Recent Posts - page 9
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If you need to get blood drawn for a routine medical exam…
go to the lab at the Atrius Health office in Braintree! (I highly recommend it. This is an unsolicited testimonial.) My experience there yesterday can be summarized in three words: fast, efficient, painless. (Those adjectives describe the Atrius lab, not… Read More ›
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Good Lieutenant by E.J. Copperman
Good Lieutenant is the sixth, the best, the most serious, and (alas) the last novel in Jeff Cohen’s Jersey Girl series of mysteries. But — wait, wait! important question here, I hear you cry — you said Jeff Cohen but… Read More ›
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Elon
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Tavolo
It’s been a long time since we’ve been to Tavolo, largely due to weather and not being able to drive after dark. The solution today was to go to brunch! They were serving the regular dinner menu along with their… Read More ›
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Abigail’s Dilemma
Abigail just received two presents to celebrate the monthiversary of her adoption. Now she can’t decide whether she prefers her new kitty bed (“So soft!” she exclaimed. “And it’s purple!”) or her new scratching post (“This gives me a view… Read More ›
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A close-up view of Neighborhood #4, Orchard Heights
And now we move on to another neighborhood in my model railroad layout, a.k.a. Rose City: Orchard Heights is — wait for it — the Rose City neighborhood with the highest altitude. What a surprise! But it no longer has… Read More ›
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Written in the South Pacific during World War II
This is a poem written by my dad in 1943 while he was serving in the U.S. Army in the South Pacific — not in Tahiti unfortunately, but in New Guinea in this case. During most of the war, however,… Read More ›
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Baskerville!
Four years ago I wrote a post about the Baskerville typeface, Of course my post had to be titled The Font of the Baskervilles; I had no choice. And now we have an entire book called Baskerville, subtitled The Biography… Read More ›
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The Law of Innocence
You’re wondering why Mickey Haller, the eponymous Lincoln Lawyer, would choose to represent himself. He even quotes the maxim that my father happens to have taught me when I was 11 years old or so: “He who represents himself has… Read More ›
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Abigail supervising her domain from on high
“Hmmm… I want to learn music theory,” says Abigail, “but I’m not sure how to do that. Maybe I can do it by sitting on top of the bookcase, right above some music books, while I gaze over my domain.”… Read More ›
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Bye bye Mark Z.
My Facebook account is going away, effective 24 hours from now. Find me on BlueSky at https://bsky.app/profile/ljdljd.bsky.social or by email at davidson.larry@gmail.com Bye bye Mark Z.
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City Unseen
City Unseen: New Visions of an Urban Planet is an amazing collection of 100 annotated images by Karen C. Seto and Meredith Reba. Is it a collection of artistic images, you ask, or is it a collection of maps? Art… Read More ›
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The Guest List
Despite having multiple viewpoint characters (a practice I’m not usually fond of), Lucy Foley’s The Guest List is both absorbing and easy to read. It is definitely the sort of book where you should not read reviews ahead of time,… Read More ›
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Abigail: A better photo
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Welcome to your forever home, Abigail!
Five days ago, timid little Abigail met us at MSPCA/Angell and agreed to adopt us. From an all-time high of six cats to a low of one cat, we had now been completely catless for nearly three months at that… Read More ›
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Overboard
Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski series has been going on forever — or so it seems. Actually it’s been 43 years now, but that’s practically forever in the publishing world. After reading the earliest dozen or two, I started to get… Read More ›
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A close-up view of Neighborhood #3, The ’Burbs
This month’s exploration of my model railroad layout is our third look at an individual neighborhood of Rose City. Back in the 1940s some developers noticed that there was a lot of still undeveloped property just north of PowerTown. Clearly… Read More ›
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Men can say no.
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Polostan
Of course I knew that I had to read Polostan as soon as I saw that the author was Neal Stephenson. His 19 previously published novels are all IMHO first-rate — ranging from 1984’s The Big U to 2021’s Termination… Read More ›
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Dylan
Like Bob Dylan himself, the new biopic A Complete Unknown has generated a lot of controversy. So I had to go see it yesterday, sitting in a comfy seat in a Dorchester movie theatre surrounded by hundreds of Dylan fans…. Read More ›
Featured Categories
Books ›
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The Odyssey (my failed attempt to see the movie)
August 12, 2026
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Murder off the Page
August 6, 2026
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With Prejudice
July 31, 2026
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Happy birthday (or maybe not), Messrs. Strunk and White!
July 30, 2026
Dorchester/Boston ›
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Bred
August 21, 2026
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Morning glories
August 13, 2026
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Good stuff cheap! The story of Jerry Ellis and Building #19
August 4, 2026
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Hydrangeas
July 27, 2026
Food & Restaurants ›
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How was last night at Tavolo different from all other nights?
May 7, 2026
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Dot Block Diner
April 21, 2026
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Happy spring! Happy buck-a-shuck!
March 20, 2026
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A special brunch at Tavolo
March 1, 2026
Life ›
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Fireworks
July 3, 2026
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Christina II
July 1, 2026
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Speaking of Les Miz…
June 27, 2026
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The Tartan Army: the day Scottish FIFA fans drank Boston dry
June 26, 2026
Linguistics ›
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What, I hear you ask, is an inverted oloid? (For that matter what is a plain vanilla oloid?)
August 14, 2026
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Why don’t Native Americans want to be called Native Americans?
July 28, 2026
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Unabridged
June 28, 2026
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Judeo-Arabic
May 24, 2026
Math ›
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Very sad news
October 17, 2025
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The metric system has gotten an update!
July 14, 2025
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As Tom Lehrer says, that’s mathematics!
July 9, 2025
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The Plinko Bounce
June 28, 2025
Model Railroading ›
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Only the best…
July 22, 2026
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Where are the women?
April 13, 2026
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Famous railway modellers
March 16, 2026
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“So you want a model railroad” — a well-known… okay… not-so-well-known Warner Bros. film from 1955
November 22, 2025
Movies & (occasionally) TV ›
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Picard: Welcome to the Sticks!
March 6, 2026
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The new Springsteen bio-pic
November 11, 2025
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Breaking Silence: a truly outstanding documentary!
July 29, 2025
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The Social Network
May 11, 2025
Teaching & Learning ›
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Who’s better at understanding written English — you or some random teen in South Korea?
January 22, 2026
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Triple threat: Carl Sagan, critical thinking, and an exam
October 13, 2025
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Truly these are oldies but goodies — songs from… wait for it… two millennia ago!
September 28, 2025
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Measles and polio down in the schoolyard
September 8, 2025
Technology ›
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Claude vs. ChatGPT
May 28, 2026
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Will the real John McWhorter please stand up? (No, no, that’s not the real one; that’s the AI John McWhorter!)
January 18, 2026
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Not the other Wes Moore
June 22, 2025
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Bye bye Mark Z.
February 6, 2025
Travel ›
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Interesting address
April 8, 2026
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Taunton vs. Colmar?
March 4, 2026
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Written in the South Pacific during World War II
February 17, 2025
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Globle
February 15, 2023
Weston ›
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A former student’s PhD defense
August 15, 2025
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“Dear parents of math geniuses…,” writes Tanya Khovanova
December 6, 2022
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How can girls succeed at the highest level of high-school debate?
November 20, 2022
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Reading Latin and Ancient Greek for fun and profit. For what? Fun? Yes, fun. Really. And the profit was purely intellectual, not financial.
October 19, 2022
