Recent Posts - page 95

  • Invisible children

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    At school yesterday we had a special assembly sponsored by our local Amnesty International chapter. Here is the official description we were given ahead of time: At the assembly on March 3, Thursday, the non-profit organization Invisible Children will be… Read More ›

  • Math Team to State Meet

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    Congratulations to the Weston High School Math Team for moving on to post-season! We will be competing in the State Meet on April 1 because of our current standing, which is #3 in the state among medium-sized high schools: at… Read More ›

  • Making order out of chaos

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    Yesterday evening I delivered the first lecture in our new Beyond the Classroom series, described as follows: Weston High School is pleased to announce a new series of talks for the whole community led by our esteemed faculty members on a broad… Read More ›

  • Utopia in Four Movements

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    Saw an absolutely fascinating movie yesterday at the ICA: Utopia in Four Movements. This engaging film, which premiered last year at Sundance, is unusual in at least two ways. First, although it has music and voice-over like most documentaries, both… Read More ›

  • Yankee?

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    They really shouldn’t be displaying a frayed flag. And I think they would get more business if they changed their name, perhaps to Red Sox.

  • Lamb Jam

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    Mixed feelings about the American Lamb Jam held yesterday at the Charles Hotel: On the one hand, the food was excellent and plentiful. Seventeen restaurants, mostly from the Boston area, provided a huge variety of lamb preparations and side dishes,… Read More ›

  • Rail Power

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    It turned out to be a pleasure to read Steve Barry’s Rail Power, a gift from my sister-in-law. At first glance this looks like nothing more than a downsized coffee-table book, filled with lots of pictures and very little text. What… Read More ›

  • Making order out of chaos

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    BSP*: Come hear my talk on linguistics at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, February 1, at the Weston Public Library! Here’s a description: Making order out of chaos: A conversation about linguistics “Linguistics? What’s that?” This is the usual response I… Read More ›

  • Why Don’t Students Like School?

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    On the whole it was refreshing to read Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about How the Mind Works and What it Means for the Classroom. Despite the misleading title and overly long subtitle, Daniel Willingham’s… Read More ›

  • Diamonds for the Dead

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    Diamonds for the Dead, by Alan Orloff, is a reasonably compelling mystery with an interesting cast of characters, many of whom are Russian immigrants in northern Virginia. The characters and the place make the book. It’s fun to read — nothing… Read More ›

  • dBar/Chau Chow

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    It was a good way to end one year and start the next. For New Year’s Eve, Barbara and I went out to eat at dBar; then, for breakfast the next morning, we went to Chau Chow for dim sum…. Read More ›

  • Doodling in math class

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    And the award for coolest math video ever goes to…Vi Hart, for her Doodling in Math Class series. These videos are “subversive,” as one of my colleagues (approvingly) labels them. The common theme appears to be that math classes in… Read More ›

  • Negative attitudes

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    Quotation from one of my students: “I hate it when people don’t like negative attitudes.” (Context: He had been solving a problem at the board and made a negative remark, causing one of his classmates to say that he was… Read More ›

  • Themes in precalculus

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    A course ought to tell a story. If it doesn’t, it’s just a collection of topics, not a course. Honors Precalculus at Weston definitely does tell a story. I was thinking about the themes of that story today, and I… Read More ›

  • Model railroad exhibit at the National Heritage Museum

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    Barbara and I just came back from a model railroad exhibit at the National Heritage Museum, sponsored by the HUB Division of the National Model Railroad Association. This was the same exhibit that I missed three years ago because of… Read More ›

  • Missing Justice

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    Although it was published over six years ago, I’ve just gotten around to reading Missing Justice, a worthy early contribution to Alafair Burke’s Samantha Kincaid series. Actually, I didn’t read it; I listened to the audiobook version, narrated by Betty Bobbitt…. Read More ›

  • Names of polygons

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    Why do so many of my students use incorrect names for various polygons? They claim that they are merely recalling what they have been taught; maybe this is so, maybe not.  I suppose there are two major possibilities: They are… Read More ›

  • Yankees’ fans in Weston

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    In my geometry class today, some students caught sight of a file on my computer named Weston+Yankees.pdf, so of course they wanted to know what it was. It turned out to be a Boston Globe article from six and a… Read More ›

  • Hangman

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    I just finished listening to the audiobook version of Faye Kellerman’s latest novel, Hangman, beautifully narrated by Mitchell Greenberg. While I liked it a lot, I can understand why some people might not. In the first place, this book is… Read More ›

  • Chanukah is not the Jewish Christmas

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    Do read this excellent piece by Penelope Trunk. Although her focus is on Christmas in the workplace in the context of promoting diversity, her views have much wider applicability. Here are a couple of brief excerpts: It seems there should… Read More ›