If you're a curious sort and would like to learn more in bite sized chunks, then Crash Course might just be the youtube channel for you. On the channel Hank green teaches you Anatomy and Physiology, Phil Plait teaches Astronomy, Craig Benzine teaches American government and politics and Adriene Hill and Jacob Clifford teaches Economic.
It's a varied course full of cute graphics and high production values, so it's well worth subscribing to.
Being the Head-Honcho Has Never Been Easy, and Make That Doubly So If You Were A Woman In the Past. Often branded as 'whores', 'poisoners', 'witches' and worse, many societies in the past had a visceral distaste of women in power, and many of the same issues still face women in power today. A politically manoeuvring woman is so often called a 'bitch', an opinionated headstrong woman is so often a 'shrew', or 'nag'. In moments of arguments they are often infantalised - told to "calm down dear" (David Cameron to Angela Eagle), called a 'girl' (Silvio Belusconi) or a 'brave little woman' (Austin Mitchell on Margaret Thatcher). If they are dressed plainly they are painted as emasculating, ugly, dowdy and homely as if they have nothing else to contribute ("What does she want, this housewife? My balls on a tray" - Jacques Chirac on Thatcher). If they present as too conventionally 'pretty' they are not taken seriously and dubbed 'beauty queens' (Kumara Welgama to Rosy Senanayake) or criticised (as in the case of the ANC playing fashion police in criticising South African leader Lindewe Mazibuko's outfit).They may even be subject to wolf-whistles rather than being listened to (as Cecile Deflout, the French housing minister). Given that women in power still face these challenges today in our relatively liberal western-centric society, in the past their successes were nothing short of remarkable. In 'Women Who Ruled- History's 50 Most Remarkable Women' Claudia Gold's impressive research brings 50 of these such women into the limelight they deserve. Claudia Gold's book is very easy to read for anyone interested in women's history without any polemics, perfect for dipping in and out of. The 50 women listed are organised chronologically.This becomes especially important when we reach the 16thc and the age of European Queens, when often the political fate of one woman's family influences the rise of another. The book is also commendable in offering a wide variety of female leaders, from the near-mythological figures of Jazebel and the Queen of Sheba, through to Eastern leaders such as Wu Hou and Roxelana, as well as the western favourites of 'Bloody' Mary and Elizabeth 1st and finally into the modern day politicians of Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher. You get a real impression that the book aims not to view history through a western lens, but to celebrate and commiserate the lives and careers of as many interesting ladies as possible.
Roxelana, The Ukranian slave who became Sultana of the Ottoman Empire
The brilliant thing about Women Who Ruled is that Gold gives us a full picture of the women in power across the many countries of the world without romanticising them. These women did not have to be saints in order to be respected: just as we have Machiavellian kings we have viscous queens. Just as we have weak-willed and exploited kings we also have foolish and naive queens. Just as we have opportunistic lords we have conniving ladies. For some the bonds of family united them together in mutual honour and bravery, and for others the bonds of family were simply threads in a web to be manipulated and cut off at will. The characters in this work are all multi-faceted and, in the brief few pages that are granted to each, you get a real impression of the often dangerous political landscapes that they resided in, and how fickle fate could be to even the most intelligent political wrangler. Across each story, though, we see how each woman (or her family and 'allies') had to rely on their quick wits to carve out a place for themselves in societies that so often mistrusted them.
Whatever your stance on feminism as a whole, this is a very engaging and interesting book for anyone who is a fan of history. I very much recommend it.
'Women Who Ruled- History's 50 Most Remarkable Women' By Claudia Gold
The Cult of Celebrity is Probably One of The Biggest Cultural Phenomenons of Our Age. Established celebrities star in films while new ones scratch out fame on reality TV. Books are joined by signings and music by a flurry of speculative interviews, paparazzi and fandoms. Scandals cover glossy magazines and newspapers alike (sometimes even joined by surreal paparrazi shots as on the right) and everything is tied neatly to the already established aspirational consumer culture that elevates these lives onto a pedestals. Love them, or love to hate them, their influence is everywhere.
So what exactly is celebrity culture?
Celebrity culture can probably be most accurately described as a wide public interest in following a common knowledge which is projected onto particular individuals and which then reflects back into the aspirations of the public themselves.
