Stories By Van

In Norse mythology, Jörmungandr, pronounced [your-mun-gan-der], meaning "huge monster"), also known as the Midgard (World) Serpent, is a sea serpent, the middle child of the giantess Angrboða and Loki. According to the Prose Edda, Odin took Loki's three children by Angrboða—the wolf Fenrir, the death goddess Hel, and Jörmungandr—and tossed Jörmungandr into the great ocean that encircles Midgard. The serpent grew so large that it was able to surround the earth and grasp its own tail. As a result, it received the name of the Midgard Serpent or World Serpent. When it releases its tail, Ragnarök will begin. Jörmungandr's arch-enemy is the thunder-god, Thor. It is an example of an ouroboros. Stories There are three preserved myths detailing Thor's encounters with Jörmungandr: Lifting the Cat In one, Thor encounters the giant king Útgarða-Loki and has to perform deeds for him, one of which was to lift the serpent in the form of a colossal cat, disguised...

People fear failure because nobody wants to be judged. People fear of being judged by society — now who is this society? Society is composed of people like you and me; so do we fear each other? The answer is yes! We all crave for acceptance from our friends, family, colleagues, and society at large. Earlier, getting acceptance was more important rather than being true to yourself, but this is changing. Society is changing, you and I are changing, we are accepting each other the way we are. People no longer feel fear — fear of being judged, being rejected. We all are slowly accepting the flaws in each other, accepting that there is no such thing as black and white, right and wrong, that there are multiple shades and reasons. A woman who leaves her children her abusive husband is not being judged as a selfish woman — people no longer see things through one perspective. Living your life, the way you want and how you want has become more important than what others want from you or...

Sometimes you aren’t who you used to be anymore. It can be a physical change, you take a look in a mirror and see a layer of fat that wasn’t there before. You start to wonder: What’s happened to me? Have I let myself go? How did this creep up? You get a leaden feeling in your stomach. You start to admonish yourself for getting lazy. Letting life get in the way. Indulging too many times in those croissants you love so much… but the change isn’t only cosmetic. It is also a change in values or interests. You take a look at your clothes. Once upon a time, you used to pride yourself on being fashionable. Now? Although you still appreciate fashion and personal style, putting together a unique outfit that feels “just right” is the last thing on your mind. There are more vital things to worry about. The change is also subtler. Something you can’t even put your finger on, something that you can’t even name yourself. That’s the scariest change. You feel it like a mist hanging over you. ...

Depression isn’t the saddest person in the room. Quite contrary actually, depression sometimes is the person you would have never expected. Along with trying to convince you they’re happy, they’re trying to convince themselves. Depression isn’t that melancholy person, you don’t want to be around. Oftentimes, it’s the person everyone loves because of the light they bring to a room is so bright but that’s only because they know darkness. Depression isn’t the person screaming out for help. It’s the silent person dealing with battles they’re still trying to understand themselves. Depression is doing everything you can to hide it. Because there’s nothing glorified about it. There’s nothing beautiful about a bad night as you fall to your knees, in a silent scream, that no one hears because you’re alone and you need to be until you get through it. It’s the sleepless nights as you lay awake at 2 am staring at the ceiling. It’s that time of year, you just get a little bit sadder fo...

In the early days of gene editing, biologists had a molecular tool kit that was somewhat akin to a printing press. Which is to say, altering DNA was a messy, labor-intensive process of loading genes onto viruses bound for target cells. It involved more than a fair amount of finger-crossing. Today, scientists have the genetic equivalent of Microsoft Word, and they are beginning to edit DNA almost as easily as software engineers modify code. The precipitating event? Call it the Great Crispr Quake of 2012. If you’re asking, “what’s Crispr?” the short answer is that it’s a revolutionary new class of molecular tools that scientists can use to precisely target and cut any kind of genetic material. Crispr systems are the fastest, easiest, and cheapest methods scientists have ever had to manipulate the code of life in any organism on Earth, humans included. The long answer is that Crispr stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Palindromic Repeats. Crispr systems consist of a p...

Was Abraham Lincoln a gay American? The subject of the 16th president's sexuality has been debated among scholars for years. They cite his troubled marriage to Mary Todd and his youthful friendship with Joshua Speed, who shared his bed for four years. Now, in a new book, C.A. Tripp also asserts that Lincoln had a homosexual relationship with the captain of his bodyguards, David V. Derickson, who shared his bed whenever Mary Todd was away. In "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," to be published next month by Free Press, Mr. Tripp, a psychologist, influential gay writer and former sex researcher for Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, tries to resolve the issue of Lincoln's sexuality once and for all. The author, who died in 2003, two weeks after finishing the book, subjected almost every word ever written by and about Lincoln to minute analysis. His conclusion is that America's greatest president, the beacon of the Republican Party, was a gay man. But his b...

Death is inevitable, yet the loss of a close friend or family member always showers us with a range of emotions. One day we might desperately try to avoid the pain, anxiety and feelings of helplessness we feel when a loved one dies. Other days, we feel like life has returned to normal—at least until we realize that our life has changed irrevocably. Despite the gamut of emotions we feel, grieving for a loved one helps us cope and heal. The intense, heart-breaking anguish indicates that a deep connection has been severed. Without a doubt, grieving is painful. But it is also necessary. Going forward doesn’t mean forgetting about the loved one who died. Enjoying life again doesn’t imply that the person is no longer missed. Piecing together your shattered emotions doesn’t mean you, somehow, betray a friend or family member. It simply means that your grief has run its course. While no single pathway through grief exists, people do share common responses. In 1969, psychi...