Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 16

• William wins Cutest Cat of the Day award!

  By ljd42 on February 24, 2023

  

• It can’t happen here. (Or can it?)

  By ljd42 on February 23, 2023

  What took me so long? I have finally finished reading Jo Walton’s 2006 alternative history novel, Farthing, subtitled A Story of a World that Could Have Been, Volume I of the Small Change trilogy. Walton has written two of my… Read More ›

• No, APL doesn’t stand for “Alison, Phil, and Larry.”

  By ljd42 on February 21, 2023

  Let’s suppose your unimaginative instructor gave you this task: add up all the whole numbers from 1 through 42. You have, of course, several options: Or, if your language of choice is APL, you could simply write a one-line program… Read More ›

• Ὁ Ἡρóδοτος: A beautiful new edition (in English, not Greek)

  By ljd42 on February 19, 2023

  

  Can you name three or four ancient world historians? I don’t mean modern writers who study the history of the ancient world; I mean writers who lived in the ancient world and wrote about the history of their time and… Read More ›

• What grade should these get?

  By ljd42 on February 17, 2023

  We continue to hear concerns about Artificial Intelligence, especially ChatGPT, nearly every day. As the link in the previous paragraph will take you to my second post about ChatGPT, this must be the third, and I really don’t want to… Read More ›

• Globle

  By ljd42 on February 15, 2023

  

  Following in the recent tradition of Wordle and its many spinoffs, Globle is an online game that will let you test your knowledge of geography in an unconventional format. The instructions are simple. First your opponent (the computer) picks a… Read More ›

• The Next Generation

  By ljd42 on February 13, 2023

  

  The Next Generation. No, not Star Trek—we’re talking America’s Test Kitchen: The Next Generation on Amazon FreeVee. Normally I don’t like cooking competitions. But I continued to watch all ten episodes of this competition because of my love for the… Read More ›

• Ça va bien aller.

  By ljd42 on February 11, 2023

  

  It’s going to be all right, as they say (in Quebecois French) in this novel. After a long wait caused by so many other library patrons, I finally had a chance to read A World of Curiosities, the latest Three… Read More ›

• A known unknown? Or maybe it’s an unknown known? Or what?

  By ljd42 on February 9, 2023

  

  You do remember Donald Rumsfeld, don’t you? Famous (or infamous) for many things, including the distinction between known unknowns and unknown unknowns, not to mention known knowns and unknown knowns. Confused yet? James Harbeck—whom I’ve cited a dozen times in… Read More ›

• You are what you wear.

  By ljd42 on February 7, 2023

  

  “Wait a minute!” you say. “Shouldn’t that be you are what you eat?” Well, yes, the familiar quotation is indeed “You are what you eat”—or “Der Mensch ist was er ißt” in the original German—but the two claims are closely… Read More ›

• William stays warm.

  By ljd42 on February 4, 2023

  

  Outside it’s –6° F, but William is keeping warm on his kitty couch, right next to the heat.

• This high-school reunion was even deadlier than usual.

  By ljd42 on February 3, 2023

  

  The senior superlatives in my high-school yearbook didn’t include Most Likely to Murder. Did yours? Probably not. But that’s the title of the fourth (and last?) novel in Carole Shmurak’s Susan Lombardi series. I reviewed the first in the series… Read More ›

• Clearly a ¼-pounder is larger than a ⅓-pounder. After all, 4 is larger than 3. Right?

  By ljd42 on February 1, 2023

  

  Americans don’t understand numbers—especially when those numbers are fractions. You may know the true story about Arby’s customers who were convinced that a new ⅓-pound burgers contained less meat than the familiar ¼-pounder, since 4 is larger than 3. Maybe… Read More ›

• Possibly our last dinner at the Ashmont Grill

  By ljd42 on January 30, 2023

  

  Should we be sad about the news, or should we be happy about the wonderful people we met and wonderful meals we ate at the Ashmont Grill over the past 18 years? The answer is on their website: Don’t cry… Read More ›

• In which I read a graphic novel… and give it a surprising A+!

  By ljd42 on January 29, 2023

  

  Graphic novels aren’t my thing. I never read them. Well, actually, that’s not quite true. On average I read one graphic novel every three… three what? three months? No. How about three years? No again. More like once every three… Read More ›

• The town of Lincoln first participated in—and later rejected—this “radical experiment in integration.”

  By ljd42 on January 27, 2023

  

  “Why do you want to mix our children with city blacks? We moved here to get away from that element.” So said a resident of Lincoln, Massachusetts. A white resident, needless to say. Shocking perhaps, but not surprising, even if… Read More ›

• Chynah Tyler on igniting the passion of a new generation of voters.

  By ljd42 on January 25, 2023

  

  Chynah Tyler, member of the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, more commonly known by its informal name, the Massachusetts State Legislature, has published a fine article in Commonwealth Magazine. You should read it—not just because Chynah… Read More ›

• Farewell, Ashmont Grill 🥲

  By ljd42 on January 23, 2023

  

  This is very sad: Our favorite local restaurant, the Ashmont Grill, is closing its doors permanently in three weeks. I’ve written about the Grill many times. For a few examples, check out these posts: I could go on at great… Read More ›

• A pair of Horowitzes? (Is that the plural? How about Horowitzim?)

  By ljd42 on January 22, 2023

  

  Actually, there’s only one Horowitz that we’re talking about here: Anthony. I’m using the plural metonymically, if that’s the right word, with the author standing in for his books. Thirteen months ago I reviewed A Line to Kill. Two months… Read More ›

• Q: Is AI forcing us to switch to project-based learning? A: Not really, but…

  By ljd42 on January 20, 2023

  

  The newest moral panic, as I’m sure you’ve heard, has teachers and professors clutching their pearls about AI, specifically ChatGPT. A couple of weeks ago I proposed three solutions to this problem, but now I want to address three more… Read More ›

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