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...
by david allan van nostrand | Jan 17, 2022 | Human Behavior, Items in the News, Organizational Behavior, Unintended Consequences
Florida is one the busiest vacation destination states in the USA. Most come for the ocean, beaches and warm, sunny days. Many of the more than 130 million tourists who come to Florida are golfers. Combine these numbers with the many year-round residents who golf and...
by david allan van nostrand | Dec 13, 2021 | Items in the News, Unintended Consequences
One cold night in the desert an Arab was warm inside his one man tent, asleep. His camel gently poked his nose in and said it was so cold outside, perhaps his owner would let him get just his nose warm. Groggy and not seeing the harm in that, the Arab said okay...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 23, 2021 | Items in the News, Unintended Consequences
People in a hurry to solve a problem rarely take the time to look around the corner and down the road to consider what other things may be affected by their solutions. Take for example the installation of all those plexiglass shields we see in stores today. They were...
