I’m learning something new about blogging every day! My last post quoted an article from The Onion that mentioned Vanderbilt University. Next thing I know, there’s a trackback from Vanderbilt. It must be some kind of spider searching the blogs for the school’s name and automatically linking to it. The University of Texas trackback was probably the same thing. I wonder if other schools have that. Like, say, Stanford University. Or the University of Notre Dame. Or New York University. Or the Ohio State University. Or the University of California Los Angeles. Or Northwestern University. Or the University of Wisconsin Madison. Or Arizona State University. Or the University of Pennsylvania. Or the Pennsylvania State University, better known as Penn State. Yes, I do wonder…

Well, there are better ways to get linked up. I just registered this blog with Technorati, an online blog directory. Shakespeare Teacher is currently ranked 2,431,865 out of all of the Technorati blogs. I don’t think they make giant foam hands with that many fingers, but hey, I’m just getting started. However, if you do a search for Genghis Khan Theme Park, my blog comes up second only to a re-posting of the article I was originally citing. So, who’s obscure now?

I tried to access the blog from a Department of Education site yesterday, but it wouldn’t load in fully. The filter said that the page had exceeded the number of “questionable words.” Now, I think I do a pretty good job of keeping it clean here. Any thoughts on what words or phrases in my first week of posts might have given the filter pause?

Now, this is strange. After my last post, Maps of War, both my cousin’s blog and the University of Texas picked up that I had linked to them, and they both linked back to my post. I didn’t know they could do that!

So now that I’ve been outed as a blogger, I guess the time has come to go public. And I think there’s enough content here now that I can start inviting a small group of people to come and visit. If you’re one of these people, then this may be the first post you’re reading. Welcome to my blog!

What would be an appropriate introduction to Shakespeare Teacher? How about an article from The Onion that gives the site a name check?

Theater Major Has Too Long Borne Shakespeare Teacher’s Blunt Upbraidings, Bitter Scoffs

November 20, 2006 | Issue 42-47

NASHVILLE, TN-Vanderbilt University theater major Sandy Heckscher said Monday that she has been stretched to the limits of her endurance by the “blunt upbraidings and bitter scoffs” of drama professor and Shakespeare scholar Ian Treatt. “Who breathes but’d rather be a simple whore, than lurk within this country of insult?” said Heckscher, who thinks Treatt is a “bad grader.” “O monstrous beast! How like a swine he lies! Grim death – that foul and loathsome moniker!” Treatt responded to the charges by saying only that he found himself amazed that theater majors “are too simple/To offer war where they should kneel for peace.”

Enjoy the rest of the blog, and if you find a post or two that speaks to you, feel free to speak back and leave a comment behind, so I’ll know you’ve been here.

I came across this via a post by my cousin, TheMediaDude. It’s an animated map of who has controlled the Middle East for the past 5000 years, and it is quite simply the reason why computers were invented:

There are some other animated maps at Maps of War including one showing the History of Religion.

What’s there is great, but there’s not much of it, so if you’re like me, you’ll start to get a thirst for more historical maps. You can quench that thirst at the University of Texas Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection.

According to a new study, Shakespeare is good for your brain:

Reading Shakespeare excites the brain in a way that keeps it “fit”, researchers say.

A team from the University of Liverpool is investigating whether wrestling with the innovative use of language could help to prevent dementia.

More details here.

In this new year, let’s all make a promise to ourselves to read Shakespeare on a regular basis. It’s the responsible thing to do.