FYEAHLEARNING

Welcome to fyeahlearning! We aim to make learning and education as they should be: fun, interesting and accessible. Daily, weekly and monthly features about Literature, History, Science, Tech, News, Arts, Politics & Culture through quirky facts, a humorous lens and a holistic approach. This blog is run by a variety of contributors. Apply here.

[fyeahlearning-blog]

update

hey all!

sorry we’ve been a little quiet. personally, i’ve had some family things going on but i now have more time trickling in to research and post.

we’re still accepting contributors! if you’d like to join us, please apply here.

working on some new content for you guys. please feel free to suggest topics or features you want to see!

[fyeahlearning-blog]

For the next few science posts, I’m going to talk about some breakthroughs that use CRISPR-Cas9. So take this as an intro post to CRISPR technology.

The CRISPR-Cas9 system is a mechanism used by bacteria to defend against viral attack: an immune system, if you will. CRISPR is a short segment of DNA that matches a viral or plasmid DNA. The CRISPR locus is transcribed into a guide RNA. When the guide RNA binds to the complementary sequence, Cas9 (an endonuclease) is able to cut the DNA at that specific point and inactivate it.

Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier in 2012 described a simplified method of the CRISPR where a synthetic guide RNA could be used. In 2013, Feng Zhang and George Church first described that CRISPR-Cas9 can be used for genome editing in eukaryotic cells.

Essentially, instead of the guide RNA being used to target viral DNA, it could be used to target a gene (in a human!). If a scientist wants to study a loss of function gene in a cell or animal, they would design a guide RNA introduce it and Cas9 into a cell and the Cas9 would remove the gene. This is an extremely targeted way of editing genes. Before, scientists would have to use radiation and other mutagens and screen hundreds of millions of cells before getting the exact mutation they want. This system can also be used to correct gene mutations! So, infinite potential.

In the scientific community, there is basically a consensus that this technology will win a Nobel Prize. (The Nobel Prize can only be shared between a maximum of three people: no one knows what combination of Doudna, Charpentier, Zhang, and Church will get it.) But recently, the East Coast Team™ (Zhang and Church) won the patent over the West Coast Team™ (Doudna and Charpentier), so that’s a big win for them.

Links to original papers: x, x

[medievalpoc]

Do you know of any ancient cultures outside of Roman and Greek (and not European obviously) with myths about humans becoming immortal? I'm trying to do character building for a story about immortals in the modern world and I want to have as much diversity as possible (aka NOT just Romans and Greeks), but I haven't found much yet and also don't want to bend other cultures' myths to fit my ideas, either. Anyway, I think your blog is great and thanks for the help.

Immortality and the origin of death is one of the most popular topics of stories from around the world, actually. Often immortality is or can be conferred on average humans by eating or drinking a rare and special kind of food or beverage.

In the Islamic world you have the four immortals, including Khidir, the Green Man, who drank from the water of life and became immortal. Khidir’s tale shares some factors in common with the story of The Wandering Jew. You can read more about him and the other immortals here.

In China you have the Covert Eight Immortals:

Immortal Woman He (He Xiangu),

Royal Uncle Cao (Cao Guojiu),

Iron-Crutch Li (Tieguai Li),

Lan Caihe,

Lü Dongbin, leader;

Philosopher Han Xiang (Han Xiang Zi),

Elder Zhang Guo (Zhang Guo Lao), and

Han Zhongli (Zhongli Quan).

whose power can be transferred to tools an used to destroy evil ro bestow life; as well as the Eight Immortal Scholars of Huainan, or the Eight Gentlemen, who aren’t deified or made supernatural in any way, as their “immortality” is a metaphor but I think that’s a fun play for fiction. As well as Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who famously spent much of his life searching for an elixir of immortality.

There are a fair amount of Native American tales that deal with this topic, too. The Boy Who Would Be Immortal is a Hočąk story, with analogues in Macmac, Menominee, and Potawotami, with their theme of fasting. If you plan to include immortals that blend with supernatural tales, Wendigo are certainly immortal (humans become Wendigo by breaking taboos or committing terrible crimes), as are Skin Walkers in Navajo legend.

In Vietnam, Hang Nga and Hau Nghe are made immortal by eating a special type of grass. Separate from this, you have the Vietnamese Four Immortals: the giant boy Thánh Gióng, mountain god Tản Viên Sơn Thánh,Chử Đồng Tử the marsh boy, and the princess Liễu Hạnh.

In both Hindu and Buddhist tales, the elixir of immortality is guarded jealously by the gods and Garuda, the mythological bird person, plays a very important role in these kind of stories in Southeast Asia.

