Author Archives
In 2018 I semi-retired by retiring from Weston High School after my 21st year teaching mathematics there. This was also my 44th year as a teacher altogether. In 2023 I retired fully, adding in my 18 years at Harvard’s Crimson Summer Academy each summer. For 21 years I had taught at the Saturday Course in Milton, MA, and I used to serve on the board of the Dorchester Historical Society.
I read, cook, and spend a lot of time building my model railroad. For some reason I’m left with less free time than would be ideal, considering that I’m supposed to be retired, but somehow I also manage to devote time to my wife, Barbara, and to our varying number of cats (once up to six, but now sadly down to one).
Larry Davidson
ljd@larrydavidson.com
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The solution to that Estonian puzzle
And here is the full solution to the puzzle about telling time in Estonian. First the answers, in case you want to check your answers before following the link to the full solution: Challenge 1a. 9:25b. 11:45c. 2:30d. 3:15e. 6:35… Read More ›
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Shy (the book, not the song)
“Everyone should marry a gay man at least once,” says Mary Rodgers (better known as the daughter of Richard Rodgers, but an important figure in her own right, and not just for Once Upon a Mattress) on page 128 of… Read More ›
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How can girls succeed at the highest level of high-school debate?
You know the problem, right? If a girl is meek and submissive, she won’t impress the debate judges. If she is strong and assertive, the judges will call her an aggressive bitch and she won’t do well. So there’s no… Read More ›
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How to tell time (in Estonian, of course)
Alex Bellos, on Atlas Obscura, has written a fine linguistics/math puzzle about telling time in Estonian. No knowledge of Estonian is required (in fact, it would spoil the puzzle), nor is any advanced knowledge of math or linguistics expected. Here… Read More ›
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What is Jewish Noir?
According to Wikipedia, film noir comprises “stylish crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations.” So, what then is Jewish Noir? Moving the medium from film to short stories, we get a series (two books so far) edited by… Read More ›
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Ukraine: Its intertwined history and linguistics
A great article in The Spectator teaches us the history of language in Ukraine in the context of the rest of the history of the country. Author Norman Davies is remarkably thorough and thankfully straightforward, teaching us a lot in… Read More ›
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And Justice for Mall
Yet another entertaining Jersey Girl mystery by E.J. Copperman. This is the fourth. Although we’re firmly out in SoCal at this point, there are still enough reminders of her Jersey origins that you won’t forget where Sandy Moss, the protagonist,… Read More ›
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The plural of “you” is…“y’all”? “youse”? “yinz”? “you guys”? “you”?
Prescriptivists and right-wingers were all outraged back in Shakespeare’s day, when progressives and descriptivists started using the plural pronoun “you” to address a single person. It would be the death of the English language! How dare they try to change… Read More ›
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Remember the…the what? Remember the Alamo? Remember the Maine? No, remember the Horn & Hardart Automat!
If you are from either the New York or the Philadelphia area—and if you are of a certain age—you will fondly remember the Horn & Hardart Automat. And now there is a wonderful documentary about it, simply titled The Automat,… Read More ›
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What is your favorite mispelling?
If you look cooly at the maps of common mispellings, paying attention to the miniscule details, it won’t take you a millenium to recognize that many of these words are frequently mispelled. The lists in those maps may or may… Read More ›
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Catch Me If You Can
Not the book, not the musical: I’m talking about the 2002 Steven Spielberg movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio along with Christopher Walken, Tom Hanks, Amy Adams, Martin Sheen, and others that I haven’t heard of but you have. As you probably… Read More ›
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Where can I sit?
I went up to the den to sit and read in the easy chair, with my feet on the ottoman. But Flicka, of course, was occupying the ottoman again, and William left no room in the easy chair, which was… Read More ›
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Every Last Fear
Ordinarily you would never expect me to want to read a book with that title. Ordinarily I would never expect to want to read a book with that title. But it had been recommended to me by a reader I… Read More ›
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Were math skills truly destroyed by the pandemic? What is the solution?
“Disrupted learning during the pandemic brought student achievement among students in Boston and statewide to the lowest levels in a decade or more, according to new data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.” So began an article in the… Read More ›
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Yikes! Rear-ended in my own driveway!
Bang! What was that? At 7:10 Thursday evening, just as we were about to sit down to dinner, Barbara and I heard a loud bang that appeared to come from our driveway! Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. So… Read More ›
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How many Massachusetts cities and towns can you name?
Well, at least I beat Steph Solis. But she’ll probably remind me that “it’s not a competition” if she ever sees this. So here’s the situation. Axios Boston posted a link to a site where you can test yourself by… Read More ›
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I’m shocked, shocked! Middle-schoolers were hiding Satanic messages in their mural!
Take a look at the mural, designed and painted by a high-school student for the Child and Adolescent Health Center at Grant Middle School in Grant, Michigan, a suburb of Grand Rapids: I’m sure you can see the Satanic messages…. Read More ›
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“When napping on the ottoman…
…it’s very important to show off your extra toes, and to sprawl out so there’s no room for anyone else to sit there.” So says Flicka.
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The woman in the library handed me The Woman in the Library.
This is the second time in less than a month that I’ve had to use typography to disambiguate the title of a post. This is the better of the two examples, both because it contains the very same phrase twice… Read More ›
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How to build a metaverse
Cats may have nine lives. You don’t, but at least you can have a Second Life. Second Life, as you probably know, is an example of a metaverse. Do not confuse this with the new name of Facebook’s parent corporation,… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 