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 ›
Don’t shoot off fireworks in residential neighborhoods…
…where they scare cats and dogs, trigger PTSD in war veterans, and are illegal.
Gender issues: a perspective from a Russian Jewish mathematician
“My mom used to tell me that most men do not like brainy women,” writes well-known mathematician Tanya Khovanova. Well-known in certain circles, anyway. Female, Russian-American, Jewish—there are a lot of possible identity issues here. I’ve written about Khovanova twice… Read More ›
Signs of the times in Medford and Brookline
First, here’s a sign inside the entrance to the Wegmans in Medford: Yes, I know that it’s purely for commercial purposes, but it still makes me feel welcome. On the other hand, here is a pair of street signs in… Read More ›
“Who will clean out the desks?” (a crowd-sourced poem about teachers)
You do listen to Morning Edition, don’t you? You do appreciate teachers, don’t you? (Unlike Ron DeSantis and his ilk.) I am so glad that I am semi-retired, so I don’t have to cope with the all-too-common lack of appreciation… Read More ›
William says it’s important to distribute your patronage.
Yesterday the kitty couch, today the round cat bed.
Stephen Sondheim’s Putting it Together
Twenty-one years ago, Carol Burnett and four other actors performed a Broadway revue of Stephen Sondheim songs called Putting it Together. I didn’t get to see it on Broadway, but I just watched the filmed version on DVD, which you… Read More ›
So you wake up one morning, blind in one eye, and soon you learn that you have a 20% chance of going blind in the other eye too…
No, it has never happened to me. And I hope not to you either. But it did happen to journalist Frank Bruni. I have just finished reading his resilient memoir, The Beauty of Dusk. Bruni’s affliction, non-arteritic anterior optic neuropathy,… Read More ›
Gulp. Are there (were there?) special math problems given only to Jews?
Yes, unfortunately there is (or was?) such a thing. The special problems were, of course, more difficult than the regular math problems. Much more difficult. I learned about this from Tanya Khovanova’s Math Blog, where she explains “how during entrance… Read More ›
“Yes, it’s my real name. Shut up!”
You probably don’t believe it’s his real name, so check out the first chapter of Randy Rainbow’s memoir, Playing with Myself. He even includes a photo of his birth certificate (but Republicans will probably claim that it’s a fake—just like… Read More ›
Looking forward to a local cat café
What’s wrong with you, Boston? Tokyo has 100 cat cafés; Boston has zero! But that may be changing—for the better, of course, since we couldn’t have fewer than zero. Richard Auffrey, better known as The Passionate Foodie, recently wrote about… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 