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How the Philosophy of Time Is Distinct in Different Cultures

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Time is a Plural Life is full of phenomena that we find difficult to wrap our minds around. Time is one of them. It is an idea derived from our experience of planetary motions and the circadian rhythm, but philosophy kept asking whether time is an imaginary construct or reality.  Time is indeed real for us. It brackets our life on this planet; it is real because it is one of the variables against which science measures the parameters of our universe, and we measure life and death. Yet, time is a fleeting concept because how we experience it has a strong subjective element.  Aren't there different versions of the experience of time for each of us? Many personal versions of time. Time flies if we are into something enjoyable, and if we are bored, time lags on. As we age, the long time we have lived seems brief and gone in the blink of an eye. The truth is that in the cultural history of humans, different people experienced and perceived time differently. Aymaras Who walked from ...
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The Yakshi of Kerala, the Spirit of a Wronged Woman

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  ( Statue of Yakshi by renowned sculptor Kanayi Kunjiraman, Malampuzha Dam, Kerala; image source: Ranjithsiji, Wikipedia) Kerala's White-Sari-clad Vampire  Her story is terror-evoking and awe-inspiring. She is culturally tethered to the gender politics of the society in which she exists as a myth and lore. The girls in a small region in south India (the Malayalam-speaking population) grew up listening to the terrifying Yakshi stories and assimilated from them, an odd feeling of empowerment. The Yakshis in these stories are the spirits of women wronged and killed by men. A Yakshi kills men and completes her revenge, not only on the individual who wronged her but the whole bunch of ‘mankind’. Her feet do not touch the earth when she walks. This is how you can know her for what she is. She will wait for her victims in twilight, dawns and dusks, on the edges of dark nights. She has long black hair that almost reaches her feet. Her lips are full and crimson, her eyelashes thick an...
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How Far Away Is a Cancer Vaccine?

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(image source: Pixabay) A cancer vaccine has always remained elusive for medicine and science. Is this situation changing? Is hope rising over the horizon? The Ovarian Cancer Vaccine According to the latest news , Oxford University scientists have developed a vaccine for ovarian cancer . This vaccine, OvarianVax, when available for use, will be able to teach the immune cells in our body to detect and attack ovarian cancer cells in the early stages of this disease. Prof. Ahmed Ahmed is the leading scientist behind this research.  The trial for this vaccine has started. The importance of this development is that when it is ready, this vaccine might wipe out ovarian cancer. Yet, this vaccine is still years away.  Why Is a Cancer Vaccine Still a Mirage? What is Happening on the Research Front? Catherine J Wu, a cancer scientist, was awarded the prestigious Sjöberg Prize for her contribution to cancer research  in February 2024 . She is a professor of medicine at Harvard...
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Paraman, The Street Violinist: Memory of a Man

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  (The folk violin of Pulluvas; image source:  Kannanshanmugam,shanmugamstudio, Kollam , Wikipedia) The Village Visitors  Those were times when things were less complex than they now are. We lived in a bucolic countryside where everyone knew everyone else. The only outsiders who frequented the place were visiting relatives, a bunch of regularly appearing street vendors, the postman, the Gurkha (a man from Nepal who would be paid Rs 10 per month by each family for keeping vigil in the village during nights*), and our very own exclusive beggars. We knew them as they made rounds on almost expected dates and times. Paraman’s Song Paraman, the street violinist, had positioned himself between an artist and a beggar. In our culture, the members of the Pulluva community, who made exquisite music using two delightful musical instruments- a single-string local fiddle and a round mud pot with a tight wire wound across it- were the official local musicians. They would come to sing in...
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Travel Plan: A Trip to Understand The Bermuda Triangle

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  (Image source: grammidistoria.wordpress.com Hi Traveler,  You are a fan of mystery, the inexplicable, and you would love to go probing the geographies, home to such mysteries. For someone like you, the Bermuda Triangle is now not an intangible puzzle. You can visit this region of the sea by entering it from three land masses, which form the three endpoints to the triangle.  The Bermuda Triangle: Basic History and Facts An imaginary triangle drawn connecting Florida, the Bermuda Islands, and Puerto Rico in the North Atlantic Ocean will give you the Bermuda Triangle. The area of this sea stretch is around 1.3 to 3.9 million square kilometres. The exact boundaries of the triangle are not demarcated. Different people at different times set vague definitions of the area under the triangle.    In December 1945, five Navy training aeroplanes navigating the sky above the Bermuda Triangle in the Atlantic Ocean, with 14 men on board, disappeared. A rescue mission was la...
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