Stories By Van

are among the most popular and enduring of the world's mythological creatures. Dragon tales are known in many cultures, from the Americas to Europe to India to China. Though they populate our books, films, and television shows, they have a long and rich history in many forms. It's not clear when or where stories of dragons first emerged, but the huge, flying serpents were described by the ancient Greeks and Sumerians. For much of history dragons were thought of as being like any other exotic animal: sometimes useful and protective, other times harmful and dangerous. That changed when Christianity spread across the world; dragons took on a decidedly sinister interpretation and came to represent Satan. In medieval times, most people who heard anything about dragons knew them from the Bible, and it's likely that most Christians at the time believed in the literal existence of dragons. After all, Leviathan — the massive monster described in detail in the Book of Job, ...

The other day, I saw a bumper sticker that made me sit up and take notice.  It said, "Ignorance is NOT bliss!"  At first, I loved it.  That's my kind of bumper sticker.  I am, after all, a knowledge-is-power, the-truth-will-set-you-free kind of guy.  But I stopped to think about it for awhile more.  Is ignorance really bliss?  Or not?  Never?  Or sometimes? So I did a little digging about the origin of the phrase and discovered Thomas Gray's famous poem.  There, he nostalgically reminisces about the bliss of youth with its carefree days of playfulness unmarred by the dark realities of adult life.  The poem reveals Gray's double perspective that not only is ignorance bliss but knowledge is misery. So what does psychoanalysis have to say about this apparent contrast?  It is a kind of splitting, I think, in which we remember what we once had as better than it was and we relate to what we do have as worse than it is.  I...

President Franklin Roosevelt famously asserted, "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself." I think he was right: Fear of fear probably causes more problems in our lives than fear itself. That claim needs a bit of explaining, I know. Fear has gotten a bad rap among most human beings. And it's not nearly as complicated as we try to make it. A simple and useful definition of fear is: An anxious feeling, caused by our anticipation of some imagined event or experience. Medical experts tell us that the anxious feeling we get when we're afraid is a standardized biological reaction. It's pretty much the same set of body signals, whether we're afraid of getting bitten by a dog, getting turned down for a date, or getting our taxes audited. Fear, like all other emotions, is basically information. It offers us knowledge and understanding—if we choose to accept it—of our psychobiological status. And there are only five basic fears, ou...

Imagine yourself in the following situation: You sign up for a psychology experiment, and on a specified date you and seven others whom you think are also participants arrive and are seated at a table in a small room. You don't know it at the time, but the others are actually associates of the experimenter, and their behavior has been carefully scripted. You're the only real participant. The experimenter arrives and tells you that the study in which you are about to participate concerns people's visual judgments. She places two cards before you. The card on the left contains one vertical line. The card on the right displays three lines of varying length. The experimenter asks all of you, one at a time, to choose which of the three lines on the right card matches the length of the line on the left card. The task is repeated several times with different cards. On some occasions, the other "participants" unanimously choose the wrong line. It is clear to you ...

Complex networks form the backbone of modern society: the Internet, the aviation network, the pattern of connections between individuals. And more complex examples are constantly emerging—the way genes interact in cells, how information flows through the banking system and the ecosystem. The more complex the system, the harder it is to control. Nevertheless, computer scientists, doctors, economists and the like exercise a modicum of control over many of these networks. And that raises an interesting question: is it possible to exercise the same kind of control over the most complex network we know of: the human brain? Today we get an answer of sorts, thanks to the work of John Medaglia at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and a few pals who assess the discipline that is emerging at the intersection between network neuroscience and network control theory. “A critical question … is how to modulate a human brain network to treat cognitive deficits or enhance mental a...

Late at night, on October 4 2002, a strange guest appeared on a cult American radio show. Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell had a reputation for exploring weird themes with fascinating guests, but few had ever sounded as excited as this one. Dallas Thompson was a former personal trainer who had spent his youth in Hawaii but now lived in Bakersfield, California. His life had changed forever following a terrible accident, five years earlier. He’d been driving along Highway 58 during heavy rain when his car had aquaplaned, spinning four times, only to plunge backwards down a 250ft drop. When Thompson was found, the roof of his blue Honda Accord had been crushed almost to the floor. The fireman who rescued him was amazed he hadn’t been decapitated. As he’d been sitting, helpless, in the wreck, Thompson had had a vivid near-death experience. He claimed to have seen a “light so bright that it burnt my eyes” and made him “legally blind” and to have had bizarre knowledge about the world p...

Death. It’s a concept that few wish to dwell on, but one that will eventually become a reality for each of us. For some of us, it comes rushing up sooner than we’d like, and suddenly the hands of the clock are moved up to five minutes till midnight. For others, the hands move at their normal pace, but our minds linger on what those final moments will hold. The truth is that we are all dying. Every last one of us. But by learning to accept death, by allowing the ticking clock to drive us to greater heights rather than to deeper despair, we can truly live. And in choosing to live in the face of death, we not only improve the time we have left, but also set an example for others so that they might do the same. Whether you've recently found your own clock unexpectedly moved forward or if you simply find your eventual end more discomforting than you'd like, there are lessons to learn here that will make the remainder of your life not mere a series of days, but beautifully a...