Recent Posts - page 88

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

    By on

    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

    By on

    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.

    By on

    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!

    By on

    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

    By on

    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

    By on

    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

    By on

    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

    By on

    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.

    By on

    Here’s Douglas, helping me grade geometry quizzes:

  • The Universe in Zero Words

    By on

    Well…not really zero words…closer to 100,000, in fact. But the main point of Dana Mackenzie’s beautiful book about beautiful mathematics is his combination of illustrations, numbers, and the equations relating those numbers to each other. Essentially, The Universe in Zero… Read More ›

  • Make Just One Change

    By on

    I dunno. In this book, Make Just One Change, authors Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana try passionately to make a compelling case for their view that education can be transformed by making “just one change”: teaching students “to ask their own… Read More ›

  • Ladectsbeal

    By on

    A few days ago, in my review of Maphead, I wrote the following: I invented my own country, Ladectsbeal, when I was 11 or 12, and pursued creating its details for several years thereafter. Maps were my primary focus there, but I… Read More ›

  • The Given Day and Live by Night

    By on

    Dennis Lehane is best known as a local mystery writer, but his last two books aren’t mysteries: they’re historical fiction. They loosely form the first two parts of a trilogy (actually, I’m just guessing…maybe there won’t be a third book… Read More ›

  • Math Forum

    By on

    We had an interesting Math Forum last night, sponsored by the PTO (which I understand is called the PTA in some states). This was an opportunity to discuss Weston’s secondary math program in an open forum. Maybe 55-60 parents attended,… Read More ›

  • Do elite colleges discriminate against Asians?

    By on

    Visit any suburban high school and talk to some seniors. You’ll be convinced that most of the Asian-Americans are shoo-ins for admission to elite colleges: either they’ve already been admitted or else they surely will be by April. That’s the… Read More ›

  • Maphead

    By on

    I mentioned a few days ago that I hadn’t yet reviewed Ken Jennings’s book, Maphead…so here we go. Unlike either Brainiac and Because I Said So, this is not really a book for a general audience. It’s not that you have to be a map geek or… Read More ›

  • A double dose of algebra

    By on

    An interesting article by Kalena Cortes, Joshua Goodman and Takako Nomi appeared recently in EducationNext, a right-wing magazine that comes out of Stanford’s Hoover Institute. They claim to be fair and balanced. Sound familiar? Those aren’t their words, actually, but that’s definitely their gist:… Read More ›

  • The Ten Cent Plague

    By on

    The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America is a terrific history of the comic book industry and the role it has played in American culture. Most of my readers are too young to remember the ’50s,… Read More ›

  • Because I Said So

    By on

    Ah…Ken Jennings! The Jeopardy geek’s favorite. He’s our favorite, not just because he’s the big all-time long-lasting winner, but more because he combines encyclopedic knowledge, intellectual curiosity, sense of humor, and surprising humility. I earlier reviewed his book Brainiac, and I just… Read More ›

  • Is ed reform hurting kids?

    By on

    OK, so I’m fortunate to be teaching in Weston, not in Chicago. The populations are very different, the school systems are very different, and the school administrations are very different. Nevertheless, I highly appreciated the essay “Make No Mistake, Corporate… Read More ›