The Weston High School Library recently posted a slide show from Rutgers University explaining why students shouldn’t use Wikipedia. This carefully produced polemic deserves a thoughtful rebuttal; I have endeavored to write one here. Be sure to watch the slide… Read More ›
Month: November 2010
Sleeping moon
Apparently in honor of the holidays, someone has “enhanced” local artist Joseph Wheelwright’s sculpture, Sleeping Moon, which sits prominently in Peabody Square in Dorchester right next to Ashmont Station. I have no idea whether the modification was authorized or not…. Read More ›
Shanghai dumplings and the gas tank
Just got back from another excellent dim sum at the Dorchester branch of Chau Chow. If you live anywhere near Dorchester, come here for dim sum! Unlike Chinatown, parking is easy in their own lot and the overflow lot across the… Read More ›
An international Thanksgiving
It was another international Thanksgiving at my sister’s house this year — nine Americans and nine visitors from abroad. I counted three from Germany, one from France, one from Korea, three from Taiwan, and apparently one from somewhere Spanish-speaking, but… Read More ›
Capitol Betrayal and Inside Out
Because I have such a large backlog of reading material, I often put print books and audiobooks on a queue; I get to them whenever I get to them. It could easily be months later, so I no longer remember… Read More ›
“Solving” the Rubik’s Cube
Why is it that the phrase “solving the Rubik’s cube” has such a different meaning to me than it does to others? For a long time I was quite puzzled by people who made the implausible claim that they had… Read More ›
Why 1 is not prime
At Saturday Course we were working with prime numbers, and one fifth-grader asked his classmates a question: Student A: Is 1 a prime number? Student B: No. Student A: So it’s composite? Student B: No, it isn’t prime and it… Read More ›
The Corrections
Too often I expect to like a certain book and then I’m disappointed. Occasionally the opposite situation happens to me; such is the case with Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. I tend to read so much genre fiction and non-fiction that… Read More ›
Feeling like a community
A class ought to feel like a community. (Mathematically speaking, that’s what make it a class, rather than a set. Yes, it’s a slightly different meaning of the word “class,” but the resemblance is not a coincidence.) We’ve all been… Read More ›
Weston’s Math Department on nation-wide TV
The Math Department of Weston High School & Middle School was featured in a report on last night’s NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams! Be sure to watch all the way to the end (it’s only two and half minutes), not… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 