Here’s a cool math video by a “mathemusician” named Vi Hart, with a hat tip to Jeff Branzburg for the link.

According to my sister, there’s a scene in Back to the Future where Doc Brown sets the clock in the DeLorean to a day 25 years in the future. Today. And today, probably not coincidentally, also marks the 25th anniversary of the US premiere of the film.

Of course, the real target year for the franchise will be 2015, when we can see how the future as depicted in Back to the Future II compares to the real thing. Until then, I invite you to enjoy this very funny song from Tom Wilson, who played Biff in the trilogy:

Back to the Future IV, not happening? I guess that makes sense. You can’t really do another BTTF movie without Michael J. Fox, and he is more or less retired from acting due to his illness. But do we really need a Back to the Future IV? Or is what we really need a remake of the original movie? Follow along with me, as I imagine what that might look like. And as this is a rough sketch, I invite readers to contribute to the vision, or even modify it as needed.

The film would star today’s version of Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly. I don’t know who that would be, but that’s kind of the point. The movie isn’t for me, it’s for today’s teenagers.

The year is 2015, and Marty McFly is a teenager who is an aspiring video game designer. He gets a call from his friend, Doc Brown, and goes to meet him. Marty learns that Doc Brown has created a time machine out of a Prius, and has bought some enriched yellowcake uranium in order to generate the 1.21 gigawatts needed to fuel it. Doc Brown pronounces “gigawatts” correctly this time. Homeland Security shows up and arrests the Doc, while Marty escapes in the Prius to the year 1985.

At first, he’s not sure what’s going on. He can’t get a signal on his iPhone, so he goes into a restaurant and asks where he can get online. The manager tells him he’s the only customer waiting, so there’s no need to get on line. Marty shows him his phone and asks where he can get reception. The manager tells him there’s a reception in the back. Marty asks how many bars he can get, and the manager asks him for ID.

Leaving the restaurant, Marty sees his young father, George, and follows him. Marty sees that George is about to be hit by a car, and pushes him out of the way. Marty is hit by the car instead. He wakes up to find a teenage version of his mother, Lorraine, who keeps calling him Isaac Mizrahi. He joins the rest of the family for dinner, which they eat while watching Family Ties. After dinner, they play Super Mario Brothers on the family’s new Nintendo Entertainment System. Marty quickly gets bored and wanders off.

Marty looks up Doc Brown, who points out that to send Marty back, they need to generate the 1.21 gigawatts (pronouncing it wrong this time) to power the time machine. Marty looks on his iPhone to find the next thunderstorm. He can’t connect, of course, but Doc Brown notices that Marty’s iPhone wallpaper is a digital picture of himself with his brother and sister, and his brother’s image is starting to pixelate. They realize that Marty prevented his parents from meeting, and he has to get them back together, so they can have their first kiss at the Pac Man Fever dance hosted by the school.

Marty tries to befriend George, but ends up crossing Biff, the local bully. To escape Biff, Marty borrows a skateboard from a local kid, and sticks a broom handle on the end to fashion a makeshift scooter, which he’s more experienced riding. Think about that for a second.

At first, George doesn’t want to go along with the plan. But Marty, knowing George is into science fiction, shows him a video clip of Avatar on the iPhone and George is so freaked out that he’s willing to trust Marty. He’s supposed to punch out Marty to protect Lorraine, but he ends up punching out Biff instead and the rest is history.

At the Pac Man Fever dance, Marty rolls his eyes at the primitive video game technology, and describes in great detail for those in attendance about his favorite video game, Grand Theft Auto. At the end of his description, he finds everyone staring at him slack-jawed. He realizes they may not be ready for a video game where you drive around stealing cars and beating up prostitutes, “but your kids are gonna love it.”

Your move, Robert Zemekis.

From Henry IV, Part Two:

My gracious liege,
You won it, wore it, kept it, gave it me;
Then plain and right must my possession be:
Which I with more than with a common pain
‘Gainst all the world will rightfully maintain.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Conan is leaving the Tonight Show due to lip-wag wars with Leno. What frustrates him mightily? Someone imply to an eligibility-limit arrangement?

