Amy’s senior year schedule is as follows: AP Calculus BC; AP English Literature; AP Chemistry; AP Government and Economics; Spanish IV; and Yearbook, a publication of which she is the editor. Her scores on the SAT and the ACT are in the 90th percentile. She is active and involved in
Pre-scientific societies were said to make causal inferences from correlations. Which led to any number of major oopsies: I swung a dead cat around my head three times at midnight. Look at this bountiful harvest. A classic blunder: Post hoc ergo propter hoc–after this, therefore because of this. Timeless examples
Our handsome protagonist appears to be in desperate straits. The emissary of a rival gang has smashed his way into the office. (Burglar alarms are not yet a thing during prohibition.) The intruder is accompanied by half a dozen armed thugs. The hero of the show is—gasp!–on his own. The
“Why do we have to know this?” “How will this help us in life?” “Will this be on the test?” All teachers endure these questions. All teachers hate these questions. Teachers have a variety of ineffectual responses–possibly because they are blinded by disgust and hatred. Some rejoinders are forceful: You must
A young adult I know recently completed his DPT, Doctor of Physical Therapy. As a result of his degree, he is now inundated with a repeated query. Everyone wants to stay healthy. Everyone is concerned with getting infected. So everyone asks the same question: what is the best exercise? Is
“You never know” suggest the strategists tasked with separating you from your dollar. Those designing lottery adverts are compensated by their success. “You never know” is an enticing campaign. The implication—that you might win a million dollars and be able to significantly pay down your credit card debt—is clear. You
High school juniors are currently struggling with college application essays. Nobody enjoys writing to begin with. If anybody did enjoy writing, that person would not be an adolescent effervescing over the crafting of a personal statements for admissions and in the extraordinarily unlikely eventuality that anybody enjoyed writing personal statements,
Once upon a gentler time before “Kill the Ref!” became the norm, parents used to chat amicably on the sidelines while their little ones imitated hordes of lemmings on the soccer pitch. Adorable seven-year-olds would flock gleefully around a careening ball. Comfortably ensconced on lawn chairs, moms and dads would
In the mid 1950s, my grandparents bought a 700-square foot two-bedroom, one-bath, summer home in western North Carolina. They paid $5000. Their first visitor considered the shoddy construction, the 25-foot wide lot, the peeling paint, the obscure location hundreds of miles from Brooklyn and the rest of the known universe.
John Irving’s character, Garp, defined gradual school as “where you go to school and you gradually find out you don’t want to go to school anymore.“ I, to the contrary, loved graduate school, would still be there if I could. The coursework, professors, and colleagues were invariably awesome. What could
Copyright © David Altshuler 1980 – 2022 | Miami, FL • Charlotte, NC | (305) 978-8917 | [email protected]
