There is No Second Base
Well howdy. I hope this email finds you well,
I wrote about why teachers often don't care about research, even good research, first trying it out a twitter thread and then preserving it as a short note on my website. In the past I would have blogged this, but I sort of liked this two-stage process.
Last week my son asked what it would be like if baseball was played on a pentagon or hexagon. Not sure, but check out the Dominican stickball variation vitilla: "Vitilla has a home plate and two bases, primera (first base) and tercera (third base); there is no second base. The base path is a triangle, 50 feet on a side." It's played with little floaty caps instead of a ball, watch it played here.
"This is what Bill Gates has to find in an old coat to feel like I did with a $20 bill." You've heard me rave in these emails about Gary Gulman's standup, and I am delighted to report that he nails the math in this joke about Bill Gates' net worth.
Speaking of laughing, "All right, settle down, everyone. Take your seats. This is Advanced Mathematical Social Dynamics and Applied Psychology in Literary Politics 361" by Michelle Spies in McSweeney's. Also, Robert Criss' humor makes me actually grin like an idiot, here's his site.
Back to teaching. Here are some metaphors for school: "the school as a factory; the school as a hospital;
the school as a family; the school as a war zone." Cited in Larry Cuban's blogpost about the factory metaphor."As artist Laurel Nakadate has observed, being a parent is already very much like being an artist. It means always lugging things around, living in chaos, doing things that are mysterious or impossible or scary. As with art, children can drive you crazy all day, make you wish all this could go away. Then in a single second, at any point, you are redeemed with a moment of intense, transformative love." From Jerry Saltz in NY Mag, who also notes that 80% of artists he knows have found a scam that allows them to work just 3 days a week and make art the rest of the time.
Back to math: Steve Phelps is a geogebra wizard and has created a really delightful geometry activity I hope to use this year. Can you tell if these poorly drawn squares are actually squares?
Speaking of geometry: big fan of Catriona Agg's puzzles, big fan of this one, also this one, I bought her book and am doing a puzzle or two a day and it's tremendous fun.
"This is the oldest surviving synagogue building in NYC from 1849, originally for the German Jews...Then Angel Orensanz discovered it after it had been abandoned in the 1970s and turned it into an art center." I've been loving watching Tom Delgado's walking tours of NYC neighborhoods. His Lower East Side video is a good place to start. I've been hanging out on the LES a bit for work this summer and it's such a fascinating part of the city. Like so many American Jews, my family has a touch of history there. h/t to Freddie de Boer for the recommendation.
The new Titus Andronicus album is looking like it's going to be ambitious, punchy, and awesome.
See ya,
Michael
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