by david allan van nostrand | Aug 29, 2022 | Items in the News, Point of view, The world around us
Over coffee one day in the 1950s, a shop teacher heard a policeman say he wished there was a way to immobilize parking violators’ cars instead of just issuing citations that are often ignored. It could have been called the Frank Marugg boot, but was given the name of...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 22, 2022 | Items in the News, Unintended Consequences
A man wearing a silly little hat and a trench coat belted tightly around his waist enters a quaint old European mountain hotel where a clerk with bushy grey hair, eyebrows and mustache sits behind the desk puffing on a long-stemmed pipe. Near the clerk, a small furry...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 15, 2022 | Americana, The world around us, Unintended Consequences
Milk was touted for hundreds of years as good for kids’ teeth and bones, especially since Louie figured out how pasteurize milk. Back then there were no milk bottles. Vendors sold it by the dipperful. As the story goes, Dr. Henry Thatcher had an epiphany one day...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 8, 2022 | Human Behavior, Items in the News
What’s quick as a bunny, slow as a turtle, wise as an owl, sly as a fox, hungry as a wolf, free as a bird, slippery as an eel, clumsy as an ox, graceful as a swan, gentle as a lamb, silly as a goose, crazy as a loon, pig-headed, eagle-eyed, blind as a bat, stubborn as...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 1, 2022 | Fads, Human Behavior, The Wayback Machine
As P.G. Wodehouse once wrote, “What’s wrong with flies being in ointment, what harm do they do and who wants ointment anyway?” Perhaps he was unfamiliar with the following verse from the Book of Ecclesiastes: “Dead flies cause the apothecary’s ointment to send...