Another linking theme is the Tree of Life, which many cultures have in common, from Yggdrasil to the Mesoamerican World Tree.

There’s a Yoruban tale about Oba Koso or Shango, who was forced to commit suicide by political intrigue but did not hang; The demigod Maui has many stories his quests involving immortality for himself and others in Tonga, New Zealand, Samoa, and many other Pacific Islands.

Also keep in mind, even if you’re going to allow Greek or Roman immortals to dominate your story-not all Greek or Roman immortals were white people. A notable exception is Memnon, an African (Ethiopian and/or Sudanese) king, who was killed by Achilles and mourned so deeply by Eos, his mother, that Zeus was moved to grant him immortality.

I highly encourage anyone else to add their favorite stories about immortality to this post!!!

[socpuppet]

I’m not sure if someone’s already mentioned it, but there’s a Japanese folktale about how if you eat the flesh of a mermaid (person-fish, 人魚), you’ll become immortal.

There’s a brief passage about the original story here (which started showing up in the Edo/Tokugawa period [~1600-1868]) and a general entry from the Obakemono Project which now, sadly, can only be accessed by the WayBack Machine, but sports a very nice citations list. 

[fyeahlearning-blog]

According to Confucius beliefs, a woman who rules is as unnatural as a hen who crows like a rooster at dawn. Yet Wu Zetian (624-705 AD) lived to rule China during the Tang dynasty, a time regarded as a golden age of Chinese civilisation. She was the only female emperor to have reigned in China, going as far as to found her own dynasty, and she is arguably the most controversial monarch to grace China’s 5,000-year-long history.

Early Life

Wu Zetian, known simply by her patronymic name Wu, was born into a wealthy noble family. Unlike many girls of her time, she learnt how to read and write, and was encouraged in intellectual pursuits that were traditionally reserved for men.

As she grew, Wu came to be known for her wit, intelligence and beauty, and at the age of thirteen or fourteen, she was summoned to serve as an imperial concubine to Emperor Taizong. During her time with Emperor Taizong, she impressed him with her intellect, which earned her a promotion from laundry duty to become his secretary. She also attracted the attention of the Emperor’s son, Prince Li Zhi, and the two had a romantic affair whilst she was still attached as a concubine to Emperor Taizong.

On Emperor Taizong’s death, as she had failed to bear him any children, imperial practices dictated that Wu retreat into religious chastity and consign herself as a nun in Ganye Temple. However, she was saved from this fate when Prince Li Zhi – now Emperor Gaozong – summoned her back to court and made her the first of his concubines. She was aged twenty-seven.

Death of a Daughter

As Emperor Gaozong’s favourite, Wu inevitably made enemies of his wife, Lady Wang, and his former first concubine, Xiao Shufei. The two women were especially envious of the favour she received after bearing the Emperor two sons, and they reportedly set aside their own feud to conspire against her.

Wu next bore the Emperor a daughter. But soon after her birth, the baby princess was found smothered to death in her own crib. Wu accused Lady Wang and implicated Xiao Shufei for murdering her daughter, citing their jealousies as motive, and both women were swiftly found guilty of the charge. Divorced, barred from court, and forced to live in exile, Lady Wang and Xiao Shufei were allegedly killed as well on Wu’s order.

Chinese historians would later assert that it was Wu who smothered her own week-old daughter, then framed Lady Wang and Xiao Shufei to have them deposed, which allowed her to rise to the role of the Emperor’s wife. It’s an infamous and oft-repeated story painting Wu as a cold, ruthless, scheming and bloodthirsty villainess, but this version of affairs is widely-held now to be biased and unreliable if not outright false.

Whether Wu murdered her own daughter to dispose of her enemies, or Lady Wang did indeed kill the princess in a fit of jealousy, or if the baby had simply suffered a tragic cot death, is a truth lost forever to history.

Rise to Power

After his marriage to Wu, Emperor Gaozong suffered a series of strokes which left him blind and severely incapacitated. He had his court duties delegated to Wu, and she effectively ruled China on his behalf – ranking equal to him as the Empress of Heaven – until his death in 683 AD.

Wu’s first and second born sons never got to rule after their father’s death. Prince Li Hong had died under suspicious circumstances in 674 AD, and Prince Li Xian was found guilty of treason and demoted to the rank of commoner. It was Wu’s third born son, Emperor Zhongzhong, who succeeded the throne in 684 AD; but less than two months into his role, when he proved unmalleable to Wu’s commands, he was charged with treason as well and banished.

