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

• Friday cat blogging

  By ljd42 on December 18, 2009

  

  Rosie is cold:

• Special Topics in Calamity Physics

  By ljd42 on December 16, 2009

  Yes, this is a bizarre title for a novel. But a novel it is. And it continues one of the themes suggested in yesterday’s post: the extraordinary but still believable teenager. Many readers found Marisha Pessl’s narrator (and hence this… Read More ›

• The Last Child

  By ljd42 on December 15, 2009

  Part mystery and part thriller, John Hart’s absorbing novel, The Last Child, is well worth reading. Actually, more than a mystery or a thriller, it’s a portrait of an extraordinary 13-year-old boy, a mother, and a police detective, all caught… Read More ›

• Requiring algebra in eighth grade

  By ljd42 on December 13, 2009

  Ten years ago, the highly respected mathematician Lynn Arthur Steen wrote an article entitled, “Algebra for All in Eighth Grade: What’s the Rush?” Well, now we know what the rush is…or do we? Steen sets up the issue with a… Read More ›

• Friday cat blogging

  By ljd42 on December 11, 2009

  William and Sasha in their riverboat:

• Harp+Bard

  By ljd42 on December 10, 2009

  Our quest for new dining experiences in Dorchester continues with Harp & Bard, a follow-up to our recent visit to Ledge. Barbara and I — this time with our friends Al and Melanie — enjoyed our meal enough to be… Read More ›

• Ledge

  By ljd42 on December 8, 2009

  Barbara and I, along with our friend Mary, were disappointed with Ledge, the newest restaurant in the up-and-coming Dorchester dining scene. It would probably be a fine place for lunch, but we were unimpressed with our dinner there. The most… Read More ›

• HUB Model Train Expo

  By ljd42 on December 7, 2009

  

  Just went to the Hub Model Train Expo in Marlborough. It was surprisingly popular — I had to park a quarter mile away — but somewhat disappointing. There were lots of vendors, mostly selling similar items, and only a few… Read More ›

• The true spirit of Christmas?

  By ljd42 on December 6, 2009

  

  Note the combo of decorations in front of this house on Furnace Brook Parkway in Quincy:

• Traumatized for life

  By ljd42 on December 5, 2009

  Some of us can barely remember anything from third grade, but last night at a restaurant in Dorchester I met someone my age who was truly traumatized for life by a single experience way back in third grade. We’ll call… Read More ›

• The Writing Class

  By ljd42 on December 4, 2009

  The Writing Class, by Jincy Willett, might make a good companion volume to The Jane Austen Book Club. Though much lighter — with no pretense of being serious literature — this mystery novel also deals with a group of adult… Read More ›

• Defining a trapezoid

  By ljd42 on December 3, 2009

  This is the cue for my students to roll their eyes… Yesterday I got into a heated discussion with another math teacher about an important issue: how to define a trapezoid. He was arguing in favor of the position that… Read More ›

• Paper clip update

  By ljd42 on December 2, 2009

  

  Paper clips are up to 25 now: Getting closer to donuts.

• Comic Sans Redux

  By ljd42 on December 1, 2009

  If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you will recall that I wrote a post four years ago entitled, “Ban Comic Sans!”, in which I linked to the ban comic sans site. Now Gizmodo has a new take on… Read More ›

• Finally, The Lion King

  By ljd42 on November 30, 2009

  Somehow this post got delayed from earlier in the year. Oh, well…hakuna matata. Anyway, earlier in this calendar year — but it was last academic year — two of my Weston sophomores were aghast to hear that I had never… Read More ›

• The Jane Austen Book Club: the book and the movie

  By ljd42 on November 29, 2009

  Two and a half years ago I read Karen Joy Fowler’s novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, and I am surprised that I didn’t write a review of it at the time. I no longer remember why. Perhaps I was… Read More ›

• A wandering past participle, or a new idiom?

  By ljd42 on November 28, 2009

  Maybe I am inadvertently committing the Recency Fallacy, but it seems to me that up until last year or so the past participle of pet was petted: “Where do your cats like to be petted?” <http://www.mihav.com/en/forum/share-amp-chat/where-do-your-cats-like-to-162014&gt; “pet; petted; petting” <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pet>&#8230; Read More ›

• Friday cat blogging

  By ljd42 on November 27, 2009

  

  This is William of Orange, who seems to think that a plastic bucket in an old bathtub is a perfectly reasonable place in which to sit:

• Pie for Thanksgiving? No, a pie chart from Fox News

  By ljd42 on November 26, 2009

  This pie chart from Fox News speaks for itself:

• Are you smarter than a fifth-grader?

  By ljd42 on November 25, 2009

  “Do you know about the Xerox Alto and Xerox Star computers from back in the ’70s?” asked one of my fifth-graders in The Saturday Course. “Yes,” I replied, “but I’ve never before met a fifth-grader who knows about them!” This… Read More ›