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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

  • The Doomsday Book

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    Connie Willis is my second favorite science fiction author, so I decided to read The Doomsday Book for the third time. Yes, I do read books more than once. I know that I’m in the minority in that respect. And yes, I… Read More ›

  • Language families: amazing maps!

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    What a diversity of languages we have! With 7000 languages spread out over the world in a patchwork quilt, we can fuse linguistics and maps into a single combined representation. That’s what Annemarie Verkerk’s article “Language Family Maps” is all… Read More ›

  • Wedding follow-up: Why is this ratio so strange?

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    A couple of mathematical follow-ups to my recent post about my niece’s wedding: Wedding favors are a standard perk; in this case we received tote bags hand-made by the bride. But there was a mathematical twist to the posted sign:… Read More ›

  • High School

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    “High school is the best time of your life.” That‘s what they say. Whoever they might be. Actually, some people do say that and even mean it. Then there’s the rest of us, those whose lives were much better after high school…. Read More ›

  • Jed Sutter

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    I recently attended a small but wonderful exhibit of the paintings of the distinguished local artist Jed Sutter. Reflections is probably my favorite. I love the representation of the reflection, of course (and not just because it’s a geometric concept), but… Read More ›

  • Fox & Hound

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    Lacking Halloween spirit, Barbara and I escaped by taking her sister Brenda to the Fox and Hound for a long, leisurely dinner — not only long and leisurely but also a truly excellent feast, as it turned out! Wedge salad,… Read More ›

  • Seattle 4: The Food

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    Seafood and Asian food — that’s what you would expect in Seattle, amirite? Well, one of two ain’t bad: we did have lots of good seafood. The first night we  went to RockCreek Seafood, which was spectacularly good. It turned… Read More ›

  • Seattle 3: The City (with insufficient rain)

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    This was supposed to be a mini-vacation along with Hannah and Ben’s wedding, but was it? Yes, it counted as one in my book, even though there wasn’t a whole lot of down time. Here are a few of the… Read More ›

  • Seattle 2: The Wedding

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    As I indicated yesterday, our principal reason for this long weekend in Seattle was to attend the wedding of our niece, Hannah. Although I had worried that I would be overwhelmed by the large number of guests (over a hundred),… Read More ›

  • Seattle 1: Chihuly

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    Barbara and I are here in Seattle for our niece’s wedding and a mini-vacation, while Barbara’s sister Brenda house-sits and cat-sits. William appreciates her long fingernails, which are designed for scritching. Anyway, all the details about Seattle will come in… Read More ›

  • Rendezvous with Rama

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    The late Arthur C. Clarke and the late Isaac Asimov used to have a running dispute, which they resolved by agreeing that Clarke would always say that Asimov was the second best science fiction writer in the world, and Asimov would… Read More ›

  • Is that even a word? Is it in the dictionary?

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    “That isn’t a word: it isn’t in the dictionary!” is heard all too frequently. There are two problems with statements like this: There is no such thing as THE dictionary; there are many different dictionaries, and no two lists of… Read More ›

  • Translation and culture

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    Translation is impossible. Traduttore, traditore. That’s the lovely word pairing in Italian — roughly “a translator is a traitor”, where there’s only a small vowel change and a doubled consonant distinguishing the two words. A recent article by Matthew Reynolds explored… Read More ›

  • The bathroom is finally finished!

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    It took nine weeks. First the workmen demolished everything, down to the studs. Then they built a complete new bathroom in the same space. Some fixtures from Kohler and Home Despot, but primarily from our local Norfolk Hardware and Home Center. (Shout-out… Read More ›

  • Intertwingled/“Hypertext in the Age of Trump”

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    Hypertext pioneer Mark Bernstein has just published Intertwingled, a collection of nine essays and one short story. No one could ever say that Bernstein is shy about expressing his opinions, so don’t expect some dry attempt at scientific “neutrality.” If you… Read More ›

  • Graphing calculator prices: how TI cornered the market

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    You’re a student. Why are you required to buy a Texas Instruments calculator? Why not something cheaper and better? Usually what you’re buying is a TI-84, a 15-year-old piece of expensive technology. Zachary Crockett explains how we got into this… Read More ›

  • 224 Boston Street

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    As I wrote on 12/12/2015 and 10/31/2010, Dorchester used to have a scarcity of good restaurants, but now there are a lot: Twenty-five years ago you could count the number of good restaurants in Dorchester  on the fingers of one… Read More ›

  • Blue, green, and grue

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    Color names are a mystery. At least to me. Take a look at the color chips in the image. If we limit ourselves to common English color names (excluding, that is, the myriad of names used by both types of… Read More ›

  • Mollie and Vincent

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    Mollie likes to sleep with one eye open, just in case. But she curls up with her brother Vincent, who will always  protect her.

  • Trump’s language — and Obama’s

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    What do you think about Donald Trump’s use of language? A lot of people criticize it. On the other side there were even people who criticized Obama’s language, so where does the truth lie? Frances Brown, who worked for the… Read More ›