by david allan van nostrand | May 31, 2021 | Human Behavior, Language, Misinformation traps, Wordplay
Elegant and fashionable people from high social classes are called posh, which was Victoria Beckham’s choice (when she was one of the Spice Girls). Posh is also the name of a pedigreed cow that sold at auction for a record-setting £262,000. The owner said the name...
by david allan van nostrand | May 24, 2021 | Items in the News, Planning
The first cliques most of us encountered were in school, where the cool kids hung around in one bunch, the jocks in another, and so on. I pronounced it “clicks” for years and then someone told me it’s “cleeks.” Whichever way you say it, cliques are small groups that...
by david allan van nostrand | May 17, 2021 | Items in the News
Vowing I wouldn’t quit until I was done, I locked myself in the house and didn’t come out for two weeks. If I wasn’t sleeping, I was writing nonstop until I had finished what I was willing to call my best draft of a graduate thesis on job...
by david allan van nostrand | May 10, 2021 | Anthropology, Items in the News, The world around us
Hundreds of car companies have gone out of business, most in the earliest days of automobiles Did you know the beer company Anheuser-Busch once built a car? Or that a company named Apple Automobile built a car in 1917? Alcoa, the aluminum company built a car, as did...
by david allan van nostrand | May 3, 2021 | How to tell good research from bad, Teaching, Using Information
Lake Wobegone is the fictitious central Minnesota town “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” It was the setting of a long-running radio variety show, several novels, and a feature film. The radio show A...
