by david allan van nostrand | Apr 1, 2024 | Items in the News, Social archaelogy, The world around us
NOTICE: This is not an April Fooler. If you’d like to read some classic April Fool nonsense, click here for the March 32nd issue from a few years back. Fee, Fie, Faux, Fum A few days ago, I read an article called Nice Watch — Love the Dent! Why Stylish Guys Want...
by david allan van nostrand | Nov 6, 2023 | Americana, Anthropology, Human Behavior, Social archaelogy
Who Were the Beats? So many people were killed in World War II that no one knows the exact number. Officials estimated that 50 million military and civilian deaths were directly caused by the war and another 20 million died as a result of famine and war-related...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 16, 2023 | Human Behavior, Social archaelogy, Sociology
When you’re undecided about something, you are not literally “up in the air.” When you’re “over the moon,” you’re still on earth, and when something hits you like “a ton of bricks,” you’ve not been hit by a single brick, much less 2,000 pounds...
by david allan van nostrand | Sep 4, 2023 | Americana, Social archaelogy, The Wayback Machine
In 1920, Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company broadcast the live returns of the presidential race between Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox, two-term governor and two-term U.S. Congressman from Ohio. Cox’s running mate was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 21, 2023 | Human Behavior, Marketing, Social archaelogy, The world around us
The Guardian tells of a visiting British minister who presented a pocket watch to a Taiwanese official. When asked to comment on the gift, the official said he might sell it to a scrap dealer for some money. The stunned minister sniffed that in the UK a watch is...
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...
