Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 24

• Irises

  By ljd42 on May 21, 2022

  

  Irises. Perhaps, like some people I know, you don’t believe that that’s how the plural of iris is spelled. Perhaps you prefer the original spelling, ἰριδες. In any case, our ἰριδες are doing quite well, considering that it’s only mid-May.

• Index, A History of the

  By ljd42 on May 20, 2022

  

  You’re in for a treat—if you read this will book with full focus and close attention. The title of this post is also the title of the book. Right away, you notice its form, and you realize that author Dennis… Read More ›

• Seventeenth anniversary of my very first blog post!

  By ljd42 on May 18, 2022

  

  Exactly 17 years ago today. That was the day when I started this blog. You can still read my very first post, which was originally on Blogger and then transferred to WordPress. I have written 2,194 posts since then, which… Read More ›

• Stephen Sondheim’s Putting it Together

  By ljd42 on May 16, 2022

  

  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…

  By ljd42 on May 13, 2022

  

  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 ›

• A quiz: why can’t you read this?

  By ljd42 on May 11, 2022

  

  Yes, I know you can read this, namely this blog post. The question is why can’t you read the passage below this paragraph. OK, OK, so it’s not in English, but that’s not the point. It’s from the Greek Old… Read More ›

• “God created the integers…”

  By ljd42 on May 9, 2022

  

  No, it’s not about theology. It’s about math! The title of this book, edited by Stephen Hawking, is the first half of a famous quotation from Leopold Kronecker: “God created the integers, all else is the work of man.” Actually,… Read More ›

• Don’t be misled by the name.

  By ljd42 on May 7, 2022

  

  The Neponset Cafe is a small Japanese restaurant in Dorchester that primarily features ramen, despite the restaurant’s name—which comes from its location on Neponset Avenue, right next to Neponset Circle. (Don’t confuse it with a very different Neponset Cafe across… Read More ›

• My next challenge: (re)reading Ulysses!

  By ljd42 on May 6, 2022

  

  Perhaps the title to this post is misleading: is it strictly correct for me to say that I am “re”reading Ulysses? Well, in a way. I like to claim that I’ve already read it one and a half times, because… Read More ›

• Revisiting Brasserie

  By ljd42 on May 5, 2022

  

  In honor of Star Wars Day, Barbara and I returned to Brasserie for our third visit yesterday. OK, I lied. It wasn’t really for Star Wars Day (but still: May the Fourth be with you). It was for another holiday… Read More ›

• A Pop History of Asian Americans from the Nineties to Now

  By ljd42 on May 4, 2022

  

  The title of this post is the subtitle of the book, even though it describes it perfectly. The much more cryptic title is simply Rise. This is not the kind of book you read cover-to-cover. It’s more the type you… Read More ›

• Are contractions bad? In a way, but not for the obvious reason.

  By ljd42 on May 2, 2022

  Oh my. Edwin Battistella begins a recent post in the OUP blog with this sentence: A few years ago, a student dropped a linguistics course I was teaching because the textbook used contractions. Yikes, can that be true? Apparently so…. Read More ›

• Gulp. Are there (were there?) special math problems given only to Jews?

  By ljd42 on May 1, 2022

  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!”

  By ljd42 on April 29, 2022

  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

  By ljd42 on April 27, 2022

  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 ›

• Re-read a whodunit (even though you already know who done it because you’ve read it before)!

  By ljd42 on April 25, 2022

  Why, you ask, should I re-read a whodunit when I already know who done it because I’ve read it before!? The quick answer, which I mentioned in an answer to a completely different question in a completely different context two… Read More ›

• Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog.

  By ljd42 on April 23, 2022

  Say what? If you don’t get it, just read it backwards! Yes, it’s a palindrome. And I just watched a movie about people who write palindromes: The Palindromists. “How nerdy can you get!”, you exclaim. “And which syllable has the… Read More ›

• Math helps you flourish—but not in the obvious way!

  By ljd42 on April 21, 2022

  My good friend and colleague Leah Gordon often likes the same books that I do. From time to time we make recommendations to each other. One of these is Francis Su’s Mathematics for Human Flourishing, which I have just finished… Read More ›

• What could possibly shock a German?

  By ljd42 on April 19, 2022

  You may think the answer is “nothing.” Except maybe a failure to follow the rules. But you would be wrong. By this point you are probably familiar with Felicia Hofner, a.k.a. “Feli from Germany.” After six years in Cincinnati her… Read More ›

• Happy Passover!

  By ljd42 on April 17, 2022

  

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