Progress & impediments: Why I’m leaving Facebook
Back on January 1, I posted my New Year’s Resolutions, here. Sorry to report less than satisfactory progress on all but one goal, learning German. Thanks to the exercises on DuoLingo, that’s going quite well. I can now read texts much more easily, though still with frequent recourse to the dictionary. However, my main purpose … read more »
2024: Return of the Man Who Can
The Man Who Can is the most potent and most pragmatic of my alter-egos, the one who solves problems and gets things done, but he has been unavailable, hors de combat for much of this past year. Two overseas trips — to the U.S. in June and Italy in October — interrupted my, and his, work. … read more »
You and I, our own fictional creations
The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human, and How to Tell Them Better by Will Storr My rating: 5 of 5 stars An event “may flash before our eyes, or brush our skin, or make our ear drums vibrate, but we give it no importance until or unless we see its relevance to … read more »
Rabble, a review en français
I am truly delighted — ravi serait le mot juste— by this review of Rabble! by Michèle Audin, and especially by her call for the book to be translated into French. Her critique litteraire has just arrived as an early Three Kings Day gift. Un mot sur Michèle Audin : Besides being a distinguished mathematician, … read more »
Projects for the new year
This coming June will be the 60th anniversary of my Harvard graduating class. There, at our reunion in Cambridge MA, Susana and I hope to see f2f and embrace classmates that I have seen recently only by Zoom, including in our weekly gatherings hosted and organized by classmate Kent Garrett, author of a very good … read more »