Emperor Ruizong, the youngest of Wu’s four sons, next took the throne. It is generally agreed that he had been a puppet to his mother who ruled behind him as Empress Dowager. But he too failed to live up to his mother’s expectations, and she forced him to abdicate in 690 AD.

With no immediate successors left, Wu was free to declare herself Empress Regnant, and she became the first and only woman to seat herself on the Dragon Throne as ruler of China. She was aged sixty-six.

What’s in a Name?

Having come into power, Wu fashioned herself a new name: Wu Zetian (Chinese characters: 武瞾). The second character of her name was one she invented, with Chinese radicals for the sun (日) on the left and the moon (月) on the right standing on equal footing over the character for sky (空) below. As the sun represented the male sex and the moon the female sex, by having both radicals in her name, Wu transgressively asserted an elimination of the sexes within herself as Emperor of China.

Achievements as a Benign Ruler

One of the first things Wu did as Emperor was to establish her own dynasty, changing the name of the state from Tang to Zhou, or Tianzhou meaning “granted by Heaven”.

To combat Confucian norms that was prejudiced against women, Wu commissioned scholars to write biographies of famous women, and elevated the status of her mother’s clan by giving her relatives high political positions. She also created history’s first professional civil service where everyone, regardless of background, was given the chance to compete for government positions by passing rigorous exams. In court, she promoted both men and women equally and based solely on merit; this included Shangguan Wan'er (664-710 AD), a palace slave who rose all the way up to become history’s first female Prime Minister a full 1,400 years before her modern counterpart.

Wu went on to reduce the size of her army, emptying her government of influential military men and increasing China’s trade and diplomatic relations. She also had the military reformed by implementing competency tests modelled after the exams for her civil servants. For her subjects, she had a petition box installed where everyone was welcome to file their grievances or offer suggestions for reform directly to her. One of her most popular reforms was to lower oppressive taxes which allowed peasants to raise agricultural production. 

No aspect of Chinese life was left untouched by Wu, and her achievements and precedents are much too innumerable to list here.

Decline and Death

As Wu grew older in power, she became increasingly paranoid, and took to purging her administration by banishing or executing people who showed the slightest hint of disloyalty. She began to withdraw from public life as well, and neglected her responsibilities as ruler by ensconcing herself for long periods of time with young male lovers.

In 704 AD, with her court now in decline and her health beginning to fail, Wu was finally pressured into abdicating. The throne went to her once-banished third son, Emperor Zhongzhong, and his wife, Lady Wei, who would go on to emulate Wu and rule through her husband.

Wu died peacefully a year after abdicating at age eighty-one.

Main online resources:

Wu Zetian by Emily Mark (Ancient History Encyclopedia)

Empress Wu Zetian by Lyn Reese (womeninworldhistory.com)

The Demonization of Empress Wu by Mike Dash (Smithsonian.com)

The Ascent of Woman by Dr Amanda Foreman – Episode 2 (BBC)

[fyeahlearning-blog]

A mix of this week’s interesting news:

BBC viral interview sparks debate, The Guardian

How Harry Potter helps make sense of Trump, The Guardian

GreenLeft wins Dutch election, The Guardian

Nicola Sturgeon seeks Scottish independence, The Guardian

Flying balloon chair because why not, National Post

Sierra Leone pastor discovers 706-carat diamond, Reuters

British Quidditch World Cup Results, Reuters

Can quantum theory explain why jokes are funny?, ScienceDaily

Black holes: beware star dust, ScienceDaily

[the-future-now-deactivated20170]

Scientists find a lost continent underneath the island of Mauritius

Scientists have long theorized that about 200 million years ago, a giant stretch of land connected what are now India and Madagascar to form an ancient supercontinent called Gondwana.

In a new paper, geoscientists finally concluded that not only was the supercontinent real, fragments of it still exist — sunken leagues beneath the tiny isle of Mauritius.

“Our findings confirm the existence of continental crust beneath Mauritius,” the paper says.

Researchers were first tipped off to the continental crust’s presence because of a strange feature that’s unique to Mauritius: The pull of gravity is particularly strong on the island. Read more

follow @the-future-now​

[fyeahlearning-blog]

On Wednesday 15 March 2017, general elections were held in the Netherlands to elect all 150 members of the House of Representatives.

In an election that was billed as a litmus test for populism in Europe, the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte successfully saw off the challenge of Geert Wilders, a far-right anti-Islam and anti-EU populist figure. Rutte’s centre-right liberal party, the VVD, make the biggest party in the Dutch parliament with 33 seats, whilst Wilders’ party, the PVV, finished a distant second with 20 seats.

