I’ve never been a mother. I’ve never been a daughter. So why would I want to read You’re Wearing That?, which bears the subtitle Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation? Two reasons: The author is Deborah Tannen, as shown above the title. Tannen, if… Read More ›
The Scots language has been in the news! Until a few years ago I didn’t even know what Scots is. Do you? If you’ve read my post of August 15, you do. Otherwise there’s a good chance that you don’t know, or… Read More ›
Do we care about labeling a literary genre? What difference does it make? Ever since I was a pre-teen, I was interested in science fiction. Fantasy, not so much. But what’s the difference? And who cares? First of all, just… Read More ›
“What a silly question!” you reply. “We translate sentences in high-school language classes all the time!” Do you? You might not do that at all (perhaps you took a total immersion class) but let that pass. You probably did at… Read More ›
Just in case the year 2020 hasn’t been depressing enough, I was appalled to read today that 13% of millennials in Massachusetts believe that Jews caused the Holocaust. Other related statistics from the study by Schoen Cooperman Research are just… Read More ›
Gödel, Escher, Bach — what more do I need to say? Quite a bit more, you reply, especially since only 8% of you have actually read this amazing book. (Statistics gladly invented on the spot, of course.) If you’ve heard of… Read More ›
Let’s assume that you neither speak nor read Irish. (Probably a safe guess.) I, too, neither speak nor read Irish. But work with me here. Study this image, which shows an American wearing a custom tee shirt. Without knowing any Irish,… Read More ›
Apparently many people think that the number of Supreme Court justices is immutable, that the Constitution specifies that there must be nine. This is not true. If you think that nine is a magic number written into the Constitution, you… Read More ›
Donald Trump doesn’t understand that science is not a fixed body of known facts. It changes all the time — whenever new data and new tools result in new information and therefore new knowledge. That’s why Fauci (et al.) used… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 