Author Archives

I am entering my 21st year as a math teacher at Weston High School, the sole public high school in Weston, MA. It’s also my 44th year as a teacher altogether. In addition to my day job, I taught for 20 years at the Saturday Course in Milton, MA. I also teach at Harvard’s Crimson Summer Academy each summer; 2017 was our 14th consecutive summer.

Sometimes I work on educational software. I also read, cook, and continue building my model railroad whenever I can. For some reason I'm left with less so-called free time than would be ideal. Nevertheless, I manage to devote time to my wife, Barbara, and to our excessive number of cats as well.

  • Winthrop

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    Never would I have picked the town of Winthrop as the ideal vacation spot… until the confluence of two events: Barbara and I had wanted to find a nearby long-weekend getaway that wouldn’t take much time to travel there and… Read More ›

  • The Vocal Fries (yet another linguistics podcast!)

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    Yet another linguistics podcast has come to my attention! It’s The Vocal Fries, subtitled “the podcast about linguistic discrimination.” This series, now four months old, is of course named for the phonological register commonly called “vocal fry,” but that’s only the starting point…. Read More ›

  • Cats and geometry

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    Three of the cats, doing their best to sit at the vertices of an equilateral triangle (even though William isn’t paying attention and Vincent is messing up the covers):

  • Campaign posters

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    Randomly chosen campaign posters for candidates for class officer positions as seen on the walls of Weston High School this morning (identifying images have been deliberately blurred to protect student privacy):          

  • Ready, Player One (the movie)

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    So, what’s the verdict? … It lived up to my expectations and more so. Last week I reviewed the book; yesterday, when I saw the movie, I was pleasantly surprised to see how closely Steven Spielberg’s vision matched my own…. Read More ›

  • The Marriage Pact

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    What a strange (and disturbing) book! It’s one of those novels that grip my attention and refuse to let go — so I feel compelled to read to the end — and yet I certainly can’t say that I enjoyed… Read More ›

  • State Math Champions!

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    Congratulations to the Weston High School Math Team for their extraordinary performance yesterday in the medium-sized high schools’ playoffs for the Massachusetts state math championship! Weston finished #1 among all the medium-sized schools in all the state math leagues, and far… Read More ›

  • Felicia Day: You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost)

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    Continuing with the gaming theme that played a major role in Player by Proxy, Ready Player One, and The Chalk Artist, now we need to talk about Felicia Day’s amusing and engaging memoir, You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost). As you know… Read More ›

  • Ready Player One (the book)

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    Flashback to two months ago: apparently I was the only living person who hadn’t yet heard of Ernest Cline’s Ready, Player One. Now everyone has heard of it, since Spielberg’s film adaptation has just opened. As I’m not going to be seeing… Read More ›

  • Finally… the 16th Annual Fractal Fair

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    Our plans for the 16th annual Fractal Fair at Weston High School looked good. All was supposed to go smoothly, just as the previous 15 fairs had. Why not, after all?           But the weather did… Read More ›