when you write back to this elf at mesontag@gmail.com with your wish list!!!! Hope to hear from you soon, because Christmas will soon be upon us – ho ho ho!!!

What do you think? (Yosemite Valley Virtual World)

Now that you have roleplayed either a Native American or a white settler in the Yosemite Valley KaMOO virtual world, answer either question 1 or question 2, and then answer both 3 and 4 after others have posted. For extra credit, try your hand at answering question 5 and question 6.

1. If you were a Native American, what kind of an impression did your experiences give you of the white settlers?

2. If you were a white settler, white kind of an impression did your experiences give you of the Native Americans?

3. Do you think your experiences were based on fact, or rumors? What makes you think that?

4. If the character you roleplayed could have experienced everything that all the Native Americans AND the white settlers experienced, how could this have changed your view of your "enemies"?

5. Google and read information from at least one site related to "Critical Thinking". Then post a comment about how the things you experienced in the Yosemite Valley Virtual World relate to critical thinking.

6. Pick one of these phrases and explain what you think it means. Then explain how this phrase relates to the idea of critical thinking:
A. "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
B. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." (For further thought, read the article at Constrain_Iran)