“This is an evening in which the Netherlands, after Brexit, after the American elections, said ‘stop’ to the wrong kind of populism,” said Rutte as relieved European leaders lined up to congratulate him.

However, it is worth noting that the VVD lost 8 seats whilst the PVV gained 5 more, with pundits warning that far-right nationalist movements across Europe remain at large. Back in the Netherlands, Rutte now faces the unenviable task of forming a coalition of up to five parties in order to reach a 76-seat majority.

The biggest winner of the elections is agreed to be the GreenLeft party led by Jesse Klaver. Nicknamed “Jessiah” by his supporters, Klaver has a Moroccan father and a mother of Indonesian descent. His GreenLeft party was formed only 25 years ago with a mix of “communists, pacifists, evangelicals and self-styled radicals”; this year, the party leapt from four parliamentary seats to 14.

In a message to his European left-leaning counterparts, Klaver said: “Stand for your principles. Be straight. Be pro-refugee. Be pro-European. We’re gaining momentum in the polls. And I think that’s the message we have to send to Europe. You can stop populism.”

Sources:

Dutch PM cheers EU leaders by seeing off far-right's Wilders (Reuters)

Dutch elections: Rutte starts coalition talks after beating Wilders into second – as it happened (The Guardian)

Dutch PM Mark Rutte sees off election threat of Geert Wilders (The Guardian)

GreenLeft proves to be big winner in Dutch election (The Guardian)

Dutch election result: Mark Rutte sees off Geert Wilders challenge as Netherlands rejects far-Right (The Telegraph)

Who won the Dutch election and what does it mean for Geert Wilders and the far-Right in the Netherlands and Europe? (The Telegraph)

[fyeahlearning-blog]

Favorite Historical Women: Rita Levi-Montalcini

Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin, Italy in April 22, 1909 to a Jewish family. Her father believed that higher education would interfere with a woman’s role as a wife and mother and discouraged her and her sisters from attending university. However, Rita was able to convince her father otherwise and graduated the University of Turin with a degree in medicine and surgery.

Come the rise of fascism in Italy, Mussolini issued the “Manifesto of Race” which prohibited the professional and academic careers of non-Aryan Italian citizens. Undeterred, Rita converted her bedroom into a research lab and studied nerve growth in chicken embryos. 

World War II caused her to move twice; eventually ending up in Florence where she served as a doctor for the Allied health service. After the war, she went to St. Louis to continue her experiments in chicken embryos. She eventually isolated nerve growth factor from observations of tumors that were transferred into chicken embryos that caused rapid embryonic nerve growth.

She received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986 for her work in growth factors.

Sources: x, x

[fyeahlearning-blog]

March 16

Day of the Book Smugglers in Lithuania

From 1864 to 1904, books in the Lithuanian language were smuggled past the Prussian-Russian countries in an act of defiance against laws that prohibited the usage of the language. [source]

The date was chosen to match that of the birthday of Jurgis Bielinis, the main organizer of the network of book-smugglers. Books and pamphlets would be printed in Germany and then taken to Lithuania. Bielinis died a month before Lithuania declared their independence. [source]

In Lithuania, they’re referred to as knygnešiai which doesn’t have a direct English translation but roughly means ‘book smugglers’ or ‘book carriers’. [source]

[humanoidhistory]

TODAY IN HISTORY: The Space Shuttle Discovery launches on March 15, 2009. 

(NASA)

[fyeahlearning-blog]

Beware...

watch out, learners, for it’s the Ides of March, which is when, once upon a time in Rome, there was some bad stuff going down.

In 44 B.C. there was a lot of unhappiness with how things were going under Julius Caesar’s rule (a.k.a. dictatorship but let’s not get fussy, dead is still dead), so one of his fellow Senators, Brutus, came up with the brilliant idea of, “Hey, why don’t we just get rid of Caesar entirely?” To which 60 (sixty!) other senators agreed, killing Caesar was OBVIOUSLY the best route to take in terms of ‘fixing Rome’.

Now, it’s important to note that this single action of stabbing Caesar (23 times, to be exact) and killing him as a result of all those knife wounds (not knife, Brutus) caused the end/fall (argued by some scholars) of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire, which was a HUGE shift in political dynamics and how the world worked from then and has an impact on our world today

(It’s also important to note that Caesar’s autopsy report was the earliest autopsy report known, go scientists/doctors in Ancient Rome!)

