Stories By Van

In the winter of 1967, a no-nonsense Missouri farmer had a run-in with a horde or strange, scurrying, entities from outer space that one could only describe as resembling “green space penguins.” On the bone chilling morning of February 14, 1967, a 64-year old farmer by the name of Claude Edwards woke up to attend to his duties on a remote parcel of land near Tuscumbia, Missouri. As the sun rose low on the horizon, Edwards bundled up to face the bitter day, never imagining that he was about to have a face to face encounter with the unknown. Edwards was a simple, hardworking, salt of the Earth Midwesterner who had no time for any kind of foolishness regarding aliens, flying saucers or the like; so as his worn boots tramped across the icy, rock strewn slope that took him from his home to his barn, nothing could have shocked him more than to see what appeared to be a UFO sitting in one of his nearby fields. Edwards stated that before he saw this unusual object, the fi...

Around the world, alcohol is often seen as an acceptable beverage in moderation, and even accepted in excess. And while it’s a drug, it’s typically not referred to as such, since “drugs” seem to fall into a taboo category that have caused many of them to be outlawed altogether. But why do we put alcohol on a pedestal and others, like psychedelics, in such a dark place? A 2014 Vice article titled Why Are Psychedelics Illegal ? by Tao Lin put this interesting dichotomy into perspective by pointing out why psychedelics are illegal: “Terence McKenna viewed cannabis, psilocybin, DMT, LSD, and other psychedelics as ‘catalysts of intellectual dissent.’ He wrote in The Archaic Revival (1991) that his assumption about psychedelics had always been that they were illegal ‘not because it troubles anyone that you have visions’ but because ‘there is something about them that casts doubts on the validity of reality.’ This makes it difficult, McKenna observed, for societies—even democr...

If you made a list of the most gripping opening lines in literature, the following would surely make it into the top ten: As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. It is from a short story, “The Metamorphosis,” by Franz Kafka (1883–1924). It’s probable that Kafka did not much care whether we read this sentence or anything that he wrote. He instructed his friend and executor Max Brod to burn his literary remains “preferably unread” after his death—he died prematurely, aged forty, from tuberculosis. Brod, thankfully, defied the instruction. Kafka speaks to us despite Kafka. The human condition, for Kafka, is well beyond tragic or depressed. It is “absurd.” He believed that the whole human race was the product of one of “God’s bad days.” There is no “meaning” to make sense of our lives. Paradoxically that meaninglessness allows us to read into Kafka’s novels such as The Trial (which is about a legal ...

Why are movies so compelling? Why did I spend the weekend binge watching an entire season of a TV drama? Fortunately for me, I can prevent myself from getting hooked on many such programs (sometimes). Yet our addiction to the screen can be so seductive that it requires daily fixes. Over the past 100 years, filmmakers have discovered clever ways of capturing our attention and moving us through a dramatic plot. From a psychological standpoint, if we could uncover the attraction of movies, we may better understand basic features of human nature, such as motivational drive, spatial perception, imagination, and social engagement. The scientific path to our understanding of movies is best approached by considering how filmmakers guide us through a dramatic plot. In one study, psychologist Tim Smith recorded eye movement behavior while individuals watched clips of feature films, such Blade Runner and There Will Be Blood . Interestingly, as they watched a movie clip virtually all th...

Leonardo da Vinci survived a series of bubonic plagues that struck Milan between 1484 and 1485. These outbreaks, which killed some 50,000 people—a full third of the city’s population, inspired the Renaissance polymath to design concepts for a future city that he illuminated through a series of drawings and notations completed between 1487 and 1490 (that today can be found in Paris Manuscript B). At the heart of these concepts is da Vinci’s perspective on shifting the cityscapes of medieval cities like Milan—which were narrow, hard to navigate, dirty, crowded, and entirely conducive to the spread of disease—toward a more modern layout emphasizing aesthetics, cleanliness, and efficiency. To achieve this, da Vinci envisioned two signature features of a future city: a network of canals that would support both commerce and sanitation, and the vertical division of the city itself into as many as three different tiers, each for a different purpose. This vision was radical, and essen...

If you thought the “flat Earth” theory was the craziest conspiracy you’d hear about all year, think again. Because there’s a growing community of people convinced the Earth is hollow , with a race of superior “alien” humans, Vikings and Nazis living in paradise at the center. They even believe that flying saucers and UFOs come from within the interior Earth — sent from the highly evolved tribes to spy on us and prevent nuclear war. Spearheading the bizarre movement is Rodney Cluff, author of “World Top Secret: Our Earth IS Hollow.” He was so confident in the theory that he organized a 2007 voyage to the hollow Earth — with a plan to set off from Russia on an icebreaker ship to find an “opening” at the North Pole. The $20,000-per-head expedition was canceled, but this in no way dampened his enthusiasm for the theory that flies in the face of modern scientific thinking. He told SunOnline that the movement has exploded in popularity — with thousands subscribing to the idea of an...

Life is impermanent. After we come into this world, we may live for ten years, possibly a hundred years, or perhaps even longer. But we grow, and finally we have to die. People normally think of death as the end of everything. There is nothing great about it. But according to Buddhism, our life does not begin only at the moment of birth; and death too, does not imply the end of everything. If life was as simple as this, then this would encourage us to fritter away our time with no purpose. Actually, we existed before we were born, and we will have another life after death. We will be reborn in another place and the cycle of life and death will continue endlessly. The constant rebirth into this suffering world is a bigger problem than the simple death at the end of each life! Constant rebirth is difficult to solve and it becomes a critical issue when we recognize and wish to overcome it. The situation is analogous to a businessman who starts his business at the beginning of the...