Two days ago I wrote about my favorite linguistics podcasts. Now check out my five favorite non-linguistic ones, especially the first two: Pod Save America Stay Tuned with Preet Hidden Brain Serious Eats Unorthodox
Month: April 2019
Weston: New England Math Champions!
Congratulations to Weston High School for finishing first in this year’s medium-size schools division of the New England Math Championships! Weston earned 97 points to capture first place. Avon, CT, came out of nowhere to score 93 points, providing a… Read More ›
Linguistics podcasts updated
A year and a half ago — forever, in tech terms — I reviewed four linguistics podcasts: Lingthusiasm, The World in Words, Very Bad Words, and Lexicon Valley. Since then, the second and third of these have unfortunately ceased to… Read More ›
The Silk Road, the Noodle Road, and Confucius
You surely know about the Silk Road, even if (like me) you went to school before courses like World History existed. But do you know about the Noodle Road? If not, you should read Jen Lin-Liu’s excellent memoir, On the Noodle… Read More ›
An upcoming reunion — words and all
Yikes! My 50th college reunion is coming up! (You already know this if you happen to have read a certain post that I wrote a couple of months ago.) What was the famous class of 1969 like? “All happy graduating… Read More ›
Roots and wings
Looking back, do you like the way your parents raised you? Eight of my nine principal academic interests came from my dad: in alphabetical order we have editing, history, languages, law, maps, math, philosophy, and typography. We’re only missing computer… Read More ›
The Israeli election, consciousness-raising, a potential Nobel Peace Prize winner, the college admissions scandal, the U.S. constitution, and mostly a Sierpinskitasch — all in one post
Six topics in a single blog post? How can that be? Well, it’s all because those are six of the topics discussed in a single blog post in Scott Aaronson’s interesting blog, Shtetl-Optimized — all being examples of things that make… Read More ›
A 5% discount (or is it a five percent discount? or a 5 percent discount? or a five % discount?)
Like many of you, I grew up learning the traditional rules about when to write out numbers in words and when to use numerals. Most professionals continue to use these rules today, as in the following awkward paragraph from Talking… Read More ›
Excellent carpentry, Verizon!
Coleman Road, Arlington (corner of Wildwood Ave). That looks like a first-rate job, safe and secure, doesn’t it? Excellent carpentry, Verizon!
Code Girls
You know how college recommendation forms often ask “What three words first come to mind about this applicant?” In the case of Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Codebreakers of World War II, the three words would be fascinating, absorbing,… Read More ›
A Truck Full of Money
As you may know, Tracy Kidder is the author of some wonderful non-fiction books, including Soul of a New Machine, House, and Mountains Beyond Mountains. (He also attended both high school and college with me, but that’s not so important.) Apparently this really is a… Read More ›
Crypto: The KEY to Algebra.
This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post, where I wrote “I also gave a second talk, in a breakout session, on cryptography.” The crypto talk was a bit more informal than the keynote; it had an audience of about a… Read More ›
I gave the keynote address… and lived to tell the tale!
Yesterday I delivered the Keynote Address at the annual conference of the New England Mathematical Association of Two Year Colleges. Despite being an INTJ — which means that I should have been exhausted by the presence of so many other people —… Read More ›
A student’s take on testing and related pressures
Hello my name is worthless Name number and date State your class and hour Let the rubric pick your fate This is the first stanza of a high-school student’s poem, as posted by her teacher, Kevin Bosworth, in Diane Ravitch’s blog…. Read More ›
Learning Strategies 