Stories By Van

Origin The centaurs were usually said to have been born of Ixion and Nephele (the cloud made in the image of Hera). Another version, however, makes them children of a certain Centaurus, who mated with the Magnesian mares. This Centaurus was either himself the son of Ixion and Nephele (inserting an additional generation) or of Apollo and Stilbe, daughter of the river god Peneus. In the later version of the story his twin brother was Lapithes, ancestor of the Lapiths, thus making the two warring peoples cousins. Centaurs were said to have inhabited the region of Magnesia and Mount Pelion in Thessaly, the Foloi oak forest in Elis, and the Malean peninsula in southern Laconia. Another tribe of centaurs was said to have lived on Cyprus. According to Nonnus, they were fathered by Zeus, who, in frustration after Aphrodite had eluded him, spilled his seed on the ground of that land. Unlike those of mainland Greece, the Cyprian centaurs were horned. There were also the Lamian ...

What is the purpose of art in a society? This is a question that seems impossible to answer; almost. When I think about this question, I don't think there is really one right  answer. Just a lot of opinions from different people. It does seem like a hard question, but there's a quote from one of my all-time favorite movies that goes like this: “Medicine, law, business, engineering: these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But, poetry, beauty, romance and love... these are what we stay alive for.” -Dead Poet's Society (Robin Williams) I think there's no simpler way to answer your question. Robin Williams has reduced one huge problem of justifying 'art and it's purpose' to people. Art makes everything tangible that one thinks is intangible, because those are mere figments of one's mind. I can ramble on for pages and still enough can't be said or written about ART. Let's take a small example here. Assume you or someone you c...

The law of social cycle is a social cycle theory developed by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar. It is based on the theory of human historical motivity based on "the ancient spiritual ideas of the Vedas". The theory was developed in the 1950s and expanded by Ravi Batra since the 1970s, Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah since the 1990s and others. This is an extremely interesting theory that I was talking to my cousin, Terry, about this morning (We're on a fringe kick this November and it's a great time). We were discussing society and where we might be headed, and I asked the question: "Do you think that we're destined as a society to go through cycles of building to the peak of civilization and then destroying ourselves, only to be rebuilt again?" I mean, the ancient Egyptians, they say, might've known things that we don't. They were a monumentally advanced civilization at the time, and then they destroyed themselves and the world moved on. Ancient G...

Our minds are full of mysteries that scientists have been trying to solve since they were known as philosophers. One of those mysteries is our memory. Because memories underlie so much of our rich life as humans our ability to learn, to tell stories, even to recognize each other it's unsettling to think that it all hinges on the mass of flesh and goo between our ears. So, the question of the day is: How does memory work? Memory is not my field of research and this response of course is very far from complete. But here are some thoughts which I hope you may find interesting. 1) There are different forms of memories and they are also encoded in the brain in very different manners. 2) For instance, working memory (like when you hold a few numbers or an address in your mind) is very different from long-term memory. One way in which working memory is stored is by keeping neural circuits that encode the remembered items active. This may be seen as the physiological analogue of...

Cai Lun (AD 50-121) Inventor of paper. Cai Lun (Ts’ai Lun) was born in Guiyang during the Eastern Han Dynasty. After serving as a court eunuch from AD 75, he was given several promotions under the rule of Emperor He of Han. In AD 89, he was promoted and given the title of Shang Fang Si, an office in charge of manufacturing instruments and weapons. He also became a Regular Palace Attendant. He was involved in palace intrigue as a supporter of Empress Dou, and in the death of her romantic rival, Consort Song. After the death of Empress Dou in AD 97, he became an associate of Consort Deng Sui. In A.D. 105, Cai invented the composition for paper along with the papermaking process – though he may have been credited with an invention of someone from a lower class. Tools and machinery of papermaking in modern times may be more complex, but they still employ the ancient technique which involves. Felted sheets of fibre suspended in water, draining of the water, and then drying into a thi...

"Without a universal belief in the new age religion, the success of the new world order will be impossible!" Hello everyone, and welcome to another Conspiracy Monday. I hope you're all looking to get paranoid for the next week. I found this theory while looking at a few different conspiracies during my morning coffee, and it hit me like a mind-blowing brick to the face. Not that I believe it fully, but as I always say, the "what-if" with conspiracy theories makes this one very interesting and frightening. I'm pretty sure this theory is completely discredited, but I still like it, so let's get into it. You read the title already so you know what this is: Project Blue Beam, and/or NASA's plan to falsify the second coming and start a global domination. Man-made aurora lights sent by NASA to "test" atmosphere The alleged purpose of Project Blue Beam is to bring about a global New Age religion, which is seen as a core requirement fo...

Although largely unconscious, the awareness of our finite existence, the fact that we all must die, has a profound impact on our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. The fear and emotional anguish associated with anticipating the end of life are so painful that we must protect ourselves. People find it difficult to tolerate facing their mortality directly, therefore, they repress the full realization of death and dying, and develop various defenses to keep the suppressed material at bay. As existential psychologists Victor Florian and Mario Mikulincer (2004) rightly observed, “The paralyzing terror produced by the awareness of one’s mortality leads to the denial of death awareness and the repression of death-related thoughts." Most people would say they rarely think about death. Nevertheless, on an unconscious level, cognizance of our eventual demise arouses feelings of death anxiety that influence significant aspects of our lives and motivate many of our actions.   Empirical s...