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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Comic Sans is back in the news.
Oh nos, Comic Sans is back in the news! Three times in the past 20 years I’ve felt compelled to write about the Comic Sans font: in 2005, 2009, and 2016. And here we go again: Of all the things… Read More ›
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Linguistics in MetroWest
For many years I inserted linguistic lagniappes into my honors geometry classes at Weston — typically for 15–20 minutes, twice a month. You may wonder what the connection between linguistics and geometry might be — but if you view honors geometry as… Read More ›
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“America’s math curriculum doesn’t add up,” observes Steve Levitt.
Please listen to (or read) this week’s Freakonomics podcast. I will wait. No, actually, I’m going to discuss it without making any prior assumptions that you have listened to it or read it: If you’ve been reading this blog for… Read More ›
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Neal Stephenson’s Fall
Another thousand-page tome from the wonderful Neal Stephenson! Well, no, it’s actually only 880 pages — but that’s close enough. It’s still worth every minute (or should I say “every day”?) that it takes to read it. Basically, Fall: Dodge… Read More ›
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Progress report on renovation of our first-floor bathroom
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What’s wrong with this picture?
Cool new shirt (matching my trademark jacket), but… What”s wrong with this picture? (Thanks, Alison B., for noticing what I hadn’t noticed!)
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Molinari’s
Barbara and I went to Molinari’s last night, as she had to work late, and JP Seafood (right near where she works) was closed. So we decided to try Molinari’s, which is less than a mile from where we live. Based on… Read More ›
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(Before the alt-right) An Informal History of the Hugos: A Personal Look Back at the Hugo Awards, 1953–2000
White privilege and male privilege are alive and well in the Hugo awards, despite claims about “criminally overlooked” white males. All you have to do is look through the inestimable Jo Walton’s deeply annotated objective account of all the Hugo awards… Read More ›
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Do we need to upgrade the Constitution? Plus a parsing problem…
According to my iPhone (see screen shot below), we can do so for only $1.99! Any suggestions? Also, we have this quotation from a Washington Post article: The whistleblower is not white,” one 4chan commenter asserted Thursday, probably misreading a… Read More ›
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Greek Script Hacking
Four weeks ago I reviewed two of the Script Hacking books: Korean and Arabic. Now I turn to a script that I actually know — one that I know thoroughly, in fact: I studied Greek for six years, starting in… Read More ›
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A glorious morning…
…say the purple morning glories next to our driveway:
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Diversity and majorities in Boston elections
Boston just had a preliminary election yesterday (more or less what other places call a primary, though it’s non-partisan). As you know from my post of September 22, one of the topics that I teach in my Quantitative Reasoning class is… Read More ›
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Batman uses linguistics! Who’d’a thunk it?
Yes, it’s a couple of days late for Batman Day — but that’s OK. I was astonished to learn that there are not just one but two episodes of School of Batman in which linguistics plays a major role. First… Read More ›
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Looking back from the 23rd Century
It’s too had that the Times editors had to write “The opinion piece below is a work of fiction,” but I guess nobody recognizes satire anymore. If they had managed to date it “September 23, 2021,” I don’t suppose anyone… Read More ›
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What is “quantitative reasoning”?
If you read this blog regularly, you know that I teach a course with the strange title of “Quantitative Reasoning.” What does that mean? I’ll describe the course in general, followed by specifics of all four units. Generally referred to… Read More ›
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Jiffy? Centijiffy? Decijiffy?
“I’ll be with you in a jiffy.” How long is a jiffy? What about a centijiffy? Before we get to the urgent question of how long a jiffy is, I want to comment on a surprising error (or is it… Read More ›
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People speak [insert language name here] really quickly, don’t they?
We’ve all had the experience of listening to someone speak an unfamiliar language and perceiving their speech as being particularly rapid. It seems like a stereotype — depending on the language, that is — so we’re naturally skeptical. Maybe it’s… Read More ›
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The answers you’ve been waiting for!
Here are answers to the puzzle from a few days ago, the one that asked you to identify 13 different languages: 1. French 2. Italian 3. Spanish 4. Portuguese 5. Ladino 6. Galician 7. Aragonese 8. Catalan 9. Occitan 10…. Read More ›
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What Has Become of You
Academic settings… disturbed and/or disturbing people… why do I keep reading such novels? Well, we know why the academic settings appeal to me. As for the characters, that’s harder to analyze. I suppose I’d like to understand some of the… Read More ›
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Gyu-Kaku
Gyu-Kaku recently opened a new restaurant at South Bay Center in Dorchester, its third location in Massachusetts (Harvard Square and Brookline predate it). This turns out to be an enormous chain — with over 700 restaurants world-wide, 90% of which… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 