You definitely want 366 days of math. Check it out as we are about to enter a new year! The American Mathematical Society offers us a page-a-day desk calendar, in the usual form factor, with a mathematical tidbit for each day… Read More ›
Month: December 2019
The surprising truth about Donald Trump
The shocking truth about Donald Trump! The book A Warning (by “Anonymous: a senior Trump administration official”) reveals it. Well, no, it doesn’t. I lied. But I figured that I would start with a lie, in keeping with the subject. Now for the… Read More ›
A Latin Christmas Carol?
Verb or noun? Two options from Gretchen McCulloch: Good King Wenceslo Good King Wenceslas Good King Wenceslat Good King Wenceslamus Good King Wenceslatis Good King Wenceslant Good King Wencesla Good King Wenceslae Good King Wenceslae Good King Wenceslam Good King… Read More ›
Gyu-Kaku for the second time
Veering slightly from the Jewish-American tradition, Barbara and I made a second visit to Gyu-Kaku (Japanese and Korean, not Chinese) for an excellent Christmas dinner. See my post of September 13 for a review of our first visit, so I’ll… Read More ›
Carols for editors (and writers too)
Listen closely to the words (and don’t pay attention to the quality of the singing, which isn’t the point):
Conviction
Denise Mina’s latest novel, Conviction, is about podcasts — in part. It’s also about family. And murder. And #MeToo. And mystery. And true crime. And power and wealth. And betrayal. And trauma. And Ukrainian gangsters. (How up-to-date!) And storytelling. Not to mention… Read More ›
“Why don’t high schools teach CS?” asks Mark.
Say what? Of course high schools teach CS! Weston has done so for decades. Surely Mark Guzdial knows better, but his recent blog post asks that very question. So what’s going on? It turns out that I have MB (Massachusetts Blindness)…. Read More ›
“Untranslatable” words (redux)
Six months ago I wrote an essay in my blog about “untranslatable” words. If you haven’t read it, you may want to do so now. The bottom line was that when someone claims that a word in some language is… Read More ›
There’s no such thing as too many books.
More shelf space may not be an option. More shelf space requires more shelving, which in turn requires more bookcases, which in turn require more room. Sigh. I gave a few hundred away just over a year ago, but that… Read More ›
It’s 50 years later; would I still be able to write something like my master’s thesis?
I can still teach linguistics — but could I still write a linguistics thesis? On April 10, 1969, I submitted my master’s thesis, The Development of Embeddings in the Speech of Young Children. Just now, for a somewhat complicated set of… Read More ›
Russian Script Hacking for Beginners
Is it Korsunsky or Korsunskiy or Korsunski or perhaps even Korsunskyi? Would it help to see it written out in Cyrillic rather than in our Roman alphabet? Related question: what’s the capital of Ukraine — Kiev or Kyiv? Actually, it’s… Read More ›
Every vote counts!
How do elections work? Does your vote really count? Could your single vote really make a difference? See below. But first… Regular readers of this blog know that I teach a course every summer to rising tenth-graders where one unit is… Read More ›
A negative decrease?
Hmm… so I guess that means that my score increased?
Coffee shops with books: A personal connection
As you know, many coffee shops and small restaurants want their customers to feel at home, so they have comfortable chairs and shelves with random books on them. The intent, I suppose, is to create an ambiance like a living… Read More ›
Semicolon
“What!? An entire book about semicolons??? You’ve got to be kidding!” “And an audiobook of all things???? How can you listen to a semicolon?” Yes, I have to admit: I really did listen to an audiobook about a punctuation mark…. Read More ›
Language Unlimited: “Syntax is where the magic happens.”
“Syntax is where the magic happens. It takes the words we use to slice up our reality, and puts them together in infinitely varied ways.” — from Language Unlimited, by David Adger. If I had to pick one paragraph as the thesis statement… Read More ›
The apostrophe? Its no longer needed.
Ive written earlier about apostrophes, but now we have the definitive essay on the subject for all the peevers and prescriptivists out there: “Thats all Folks: The Apostrophe Protection Society Gone for Good” by the distinguished Dennis Baron. Read it… Read More ›
Murder on the Toy Town Express
Toy Town is East Aurora, NY. Although you probably already knew that, I didn’t know it until I read Barbara Early’s Murder on the Toy Town Express. Don’t confuse this novel with the famous murder on that other express. You can tell… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 