Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 30

• What does the Thursday Murder Club do?

  By ljd42 on November 4, 2021

  Do the members of the club commit murders on Thursdays? Do they always solve murders on Thursdays? Definitely not the former. The latter is closer to the truth, but that’s not quite it either. They meet every Thursday, and they… Read More ›

• Translating Medicarespeak into other languages

  By ljd42 on November 1, 2021

  I was looking through the newest information from Medicare, which looked to my untrained eyes just like the previous version and the one before that and the one before… What caught my eye won’t surprise you: some sentences (presumably equivalent… Read More ›

• Men of Boston Cook for Women’s Health

  By ljd42 on October 29, 2021

  Every year—well, not last year, for obvious reasons—the Codman Square Health Center in the center of Dorchester hosts a fundraiser called Men of Boston Cook for Women’s Health. Barbara and I have attended almost every year from 1996 through 2017,… Read More ›

• Street art in Dot

  By ljd42 on October 26, 2021

  No, it’s not a gallery, nor a museum. These are works of art created by anonymous artists in my neighborhood, spotted on a recent walk. The first two are—if you look closely—a pair of well-decorated traffic light control boxes. The… Read More ›

• On the planet of the apps: Between Glossika and DuoLingo, who wins?

  By ljd42 on October 24, 2021

  I have been trying these two language-learning apps every day for a month now. You may recall that I wrote about them three weeks ago, when I continued to review my rusty German, since I used to be pretty good… Read More ›

• Read Stanley Tucci’s memoir, Taste !

  By ljd42 on October 22, 2021

  Actors? Mostly I can take ’em or leave ’em. But there are a few actors I find memorable, and Stanley Tucci is one of them. I knew him originally from The Big Night and Julie and Julia, and more recently… Read More ›

• Democracy? How could geometry tell us anything about democracy? To find out, read Shape, by Jordan Ellenberg!

  By ljd42 on October 20, 2021

  Even if you don’t usually read applied math books, you need to read Shape, by Jordan Ellenberg. The subtitle tells you more than the title: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else. Yes, I know, it… Read More ›

• Nothing to see here. Move along.

  By ljd42 on October 18, 2021

  I never discuss politics in these posts. (Well, hardly ever. I do make an exception for the Former Guy.) So there’s no politics in this post. Don’t look at the picture: it’s just a photo of an unremarkable nearby house,… Read More ›

• A Lincoln-Sudbury alumnus stars in Gifted.

  By ljd42 on October 15, 2021

  Chris Evans—an actor you may recognize, but I don’t—is a Lincoln-Sudbury alum (’99?) and the star of the movie Gifted, which you should definitely see. See it even if you have no connection whatsoever with either Lincoln or Sudbury! Evans… Read More ›

• Polychromatic house

  By ljd42 on October 14, 2021

  Walked by this Dorchester house on today’s walk. I really like the color combo, but I suspect that a lot of people don’t.

• 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 ›

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