by david allan van nostrand | Oct 5, 2026 | Behind the curtain, Sociology, Teaching, The Wayback Machine
I’m an inveterate puzzle-solver with an abiding curiosity and a knack for explaining complicated subject matter simply. As a kid, I devoured everything math and science, geometry and geography, and imagined a career in engineering. Since I was 11, I spent my summers...
by david allan van nostrand | Mar 4, 2024 | Human Behavior, Point of view, Sociology
Reefer Madness was a deliberately false and misleading film made to influence parents’ thinking about the dangers of marijuana. As they watched the story, parents learned that pushers get high school kids hooked on marijuana, which makes the kids go insane...
by david allan van nostrand | Feb 5, 2024 | Human Behavior, Sociology, The world around us
Sociologist Thorsten Veblen, author of the book The Theory of the Leisure Class, coined the term conspicuous consumption to describe the action of going out of your way to spend more money on goods than they are worth. Conspicuous consumers spend money ostentatiously...
by david allan van nostrand | Nov 27, 2023 | critical thinking, Sociology
In 1998, I traveled across North and South America, Europe, and Asia conducting field tests with prototypes of what we now call tablet computers. The device was originally conceived as a browser-only gadget that operated wirelessly from a base station, much like a...
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 | Oct 2, 2023 | Human Behavior, Language, Sociology, The world around us
The scientific study of language is called linguistics. Sociolinguistics is the study of how people use language and how it changes over time. It examines all aspects of the interrelationship of language and society, how language varies among speakers, and the...
