Check out the great photos at <legnangel.livejournal.com/564026.html>. I wish I could read the Russian text, but maybe Boris can help. Anyway, the question for me is why this collection resonates for me at several different levels. For one, the miniature… Read More ›
Month: February 2006
Sel de la Terre
Just got back from Sel de la Terre. Highly recommended for a wonderful birthday dinner with that Provençal flavor.
Graphing aids
There are several blogs that I read regularly. One of my favorites is Learning Curves, by the pseudonymous math professor Rudbeckia Hirta. She goes to some lengths to hide her real name, as well as the the name of the… Read More ›
Bars, gates, & a ticket of admission
Almost 25 years ago, my friend and colleague Phil Lewis wrote an article for Kaleidoscopes called (if memory serves) “Subject to Gates and Bars.” If I were better organized, I would be able to find that article; Phil always describes… Read More ›
No slow service from Apple
Tuesday afternoon at 4:20 — I took my iBook to the Cambridge Apple Store, having made an appointment earlier in the day at the so-called Genius Bar. (CDs and DVDs were ejecting less than 50% of the time. Worse yet,… Read More ›
Win the lottery: what a good idea!
All I can do is shake my head in amazement: About one out of five Americans believe that winning the lottery is the most practical way of attaining personal wealth, according to a survey released in January by the Financial… Read More ›
The Harvard Coup
No, that’s not a typo. I don’t mean the Harvard Coop; I’m referring to the forced resignation of Harvard President Larry Summers, which Alan Dershowitz rightly calls a coup. Definitely read Dershowitz’s column! I do have a certain bias in… Read More ›
Finally TiVo
So we finally gave in and got a TiVo box. I think it was a recommendation by Ira Glass that did the track. Most of the setup was painless, but it’s been very frustrating trying to connect it to our… Read More ›
The soul-stealing iPod and fuzzy math
Does the iPod steal music’s soul? Do these numbers make sense? Here are the views of Tony Brummel, founder of Victory Records: iTunes “makes music disposable. It makes it a faceless impulse item. It steals its soul,” according to Macworld… Read More ›
Redefining our major curriculum units
Early in April, our entire math department will be participating in a workshop on “redefining our major curriculum units”. At this point I have some very preliminary thoughts, some of which I’ve discussed here previously: Many mathematical applications that are… Read More ›
Inflammatory headline in Boston Globe
Today’s Boston Globe reports on the appointment of new principals to both of the high schools in Newton. One candidate, Jennifer Price, had been a finalist for the position at Weston, though she was not the one ultimately chosen. (See… Read More ›
The Bookman’s Promise
I’m currently reading The Bookman’s Promise, another Cliff Janeway mystery by John Dunning. If you don’t know this series, run to the nearest library or bookstore — at least if you love books. Dunning’s protagonist is a bookman, defined in… Read More ›
Throwing money at it
How we can solve the dismal state of so many of our schools that are educationally inadequate? We all know that throwing money at the problem won’t help, don’t we? “Throwing money at the problem isn’t going to help,” says… Read More ›
Bill Gates Redux
We don’t have to like Bill Gates, and we certainly don’t have to like Microsoft, but we do have to admit that Gates has changed. He’s making an impact by doing fine work as a philanthropist, and occasionally he’s even… Read More ›
The Anglo-Irish Murders
I’ve just finished listening to an audiobook, The Anglo-Irish Murders, by the Irish author Ruth Dudley Edwards. Rates a cautious thumbs-up from where I stand. But I learned from a former boss that where you stand depends on where you… Read More ›
Bush & Barbie
On February 3, President Bush was addressing a crowd at Intel concerning the importance of studying math and science: A lot of people probably think math and science isn’t meant for me — you know, it seems a little hard,… Read More ›
Personal responsibility
An interesting resonance among four recent but different news and/or entertainment items: Last month, students in a certain well-regarded suburban high school report that “other kids” (of course it’s always other kids) have been selling or giving Ritalin to their… Read More ›
Diversity in Weston
The other day I turned on the radio to hear someone say, “Sure, there’s diversity in Weston. They have doctors and lawyers.” But now we have a more convincing sign of diversity: a black principal! The Superintendent of Schools just… Read More ›
North, East, South, and West
The day before yesterday, it was getting to be too late to cook dinner after I picked up Barbara in Watertown…and we would have had to defrost something anyway, or go grocery shopping on the way home…which would have made… Read More ›
More APs! More APs!
High-school students want to take more and more Advanced Placement courses these days. And we’re encouraging them. At Weston we have altogether too many students who want to skip the second half of precalculus and take AP Statistics instead —… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 