Every year—well, not last year, for obvious reasons—the Codman Square Health Center in the center of Dorchester hosts a fundraiser called Men of Boston Cook for Women’s Health. Barbara and I have attended almost every year from 1996 through 2017,… Read More ›
Month: October 2021
Street art in Dot
No, it’s not a gallery, nor a museum. These are works of art created by anonymous artists in my neighborhood, spotted on a recent walk. The first two are—if you look closely—a pair of well-decorated traffic light control boxes. The… Read More ›
On the planet of the apps: Between Glossika and DuoLingo, who wins?
I have been trying these two language-learning apps every day for a month now. You may recall that I wrote about them three weeks ago, when I continued to review my rusty German, since I used to be pretty good… Read More ›
Read Stanley Tucci’s memoir, Taste !
Actors? Mostly I can take ’em or leave ’em. But there are a few actors I find memorable, and Stanley Tucci is one of them. I knew him originally from The Big Night and Julie and Julia, and more recently… Read More ›
Democracy? How could geometry tell us anything about democracy? To find out, read Shape, by Jordan Ellenberg!
Even if you don’t usually read applied math books, you need to read Shape, by Jordan Ellenberg. The subtitle tells you more than the title: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else. Yes, I know, it… Read More ›
Nothing to see here. Move along.
I never discuss politics in these posts. (Well, hardly ever. I do make an exception for the Former Guy.) So there’s no politics in this post. Don’t look at the picture: it’s just a photo of an unremarkable nearby house,… Read More ›
A Lincoln-Sudbury alumnus stars in Gifted.
Chris Evans—an actor you may recognize, but I don’t—is a Lincoln-Sudbury alum (’99?) and the star of the movie Gifted, which you should definitely see. See it even if you have no connection whatsoever with either Lincoln or Sudbury! Evans… Read More ›
Polychromatic house
Walked by this Dorchester house on today’s walk. I really like the color combo, but I suspect that a lot of people don’t.
A near-future dystopian novel by a Canadian woman author: any guesses who the author is?
No, it’s not Margaret Atwood. We’re talking about The Madness of Crowds, by Louise Penny. It’s not nearly as dystopian as Atwood’s vision, but it still nudges us in that direction. This is the newest (#17) novel in the Armand… Read More ›
The curious, enthralling and extraordinary story of English spelling
That’s the subtitle of a wonderful book that was written for you, if you are a reader of English. Also if you’re a writer in English. And most especially if you have to spell English words, as the main title… Read More ›
Pete remembers Woody.
Please don’t say “Pete who?” or “Woody who?” I hope you know who the title refers to. The original version of this wonderful memorial came out nearly seven years ago as an LP; the CD version was released nine years… Read More ›
The Court Jester
Robin Hood or The Princess Bride? Which one inspired The Court Jester? Well, if you look at the image, you see that Danny Kaye (born דוד־דניאל קאַמינסקי—that’s Yiddish, even if it looks like Hebrew) starred in The Court Jester, and… Read More ›
How do you learn a foreign language? “There are no subtitles in real life.”
“One fine day, it’s like going from the black and white to the color part of The Wizard of Oz.” That’s John McWhorter’s striking description of one of the things that happens when you learn a new language. It’s from… Read More ›
“Scientific discoveries are never given the names of their actual discoverers.”
When I teach cryptography, my students learn that the Caesar Cipher wasn’t actually invented by Julius Caesar, that the Playfair Cipher wasn’t created by Lyon Playfair, that the Vigenère Cipher is wrongly attributed to Blaise de Vigenère, and so forth…. Read More ›
Learning Strategies 