Recent Posts - page 121

  • Hackers and Painters

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    You should definitely read Paul Graham’s highly opinionated book, the one with the unlikely title of Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age. But the first thing you have to know, if you’re not a computer geek, is… Read More ›

  • Vacationing in Lexington, Newton, and Quincy

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    If you’re not going anywhere for vacation, how about being a tourist at home? That’s what Barbara and I did this year as a consequence of having unfortunate summer calendars: we ended up having a total of one week’s vacation… Read More ›

  • Spellbound

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    Just finished watching Spellbound —the 2002 documentary, not the 1945 Alfred Hitchcock classic. (I do highly recommend the Hitchcock film, but that’s not the subject of this post.) What’s so interesting about the national spelling bee, anyway? Yes, that’s what… Read More ›

  • Unaccustomed excitement at the Museum

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    Part of our at-home mini-vacation (more on that later) was an all-too-rare visit to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, all-too-rare since we’re members and ought to be taking more advantage of that opportunity. Anyway, we wanted to see the Americans… Read More ›

  • This year we decided to cut back on the number of topics

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    Less is definitely more. In the first summer of the Crimson Summer Academy (2004) we attempted to explore two different (but related) topics in our Quantitative Reasoning (QR) course for rising sophomores: Visual Representations of Data and Models of Voting…. Read More ›

  • Ruth Rendell: Thirteen Steps Down

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    “The doyenne of the crime writing world” is Mystery Ink’s description of Ruth Rendell. I’ve long been a fan of her fiction, not only her traditional detective series featuring Inspector Wexford but also her psychological crime novels. By this point… Read More ›

  • TWiki

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    This was the last day of this year’s session of the Crimson Summer Academy, which has been the subject of various posts earlier in this blog. As always, it was an excellent session. As always, there were some glitches. But… Read More ›

  • More From Polymath

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    In yesterday’s post, I recommended an article in the Polymathematics blog. That entire blog is well worth reading. For example, consider a discussion of whether 0^0 should be 0 (because zero to any power is 1) or 1 (because anything… Read More ›

  • Why .999… really does equal 1

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    Do read the fascinating (but long) post in Polymathematics about why .999… really does equal 1.

  • Cell phones: good or bad?

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    It sounds like a silly question: “Are cell phones good or bad?” Clearly they’re good in emergencies, but bad when they ring in the classroom. Clearly they’re good when you’re on a bus and have to call to say you’ll… Read More ›

  • World's best version of Life

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    Check out the world’s best version of Conway’s Game of Life.

  • S is for Silence

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    Let’s see. This must be the 19th book in Sue Grafton’s alphabet series. So it must be also be the 19th that I’ve read, since of course I’ve read them all in order — mostly because they’ve been published that… Read More ›

  • McCall Smith in Germany

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    In several previous posts, I have written about the first five novels in Alexander McCall Smith’s Botswana series, featuring Precious Ramotswe, as well as the first novel in his Edinburgh series, featuring Isabel Dalhousie. Now I’ve read all three in… Read More ›

  • McCall Smith in Botswana

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    In a much earlier post, I discussed Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, the first in a series of mystery novels taking place in Botswana. In the intervening months I have subsequently read the next four in the… Read More ›

  • Jasper Fforde

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    I have recently read Jasper Fforde’s first three Thursday Next novels: The Eyre Affair (2002), Lost in a Good Book (2003), and The Well of Lost Plots (Feb. 2004). Where do I begin in describing this offbeat series? One reader… Read More ›

  • Mathematical Gangsta Rap

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    Filled with in-jokes about cryptology and computational complexity, Mathematical Gangsta Rap is an amusing combination of high culture and low culture. But you’ll have to make your own decision about which is which.

  • Suddenly a new car

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    Our trusty Ford Escort station wagon, which was relatively cheap but reliable, finally stopped being either and just died. When you have a nine-year-old car and you’re faced with a $1000 estimate for repairs, you have to decide whether it’s… Read More ›

  • End of hiatus!

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    Finally back from a blog hiatus of almost three months! I am very much looking forward to the new vesion of Blogger, which will permit labels on posts to denote categories. This feature will help viewers who are interested in… Read More ›

  • Quotation from a math student

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    Quotation from a math student at a college that will be unidentified to protect the innocent: That exam was unfair. You made us understand the material. I’ll memorize the phone book if you ask me to, but you can’t expect… Read More ›

  • Chau Chow

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    Dorchester finally has a good Chinese restaurant! For years we’ve had to cross the border into Quincy to eat at the best Chinese restaurant around, the Great Chow (which, as I only discovered two years ago, is owned by the… Read More ›