Speaking of Samuel Johnson, you can read the Preface to his landmark 1755 dictionary at this Rutgers English professor’s university page.

It’s worth checking out, if not to gain a deeper insight into this unique moment in the art of lexicography and the development of the English language, then at least to enjoy Dr. Johnson’s wry prose style.

Well, the conference is over and it was fantastic. We focused mostly on pedagogy today, so I felt a lot more in my element. We also talked about the changing nature of the canon. Yesterday we did a lot of 19th century historical analysis of Shakespeare instruction, which was fascinating, but made me feel like I had a lot of catching up to do. (And when I do that catching up, I now know to start here.)

Anyway, I’m still processing it all. I’ll probably blog more on the conference when I return to NYC, but until I get back, please enjoy this video. In line with the theme of the Shakespeare classroom, here are a very young Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie showing us how it’s done:

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Via the original creators of Charlie the Unicorn, it is my great honor to be able to share the German re-dub of Charlie the Unicorn.

Discuss.

I’m off to the baby naming for Lilah, so no time to post anything original this morning. Instead, I leave you with this Animaniacs song about Magellan, that for some reason really cracks me up. Enjoy!

Don’t forget – Sundance is showing all six episodes of Season Two of Slings & Arrows today from 3pm to 8pm. Then, the new season begins at 8pm.

Use the comments section of this post to discuss any aspect of Season Two. You can discuss the Darren Nichols production of Romeo & Juliet, the new internship program, Frog Hammer’s marketing campaign, Ellen’s audit, the main stage production of, um, “Mackers,” or the elementary school version of it.

You can continue to discuss Season One in my earlier post here. And I’ll start putting up a thread to discuss Season Three episodes each Sunday, starting this afternoon.

Here’s a taste of Season Two to hold you over until 3pm.

Blinking electronic signs advertising Aqua Teen Hunger Force recently triggered a terrorism scare in Boston.

Fortunately, the staff of the National Lampoon reacted quickly and professionally, and put together this 24/ATHF mash-up parody before any damage was done:

Ladies and gentlemen, set your TiVos. Sundance is showing all six episodes of Season One of Slings & Arrows this Sunday, February 11, from 3pm to 8pm.

This is absolutely Must See TV for Shakespeare fans or theatre folk, and actually some pretty good viewing for everyone else, too. It’s a 50-minute comedy/drama that follows the various personalities in a fictional Canadian Shakespeare Festival as they put together a production of a play over the course of a six-episode season: Hamlet in Season One, and Macbeth in Season Two. Season Three starts February 18 at 8pm. It looks like they’re going to be doing King Lear.

The show isn’t about the Shakespeare per se, but I have to say that they get the Shakespeare part right. And when Shakespeare is done right…

So check out that marathon on Sunday. You’ll be glad you did.

A few days ago, I included a long discussion about the brain in a post about Daniel Tammet, the mildly-autistic, but highly-savant “Brain Man” of Britain. I’m aware that some of you may still have some questions about the way the brain is configured. As a public service, it is my pleasure to provide this illumination from one of the world’s leading authorities on the brain.

When you think about it, this is really a revolutionary technology.

Before the Internet, all of the mass media of the 20th century required a great deal of wealth to buy into. Whether it was the national newspaper, the radio, the moving picture, broadcast television, or cable television, only those who were in control of vast sums of wealth could afford to get their message out, which, not surprisingly, favored the interests of wealth. So for a long time, that was the only message that most people were getting.

But with the Internet, anybody can freely post their opinions. Now we truly can move toward an open and democratic exchange of political ideas without the corporate filter defining the terms of acceptable discourse. Even I can have my little piece of real estate and post anything I choose.

I choose to post a video of some guys reenacting the Death Star trench scene from Star Wars with their hands.