The Commas strike back

Luke, I am your father. This sentence is an example of a good use of a comma. I'm going to continue my emphasis on commas.
One of the things that has always gotten me is comma splices. I had never heard of these until my sophomore year in high school when my teacher attacked me viciously about them. For years I just ignored the red pencil and pen marks and kept going. Who cares about comma splices? I'll just take the hit in the grade and keep going. And then I came to college. I never realized how quickly a grade could be brought down because of comma splices. When I asked what a comma splice is, the teacher looked down his nose at me and gave me that look that said, "Are you seriously in my class asking me this question?". I withdrew my question.
According to the Online Writing Center at Purdue, a comma splice and run on sentences are closely related. The two rules they give about both are:
1. Join the two independent clauses with one of the coordinating conjunctions (and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet), and use a comma before the connecting word.
2. When you do not have a connecting word (or when you use a connecting word other than and, but, for, or nor, so, or yet between the two independent clauses) use a semicolon (;).

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/598/02/