Read this book! About six months ago I reviewed Fortune Favors the Dead, the first Pentecost and Parker novel by Stephen Spotswood. Now I’ve read the second book in the series: Murder Under her Skin. It’s even better than its… Read More ›
Month: January 2022
Surely schools are not supposed to teach critical thinking. Right?
As you know, there has been a recent uptick in banning books, in attacking teachers for teaching inconvenient truths, and in promoting undemocratic ideas and ideals. As Diane Ravitch has pointed out, schools and libraries are being pressured to remove… Read More ›
What‽ Ashmont Grill again‽
It seems that Barbara and I visited the Ashmont Grill just two weeks ago. It seems like that because it’s true. But we just had to go again last night when we saw the list of specials: I couldn’t resist… Read More ›
The Rival Jewish Dynasties that Helped Create Modern China
What an eye-opener! I learned so much from The Last Kings of Shanghai, a truly informative and engaging book by Jonathan Kaufman. So what’s with the headline of this blog post? Well, that’s not my phrase; it’s the subtitle of… Read More ›
Are we embarrassed to be Bostonians? Should we be?
Patrick Maguire’s blog, Server Not Servant, is always worth reading. Those of us who treat restaurant servers well—those of us who consider respect toward essential workers to be an important American value—have been sorely tested by some of our fellow… Read More ›
The Synagogues of Dorchester, Roxbury, & Mattapan (but are there any?)
Yesterday afternoon the Dorchester Historical Society sponsored a fascinating presentation by Jeff Calish titled “The Synagogues of Dorchester, Roxbury, & Mattapan” [Oxford comma added by me for those who care]. There used to be 56 synagogues in the area. A… Read More ›
The Source Material for… (Episode I of these episodic posts: The Bicentennial Man)
About five weeks ago I reviewed the movie The Bicentennial Man. I pointed out that it was based on two sources: on Isaac Asimov’s novelette of the same name and on the later adaptation of that novelette into a full-length… Read More ›
William is so handsome…
On his blue comforter, even if for some reason it has a lot of cat fur on it:
Being human in the age of algorithms
That’s not the title. It’s actually the subtitle. The book’s title is Hello World. OK, so now that you know the title, you want to know who the author is—right? Well, the author is applied mathematician Hannah Fry, whom I… Read More ›
Ayliean (who?)—and her Hitomezashi patterns (what?)
No, I don’t know how to pronounce Ayliean. My Scots Gaelic isn’t what it used to be. (It never was.) And I’m not so sure about Hitomezashi either, as my Japanese isn’t what it used to be. (But I did… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 