I watch this clip. Make up your own mind.

Jay’s 2004 Announcement – watch more funny videos

I subscribe to a service called “SiteMeter” which allows me to see a limited amount of information about my visitors. One thing that I can see is if someone finds my site via a Google search, and what they were searching for.

It’s been a while, but every now and then I check in on what searches people have done to find themselves at Shakespeare Teacher, and to respond to those search terms in the name of fun and public service.

In celebration of the fact that I’m moving the Googleplex to Sundays, I’m going to double my usual 6-for-me/6-for-you format and give you 12 of each. Full disclosure: I actually started this post some time ago. All of the following 24 searches did bring people to this site in the same week; it just wasn’t this past week.

Enjoy!

william shakespeare’s teachers

I kept getting hits for this search, and couldn’t for the life of me figure out what people were looking for. Then, I realized that they were searching for this TED lecture on how schools kill creativity, given by Sir Ken Robinson in 2006. It’s almost 20 minutes long, but well worth watching. I should have posted this a long time ago.

freud and arrested development

I think they were looking for the actual psychological phenomenon, and not my analysis of a sitcom. But this post now ranks fourth in this particular Google search. The Internet is a funny place.

if shakespeare were alive today, who in history would he write tragedy about?

Shakespeare’s take on George III would have been well worth the staging. He probably would have also had a go at William III and the Glorious Revolution. We’d probably still be staging the famous Battle of the Boyne scene and debating whether or not Shakespeare was a secret Jacobite.

two monarchs reigned during shakespare lifetime. the bu

The two monarchs were Elizabeth I and James I. I’m not really sure what the rest of your question was going to be.

what do shakespeare’s play show about religion of the time

Shakespeare lived between two periods of severe religious strife. The mid-16th century was marked by radical shifts in English religious life described in greater detail here. After Shakespeare’s death, growing religious tension between Catholics and Protestants would lead to civil war and the execution of King Charles I. Compared to these two periods of violence, Shakespeare’s England was relatively stable religiously, though obviously there was still some unrest.

People have looked to Shakespeare’s plays for clues of where he fell on the question, but there’s no concrete evidence either way. Most of his plays are set either before the Protestant Reformation or in Northern Italy (which was solidly Catholic at the time) so Shakespeare – seemingly by design – didn’t have to deal with the religious issue much. One notable exception is Measure for Measure, which takes place in Vienna. If you would like to read Shakespeare’s scenes depicting a Protestant official debating the death penalty with a Catholic novice, you will find them here and here.

the religion in king lear

King Lear takes place in pre-Christian Britain. The characters make various references to Roman gods such as Jupiter and Apollo.

what inspired shakespeare to write macbeth?

Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, and Shakespeare had spent much of his career writing popular plays about her famous ancestors. When James I ascended the throne, Shakespeare wrote a play about his ancestors to honor the new king.

Note that the bloodthirsty Macbeth is not one of these ancestors. Rather, the noble Duncan, Malcolm, Siward, Banquo, and Fleance are the ancestors of James depicted in the play. Oh yeah, and the first seven of the show of eight kings. See below.

how does the vision of the eight kings make macbeth feel

Not good. Concerned about a prophecy that says that Banquo’s decendants will be kings, Macbeth demands to know whether all that he has done has been for the benefit of another’s line. The witches show him eight kings, and Banquo’s ghost who points to them as his. These eight kings correspond with the eight actual Stuart kings of Scotland. The eighth king is James himself.

shakespeare plays for junior high students

Well, I suppose the conventional answers are Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But I’ve had some success with Othello and Cymbeline which aren’t exactly the first plays that come to mind when I think of the term “age appropriate.” If you can find a way to help students make it their own, the experience will encourage them to appreciate Shakespeare, no matter which play you choose. Go with a selection that you’re passionate about, and maybe your enthusiasm will be infectious. Or, if you’re really daring, describe a few of the plays to the students, and let them choose which one they want to work with.

jack cade henry 6th monologue

Ah, Jack Cade – one of Shakespeare’s most under-recognized comic characters. Propped up as a claimant to the throne, the rough-hewn Cade promises to kill all the lawyers and ban literacy. The famous scene is here and you can find Cade monologues here and here.

does everyone play the queen from cymbeline as purely evil?

