Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 35

• A Murder of Magpies

  By ljd42 on April 14, 2021

  

  An outstanding first novel from Judith Flanders, published seven years ago, A Murder of Magpies is a mystery that will hold your attention and keep you entertained. In a recent post I wrote about another Judith Flanders book, but in… Read More ›

• A new unit of distance?

  By ljd42 on April 12, 2021

  No, this sign isn’t at a Starbucks:

• They both have samples of my DNA. Why do they disagree about my ancestry?

  By ljd42 on April 11, 2021

  My ancestry, says ancestry.com, is 100% Ashkenazy Jewish! No, says CRI Genetics, it’s 66.1% Ashkenazy Jewish! So who’s right? It’s always a good idea to ask for a second opinion. I trusted ancestry.com, which is respected and has a well-known… Read More ›

• A supposedly “new” way to solve quadratics

  By ljd42 on April 9, 2021

  What’s wrong with the Quadratic Formula? Let me count the ways: It’s pure magic to 99% of high-school students, who have no idea why it works. It lends itself to sign errors because of the subtraction under the square root… Read More ›

• An outstanding dinner from Tavolo

  By ljd42 on April 7, 2021

  Barbara and I had an outstanding dinner tonight from Tavolo, with lots of leftovers: chef’s burrata with basil pesto, prosciutto, grape tomatoes, parmesan & parsley crumb, and vincotto; seafood fregola with shrimp, mussels, tomato broth, and garlic butter; confit duck… Read More ›

• What’s in a (color) name?

  By ljd42 on April 6, 2021

  

  Who cares what names Crayola chooses to use for the colors of its crayons? Do you? Do I? There was only one color name that used to bother me when I was a kid: “flesh.” Even then, I guess, I… Read More ›

• Adequate Yearly Progress

  By ljd42 on April 4, 2021

  

  If you write a novel about teaching, how realistic should it be? If, in particular, it’s supposed to be a satire, then how realistic should it be? Can you distinguish a satire from reality? Sometimes it’s hard to do that…. Read More ›

• That Day the Rabbi Left Town

  By ljd42 on April 2, 2021

  

  Way back in the Before Times—in 1964, when I was still in high school—local author Harry Kemelman wrote Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, thus inaugurating a series of a dozen cozy-style mysteries featuring Rabbi David Small of a Conservative synagogue in Barnard’s… Read More ›

• Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life 

  By ljd42 on April 1, 2021

  

  Quick: What is the meaning of life? You said 42, right? No, wait a minute—that’s a different book. In Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life, philosopher John Gray explores what cats think about the meaning of life, what… Read More ›

• Have you read Robert Heinlein’s Coventry?

  By ljd42 on March 31, 2021

  

  Are you old enough to know the English phrase “sent to Coventry”? According to Merriam-Webster, if you were “sent to Coventry,” you have been ostracized. Although the cover story of the July 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction featured a… Read More ›

• Boston in Transit

  By ljd42 on March 30, 2021

  

  Boston’s rich history of public transit deserves your attention if you live in, work in, or have visited The Hub. That’s short for “Hub of the Universe,” in case you missed the memo. Boston is nothing if not proud of… Read More ›

• William’s 17th

  By ljd42 on March 27, 2021

  

  William is preparing for his upcoming 17th birthday by taking a power nap on his kitty couch to make sure that he remains cute enough.  

• The book called The Book—plus a lagniappe: a book about type

  By ljd42 on March 26, 2021

  

  Read The Book in hardcover! Not in paperback. Nor on your Kindle. And don’t listen to it as an audiobook! The hardcover is essential. The full title is The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time, as you… Read More ›

• Hwæt?Beowulf? newly translated for your enjoyment

  By ljd42 on March 23, 2021

  

  The world is atwitter at the arrival of a new translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley. Well, a certain segment of the world, anyway. And you may well wonder why. The idea of reading this epic poem has never appealed to… Read More ›

• “Guess the Language”: quite a challenge!

  By ljd42 on March 21, 2021

  

  If you heard a short sample of a language that you didn’t know, could you still guess which language it is? Quite a challenge, no? Well, in this video, you have the opportunity to see Latvian linguist Julie Maksimova face… Read More ›

• Troubled Blood

  By ljd42 on March 19, 2021

  

  Robert Galbraith has a secret identity, though you won’t spot him changing in a phone booth. What’s his secret identity? Well, many people know him better by his pseudonym, J.K. Rowling. No, wait! That can’t be right. J.K. Rowling is… Read More ›

• A really important dispute about “OK boomer”

  By ljd42 on March 17, 2021

  

  According to a post the other day in All Things Linguistic, it is widely believed that the correct translation of “OK boomer” into Middle Egyptian is whereas they point out that a more accurate translation would of course be Perhaps… Read More ›

• The Font of the Baskervilles

  By ljd42 on March 16, 2021

  

  The Hound Font of the Baskervilles? We’ve all learned, particularly in the last few years, to be cautious about believing what we read. Some people (though not nearly enough of us) have even learned to be cautious about what we see… Read More ›

• Pi(e) day: not actually a national holiday!

  By ljd42 on March 14, 2021

  

  OK, I tried to release this at precisely 3/14 1:59:26.535897932384. How well did I do? But why would the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) lie to us about Pi Day? This is just too distressing for words: Declared a… Read More ›

• O chess pieces, what are your names (in 79 languages)? And what did my dad have to do with it?

  By ljd42 on March 12, 2021

  

  Chess, of course, is endlessly fascinating. For some reason, however, I no longer play chess. I never became good at it, even though my dad started me on it at an early age. Chess meant a lot to him because… Read More ›

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