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 | Jul 31, 2023 | Human Behavior, The world around us
The sandwich story most of us know involves the time John Montagu, Lord of the Admiralty, was hungry but too busy to stop what he was doing to sit down for a meal. He sent a servant for a piece of meat to gnaw on and asked that it be put between two slices of bread so...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 17, 2023 | Case Study, Technology, The world around us
Cavemen sharpened the points of wooden poles and used them to kill game and fight their enemies. When pointed steel tips were added to the business end of these long poles, spears became lances. When lances were adopted by cavalrymen (and yes, they were men) on...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 3, 2023 | Case Study, Human Behavior, The world around us, Using Information
In 2016, I converted the more than 1,000 slides I had built for my classroom lectures at the University of the West Indies into articles that I posted on a new site, LetsTakeACloserLook.com. The subject of most of those early articles was an amalgam of what I call the...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 19, 2023 | Human Behavior, The world around us
New Yorker writer Maria Konnikova tells us how in 1923, neurologist Sir Francis Walshe noticed some interesting things involving yawns and motor reflexes. They led him to conclude that yawning was an act outside our conscious control, deep down where our lizard brains...
by david allan van nostrand | May 29, 2023 | Americana, The Wayback Machine, The world around us
At the peak of its popularity in the USA, the classic station wagon was a four-door sedan-style automobile with an interior passenger compartment that held nine people. Three rows of bench seats went all the way to the back of the car, as did the roof, so there was no...
