the most important skill you will ever learn as a human is pattern-recognition. it’s what you’ll spend your entire life doing whether it’s speaking and hearing language or doing academic tasks or sorting objects in your kitchen. everything we do as humans is based on the application of pattern-recognition. it’s… Read More »in search of patterns

but you might want one. what’s the difference between a western and japanese chisel? my facetious answer is usually that a japanese chisel cuts on the pull-stroke but, of course, you’d be an idiot if you took that seriously. a japanese chisel is the same as a western chisel in… Read More »you don’t need a japanese chisel

french pronunciation is a mystery to those outside the language. it looks a little like english, a lot like spanish, more like italian and sounds like — well, it sounds like nothing else. french might be the most distinct of linguistic sound groups of the modern languages. you can identify… Read More »say it in french

i have had many questions from students and friends about grad school. there’s a massive amount of writing about student experiences in doctoral programs (almost all horrendous and that’s definitely what i could add to the mix, though i’m not sure there’s much point as i think it’s mostly already… Read More »in search of mastery

religion is a twitchy topic. it’s easy to judge people who are religious for being stupid but it’s a very dangerous place to go — many religious people are stupid but many non-religious people are stupid and there are vastly-intelligent people on both sides of the equation. but there are… Read More »compounding error with literalism

english (like most languages written with the arcane and outdated latin alphabet) has a serious problem. an abundance of letters. that’s not the worst part, though. yes, there are various letters representing the same sound (“to” sounds like “two” and “c” and “k” are realistically interchangeable, for example). but that’s… Read More »shh. the letters are sleeping.