Before the whole stab-happy Senate meeting took place, on that fateful Ides of March (13/15 day of the first month of the Roman new year) in 44 B.C., a seer had warned Caesar that something bad was gonna happen to him “before the Ides of March” (the whole Roman calendar deserves it’s own post tbh), to which Caesar was like, “Haha, look at that, it’s the Ides of March and NOTHING happened, loser” and then walked to his bloody death.

As a result, people since then have used the phrase, “Beware the Ides of March,” to warn others to watch their backs, that not everyone might have their best interest at heart...

Happy Ides of March!

~Liv

[fyeahlearning-blog]

Minimalism: A Documentary About The Important Things

Minimalism is a tool that can assist you in finding freedom. Freedom from fear. Freedom from worry. Freedom from overwhelm. Freedom from guilt. Freedom from depression. Freedom from the trappings of the consumer culture we’ve built our lives around. Real freedom.

A documentary on Minimalism by Joshua Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus, it focuses on placing importance on what really matters, along with the causes and effects of putting too much meaning into things.

They present the idea of owning things that have a purpose, things that bring us joy (as opposed to clutter) and things that we need (instead of things that bring temporary gratification). It’s the notion of trimming our lives of the excesses to truly find happiness, focus on worthwhile experiences and ultimately live life fully.

Available on Netflix, Vimeo, Google Play, iTunes, Amazon or on DVD

[fyeahlearning-blog]

I thought I’d share this great lecture on Gothic fiction by David Punter!

1. Origins of Gothic

2. Terror and Horror in Gothic fiction

3. Gothic settings (I have no idea where #3 went, sorry!)

4. The Sublime in Gothic fiction

5. Transgressions in Gothic fiction

6. Forbidden Knowledge in Gothic fiction

7. Life and Death in Gothic fiction

8. Hero Villains in Gothic fiction

9. The Satanic

10. The Vampire

11. The Past and Inheritance in Gothic fiction

12. Class in Gothic fiction

13. Revenge

14. Gothic Women

[fyeahlearning-blog]

The Internet Warriors (Lien, 2017)

Why do so many people use the internet to harass and threaten people, and stretch the freedom of speech to its limits? Director Kyrre Lien meets a global group of strongly opinionated individuals, who spend their time debating online on the subjects they care most strongly about. Online platforms are their favourite tools to express the opinions that others might find objectionable in language that often offends. Do they behave in the same way when they come offline?

+ accompanying article in The Guardian

[fyeahlearning-blog]

March 11, 2003

Republicans throw shade at the French. [source]

“This action today is a small, but symbolic effort to show the strong displeasure of many on Capitol Hill with the actions of our so-called ally, France.”

The Republicans were really unhappy because of French’s stance on the war on Iraq. The French wanted to give more time to the weapons inspectors investigating the area. The US and UK, on the other hand, were keen to have at it. To show France how much the lack of support hurt their feelings, they changed the name of ‘french fries’ and ‘french toast’ to the (obviously) more appropriate ‘freedom fries’ and ‘freedom toast’ on the menus of three restaurants and bars within House buildings.

Other name changes (petty or otherwise): I love spam (he got married in a spam museum) [source], King Arthur Uther Pendragon [source], Beezow Doo-doo Zopittybop-bop-bop [source]

[fyeahlearning-blog]

March 10, 1876

First phone call ever. [source]

“Mr. Watson, come here — I want to see you.”

That’s what Alexander Graham Bell said into the telephone (although his journal says that what he really said was: “Mr. Watson come here I want you.”). Mr. Watson did come. It worked.

Bell was tinkering with some stuff, trying to send multiple telegraph signals when he heard something. This peeked his interest, and began working on sending the human voice instead (good call). He managed to pull it off in the nick of time, because Elisha Gray (another inventor) was working on something similar [source]. Was Bell a “Telephone Bandit”? Some believe that he resorted to bribery to get the patent (and that he had seen Gray’s work beforehand). Some believe it was an accident that they came up with the same thing at around the same time.

People still argue over this (on the phone?)

Other interesting patent fights [source]: tattoo artist vs. the Hangover Pt. II (over the Mike Tyson tattoo), Newton vs. Leibniz (over calculus) and Lucasfilm vs. High Frontier & the Committee for a Strong, Peaceful America (over the “star wars” program in the 80′s).

[fyeahlearning-blog]

reminders and updates

hey all!

if you haven’t noticed, we’ve got some new (and lovely) contributors on board. you can check out the team here.

you can still apply to join us and become a contributor

our nav page has been set up. definitely incomplete and we’ll fill them out as we develop sections

you’re totally free to request or suggest topics, learning resources (ex. podcasts, documentaries, etc.), ask us things or tip us off re: weird and quirky news