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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Weston’s 17th Fractal Fair
I returned to Weston yesterday for its 17th annual Fractal Fair. That’s a lot of fractal fairs! As you might expect for a subject that keeps evolving every year, with an entirely new set of exhibitors every year, the fair… Read More ›
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Ingrid Thoft
No, “Identity Theft” is not the title of this book — though you can readily see why Barbara thought so when she glanced quickly at the cover. Identity is Ingrid Thoft’s second novel. In some ways it’s in the tradition… Read More ›
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Old authors never die…
Lawrence Block’s latest novella, A Time to Scatter Stones, and one of Ruth Rendell’s last novels, The Monster in the Box, have something in common — a couple of things, in fact. It’s no coincidence that both books were written late in… Read More ›
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The top universities for linguistics?
Are these really the top universities for linguistics? That’s what the QS World University Rankings by Subject says. I’ve been skeptical of lists like this as I watched high-school ratings over two decades from publications like Boston Magazine and U.S. News, paying special attention… Read More ›
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Bay State Model Railroad Museum Spring Model Train Show
Wow! Look at that title: a noun phrase consisting of nine consecutive nouns! Maybe the show should be called Buchtstaatsmodelleisenbahnmuseumsfrühlingsmodellzugshow. On second thought, maybe not. OK, enough fooling around with German. Let’s get back to the show itself, which was… Read More ›
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Happy Exelauno Day!
Schools in this entire area (not just Roxbury Latin!) are closed today in honor of Ἐξελαύνω (Exelauno) Day. Or maybe there’s some other reason.
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How many Tater Tots? — the answer!
Yesterday I posted this problem: Great Fermi problem that I just heard on the Ask Me Another quiz show on NPR: Estimate how many Tater Tots were consumed in the U.S. during all of 2017. The answer (from CBS News)… Read More ›
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How many Tater Tots?
Great Fermi problem that I just heard on the Ask Me Another quiz show on NPR: Estimate how many Tater Tots were consumed in the U.S. during all of 2017. Correct answer will be posted in this space tomorrow.
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Boston Chops
Apparently, Boston restaurateurs are supposed to be named Chris. The chef/owner of Ashmont Grill, our favorite every-day local restaurant — well, more like twice a month, but who’s counting? — is Dorchester neighbor Chris Douglass. Then, for my birthday dinner… Read More ›
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I found the missing R!
I found the missing R! Remember my recent post about my neighborhood barber shop with the missing R? (In case you missed it, here is the photo again of the storefront, showing that it’s a Baber Shop, not a Barber… Read More ›
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The Punishment She Deserves
Elizabeth George writes literature, not genre fiction. That’s the sensibility of her novels, even though they are technically mysteries, which should make them genre fiction. The Punishment She Deserves is the 20th of her Lynley/Havers books, and I think I’ve read all… Read More ›
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“Why Girls Beat Boys at School and Lose to Them at the Office”
Gender-based generalizations are almost always wrong. When they aren’t wrong, they are at least misleading, because nobody listens when you explain that you are speaking in statistics, not in absolutes. Nevertheless, generalizations can be useful aids to thinking about the… Read More ›
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Crime & Punctuation (and a cat)
Crime & Punctuation. No, not the novel by Dostoevsky that just happens to have a somewhat similar title — that one that only English majors and Russian lit students have actually read, although everyone else claims to. (Confession: at least… Read More ›
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Wide William
William in his wide-body pose:
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Baber?
Never noticed this Baber Shop before (near where I live). I wonder how much that nice sign cost them.
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Douglas says he’s on vacation
Douglas says he’s on vacation, so it’s time to lie back and relax:
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Here in the Northeast it’s not Virginia — or is it?
Virginia was the home of the capital of the Confederacy, so the recent events in Virginia might not have surprised you, but could they happen here in the Northeast? What follows is a lightly edited version of a true account… Read More ›
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Teaching and coaching
One of my former colleagues gave up teaching — at least for a while — to become a “math coach.” “What does that mean?” you may well ask. That’s what I asked, at any rate. We all know what an… Read More ›
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The Temptation of Forgiveness
Looking closely, you will notice that the image here is a scene from Venice. I’ve read all 19 — can it really be 19? — of Donna Leon’s novels, all of which center on Venice. I’ve reviewed four of them before,… Read More ›
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The Colors of All the Cattle
Review #8 here about Alexander McCall Smith’s Botswana series! I’ve been writing about these 19 charming books for a long time, most recently three years ago but going back to April of 2006 for the first post — almost 13… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 