Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 12

• Fire and Bones

  By ljd42 on August 27, 2024

  

  another fine addition to Kathy Reichs’s well-known Bones series. The novel Fire and Bones manages to be both calm and suspenseful at the same time. There’s also a lot of actual history thrown in with the detective fiction. I don’t… Read More ›

• Buck-a-shuck

  By ljd42 on August 23, 2024

  

  It was monthly buck-a-shuck at Tavolo yesterday. We went early, which is always a good idea. Barbara had 18 oysters — the first photo below shows just the first 12! — along with focaccia and half of a Kale Caesar… Read More ›

• The challenges and rewards of building a staircase

  By ljd42 on August 19, 2024

  

  A 1:87 model staircase, that is, not a lifesize one. When you first came upon the “House under Construction” kit that Meredith and I are using to build our current project, you probably realized how this kit was different from… Read More ›

• Flicka says…

  By ljd42 on August 17, 2024

  

• Dead Land (Sara Paretsky)

  By ljd42 on August 16, 2024

  

  For reference here, I will start by quoting from what I wrote five years ago in a review of Sara Paretsky’s Shell Game: If you like Donald Trump, don’t bother reading Shell Game, Sara Paretsky’s newest mystery novel: it will only irritate… Read More ›

• Does English need a better alphabet?

  By ljd42 on August 12, 2024

  

  Why, you ask, would we need a better alphabet? Nothing is wrong, you say, with the one we have. We all learned it in kindergarten, after all. I suppose some other alphabets are prettier, so that might entice you; and… Read More ›

• Childless Cat Ladies

  By ljd42 on August 7, 2024

• Apparently a book review: What is Château Rock?

  By ljd42 on August 6, 2024

  

  Read the book! But read this review first. (I know that some people don’t like to read reviews first, but be assured that you won’t find any spoilers here.) First, though, take this one-question multiple-choice quiz: What do you think… Read More ›

• Two surprising Ancestry conclusions

  By ljd42 on August 2, 2024

  

  Capitalization matters. Occasionally. The title of this post can be read as written, with an upper-case “A,” or it can be read as spoken aloud, with a lower-case “a” (not that case choice can easily be heard in speech, though… Read More ›

• The Lola Quartet

  By ljd42 on July 30, 2024

  

  “Have you ever made a decision in a moment of panic and then regretted it for the rest of your life?” One of the characters in Emily St. John Mandel’s novel, The Lola Quartet, asks this question near the end… Read More ›

• Why accelerate in math?

  By ljd42 on July 27, 2024

  

  Looking back over five decades (more or less) of teaching high-school mathematics, I estimate that maybe 30–40 of the students I have taught over the years were truly accelerated in math. But let’s define our terms first: So, you ask,… Read More ›

• Building a house under construction

  By ljd42 on July 24, 2024

  

  Now that my model railroad includes a pre-fab house built from a standard kit, which I showed as a work in progress over ten weeks, it’s time to experiment with a different approach: a compromise between a standard kit and… Read More ›

• Harris/Buttigieg.

  By ljd42 on July 21, 2024

  Clearly.

• If you don’t love this book… what’s wrong with you?

  By ljd42 on July 18, 2024

  

  Christine Lavin has been one of my favorite singer-songwriters for forty-odd years (some odder than others). I most recently saw her in concert three months ago, and that inspired me to read her memoir, Cold Pizza for Breakfast. Even though… Read More ›

• JD Vance: A view from the recent past

  By ljd42 on July 16, 2024

  

  Now we know who our next VP is going to be. Well… maybe not.. but let’s look back at what I wrote on August 8, 2017, and subsequently on August 28, 2022: Post of 8/8/2017: What an irritating book! Even… Read More ›

• Building a model railroad structure, week 10

  By ljd42 on July 14, 2024

  

  Finally, the house and detached garage are done! It will take a few more weeks before we can see them in context, as the surrounding neighborhood isn’t quite complete (it’s missing some streets and most of the landscaping). When all… Read More ›

• Trying new (to us) dishes at Tavolo

  By ljd42 on July 12, 2024

  

  So often, it seems, we get the same menu items at Tavolo. That’s because they’re so good! But it was time to try something new. Not to jump right into new things, however, we started with our traditional kale Caesar… Read More ›

• They claim to speak 20… or 50… or even… wait for it… 367 languages!

  By ljd42 on July 10, 2024

  Me (in front of my geometry class) (Don’t ask): What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Several members of the class simultaneously: trilingual. Me: What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Several members of the class… Read More ›

• Building a model railroad structure, week 9

  By ljd42 on July 7, 2024

  More progress, as the Goldbergs get close to the scheduled date for their closing. They needed a mezuzah before the closing — and remember that it’s 1969, so they had to look up Mezuzahs in the Yellow Pages (if you’re… Read More ›

• Not just for nerds, not just for geeks.

  By ljd42 on July 3, 2024

  

  Suppose you heard from someone (me, for instance) that you might enjoy a book titled Thinking Inside the Box. What would you expect it to be about? Perhaps some sort of pushback against those of us who advocate thinking outside… Read More ›

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