Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 62

• The top universities for linguistics?

  By ljd42 on March 8, 2019

  

  Are these really the top universities for linguistics? That’s what the QS World University Rankings by Subject says. I’ve been skeptical of lists like this as I watched high-school ratings over two decades from publications like Boston Magazine and U.S. News, paying special attention… Read More ›

• Bay State Model Railroad Museum Spring Model Train Show

  By ljd42 on March 6, 2019

  

  Wow! Look at that title: a noun phrase consisting of nine consecutive nouns! Maybe the show should be called Buchtstaatsmodelleisenbahnmuseumsfrühlingsmodellzugshow. On second thought, maybe not. OK, enough fooling around with German. Let’s get back to the show itself, which was… Read More ›

• Happy Exelauno Day!

  By ljd42 on March 4, 2019

  

  Schools in this entire area (not just Roxbury Latin!) are closed today in honor of Ἐξελαύνω (Exelauno) Day. Or maybe there’s some other reason.  

• How many Tater Tots? — the answer!

  By ljd42 on March 3, 2019

  

  Yesterday I posted this problem: Great Fermi problem that I just heard on the Ask Me Another quiz show on NPR: Estimate how many Tater Tots were consumed in the U.S. during all of 2017. The answer (from CBS News)… Read More ›

• How many Tater Tots?

  By ljd42 on March 2, 2019

  Great Fermi problem that I just heard on the Ask Me Another quiz show on NPR: Estimate how many Tater Tots were consumed in the U.S. during all of 2017. Correct answer will be posted in this space tomorrow.

• Boston Chops

  By ljd42 on March 1, 2019

  

  Apparently, Boston restaurateurs are supposed to be named Chris. The chef/owner of Ashmont Grill, our favorite every-day local restaurant — well, more like twice a month, but who’s counting? — is Dorchester neighbor Chris Douglass. Then, for my birthday dinner… Read More ›

• I found the missing R!

  By ljd42 on February 27, 2019

  

  I found the missing R! Remember my recent post about my neighborhood barber shop with the missing R? (In case you missed it, here is the photo again of the storefront, showing that it’s a Baber Shop, not a Barber… Read More ›

• The Punishment She Deserves

  By ljd42 on February 25, 2019

  

  Elizabeth George writes literature, not genre fiction. That’s the sensibility of her novels, even though they are technically mysteries, which should make them genre fiction. The Punishment She Deserves is the 20th of her Lynley/Havers books, and I think I’ve read all… Read More ›

• “Why Girls Beat Boys at School and Lose to Them at the Office”

  By ljd42 on February 23, 2019

  

  Gender-based generalizations are almost always wrong. When they aren’t wrong, they are at least misleading, because nobody listens when you explain that you are speaking in statistics, not in absolutes. Nevertheless, generalizations can be useful aids to thinking about the… Read More ›

• Crime & Punctuation (and a cat)

  By ljd42 on February 19, 2019

  Crime & Punctuation. No, not the novel by Dostoevsky that just happens to have a somewhat similar title — that one that only English majors and Russian lit students have actually read, although everyone else claims to. (Confession: at least… Read More ›

• Wide William

  By ljd42 on February 18, 2019

  

  William in his wide-body pose:

• Baber?

  By ljd42 on February 17, 2019

  

  Never noticed this Baber Shop before (near where I live). I wonder how much that nice sign cost them.

• Douglas says he’s on vacation

  By ljd42 on February 16, 2019

  

  Douglas says he’s on vacation, so it’s time to lie back and relax:

• Here in the Northeast it’s not Virginia — or is it?

  By ljd42 on February 12, 2019

  Virginia was the home of the capital of the Confederacy, so the recent events in Virginia might not have surprised you, but could they happen here in the Northeast? What follows is a lightly edited version of a true account… Read More ›

• Teaching and coaching

  By ljd42 on February 9, 2019

  One of my former colleagues gave up teaching — at least for a while — to become a “math coach.” “What does that mean?” you may well ask. That’s what I asked, at any rate. We all know what an… Read More ›

• The Temptation of Forgiveness

  By ljd42 on February 7, 2019

  

  Looking closely, you will notice that the image here is a scene from Venice. I’ve read all 19 — can it really be 19? — of Donna Leon’s novels, all of which center on Venice. I’ve reviewed four of them before,… Read More ›

• The Colors of All the Cattle

  By ljd42 on February 5, 2019

  

  Review #8 here about Alexander McCall Smith’s Botswana series! I’ve been writing about these 19 charming books for a long time, most recently three years ago but going back to April of 2006 for the first post — almost 13… Read More ›

• “Does verbing impact the language?” he asks.

  By ljd42 on February 3, 2019

  

  I’m just starting to scenic my model railroad. Yeah, I know, using the adjective “scenic” as a verb is startling at first. I still don’t like it, though it has become standard. But let’s look at it in context. My… Read More ›

• Five-Minute Linguist Competition

  By ljd42 on January 31, 2019

  

  You may well wonder what a five-minute linguist might be. I’ll leave you to ponder that question. Before you do that, here are some of John McWhorter’s opening remarks to the third annual five-minute linguist competition: You try to explain… Read More ›

• Computational thinking — but where’s the beef?

  By ljd42 on January 29, 2019

  

  Do we believe what the Wolfram Blog says about computational thinking? Maybe. I’m suspicious of the very title of the post: The Computational Classroom: Easy Ways to Introduce Computational Thinking into Your Lessons. Anything that promises “easy ways” is automatically… Read More ›

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