by david allan van nostrand | Jul 21, 2025 | Human Behavior, The Wayback Machine, The world around us, Unintended Consequences
For most of recorded time in societies all over the world, goods were produced on a small scale by active hands that turned raw materials into finished products. Traditionally, these industries produced handicrafts using non-mechanized methods to knit, weave, and...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 14, 2023 | Human Behavior, Psychology, Unintended Consequences
How Does Punishment Affect Kids’ Behavior? Smile at babies and toddlers and they will almost always do more of what they’re doing, with even more enthusiasm. Frown deeply at them and they will either become hesitant, stop what they’re doing altogether, or even start...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 5, 2023 | Case Study, Human Behavior, Items in the News, Unintended Consequences
Bud Light put two marketing executives on leave after someone thought it was a good idea to appeal to a transgender crowd that makes up less than one percent of the population. That promotional campaign backfired with unintended consequences, cutting into sales (-25%)...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 17, 2022 | Human Behavior, Social archaelogy, Unintended Consequences
On October 19, 1856, someone at the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall in London falsely shouted “Fire!” and in the panicked rush to escape, seven were killed. On December 5, 1876, a fire broke out in The Brooklyn Theater. Employees didn’t want to panic people by...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 22, 2022 | Items in the News, Unintended Consequences
A man wearing a silly little hat and a trench coat belted tightly around his waist enters a quaint old European mountain hotel where a clerk with bushy grey hair, eyebrows and mustache sits behind the desk puffing on a long-stemmed pipe. Near the clerk, a small furry...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 15, 2022 | Americana, The world around us, Unintended Consequences
Milk was touted for hundreds of years as good for kids’ teeth and bones, especially since Louie figured out how pasteurize milk. Back then there were no milk bottles. Vendors sold it by the dipperful. As the story goes, Dr. Henry Thatcher had an epiphany one day...
