Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 47

• How does a New Yawker tawk?

  By ljd42 on April 27, 2020

  

  How do you combine linguistics, the movies, New York, and politics? Just check out this fascinating article from the New York Times! The article includes several great clips with audio and video from a wide range of New Yorkers. I… Read More ›

• William thinks he’s on TV.

  By ljd42 on April 25, 2020

  

  He thinks he’s on TV. He doesn’t realize he’s just sitting in a box from BJs.

• What an indulgence!

  By ljd42 on April 23, 2020

  

  What an indulgence: two Dorchester restaurants two days in a row! It’s important to support your local small businesses during the stay-at-home orders, so Barbara and I decided to get takeout from Tavolo last night even though we had gotten… Read More ›

• The Blarney Stone without any blarney

  By ljd42 on April 22, 2020

  

  Last night Barbara and I enjoyed another quarantine dinner that couldn’t be beat: takeout from the Blarney Stone, delivered efficiently and promptly by Caviar. Mostly quoting from the menu now, we had “grilled BBQ marinated steak tips, creamy mashed potatoes,… Read More ›

• High-school graduation photo

  By ljd42 on April 20, 2020

  

  Everyone seems to be posting their high-school graduation picture on Facebook these days. So, I guess I have to join ’em. Here we are. P.A. 1965:      

• DJ’s European Market and Deli

  By ljd42 on April 19, 2020

  

  Polish take-out yesterday afternoon from DJ’s European Market and Deli: lunch and partial dinner for Barbara, partial dinner for me. DJ’s is in the Polish Triangle, right on the Dorchester-Southie border. Courtesy of prompt delivery by GrubHub, we ordered stuffed cabbage… Read More ›

• Maxine Unleashes Doomsday

  By ljd42 on April 17, 2020

  

  How could I resist a novel with a title like Maxine Unleashes Doomsday? The genre of this story, as you expect, is near-future post-apocalyptic science fiction — more or less. Apparently it was inspired by The Road Warrior, but I’ve never seen… Read More ›

• Math and cats

  By ljd42 on April 15, 2020

  (This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post. I suggest reading it first, if you haven’t done so already.) A quote from John Horton Conway in today’s MathBlab: You know, people think mathematics is complicated. Mathematics is the simple bit. It’s… Read More ›

• RIP, John Horton Conway

  By ljd42 on April 14, 2020

  

  Very sad news. John Horton Conway, one of the greatest math educators of our generation, has died of COVID-19: John Conway leaves a legacy of the most awe-inspiring mathematical and magical mind-twisters—the Monster group and monstrous moonshine, surreal numbers, Sprouts,… Read More ›

• Wiggins is self-isolating.

  By ljd42 on April 12, 2020

  

  This is Wiggins. She peers through the bars because she thinks that quarantine is like jail. No, she’s not one of ours; her human is our friend Meredith.    

• Leonard Cohen; The Doors; Emerson, Lake, and Palmer; Jimi Hendrix; The Who; and so forth

  By ljd42 on April 11, 2020

  

  It seems that everyone in my generation was at Woodstock in 1969. Or so they claim. Except me. I wasn’t there. Apparently 400,000 attendees really were there, although well over a million people say they were there. But that’s not what I’m writing… Read More ›

• Support your local restaurants! (Tavolo and more…)

  By ljd42 on April 9, 2020

  

  Your local restaurants need your help! As you know, they operate on small profit margins, and the current prohibition on eat-in dining can destroy many a restaurant. So we’re trying to order take-out and delivery locally whenever possible. Last night… Read More ›

• Seán Mac an tSíthigh tells the story of Boston’s Irish.

  By ljd42 on April 7, 2020

  

  How do you pronounce “Seán Mac an tSíthigh”? Don’t ask me. I’ve been attempting to learn something about the Irish language, but the spelling and pronunciation are daunting, as I suggested in a post I wrote a couple of months… Read More ›

• Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother

  By ljd42 on April 5, 2020

  

  Picture this: You’re Barry Sonnenfeld, a high-school junior, on a date with a classmate at a Madison Square Garden “Woodstock Reunion” concert. And just as Jimi Hendrix is about to come on, you hear an announcement over the loudspeaker: ”Barry… Read More ›

• Social distancing: a simple geometry problem

  By ljd42 on April 3, 2020

  

  I am told that these signs are appearing around San Francisco — thank you, Doug Marquis! — offering either an open-ended or a traditional problem to give your math students. Pick one: What do you notice? How far is the… Read More ›

• William practices social distancing…

  By ljd42 on April 2, 2020

  

  … by sitting half on, half off, on his kitty couch. He doesn’t fit if he stretches out.  

• Takeout from Tavolo to support social distancing

  By ljd42 on April 1, 2020

  

  See the pix. Delicious dinner from Tavolo — at least two days’ worth: mussels (which somehow disappeared before I could photograph them), shrimp scampi, lamb ragout, 4-cheese pizza, flourless chocolate cake!

• The Panda of Death

  By ljd42 on March 31, 2020

  

  “Three murders? For a cozy? Isn’t that a lot?” Yes, three murders in one cozy. I guess that’s a lot.  This self-referential quote is from Betty Webb’s latest, The Panda of Death. And yes, it’s a cozy, but I read it anyway,… Read More ›

• Contagion

  By ljd42 on March 29, 2020

  

  If you haven’t seen it — or even if you have — this is the time to watch Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 movie, Contagion. (Or maybe it’s the time not to watch it, if you worry that it’s going to trigger you.) As you may… Read More ›

• Arabic — its sounds and its writing system — plus some related issues

  By ljd42 on March 27, 2020

  

  “They speak Arabic in Iran, Pakistan, and Xinjiang, right?” No, that’s wrong. “OK, what I meant is that they write Farsi, Urdu, and Uyghur in the Arabic script. That’s right, isn’t it?” That’s closer, but still not right. We need… Read More ›

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