A Special Place for Blog Lovers with a Touch of Science!

Have you heard about the term synesthesia? If you haven't, the time has come. From a neuropsychological trait to a literary device, it has a wide range of meanings. Generally, synaesthesia indicates an interplay between the senses, when the information registered by one of the senses simultaneously affects one or more of the others. For example, it is the situation when you had a visual impression of sound or a tactile experience of an odor.

 It is estimated that synaesthesia is a genetically linked trait that affects from 2 to 5 percent of the general population. Aside from synaesthetes, which are experiencing it involuntarily, many artists and poets have deliberately applied various practices to attain such psychological conditions. Thus they would achieve a certain creative outcome. However, we use such synaesthetic expressions in our everyday speech, such as "a cold eye," "a burning view," "a soft wind," "a hard voice," etc.

"Since one never can absolutely know another, as this would mean knowledge of every particular thought and feeling; since we must rather form a conception of a personal unity out of the fragments of another person in which alone he is accessible to us, the unity so formed necessarily depends upon that portion of the Other which our standpoint toward him permits us to see."

Could you imagine today's world without the word culture? What will you use instead of it? Civilization, habits, folklore, society, or way of life? Well, all of them are representing just a single connotation, an aspect of the above-mentioned word and its meaning. The thing is that each word has its specific perspective towards the world, and rarely, let's not say never, can be fully replaced. That statement is even more accurate when we consider such a widespread and convenient notion as culture. Following that idea, we could picture why broadening our vocabulary is so important.

1. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.

2. Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is the best.

3. If you're going through hell, keep going.

4. It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.
- Aristotle

To make good decisions, we need to have good information

The modern era of disinformation can be said to have begun in the 1980s. Operatives from the then Soviet Union concocted the lie that the AIDS epidemic sweeping the world at that time was created in a government laboratory in the US.

In a vast, worldwide operation involving field offices, agents and huge investments in newspapers, radio and even publishing a book, for years the KGB pushed the fake narrative to undermine the US and its allies. Known as Operation Infektion, the disinformation campaign was used to sow doubt and create social and political tensions all around the world.

Eventually, the story was repeated in 80 countries and translated into 30 languages until the Soviets admitted to making the whole thing up in 1987. Despite detailed admissions by senior Soviets, the rumour persists to this day, nearly 40 years later.