“Of course we should,” I hear you say. “What good is math if it doesn’t have any read-world applications?” Let me unpack your reply. In one short paragraph it brings up at least half a dozen responses. We’ll discuss a… Read More ›
Month: June 2021
Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir, by Ruth Reichl
Are you old enough to have heard of Ruth Reichl, former restaurant critic for the New York Times and former editor-in-chief for Gourmet Magazine? If you haven’t read her work—which now includes a whole bunch of memoirs, a couple of… Read More ›
What language do they speak in Scotland?
Scottish, you say? English? Gaelic? Scots? All of the above? Sounds like a simple question…but it isn’t. In the newly elected Scottish Parliament, where members were allowed to take their oaths in the language of their choice, the following languages… Read More ›
The Burglar in Short Order, by Lawrence Block…plus a comment about reviewers
Perhaps you are familiar with Lawrence Block’s oeuvre. If so, you’ll think you know what the title of this book means: it must be the latest in the Bernie Rhodenbarr series, and Bernie must be taking a job in a… Read More ›
Looking forward (mostly) to another summer of teaching remotely
Tomorrow I will meet my teaching assistants, and two days later I will meet the students in my class. I am looking forward to both. Actually, there are several errors in that short paragraph: My teaching assistants are actually called… Read More ›
The Art of Violence, by S.J. Rozan
Unusually so for an S.J. Rozan novel, there’s not a whole lot about Chinese-American culture in this one. But it’s fascinating nonetheless. Rather than Chinese-American culture, this time it’s the New York City art world that the reader learns something… Read More ›
All the Devils are Here, by Louise Penny
Maybe you’re not a Louise Penny fan, though I don’t know why you aren’t. If you aren’t, why aren’t you? It’s possible, of course, that you subscribe to the snobby belief that any New York Times bestseller can’t possibly be… Read More ›
The “Ich bin ein Berliner” myth. Admit it, you’ve always believed this urban legend, haven’t you?
You know JFK’s famous speech in 1963, where he said “Ich bin ein Berliner,” where the American pedants and English-language German books all claim that it really means “I am a jelly donut,” not “I am a Berliner” as Kennedy… Read More ›
Inherit the Shoes, by E.J. Copperman
This is a genuinely funny mystery. We need funny these days, don’t we? If you haven’t heard of E.J. Copperman, read my reviews of two of his earlier books: The Question of the Missing Head and its sequel, The Question… Read More ›
Punching down or punching up?
“Why do we have to have a Black History Month?” whined one of my less favorite Weston students in February of 2016. “Why don’t we have a White History Month?” “Because,” I replied without taking time to think, “every month… Read More ›
All Girls
As you can tell from the title, this novel is about an all-girls school. Or maybe you can’t tell that, but it’s still true. We’re not talking about a working-class Catholic girls’ school from South Boston, but a traditionally preppy… Read More ›
Yikes! Lying with statistics! About COVID! And from Massachusetts officials, no less!
Apparently schools are magical places where kids don’t get COVID. You know, because youth. To prove this, the Mass Department of Public Health has just released this informative graph: Look at the bars. As you can tell from a mere… Read More ›
Finding Freedom (Freedom, Maine, of course—were you thinking of something else?)
Did you go to summer camp in Freedom, Maine? I did. And at least two of my students did. The summer camp in question is Hidden Valley Camp. (No, nothing to do with ranch dressing, as some people claim to… Read More ›
Kafka on K-12 math education
What, you may wonder, did Franz Kafka have to say about K–12 math education? Probably nothing, you might say to yourself. But you would be wrong. At least according to Ben Orlin. As you know, Kafka’s second-most-famous novel, The Trial,… Read More ›
Avoid a risk in eleven languages!
Look at the image below. How many of these eleven languages can you identify? No fair asking Dr. Google! And I don’t think we can count English, since if you’re reading this blog you obviously can identify English. So how… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 