Knowing the facts is not the same thing as seeing them all put together in a single two-hour documentary. Yes, we all know the story of Trump’s attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021, and we may even know the surrounding… Read More ›
Life
Jewish gatecrashers in the Ivy League
“Harvard’s run by millionaires,Yale is run by booze,Cornell’s run by farmers’ sons,Columbia is run by Jews. Give a cheer for Baxter Street,another one for Pell,and when the little sheenies die,their souls go straight to Hell.” [Popular song at Ivy League… Read More ›
Always look on the bright side of life.
My friends tell me that I am an incurable optimist. That’s OK. I don’t want to be cured. I want to remain an optimist; I’m happier that way. As Eric Idle sang in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, you should… Read More ›
Superintelligence?
Probably this debate is esoteric enough for you. But let’s see. We start with a remark by Scott Aaronson on his Shtetl-Optimized Blog: Last month, you’ll recall, Steve [Pinker} and I debated the implications of scaling AI models such as GPT-3 and… Read More ›
Nominal patterns
My older niece is named Hannah. My younger niece is named Aviva. My older great-niece is named Eve. And now, as of last night, my younger great-niece is named Ada. Aha! Do you detect a pattern?
Are we now in the Twilight Zone?
This is not the only Twilight Zone episode that one never forgets. At least it’s not the only one that I never forgot, and it seems more and more relevant every year, especially this summer. I first saw it when… Read More ›
Dan Kennedy is part of the solution!
Northeastern University professor Dan Kennedy is always worth reading. And also worth listening to—on Beat the Press with Emily Rooney and other shows. For my just-concluded Quantitative Reasoning class at the Crimson Summer Academy I wish we had had time… Read More ›
Two different worlds: my students’ favorite musical artists
Yesterday we conducted a mock election to determine my students’ favorite musical artists using Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). The purpose was to let them experience RCV first-hand by going through a simulation. I think it accomplished that goal. What most… Read More ›
Atrius/Harvard Vanguard acquired by a for-profit company
Not that I’m worried or anything…I’m sure that the quality of my health care will continue to be just as good, now that the non-profit medical practice I have used for half a century has been acquired by a for-profit… Read More ›
Julia Metraux on “How queer Jews reclaimed Yiddish.”
My former Weston High School student, Julia Métraux, has published a really interesting article about the reclaiming of Yiddish by queer Jews. As you know, I’ve written several posts that mention Yiddish, most recently one about the Yiddish-German connection. You… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 