David Altshuler, M.S.
(305) 978-8917 | [email protected]

Author: David

But Did You Die?

Warning: there is a four-letter word that many find offensive in the punchline of this vignette. If you would prefer not to be exposed to the adjectival form of this term that can be triggering, now would be a good time to stop reading. That said, I want to put

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Final Answer

President James Garfield was standing on a train platform in Baltimore when Charles Guiteau, in Dr. Howard Markel’s delightful phrase, “broke through the crowd and entered the history books” shooting the 20th president twice. Medicine in 1881 was nothing to write home about. Doctors poked and prodded their unwashed, unsterilized

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Play it, Sam

“Go ahead and shoot, you’d be doing me a favor” quips Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine in Warner Brother’s classic Casablanca. Ingrid Bergman—spoiler alert, she was married, not widowed, when they were dating in those sparkling flashback scenes—has blown back into his life. Rick is inconsolable, if a tad self-absorbed.

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The Write Stuff

Before you judge, walk a mile in the other person’s moccasins. Best case, you gain some perspective, understand where they’re coming from, what they’re feeling, why they think and act the way they do. Worst case, you’re 5280 feet away and you have a nice pair of moccasins. So consider

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You May Find Your Son Behind the Wheel of a Large Automobile

A chicken, it is frequently remarked, is an egg’s way of making another egg. Or something like that. Assigning causality, that one thing is directly responsible for another thing, is tougher than just noting correlation, that two things frequently go together. That my favorite sports teams seem to lose an

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Trivial?

I don’t believe that I have ever abused the power, such as it is, of these columns by endorsing a product or service. I didn’t have time this week to reread all 680 of these previous essays to ensure that I have never suggested that my gentle readers buy anything

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Hoopla

The SAT is changing. No more paper and pencil tests, all digital from here on out. And there will be fewer questions so the test won’t take as long. More time will be allowed for each response because recent research suggests that slower thinkers are deeper thinkers. The folks in

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Sweetheart, Get Me Rewrite!

At the risk of oversharing, I’m going to come right out and admit that I was completely staggeringly incapable of penning an undergraduate admissions essay 50 years ago. As a high school senior, I stared at a blank piece of paper hour after hour. The paper stared back. The paper

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Volcano

To ensure a healthy harvest, the townspeople are careful to get the sacrifice exactly right. Apparently there were imperfections last year: the dress was not sewn properly, the sandals were open-toed. As a proximate result, the rains came late. This year the elders are determined not to make the same

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Cigarettes

My father’s father was killed when my dad was not quite six years old. In 1929. My dad started smoking cigarettes when he was stationed in Texas during the war. By the time I was born in 1956 my dad was up to three packs a day. My dad would

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