Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 30

• A near-future dystopian novel by a Canadian woman author: any guesses who the author is?

  By ljd42 on October 13, 2021

  No, it’s not Margaret Atwood. We’re talking about The Madness of Crowds, by Louise Penny. It’s not nearly as dystopian as Atwood’s vision, but it still nudges us in that direction. This is the newest (#17) novel in the Armand… Read More ›

• The curious, enthralling and extraordinary story of English spelling

  By ljd42 on October 11, 2021

  That’s the subtitle of a wonderful book that was written for you, if you are a reader of English. Also if you’re a writer in English. And most especially if you have to spell English words, as the main title… Read More ›

• Pete remembers Woody.

  By ljd42 on October 8, 2021

  Please don’t say “Pete who?” or “Woody who?” I hope you know who the title refers to. The original version of this wonderful memorial came out nearly seven years ago as an LP; the CD version was released nine years… Read More ›

• The Court Jester

  By ljd42 on October 6, 2021

  Robin Hood or The Princess Bride? Which one inspired The Court Jester? Well, if you look at the image, you see that Danny Kaye (born דוד־דניאל קאַמינסקי—that’s Yiddish, even if it looks like Hebrew) starred in The Court Jester, and… Read More ›

• How do you learn a foreign language? “There are no subtitles in real life.”

  By ljd42 on October 4, 2021

  “One fine day, it’s like going from the black and white to the color part of The Wizard of Oz.” That’s John McWhorter’s striking description of one of the things that happens when you learn a new language. It’s from… Read More ›

• “Scientific discoveries are never given the names of their actual discoverers.”

  By ljd42 on October 2, 2021

  When I teach cryptography, my students learn that the Caesar Cipher wasn’t actually invented by Julius Caesar, that the Playfair Cipher wasn’t created by Lyon Playfair, that the Vigenère Cipher is wrongly attributed to Blaise de Vigenère, and so forth…. Read More ›

• They say that America’s math curriculum doesn’t add up. But is that true?

  By ljd42 on September 30, 2021

  What’s wrong with America’s math curriculum? I’ve written endlessly on this subject, but for now I want to focus on the claims of Steven Levitt and others in a new version of an earlier Freakonomics episode. Levitt et al. are… Read More ›

• She says she’s afraid of not being afraid.

  By ljd42 on September 28, 2021

  “She” is Laura Lippman, talking about her new novel, Dream Girl. I usually read every book in Lippman’s Baltimore-based crime series; I decided to read this out-of-series (non-genre) one as well, based primarily on Ed Levine’s interview with her on… Read More ›

• Oh no! The International Astronomical Union has been lying to us all these years! What is this world coming to?

  By ljd42 on September 27, 2021

  “These explanations are entirely bogus. They’re made up.” That’s what the Kiwi Hellenist, Peter Gainsford, says about the International Astronomical Union’s incorrect explanations for the names of the planets. But how could the explanations be entirely bogus? Scientists don’t just… Read More ›

• Back Bay Blues, by Peter Colt

  By ljd42 on September 23, 2021

  No, this novel is not really about the Back Bay—not the neighborhood, nor the train station, nor the erstwhile eponymous bay. And it’s not about the blues. But you probably guessed that. Mostly it’s about the aftermath of the War… Read More ›

• Too indulgent!

  By ljd42 on September 22, 2021

  At first I wasn’t going to blog about last night’s dinner, which was our third-ever visit to Brasserie: writing about two pricey restaurants in one week was just too indulgent. But then, when dessert arrived, I had to change my… Read More ›

• The Japanese Agatha Christie?

  By ljd42 on September 21, 2021

  How to begin? Maybe with an executive summary: The Decagon House Murders, a 1987 novel by Yukito Ayatsuji, is a locked-room mystery explicitly based (in two different ways) on Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel And Then There Were None. I enjoyed… Read More ›

• Outdoor dining at 224 Boston Street

  By ljd42 on September 20, 2021

  Yesterday evening Barbara and I had a delicious dinner at 224 Boston Street. They’ve set up half a dozen very sturdy wooden booths on the sidewalk, all nicely separately and totally different from the flimsy, temporary feel you get at… Read More ›

• What is the secret to writing a successful popularization?

  By ljd42 on September 19, 2021

  What? You think I’m going to reveal the secret? No way! That’s partly because I don’t actually know the secret—but we can explore the question, as sparked by a recent post by Gretchen McCulloch, known for her surprise best-seller Because… Read More ›

• After reading The Paradise Affair by Bill Pronzini, I don’t want to visit Hawaii!

  By ljd42 on September 18, 2021

  You do need a little light reading to start the new year off right, don’t you? Then you need Bill Pronzini’s latest mystery, The Paradise Affair. From the title of the book you might expect it to be about Hawaii…. Read More ›

• September flowers on Ashmont Hill

  By ljd42 on September 17, 2021

  Flowers are still blooming on Ashmont Hill in mid-September! Spotted on yesterday’s walk:

• We need more confusion, not less! (Strategic confusion, that is.)

  By ljd42 on September 16, 2021

  Schools aren’t built around confusion. We reward students for speed and accuracy (the way we average grades and set rigid deadlines). Our standardized tests place a high value in speed and accuracy rather than nuance and confusion. We value teachers… Read More ›

• Hit and Run, by Lawrence Block

  By ljd42 on September 14, 2021

  Larry Block will teach you how to write. He can even make a hit man sympathetic. I don’t just mean that Block provides a model of good writing—though he does do that—but also that he has elsewhere written explicit advice… Read More ›

• Did the ancestors of today’s Middle Easterners come from Africa?

  By ljd42 on September 12, 2021

  Of course they did, you reply. But not so fast! There has, of course, been a lot of interest lately in tracing one’s DNA to find out one’s individual ancestry. But I haven’t seen much about the results of doing… Read More ›

• Star Trek Action, by Terry J. Erdmann

  By ljd42 on September 10, 2021

  Channel your inner geek by finding out every little detail behind the scenes in a 120-second segment of Star Trek. That’s what you get—three times—in this gorgeous book. But the intended audience clearly doesn’t include me. The problem is that… Read More ›

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