In Understanding Celebrity Graeme Turner describes this narrative as consisting of four parts:
The Rise (from obscurity, poverty or ugliness)
Stardom
The Fall (usually through moral failure)
The Rise Again
He describes this story as being very linked with 'Western' cultural symbols. It is partly classical - mimicking Ulysses' wandering - but is mostly Christian. The story of Jesus is mirrored in the story of the hundreds of saints that made up catholic culture: the story of a lowly beginning, a cult status or fame, a trial and sacrifice and then glorious resurrection. This can be applied to almost any celebrity. For example Justin Beiber rose through youtube fame as a child, achieved mass stardom and is currently falling through his ill treatment of his fans and his criminal charges, waiting to rise again. For some, the stars may never emerge from the spiral of falling, but for other when they do they return to a much higher appraisal, for example Robert Downey Junior's 'rebirth' after rehab. Some celebrities, of course, wither away from public interest, while some manage to side-step 'celebrity' all together into something more lasting and 'step out of their own story'.
Celebrity is something entirely separate from fame and is a surprisingly recent phenomenon, supported by the mass media that has only really become fully available with television, radio and the internet. Ellis Cashmore in Celebrities in the 21st Century Imagination describes it as:
'[A] culture, a characteristic set of attitudes that absorbs us as well as surrounds us. Emotion seems to supplant intellect; make-believe intimacies are pushed to the point where they become, after a fashion, actual. People's imaginations instigate action from fantasized realities. It is a culture where people, perplexity, are not the foci of consumer's attentions.'
People have always been famous and made into mythological figures (just look at Julius, Caesar, Einstein, Caligula, Alexander the Great to name a few) , but Cashmore suggests that something new is at work with modern celebrity culture. Here, it is less about the achievements of the person, but the creation of a sort of doppleganger in the public imagination that serves as an aspirational commodity. The public watches and interacts with scrutiny and buys into the celebrity lifestyle that is created in the public imagination.
'Where for example do we find...the collective voyeurism that pulses through today's celebrity culture? Or the celebrity economy - a system of production and consumption in which people become fungible commodities and their presence an exchangeable resource? Does history bequeath to us anything comparable with the culture of covetous, aspirational consumptionengendered by an entertainment industry obsessed by glamour and materialism?'
Here, Cashmore suggests, fame and accomplishments are actually decoupled. While accomplishments might lead individuals to become famous, it is the fame itself - their status as celebrities - that is ultimately more valuable. While we might admire the talent of Richard Branson's business sense, in the end his celebrity status is focused far more on what his money can buy him and the lifestyle and influence he can achieve because of it.
In this way, the public interact with ideas, rather than events. Mere shifts in interest can produce the rise, fall and annihilation of characters. Gossip is the key function of the culture, and through it, Cashmore suggests that:
'Consumers today impute properties to celebrities, but they are properties...that reduce everything and everyone to the dimension of commodities - things that, as Christophe Lasch puts it, "alleviate boredom and satisfy the socially stimulated desire for novelty and excitement.'
Celebrities then become models for a way of life, and the figureheads of the kind of consumer-based capitalism that Cashmore calls an 'aspirational prison to which the inmates are enthusiastically maintaining and building the walls.' At the end of the day celebrities are created and incubated in the mind and in the ephemeral narrative of gossip. The real people are never important. It sounds like pretty grim stuff from Cashmore's perspective. But Celebrity Culture is a perhaps inevitable result of the shift in the media and maybe is not as vapid as he suggests.
In Turner's analysis of celebrity, he links celebrity culture with the increasing role and influence of the media itself. He suggests that the media no longer simply mediates between other important social actors like the government, industry and education, but rather it takes a more leading and independant role.
'The result is a situation where our lived experience of politics, culture and society has become increasingly "moulded" by the media.'
Celebrity, therefore, serves as a bridge between the social centre of the media and this culture. It helps reposition the media to a position of entertainment and the decider in the shaping of cultural identties that are to be emulated. Perhaps it is not so bad that this shift has occurred. While we all know that media is manipulated and opportunistic in its nature, is it any more so than politics? Because media is audience driven, does this instead give our society more control over our own sense of morality and value systems? While on the negative side of things, as Cashmore suggests, we as an audience are pulled into 'buying into' celebrities and basing our own self worth on emulating their example, on the positive side he also suggests that public whim can ultimately destroy and shape celebrities as symbols. After all, a consumer public will only buy what it likes and the media is one that is very much tied to what the consumer will decide to purchase. Control, therefore, ultimately rests with the public audience.
