by david allan van nostrand | Jan 29, 2024 | critical thinking, Human Behavior, Psychology
The concept of intelligence describes cognition that results in an ability to function in the world, adapt, and achieve goals. Some say human intelligence is the skilled use of knowledge and reason. Others define it as the ability to learn from experience and use that...
by david allan van nostrand | Jan 22, 2024 | Human Behavior, Language, The Wayback Machine
What Does It Mean to Suffer Fools Gladly? In the early 13th Century, a fool was a silly, stupid, and ignorant person. The word came down the linguistic ladder from the French word for madman, insane, and harebrained idiot. Today a fool is someone deficient in...
by david allan van nostrand | Jan 16, 2024 | Americana, The world around us
Who Invented the Parking Meter? Dozens of small mom-and-pop stores filled every block in downtown commercial and business districts in the 1920s, when few people had cars and the suburbs hadn’t been invented yet. There were few cars on the road back then because they...
by david allan van nostrand | Jan 8, 2024 | Human Behavior, Psychology, Strategy
What Are Defense Mechanisms? People who are disturbed by anxious thoughts and feelings act unconsciously to protect themselves from anything they don’t want to think about or deal with. Freud called all defense mechanisms windows to the subconscious. Self-deception...
by david allan van nostrand | Jan 1, 2024 | Anthropology, Human Behavior, The Wayback Machine
For centuries, people hollowed out animal horns and cut off the pointy ends. They would blow into the small end to make sounds that came out the big end. The sound traveled farther than human voices and so was used to communicate over longer distances. This was of...
