OK, yes, I know that on September 26 I wrote that “My next four posts will deal with four different linguistics podcasts.” But then I was overtaken by events and just had to write a post about the noxious and… Read More ›
Month: September 2017
Aren’t we supposed to be promoting STEM?
This is disgusting. A leading member of Congress, Republican Dave Schweikert of Arizona, spent all day yesterday talking about the new Republican tax plan — yikes! numbers! — and had this to say about it on NPR’s All Things Considered this… Read More ›
Linguistic Podcasts
My next four posts will deal with four different linguistics podcasts — a new medium that has recently come to my attention. I’m sure you’ve been listening to podcasts for years, but I became aware of them only six months… Read More ›
Camino Island
It’s John Grisham, so I never expected it to be great literature. But I was still disappointed. The beginning was absorbing, and I liked the premise. The novel is all about booksellers and novelists — well, more like a bookseller and a novelist —… Read More ›
Homework and Causation
As this academic year ramps up, it’s worth recalling a conversation overheard by a colleague a couple of years ago: At the beginning of the third quarter, two sophomores were talking about their second-quarter report cards. “I got a C… Read More ›
Why “Names of polygons”?
Whenever I go to the WordPress Stats page for this blog, I see that my most popular post (most popular by far) is “Names of Polygons,” which I posted on December 10, 2010! It had 361 views last month, nearly… Read More ›
Nine ways (or six, she said originally) to do linguistics in high school
Unfortunately, I’ve never heard of a high school offering linguistics courses or indeed knowing much of anything about linguistics. So writes distinguished linguist Gretchen McCulloch. After all, everyone knows that linguistics is purely an undergraduate and graduate subject in colleges… Read More ›
York. Book One: The Shadow Cipher
Yes, it’s a YA novel; I don’t teach middle school, so why did I read it? The Shadow Cipher (Book One of Laura Ruby’s promised trilogy, York) is clearly aimed at intelligent seventh-graders. Yes, it got great reviews — but still, why would… Read More ›
Ancient Babylonian trigonometry? Really? Really???
It’s pretty clear what this clay tablet says, right? Obviously it’s written in… Oh, wait, maybe it isn’t so obvious. You probably don’t read Babylonian, or Akkadian, or Sumerian, or whatever language these cuneiform carvings represent. But this tablet has… Read More ›
The first day for all
Although the first day for faculty and freshmen came last week, yesterday was the first day when all who should be here were present at Weston High School. From where I sit, it was an especially smooth opening day. As… Read More ›
Do negative numbers exist? And why do two negatives make a positive?
A brief interchange on Facebook yesterday and today with three of my former students prompted this discussion of the two questions stated in the title of this post. It all started with this implausible claim from a reliable math website:… Read More ›
New York 2140
Most good science fiction takes a single premise (which may or may not be believable) and spins out the consequences of that premise. To be convincing, there should just be that one premise, since most readers are willing to suspend disbelief… Read More ›
School of Rock
I really didn’t think I would enjoy this movie. “Not my style,” I said to myself. But I was wrong. Although it’s true that it is not my style, I still enjoyed it a lot. In case it’s not… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 