Recent Posts - page 86

  • Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra Concert

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    Yesterday afternoon, Barbara and I attended a beautiful concert given by the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra at Symphony Hall. Picture yourself there. Close your eyes and just listen. You forget that this was a youth orchestra; you think that the… Read More ›

  • As Good as it Gets

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    So I managed to watch three quarters of As Good as it Gets before deciding it was time to make dinner and I wasn’t interested in finishing this 1997 movie. Despite an excellent performance (of course) from Jack Nicholson, it all just… Read More ›

  • As you know, college admissions have become more competitive.

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    Does it matter that the most competitive colleges are harder to get into than they used to be? It certainly matters at Weston, and I’m sure at other top-ranked high schools as well. The question is whether the net effects… Read More ›

  • AIME revised

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    Contrary to my post of February 22, it turns out that Weston actually has nine students, not eight, who qualified for the AIME. Pravina Samaratunga (junior) took the qualifying test at a different location and therefore wasn’t included in my original list…. Read More ›

  • Ruth's Chris

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    Barbara and I went to Ruth’s Chris last night — the first time for either of us at any Ruth’s Chris location. The positives outweighed the negatives, but… Here’s the scoop. By and large the food was excellent. We both… Read More ›

  • Double Indemnity

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    No spoilers here. I finally saw Double Indemnity, which I should have seen long ago. If you haven’t seen it, do so. This 1944 noir classic is surprising and modern for its time period, although it will still feel outdated to anyone… Read More ›

  • The Joy of x

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    Steven Strogatz has made a useful contribution to the surprisingly large set of math books written for the general public: The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity. I have to admit that I started out… Read More ›

  • The Fractalist

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    I had expected to be able to leaf through The Fractalist: Memoir of a Scientific Maverick, by Benoit Mandelbrot. I had expected that I would spot a couple of interesting nuggets along the way, but that the story couldn’t possibly sustain my… Read More ›

  • Kinsey and Me

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    At this point I’ve read 22 of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone novels, starting with A is for Alibi and continuing on all the way through V is for Vengeance. This may sound extreme, but at Sue Grafton’s pace it isn’t: 22 books in 29… Read More ›

  • AIME

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    Congratulations to the eight Weston High School students who have been invited to take the prestigious American Invitational Math Exam: seniors Ian Delaney, James Goulart, and Akshay Saini juniors William Kretschmer and Daniel Rigobon sophomore Kyle Chow freshmen Akiva Gordon and… Read More ›

  • The Party

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    Just watched an old Peter Sellers/Blake Edwards comedy, The Party. No, wait!…1968 can’t be old! It’s just…well…apparently it’s 45 years ago, so I guess it does qualify as an “old comedy.” Anyway, it’s very funny and really well done, though it certainly… Read More ›

  • A Double Thread: Growing up English and Jewish in London

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    In his fascinating memoir, A Double Thread: Growing Up English and Jewish in London, John Gross does exactly what the title promises: he shows how the English and Jewish cultures can intertwine and yet remain distinct. It’s important to note that… Read More ›

  • Bellwether

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    If you know Connie Willis at all, you probably think of her as a science fiction author. I just finished reading her 1997 novel Bellwether, and indeed it was marketed as science fiction; it even was nominated for a Nebula Award!… Read More ›

  • We’re adults…but sometimes we’re still in high school.

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    Just to put this in context, you will want to know that my friend Mark Bernstein is the Chief Scientist of Eastgate Systems, with an undergraduate degree from Swarthmore and a doctorate in chemistry from Harvard. He knew Aaron Swartz; I… Read More ›

  • Transit maps TED talk!

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    I suppose it’s possible that you don’t share my passion for transit maps. That might be hard to believe, but I admit that it’s possible. Whether you love transit maps or not, you still need to watch Aris Ventikidis’s first-rate (and… Read More ›

  • Monk

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    For some reason I have never watched any of the Monk television shows. But I’ve read a couple of the short stories about Adrian Monk, all written by Lee Goldberg — who was the writer of the three of the… Read More ›

  • Professional development

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    Yesterday, while our students were enjoying their last day of a four-day weekend, it was a regular workday for teachers. Well, actually, “regular” isn’t quite the right word. We did have a full day of work, but of course there… Read More ›

  • An Egyptian cartoon…not

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    I was just flipping through a Middle Egyptian textbook that I had bought at a used book store last year (not to be confused with a used bookstore), and I came across this cartoon drawn by an unknown previous owner… Read More ›

  • Reamde

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    Where do I start? How do I write a post about a thousand-page epic? Clearly I can’t do it justice, so I won’t even try to write more a single paragraph. Reamde (not a typo) is a sprawling Neal Stephenson novel about massively multiplayer… Read More ›

  • Douglas is so helpful.

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    Here’s Douglas, helping me grade geometry quizzes: