Recent Posts - page 46

  • Your brother-in-law’s mother’s sister is your _________________?

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    Fill in the blank in the title — but no need to do it in Latin, as in the figure. English will be fine. What? You can’t do it? You say English doesn’t have a word for that relationship? You… Read More ›

  • My diverse neighborhood: everybody counts!

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    As I was taking my walk today, I came across this multilingual sign at the corner of Dot Ave and Park Street. Can you identify all five languages? Remember to fill out your census forms! In order to count, you… Read More ›

  • What are your favorite poems?

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    What are your favorite poems? Is an epic poem too long to count as an answer to this question? I hope not — but I’ll play it safe and split the difference. My favorite pair of poems are… drumroll, please…… Read More ›

  • Read it on the internet (if you can)!

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    “So many boxes to be found on the internet!” I’m guessing that you’ve seen something like this, perhaps in Facebook, Twitter, email, etc. Right? And perhaps you know that the boxes represent characters in fonts that you don’t have on… Read More ›

  • Freedom City

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    So Donald Trump dies from an apparent heart attack after taking hydroxychloroquine, and President Pence calls on far-right militias to enforce a “Make America Great Again” fascist-style government. OK, it’s fiction. More or less. My opening sentence is not quite… Read More ›

  • What’s wrong with Advanced Placement tests?

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    Three cheers for the College Board! Right? Everyone loves AP tests. Well, maybe you do, maybe you don’t, but read on. You might be surprised. Although Jonathan Halabi, a New York City math teacher, occasionally gets too much into the… Read More ›

  • The Mechanic

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    I should have known. Months ago, back on May 4th — OK, OK, I know that it was really just two weeks ago, but it feels like months — I was watching Greater Boston on Channel 2, as one does, and Jim Braude was… Read More ›

  • Does William fit?

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    “William, you don’t fit in that box.” “Yes I do.”  

  • Do you know the hidden rules of conversation?

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    “Can you pass the salt?” “Yes, I can.” And then of course he doesn’t. This is an easy example of violating the hidden rules of conversation as described by philosopher Paul Grice. The rules are commonly known as the Gricean… Read More ›

  • Takeout from The Bowery

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    The Bowery in Lower Mills has just reopened for takeout and delivery, so Barbara and I decided to try their new Sea Shanty offerings last night (no singing included): clam strips, excellent lobster rolls in a toasted bun with first-rate French… Read More ›

  • “…And Madly Teach”

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    Try to imagine, if you possibly can, a time when all teaching Is done remotely, when teachers don’t see their students face-to-face, when students spend classtime sitting at home in front of a screen watching a teacher in a studio… Read More ›

  • What gender is Covid-19?

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    The French Academy has been shocked — shocked, I tell you — that some people have actually been saying “le Covid 19” instead of “la Covid 19”. The underlying issue is that maladie (“illness”) is feminine, but virus is masculine. So the French, in… Read More ›

  • Languages change. Don’t be a peever!

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    Do you still speak Shakespearean English? Or, to go further back, Chaucerian English? No, of course you don’t. So why do so many people think that in 2020 we should speak the way people spoke in 1950, that 2020 speech… Read More ›

  • How many languages are missing from the internet?

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    One day in the early ’80s, when very few people had even heard of the internet, I was reading an online discussion about computer programming projects in Logo. A certain angry participant got very upset at a contributor from Montreal… Read More ›

  • The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe

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    Let’s see a show of hands: how many of you know who Nero Wolfe was? OK, fellow boomers, you can put your hands down now. We are the generation that knows Rex Stout. For the rest of you, I’ll tell… Read More ›

  • Why writing?

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    I wish I had created this. “This” is a series of a dozen extremely short animated videos describing the entire worldwide history of writing and writing systems — in under an hour total time for all the bite-size videos combined…. Read More ›

  • The cats know what to do!

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    William, Flicka, and Vincent — as you can see — were observing proper social distancing as they lined up six feet apart, waiting patiently for their dinner last night. (BTW, William isn’t quite as large as the perspective makes him… Read More ›

  • Masks

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    Barbara and I have new masks, hand-made with love by our niece Aviva. (Unfortunately the cats think that they’re cat toys because of the dangly straps.)      

  • In praise of English teachers

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    Some English teachers, anyway. Actually, one English teacher in particular: Dudley Fitts. I just read this short essay in Andover Magazine in which an Andover alumnus (who is slightly older than I), Tod Howard Hawks, recalled his first 9th-grade English assignment… Read More ›

  • Apart-ment

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    You will want to read a longish poem just published by my favorite Canadian linguist, James Harbeck. Before then, note what he has to say about words: Words are delicious and intoxicating. They do much more than just denote; they have appearance,… Read More ›