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 Crying Game
“If you reveal an ending that everybody already knows, does it still count as a spoiler?” There’s at least one flaw in this question: no matter what the movie, surely it can’t be true that “everybody” knows the ending, or… Read More ›
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Why is there a connection between crime novels and trains?
You think of crime novels, you think of trains. Well, maybe not you. but many people. Murder on the Orient Express leaps to mind, of course, but there are a lot of other examples, as you can read about in… Read More ›
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The First King: Birth of an Empire
The spoken dialog is entirely in Old Latin! Well, yes; it’s a movie, after all, so what do you expect? There surely are many movies in Old Latin, a.k.a. Archaic Latin, right? Well, maybe not. At least this one has… Read More ›
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Isaac Asimov’s “Black Widowers” stories
Isaac Asimov was best known as a science fiction writer, though many readers justly prize him for his ultra-clear writing of science fact. Not so many readers realize that Asimov was also a prolific—stop there! “prolific” anything is redundant when… Read More ›
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Following directions, a.k.a. lather-rinse-repeat
If you’ve ever built a model railroad structure (or a model airplane or whatever), you either build it from scratch, build it from a kit, or do some combination of the two. I am definitely not a scratch builder, so… Read More ›
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Calendrical linguistics: What a wonderfully nerdy combination!
You’ve wondered, I’m sure, about some of our names for the months. Perhaps you are puzzled about why October is the tenth month when the name clearly suggests that it should be the eighth. Similarly for September, November, and December…. Read More ›
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A welcome respite from takeout
Now that Barbara and I are both fully vaccinated (two jabs + two weeks), we ventured out to the Ashmont Grill at 6:30 last night for the first time in six months—dining on their beautiful patio of course: Note the… Read More ›
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Seven Types of Atheism
What a misleading book title! What I had expected was a book about… well… seven different types of atheism. A reasonable assumption, isn’t it? But no. It’s not about seven types of atheism. It’s a very interesting book nonetheless—but it’s… Read More ›
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The Mattapan-Ashmont “High Speed” Line in 360°
When I first moved to Boston, the Red Line went from Harvard to Ashmont (red because it’s close to crimson). Then the northern portion was extended from Harvard to Alewife. It was supposed to go to Arlington and Lexington, but… Read More ›
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What? A model railroad can be a computational device and a musical instrument?!
Surely you’re joking, Mr. Aaronson. I can (just barely) believe the musical instrument claim, but a computational device??? Actually, both claims are true, hard as it is to believe. For the musical instrument, watch this short video and you’ll see… Read More ›
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A Murder of Magpies
An outstanding first novel from Judith Flanders, published seven years ago, A Murder of Magpies is a mystery that will hold your attention and keep you entertained. In a recent post I wrote about another Judith Flanders book, but in… Read More ›
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A new unit of distance?
No, this sign isn’t at a Starbucks:
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They both have samples of my DNA. Why do they disagree about my ancestry?
My ancestry, says ancestry.com, is 100% Ashkenazy Jewish! No, says CRI Genetics, it’s 66.1% Ashkenazy Jewish! So who’s right? It’s always a good idea to ask for a second opinion. I trusted ancestry.com, which is respected and has a well-known… Read More ›
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A supposedly “new” way to solve quadratics
What’s wrong with the Quadratic Formula? Let me count the ways: It’s pure magic to 99% of high-school students, who have no idea why it works. It lends itself to sign errors because of the subtraction under the square root… Read More ›
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An outstanding dinner from Tavolo
Barbara and I had an outstanding dinner tonight from Tavolo, with lots of leftovers: chef’s burrata with basil pesto, prosciutto, grape tomatoes, parmesan & parsley crumb, and vincotto; seafood fregola with shrimp, mussels, tomato broth, and garlic butter; confit duck… Read More ›
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What’s in a (color) name?
Who cares what names Crayola chooses to use for the colors of its crayons? Do you? Do I? There was only one color name that used to bother me when I was a kid: “flesh.” Even then, I guess, I… Read More ›
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Adequate Yearly Progress
If you write a novel about teaching, how realistic should it be? If, in particular, it’s supposed to be a satire, then how realistic should it be? Can you distinguish a satire from reality? Sometimes it’s hard to do that…. Read More ›
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That Day the Rabbi Left Town
Way back in the Before Times—in 1964, when I was still in high school—local author Harry Kemelman wrote Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, thus inaugurating a series of a dozen cozy-style mysteries featuring Rabbi David Small of a Conservative synagogue in Barnard’s… Read More ›
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Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life
Quick: What is the meaning of life? You said 42, right? No, wait a minute—that’s a different book. In Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life, philosopher John Gray explores what cats think about the meaning of life, what… Read More ›
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Have you read Robert Heinlein’s Coventry?
Are you old enough to know the English phrase “sent to Coventry”? According to Merriam-Webster, if you were “sent to Coventry,” you have been ostracized. Although the cover story of the July 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction featured a… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 