…after a four-month hiatus. Stay tuned…
Life
Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra Concert
Yesterday afternoon, Barbara and I attended a beautiful concert given by the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra at Symphony Hall. Picture yourself there. Close your eyes and just listen. You forget that this was a youth orchestra; you think that the… Read More ›
We’re adults…but sometimes we’re still in high school.
Just to put this in context, you will want to know that my friend Mark Bernstein is the Chief Scientist of Eastgate Systems, with an undergraduate degree from Swarthmore and a doctorate in chemistry from Harvard. He knew Aaron Swartz; I… Read More ›
Douglas is so helpful.
Here’s Douglas, helping me grade geometry quizzes:
Ladectsbeal
A few days ago, in my review of Maphead, I wrote the following: I invented my own country, Ladectsbeal, when I was 11 or 12, and pursued creating its details for several years thereafter. Maps were my primary focus there, but I… Read More ›
Some ways Jews are different from Christians
David Weinberger wrote a fascinating post yesterday in Joho The Blog: “Some ways Jews are different from Christians.” It’s worth reading carefully. He gives permission to repost, so I’m going to quote extensively from it: Jews are a people You are a… Read More ›
Can't tell what street you're on?
New England is famous for its lack of street signs — even though things have gotten much better in the past 25 years. Sometimes you can tell what the cross-street is, but you drive for blocks to discover what street you’re on…. Read More ›
Camry electronics
After our eight-year-old Ford Taurus bit the dust, Barbara and I bought a 2012 Toyota Camry. I love the car, and I’m still learning its ins and outs. In particular, I have been pleasantly surprised by its electronic capabilities, especially in… Read More ›
Privilege
I suppose I’m biased. But bias or no, Privilege is must reading for anyone interested in the intersection of education, schools, and the American class structure. The full title of Shamus Rahman Khan’s sociological study is Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent… Read More ›
Popsicles, law, and language
Companies have to protect their trademarks, of course. There are even a few well-known examples where trademarks were lost because they weren’t protected — Wikipedia cites aspirin, dry ice, escalator, kerosene, laundromat, linoleum, phonograph, thermos, videotape, and zipper — so… Read More ›
MIT does not equal Mitt
They don’t even sound alike. An MIT alumna was nearly prevented from voting in Florida because she was wearing an MIT shirt. A poll worker thought she was illegally campaigning for Romney inside the polling place.
Math wins!
This morning’s XKCD:
Privacy is highly overrated.
Actually, privacy is a fine idea. But anyone who thinks we have it anymore is deluded. Basically, everything about you is available to anyone who looks hard enough. But that doesn’t mean that we should give it up voluntarily. The… Read More ›
Sandy
Power just went out…then it came on…then it went out…then it came on…then it went out for a longer time…now it’s back on (obviously)…. So I’m sitting here grading geometry quizzes, while Douglas naps on my left side (when he… Read More ›
Could it have anything to do with her gender?
I don’t quite know where to begin. It’s not just that a highly respected math educator (a professor at Stanford, no less) has been unfairly attacked by a couple of mathematicians. The shocking thing is that the attacks are so… Read More ›
Walking through the brick wall
Because of the expansion and renovation of our physics classrooms, the doors were all relocated over the summer. The old entrance to Room 12 was bricked over, but the old sign remains. As it’s hard to walk through the brick wall, someone altered the… Read More ›
Douglas
We have a new cat, a long-haired white beast with some dark gray smudges. He’s apparently about eight years old, according to the vet. We had to adopt him because he was a stray who had been hanging around on… Read More ›
Franklin Park Zoo
Spent a lovely morning walking around the Franklin Park Zoo today. I started with the zebra and the aptly named wildebeests, who were running around like…well, like wildebeests, dashing from one end of their huge enclosure all the way to… Read More ›
Radical Equations and related matters
A couple of years ago I got around to re-reading Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project, by civil-rights activist/math teacher Robert Moses. Just now I realized an interesting resonance with the post I wrote last week about… Read More ›
The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man's Quest to be a Better Husband
In keeping with the current trend of giving books excessively long titles, this memoir by David Finch tries to pack as much as possible into 19 words. But the title still raises more questions than it answers — and that’s… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 