by david allan van nostrand | Jun 12, 2023 | Americana, Conformity, Social archaelogy, The Wayback Machine
In Reno, Nevada, just after the Civil War, a man named Jacob Davis made tents and wagon covers from heavy-duty canvas duck cloth. When the biggest silver deposit anyone had ever seen was discovered, thousands of miners came to work the Comstock Lode. These...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 2, 2021 | Conformity, Human Behavior, Psychology
Monkey see, monkey do is an American English idiom that says children learn by imitating what they see others do. Some etymologists trace the origin to an old African folk tale about a traveling hat salesman who took a nap under a tree. While he was sleeping, his...
by david allan van nostrand | Apr 5, 2021 | Conformity, Misinformation traps, Psychology
Goldilocks went for a walk in the forest. She came upon a house and knocked on the door. When no one answered, she walked right in and saw three bowls of porridge. Hungry, she tasted the porridge from the first bowl. “This porridge is too hot!” she said,...
by david allan van nostrand | Nov 30, 2020 | Conformity, Fads, Misinformation traps
When the clerk at my grocery store asked if I found everything I was looking for, I said yes and she said “Awesome!” In the time it took her to scan my dozen items and take my payment, she said awesome seven more times. I don’t know about you, but I believe awesome...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 1, 2020 | Conformity, Human Behavior, Psychology
Are you tired of hackneyed phrases? Threadbare, moth-eaten sayings that have been used so tediously for so long that they’ve lost whatever meaning they ever had? Me, too. Recently I heard someone say “It is what it is” for the third time in a single day....
by david allan van nostrand | Mar 11, 2019 | Conformity, Customer Satisfaction
Ask around and most people will tell you McDonald’s did. They are wrong. McDonald’s saw no reason to have a drive-thru (the spelling favored by the industry because it’s a shorter word and saves money on signs) until 1975, the same year Burger King decided...
