by david allan van nostrand | Oct 31, 2022 | Human Behavior, The world around us
Pheidippides was a courier employed by the Athenian army in the days when important messages were sent by runner, sometimes over very long distances that took days to deliver, sort of like Pony Express riders without the horses. The Athenian army planned on fighting...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 24, 2022 | The Wayback Machine, The world around us, Trivia
Eric Arthur Blair was born the son of an opium agent in Bengal, India in 1903 and brought up in an atmosphere of impoverished snobbery, what he called lower-upper-middle class. As a child he was known for his intellectual brilliance and for being withdrawn, morose and...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 17, 2022 | Human Behavior, Social archaelogy, Unintended Consequences
On October 19, 1856, someone at the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall in London falsely shouted “Fire!” and in the panicked rush to escape, seven were killed. On December 5, 1876, a fire broke out in The Brooklyn Theater. Employees didn’t want to panic people by...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 10, 2022 | How to tell good research from bad, Human Behavior, Organizational Behavior, Social archaelogy
A pecking order is a social hierarchy. With domestic fowl, it is the social hierarchy of a flock of chickens in which the dominant birds peck the subordinate birds who submit to it as a signal of acceptance of the difference between their social standings. All up and...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 3, 2022 | Americana, Social archaelogy, The 1960s, The Wayback Machine
Hollywood Squares was a popular game show on television in the 1960s, patterned on the pencil and paper game of tic-tac-toe. The studio set had nine small cubicles, stacked three high and three wide. Within each open-faced square sat a celebrity. The two contestants,...