She’s pretty clearly evil, and I’ve never seen her played any other way, but that’s as far as I can go. I’m sure someone has played her otherwise. Does anyone have another experience, or an idea of an alternate interpretation?

“nymph fly” tempest

This makes me very curious. Were they looking for my Tempest lipogram? Or did they have another reason to search for this? It seems pretty specific to me. Hmmm.

I leave the task of responding to the remaining search terms to my readers:

why teach shakespeare

what would you change about macbeth

henry vi jimmy carter

romeo juliet boal technique

what creative artists did shakespeare admire?

why people like genghis khan

3 levels of shakespeare

activities to introduce macbeth

what technology did william shakespeare used

shakespeare “they fight”

how has shakespeare changed our expectations of tragedy to aristotle in romeo and juliet

anagrams for morning coffee

The 8th grade class I’ve been working with on Othello has finished their video project, and it is now available for public viewing. Enjoy!

The students watched last year’s Cymbeline video before we began the project, so they could think about what they’d like to do as they read Othello. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. Feel free to share this video with anyone you think would be interested.

From The Taming of the Shrew:

Where’s the cook? is supper ready, the house trimmed, rushes strewed, cobwebs swept; the serving-men in their new fustian, their white stockings, and every officer his wedding-garment on? Be the jacks fair within, the jills fair without, the carpets laid, and every thing in order?

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

The wry new Jib-Jab video sketch, featuring President Obama, is rife with insightful humor. We elected this shrewder president on his refreshing superhero identity charge. Now, his nerves of steel must contend with many divergent dire tasks.

Watch it here. Pirates! Ka-chow!

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Remember that Karl Fisch video “Did You Know?” that I posted in March 2007? Well, DeLisa just sent me the 3.0 version, and I think it’s worth a repost, not only because of the snazzy new visual design, but also to note the updates over the past two years.

One of the interesting changes is that, while both videos end with the question of what it all means, only the original goes on to answer the question – “Shift happens.” The newer video discards the lame pun, and leaves it to the viewer to decide what it all means. And so, here’s what it all means to me.

School should be about questions, not about answers. School should be about learning how to think, instead of learning what to think. Students should be working collaboratively on projects. They should be experiencing history, and making it. They should be using technology to break boundaries. And we as teachers should realize how much we have to learn from them.

What does it all mean? It means that to be good teachers, we have to teach students how to be good learners. How well are we doing that?

Via One Little Fish comes a very funny, very timely video:

More information about the project here. The video has received over 1 million hits, spreading awareness about an important issue, and making a powerful statement about activism in the information age.

My organization just held an event today that had 7th grade students giving persuasive PowerPoint presentations on current events issues ranging from gun control to the death penalty. I served as emcee, and had a lot of fun riling up the students about speaking out on issues and taking an active part in their democracy.

Perhaps for the next round we should consider using video. I’m already planning a project with students to create Public Service Announcements about environmental issues. Creating current events PSAs in social studies class seems like the logical next step. I’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE: In the post, I said that the video has received over 1 million hits. Actually, the video topped 1 million views on its first day.

I’ve always been a fan of both Rahm Emanuel and The West Wing, but only just learned, via The Media Dude, that Rahm was the model for the fictional Josh Lyman.

Josh Lyman, of course, becomes Chief of Staff for Matt Santos, as life continues to imitate art…

I was impressed by McCain’s gracious concession speech. Typically, during these speeches, the conceding candidate’s supporters boo the winner, affording the candidate the opportunity to be portrayed as a healer by urging post-election unity. In this speech, there was some of that, but it was kept to a minimum. And when John McCain said that America had come a long way as evidenced by the election of an African American as president, the audience applauded and cheered. In my entire life, I’ve never seen a crowd applaud the opponent during a concession speech.

Obama’s speech was beautiful, as we knew it would be, but more than anything else, it was the willingness of the Republican crowd to drop the partisan rancor to acknowledge a landmark moment in American history that filled me with hope for the future of our country.