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
-
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 ›
-
Christine Lavin, Tina Ross, and Barbara Barrie
Great short Zoom concert/interview last night by Christine Lavin, hosted by Tina Ross! Not sure whether it’s still available after the fact. In any case, you can check out her other concerts and recordings here. But I do need to… Read More ›
-
If ontogeny really recapitulated phylogeny…
If you need the full explanation, visit explainXKCD.
-
Another treat from Richard Osman
A couple of months ago I reviewed the first novel in Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series. Now I turn to the second, which I have just finished reading. This mystery, The Man Who Died Twice, is at least as… Read More ›
-
Stress is good. That’s why Shakespeare could never have been French. (Say what? Read on for an explanation.)
No, not that kind of stress! We’re talking about stressing syllables, not your mind. English poetry and prose alike depend heavily on stress—especially poetry. In prose, if you get the stress wrong, your words may be incomprehensible. Or you may… Read More ›
-
Tavolo Take-out Treat
Anticipating today’s snowstorm, Barbara and I just had to treat ourselves to a take-out banquet from Tavolo last night. (We blame Tara for it, since she had posted a tempting menu excerpt on FB.) Here’s what we had (pix below):… Read More ›
-
Yang’s Yummy Dumplings
Finally, over a period of a month or two, Barbara and I have consumed nearly all of the fifty delicious dumplings that we bought from Yang’s in Dorchester. Don’t worry: they came frozen, and are still frozen. At least the… Read More ›
-
Texas German vs. Pennsylvania Dutch
Is there really such a language as Texas German? The answer is yes. So why is it—according to my informal (and totally unscientific) poll—that everyone has heard of Pennsylvania German (usually, however, called by the misnomer Pennsylvania Dutch, where “Dutch”… Read More ›
-
NYE@AG
Happy New Year! Barbara and I celebrated New Years Eve at the Ashmont Grill, as one does. We appreciated the fact that it was a quiet and understated affair, as you would expect under the current circumstances. Barbara started with… Read More ›
-
Can German speakers understand Yiddish—and vice versa?
Is Yiddish really a language? Or is it a dialect of German? And does anyone speak it anymore? The quick answers are yes, no, and yes, respectively. It used to be a dialect of German—12 centuries ago—but both languages have… Read More ›
-
That long-awaited model railroad update: finally a progress report!
As the estimable Barry Popik observes, “A model railroad [is] never finished. There is always something to add or to remove or to modify.” So I can’t simply postpone this report until my model railroad is finished! But “I’ve been… Read More ›
-
A Jewish Christmas, in two parts (Part Two: Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas)
After we got home from our requisite Chinese meal on Christmas Day, Barbara and I watched the requisite movie: in this case the Canadian documentary Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas. If you’ve never heard of it, go find it and… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 