Fasten your seatbelt; it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Those are (or should be) the pilot’s instructions as you begin reading the novel State of Terror, co-written by Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny. Perhaps it’s not surprising that this… Read More ›
Month: November 2021
West Side Chanukah Story…and Goodbye to Stephen Sondheim
Chanukah story? Or the greatest musical of all time, West Side Story? This magnificent five-minute a cappella performance by the Manhattan Jewish Experience is both. Shoutout to David Schwartz for the link! As with all take-offs and parodies, it helps… Read More ›
“The Awful German Language”
For the past eight weeks I have been trying every day to use Duolingo to review my once-decent-but-now-rusty knowledge of German. It has been going pretty well. I suppose it ought to. My parents, after all, used to tell me… Read More ›
Are we really all related? How many degrees of separation?
We are all related—or so they say. And the new science of DNA will prove it. That, at any rate, is the thesis of well-known writer A.J. Jacobs, whom I wrote about just over seven years ago in a very… Read More ›
“But Chinese is such a simple language,” he says. “It has no grammar!”
The problem here is not what you’re thinking if you’re a non-linguist: most non-linguists think of language as writing, and they know that written Chinese looks intimidating. But language is primarily speaking, not writing, and the person quoted here is… Read More ›
Not Rizzoli and Isles
It’s not about Rizzoli and Isles. But it is a Tess Gerritsen mystery (you may or may not know that Gerritsen is the author of the Rizzoli and Isles mysteries, upon which the television shows are based); it’s pretty good,… Read More ›
The Best Years of our Lives
Even if you don’t know this classic 1946 movie—even if you’ve never heard of it—you will surely suspect that the title is meant ironically. The movie poster (below) even contains scare quotes that belie the obligatory smiles. So yes, the… Read More ›
Music to our ears
All math teachers and mathematicians love music, but not all musicians love math. That has been my experience, at any rate, based on a fairly large sample. Recently I listened to a Freakonomics episode featuring British mathematician Sarah Hart, in… Read More ›
Whining about Daylight Saving Time
If I were a pedant (which of course I’m not), I would feel compelled to articulate four pet peeves related to Daylight Saving Time: Some people—I’m thinking of you, Ethel—call it Daylight Savings Time! (Apparently it has something to do… Read More ›
Look it up! But first understand the purpose of dictionaries.
A dictionary in every room. That was an essential feature of our home when I was growing up. That way, when a question came up in conversation, no matter which room we were in, we could always look up a… Read More ›
Don’t read this book if you’re a Donald Trump fan! (It will only infuriate you.)
“Raging fascist oaf” is one subtle description of The Former Guy in the satirical novel Squeeze Me, by Carl Hiaasen. As you know, there are two kinds of satire: the dark ones, like 1984, and the humorous ones, like Squeeze… Read More ›
Are you a Renaissance man?
You may wonder why on earth you would want to read a book about Renaissance education. Perhaps you’re under the illusion that education during the Renaissance was like the image in this cartoon: But no, as you see from the… Read More ›
Should you switch?
No, I don’t mean switch from Coke to Pepsi, nor from math to linguistics. I am not even referring to the Monty Hall problem, though that seems more likely under the circumstances. I am talking about the fascinating two-envelope paradox…. Read More ›
What does the Thursday Murder Club do?
Do the members of the club commit murders on Thursdays? Do they always solve murders on Thursdays? Definitely not the former. The latter is closer to the truth, but that’s not quite it either. They meet every Thursday, and they… Read More ›
Translating Medicarespeak into other languages
I was looking through the newest information from Medicare, which looked to my untrained eyes just like the previous version and the one before that and the one before… What caught my eye won’t surprise you: some sentences (presumably equivalent… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 