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.

I saw this story on the front page of the local newspapers on my way to work yesterday morning, but haven’t really had time to comment until now.

WASHINGTON – President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant, the Daily News has learned.

The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open people’s mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.

I don’t want to go on a rant about “worst civil liberties abuse yet” because the phrase is overworn these days, and it will be hard to top the Military Commissions Act of 2006. But I do want to address the broader issue of this and other signing statements that President Bush keeps making to re-define the bills that come across his desk.

A signing statement is a written statement made by the president when signing a bill into law. It is entered into the “Legislative History” section of the United States Congressional Code and Administrative News (USCCAN) and can be used by the courts in interpreting the law.

Just to repeat, the signing statement “contradicted the bill he had just signed” and can be used by the courts in interpreting the law.

This truly isn’t an issue of conservatives vs. liberals, but rather the scope of the powers of any president regardless of political affiliation, though there have been a number of serious concerns raised about this particular president abusing powers he may not actually have:

Presidential signing statements that assert President Bush’s authority to disregard or decline to enforce laws adopted by Congress undermine the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers, according to a report released today by a blue-ribbon American Bar Association task force.

To address these concerns, the task force urges Congress to adopt legislation enabling its members to seek court review of signing statements that assert the President’s right to ignore or not enforce laws passed by Congress, and urges the President to veto bills he feels are not constitutional.

If the president vetoes a bill, Congress has the opportunity to override that veto. These are the checks and balances that have been so carefully built into our system. If the framers of the Constitution wanted the president to be able to modify bills, they would have given the office the power of the line-item veto. But the Supreme Court has ruled the presidential line-item veto unconstitutional, as the Constitution clearly grants all legislative powers to Congress. But President Bush has made it clear that he still wants the line-item veto. Failing that, he will continue to use the backdoor of the signing statement, unless Congress takes the recommendation of the American Bar Association and stops him.

I’m no constitutional scholar, but I’m pretty sure the framers didn’t intend for the executive to be able to make a statement defining what a law was going to mean. If President Bush really has this power, I disagree that he’s been abusing it. If anything, he has shown remarkable restraint. Imagine the many, many things that President Bush can do if he does actually have the power to make a law just by making a statement. But it seems pretty clear that he has no such power. He should not be permitted to behave as though he does.

I gave a full-day workshop today on the value of blogging in the literacy classroom for school-based literacy coaches and technology coaches from across the city, and I never once mentioned that I had my own blog. I don’t want to be annoying “Hey, you gotta read my blog” guy.

But if I never tell anyone about the blog, then who will come and watch my postings of grainy Animaniacs cartoons from the mid-’90’s?

There’s a good article in this week’s Economist about Mongolia’s dispute with China over which of the two peoples are the true heirs of Genghis Khan:

In a country of only 2.7m people scattered over an area four times the size of Germany, national heroes are few and far between. This makes it all the more galling that Genghis is claimed by China too. Unlike the Russians, the Chinese have got round their subjugation by the Mongols by insisting he was one of their own. Genghis’s grandson, Kublai Khan, founded China’s Yuan dynasty in the 13th century. That, in China’s view, makes Genghis himself an honorary Chinese emperor.

The dispute was apparently sparked by a new Genghis Khan theme park. Is it possible that Khan is viewed differently over there than he is over here?

Anyway, what drew me to this article was that it reminded me of a study published a few years ago, also concerned with the legacy of Genghis Khan:

An international group of geneticists studying Y-chromosome data have found that nearly 8 percent of the men living in the region of the former Mongol empire carry y-chromosomes that are nearly identical. That translates to 0.5 percent of the male population in the world, or roughly 16 million descendants living today.

16 million descendants. And that’s only men descended from Khan directly through the male line, father to son, for the past 800 years. The total number of Khan’s descendants living today is truly incalculable.

So, China and Mongolia should probably stop arguing over which of their people are the true heirs of Genghis Khan. My guess is, almost all of them are.

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.

This is my first blog entry. Today is the first day of a new year, a day when we can imagine the future and all of its possibilities stretched out before us. Starting a new blog is kind of like that. Thanks for reading this, and maybe I’ll be back.