Today we took 200 high-school freshmen on a full-day combined geometry-and-physics field trip to the Museum of Science. It was fun, educational, and…exhausting. Sometimes it was like herding cats. Fortunately we had a dozen adults, so no one individual was responsible… Read More ›
What an annoying book! How did it become a New York Times best-seller??? In the words of H.L. Mencken, “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people,” so maybe that’s the explanation. In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie… Read More ›
Back in March…and April…and May…a group of freshmen kept pestering me (nicely, of course) to write a photo-essay about my cats, so I finally gave into the pressure and wrote one. Just follow this link.
The Franklin Park Zoo is only two miles from my home, and I’m a member, but I don’t get there often enough. But I had a great time there yesterday — and how often does one get to visit a… Read More ›
What an amazing book! Or perhaps I should say “What an amazing house!” Bob Walker and his wife Frances have turned their house into a jungle gym for their nine cats, as you can see in this image. But… Read More ›
Ah…Ken Jennings! The Jeopardy geek’s favorite. He’s our favorite, not just because he’s the big all-time long-lasting winner, but more because he combines encyclopedic knowledge, intellectual curiosity, sense of humor, and surprising humility. I earlier reviewed his book Brainiac, and I just… Read More ›
I’m sure that you’re motivated to read Paolo Bacigalupi’s first novel, The Windup Girl, because it was named by TIME Magazine as one of the ten best novels of 2009, and also won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell… Read More ›
My D Block class was even more hyper and less focused than usual today, since it was the afternoon of the last day before vacation. Some of them really wanted to have a cat-drawing contest, so I gave in and… Read More ›
Last year I listened to the audiobook version of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and reviewed it in this blog, so I figured that I would follow it up with Franzen’s fourth and latest novel, Freedom. While Freedom held my interest all… Read More ›
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> “pet; petted; petting” <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pet>… Read More ›
Geometry was never their strong point. It’s hard to get them to understand what “parallel” means:
Barbara and I highly recommend a small Bed & Breakfast in Amherst, the Stone House Farm. Right on the northern edge of town, a mile or so beyond the end of the U.Mass. campus, it’s convenient to get to but… Read More ›
Generally I stay away from mysteries that feature cats. They tend to be too cute, with anthropomorphized felines that solve crimes or even talk. But Clea Simon’s Cries and Whiskers avoids those pitfalls. Aside from featuring cats, this novel also… Read More ›
Would I be interested in joining a 3-D virtual world in my copious free time, which doesn’t really exist? Some of my students have been trying to persuade me to play World of Warcraft (Wow). (That was the standard acronym,… Read More ›
You may have heard that dogs have masters but cats have staff. It’s true. Even though Barbara and I are privileged to share our house with five cats — well, actually six at the moment, since we have temporary custody… Read More ›
It’s a bit puzzling to see how various readers found their way to this blog. Looking at the referrers, I wonder at some of the searches. Here are a few examples: Google: rachel, bartlett, chicago Google: venn, diagram, about, bubonic,… Read More ›
It has been so hot and muggy that the cats are just lounging around listlessly. Which means…well, the word seems to suggest that they don’t have any lists. I’ll admit that cats aren’t big list-makers (though they are otherwise fine… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 