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
-
Catch and Kill
Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose… What do these three have in common? If you’ve been under a rock for the past five years, you might not know. So read Ronan Farrow’s exposé, Catch and Kill. If, as is more likely, you… Read More ›
-
How about a nice, relaxing cross-country bus ride from NYC to LA?
“Miles on the MBTA.” That was the clever (but unobtrusive) title of Miles Taylor’s original blog, written for years while he was a high-school student in Cambridge. His goal was to visit and review every station on the Red, Blue,… Read More ›
-
Call me by my name.
“Call me either one. I don’t care.” It always surprises me when a student gives that sort of reply in response to my asking “Do you want to be called Liz or Elizabeth?” (or the equivalent, of course, depending on… Read More ›
-
William is pretending he’s a hamburger…
William is pretending he’s a hamburger… but I’m not fooled.
-
Fake news in Fakebook… I mean Facebook.
This ad just appeared in my Facebook feed. Clearly fake news!
-
Which languages?
“This is America. Speak English, or go back to where you came from!” I hear that too often from Trumpian Americans who feel threatened by immigrants and others whom they don’t understand. The best story about that was told by… Read More ›
-
Bella Luna update
I suspect that Bella Luna has been waiting with bated breath for me to review it once again. We end up going there for dinner about once a month, after all, since Barbara works upstairs in the same building. A… Read More ›
-
Irregardless
Irregardless of the price, I am buying a new computer. Well, no, not really. Not any time soon, at any rate. But that’s not the topic of this post; the word “irregardless” is. “That’s not a word!” you cry. “If… Read More ›
-
366 days of math
You definitely want 366 days of math. Check it out as we are about to enter a new year! The American Mathematical Society offers us a page-a-day desk calendar, in the usual form factor, with a mathematical tidbit for each day… Read More ›
-
The surprising truth about Donald Trump
The shocking truth about Donald Trump! The book A Warning (by “Anonymous: a senior Trump administration official”) reveals it. Well, no, it doesn’t. I lied. But I figured that I would start with a lie, in keeping with the subject. Now for the… Read More ›
-
A Latin Christmas Carol?
Verb or noun? Two options from Gretchen McCulloch: Good King Wenceslo Good King Wenceslas Good King Wenceslat Good King Wenceslamus Good King Wenceslatis Good King Wenceslant Good King Wencesla Good King Wenceslae Good King Wenceslae Good King Wenceslam Good King… Read More ›
-
Gyu-Kaku for the second time
Veering slightly from the Jewish-American tradition, Barbara and I made a second visit to Gyu-Kaku (Japanese and Korean, not Chinese) for an excellent Christmas dinner. See my post of September 13 for a review of our first visit, so I’ll… Read More ›
-
Carols for editors (and writers too)
Listen closely to the words (and don’t pay attention to the quality of the singing, which isn’t the point):
-
Conviction
Denise Mina’s latest novel, Conviction, is about podcasts — in part. It’s also about family. And murder. And #MeToo. And mystery. And true crime. And power and wealth. And betrayal. And trauma. And Ukrainian gangsters. (How up-to-date!) And storytelling. Not to mention… Read More ›
-
“Why don’t high schools teach CS?” asks Mark.
Say what? Of course high schools teach CS! Weston has done so for decades. Surely Mark Guzdial knows better, but his recent blog post asks that very question. So what’s going on? It turns out that I have MB (Massachusetts Blindness)…. Read More ›
-
“Untranslatable” words (redux)
Six months ago I wrote an essay in my blog about “untranslatable” words. If you haven’t read it, you may want to do so now. The bottom line was that when someone claims that a word in some language is… Read More ›
-
There’s no such thing as too many books.
More shelf space may not be an option. More shelf space requires more shelving, which in turn requires more bookcases, which in turn require more room. Sigh. I gave a few hundred away just over a year ago, but that… Read More ›
-
It’s 50 years later; would I still be able to write something like my master’s thesis?
I can still teach linguistics — but could I still write a linguistics thesis? On April 10, 1969, I submitted my master’s thesis, The Development of Embeddings in the Speech of Young Children. Just now, for a somewhat complicated set of… Read More ›
-
Russian Script Hacking for Beginners
Is it Korsunsky or Korsunskiy or Korsunski or perhaps even Korsunskyi? Would it help to see it written out in Cyrillic rather than in our Roman alphabet? Related question: what’s the capital of Ukraine — Kiev or Kyiv? Actually, it’s… Read More ›
-
Every vote counts!
How do elections work? Does your vote really count? Could your single vote really make a difference? See below. But first… Regular readers of this blog know that I teach a course every summer to rising tenth-graders where one unit is… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 