by david allan van nostrand | Nov 21, 2022 | Americana, Psychology
Autumn harvests have been celebrated with feasts since before people started telling time. Historians tell us the harvest feast the Americans observe today began in Virginia 400 years ago when English Protestant settlers decided the day of their arrival in the New...
by david allan van nostrand | Apr 11, 2022 | Human Behavior, Misinformation traps, Psychology
Devotees of rump reading purport to find deeper meaning in the lines, crevices, dimples, warts, and moles of people’s buttocks. Rump reading was big in ancient Babylon, where seekers of rectal wisdom (one wonders who they were) covered their hindquarters with liquid...
by david allan van nostrand | Apr 4, 2022 | Items in the News, Point of view, Psychology
Right now, even as you read this, you are missing the vast majority of what is happening around you. You are missing the events unfolding in your body, in the distance, and right in front of you. You are ignoring an unthinkably large amount of information that...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 30, 2021 | Human Behavior, Items in the News, Psychology
Lying and the ability to detect lies are related skills. Knowing when someone is lying comes in very handy in poker games when an opponent is trying to steal the pot by bluffing. Did you know good bluffers are better than lousy bluffers at detecting when someone is...
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 | Jun 7, 2021 | Items in the News, Psychology
In 800 BC, near a town named Delphi, a Greek shepherd saw his herd of goats behaving strangely near a deep crack in the ground where steamy vapors were rising from the hole. When he came to take a closer look, he inhaled the fumes and began to have strange visions of...
