When you read this post on your device, does the title look like (as it should), or does it look like a bunch of boxes? Or maybe just like random gibberish? If your device and software are old, you might… Read More ›
Month: April 2023
Why isn’t there an “r” in “castle”? And why isn’t there an “r” in “please”?
“Why should there be?” you reply. (It’s always best to answer a question with a question.) Either of the two questions in the title of this post presupposes that an “r” is expected. But why? A brief (but relevant) digression:… Read More ›
The Best Book of the Year!
Yes. I know. How can I honestly say “best book of the year” when the year isn’t even half over yet? Furthermore, of course, I can judge only the books that I’ve read. So, let me rephrase. Of the 17… Read More ›
Sardinian. (No, it’s not the language that sardines speak.)
Your second guess will probably be that Sardinian is a dialect of Italian spoken on the island of Sardinia, so maybe it really is related to sardines, since you suspect that Sardinia was named after the many sardines that are… Read More ›
As promised, Via Cannuccia!
A mere week and a half after opening day, Barbara and I finally got to have dinner at Via Cannuccia, which is small (maybe 30 seats), very Italian, and absolutely delicious. Warm and welcoming too, it’s clearly destined to be… Read More ›
13 Quirky Stories
I have written about the fascinating author Helen DeWitt four times over the past eleven years: They say that third time is the charm, but what about the fifth time? Well, the verdict is mixed. DeWitt’s short story collection, Some… Read More ›
Tavolo again, Via Cannuccia soon
Now that Ashmont Grill is no more 😢, our closest local restaurants are Tavolo and Via Cannuccia. Barbara and I haven’t been to Via Cannuccia yet (it just opened), but we had dinner at Tavolo last night. As usual, the… Read More ›
Is this a conventional Christie? Just suspend judgment until the convention is over…
In her novel The Christie Caper, author Carolyn Hart pays explicit and implicit homage to Agatha Christie. As you would expect, she does it with panache. Clearly Hart loves and admires Christie. To enjoy this book you don’t need to… Read More ›
Forming Our Future
Eight months ago I wrote a post about our first attempt at interdisciplinarity at the Crimson Summer Academy. It was a start. Perhaps even a good start, but still no more than a start. This summer we are keeping the… Read More ›
NSFW
Don’t leave this book—Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide—lying around casually at work. Your boss might get the wrong idea. Now that it’s safely on your night table at home, or on the end table next to your… Read More ›
How well does ChatGPT do when it tries to talk about Trump and Greek literature/mythology?
“Write a short essay comparing Donald Trump and Admetus.” That was the prompt I gave ChatGPT, just to see how it would handle a presumably unfamiliar topic. I’ll show you the essay in a minute, but first I should remind… Read More ›
A Jewish student at a (thinly disguised) Ivy League college in the ’90s
If you’ve read My Last Innocent Year, you quickly figured out that it’s meant to be Dartmouth, right? Yes, it’s subtly called Wilder College, but it’s described as an elite college in New Hampshire that used to be all male… Read More ›
Daffodils, supervised by neighborhood cat
Look closely…
Kapow
A few months ago I observed that we now have three Thai restaurants along Dorchester Avenue between Lower Mills and Fields Corner! The oldest of these closed briefly a few months ago and recently reopened under new management with a… Read More ›
The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling
That’s the title of a seven-episode podcast about the attacks on J.K. Rowling from both the left and the right—originally from the right but now mostly from the left. Personally I think that both groups of critics are wrongheaded and… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 