What? Ian McEwan writes science fiction? News to me, but I had to give this book a chance. It’s Ian McEwan, after all. Machines Like Me falls into the alternative-history subgenre, in which the author postulates that one or more… Read More ›
Month: June 2019
Bella Luna
It may not look like much in the picture, but it sure was yummy: grilled sea scallops with fresh corn, cherry tomatoes, and peaches (that’s a peach, not an egg yolk, in the picture), all served over parsnip puree. This… Read More ›
Virginia Woolf: “On Not Knowing Greek”
What did I know about Virginia Woolf? Not much. I knew that she wrote about needing “a room of her own,” and that she had written something about a lighthouse, and I had long ago seen Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid… Read More ›
The most commonly spoken language in your state
What’s the most commonly spoken language in your state? (We’ll exclude the two obvious ones, of course — English and Spanish.) This map shows the surprising answer, at least if we trust Business Insider: Absolutely fascinating, but I’m not completely… Read More ›
Barcelona (the restaurant, not the city)
Four out of five stars, IMHO, for the Barcelona restaurant in Brookline. Barbara and I went there last night as a change of pace for our anniversary dinner. A major motivator was that we both love Barcelona, the city, and… Read More ›
“Why Chinese is so damn hard”
I just read a provocative essay by David Moser entitled “Why Chinese is so damn hard.” Is it really that hard? And are we talking about speaking Chinese or reading it? Hard compared to what? Hard for a foreigner or… Read More ›
Not a very large fraction of the whole world
By the way, MapLoco, someone should tell you that Puerto Rico is part of the United States and not a separate country, no what what Donald Trump thinks. Other than that (and a couple of other similar gaffes), this is… Read More ›
Yellow Door Taqueria
Barbara and I had an excellent dinner last night at Dorchester’s Yellow Door Taqueria, easily found by looking for… of course… the yellow door. I know that many people consider this a bar rather than a restaurant, but it’s successfully… Read More ›
Untranslatable words
One of the first things any article about sisu will tell you is that this Finnish word is untranslatable. (https://finland.fi/arts-culture/sisu-within-finnish-key-life-love-success/) ‘Sisu’ in Finnish means strength, perseverance in a task that for some may seem crazy to undertake, almost hopeless. (http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180502-sisu-the-finnish-art-of-inner-strength)… Read More ›
Teacher comments by race of student
Hmmm… Math teacher Bowman Dickson has gathered some statistics on the frequencies of various words used by teachers of various subjects in their report-card comments on high-school students. Here’s one of his charts: The phrase “more common” in the data above… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 