Personally, I believe that both sides feed one another. For example, much of the current feminism and gay rights changes that are trickling their way into governmental changes and law changes have found a lot of their fuel though fandoms and celebrity appreciation and the media's treatment of them as a whole. Celebrities inspire empathy as well as aspiration from the public - they become symbols that we can either root for or criticise. For example would transgender issues be so far in the spotlight at this moment if it wasn't for the sudden rise in celebrity of Orange is the New Black's Laverne Cox or Eurovision's Conchita Wurst? The public may be fickle and entertainment driven, and it may take shallow guidance in looking for aspirational idols in celebrities, but in seeking out celebrities to mould into heroes of imagined narratives, the audience chooses which stories it is important for them to tell. There is power there. In my opinion, celebrity culture is a vehicle and personification of abstract ideas and cultural values, wrapped up in an entertaining package. Whether it's a guilty pleasure celebrity (like reality TV stars), a consumarist aspirational celebrity (like Branson or 'MTV' brand celebrities) or a celebrity who has risen to their particular brand of fame by holding a particular aspirational ideal (eg Laverne's beauty and strength as a trans woman, or Stephen Fry's intelligence)...in the end they all represent a personification of a desire that the general public has (or will learn to have). Sometimes these ideas and cultural values are negative (capitalism and consumerism are never really positive after all, even if they are unavoidable). But sometimes -often times- they are positive in many elements as we've seen. Celebrities are, in a way, a focus for questions as to what we value and the imagined lives we create for them through gossip columns and through the blending of fiction and non-fiction act as a sort of puppet theatre where these values can be tested out in 'reality' and reacted to accordingly. Perhaps it's for this reason that PBSideaschannel is right in stating that the ability to empathise with something (ie- a celebrity) is more important than its real existence, as discussed when they compare the virtual celebrity Miku Hatsune to the 'manufactured' but very much real singer Lana Del Rey.
Celebrities occupy the same transient status and mythologised historical figures, in the end. They are what we want them to be, whether we realise that we are creating them or not. They're a sort of mirror where the positive and negatives of our society, and what we long for and value, are reflected straight back at us.
What do you think? Clearly, celebrity culture is a strange beast. What do you think it is?
Also, if you'd like to have a deeper explore about what has constituted celebrity over history, take a look at the Panatheon Project which aims to produce a 'global comprehensive map of famous connections' and is organised by their lasting influence on the world. It also is interesting in showing different countries and what they primarily value most as celebrities and what events encouraged their growth. For example, scientists became famous celebrities in their own right after the printing press, footballers after TV and so on.
They always say that life will find a way to survive.
At 1.23 am on April 26th 1986 a catastrophic event took place in the wooded marshlands of Chernobyl, Ukraine, that would forever test this assumption.
A day earlier, at 1am on April 25th, routine testing began on reactor four of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to see whether the plant's turbines would be able to maintain the cooling of the system in the case of a power outage, until the backup generators could come into use. In order to simulate the circumstances of the power outage, the participating workers shut down many of the safety systems. However, in the middle of the test a high power demand from Kiev (80 miles away) stalled the operation, and it was not recommenced until 11.10pm that same night. After 1am on April 26th a sudden power surge caused the reactor to dangerously malfunction. Without the safety systems in place there was nothing to stop the crisis escalating and within 23 minutes the reactor itself exploded with disastrous results.
The initial death toll of the plant was put at thirty, as several plant workers and emergency rescue personnel were either killed in the blast or succumbed to injury and radiation sickness. However the true extent of the disaster was quickly placed under debate. While the direct death toll was regarded by the UN in 2005 to be as low as 56, the full extent of the effect of the nuclear poison has been under significant debate over the following decades, and the estimations are harrowing. The UN posited that the cancer figures attributed to the radioactive poisoning of Chernobyl were some 4,000, however Greenpeace claimed that some 270,000 cancer cases were attributed to the disaster, resulting in some 93,000 fatalities. This number grew exponentially in the paper 'Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment was published by the New York Academy of Sciences' by Dr. Alexey Yablokov, Dr. Alexey Nesterenko,Dr.Vassili Nesterenko and Dr. Janette Sherman. Founded on a research base of some 5,000 separate reports, and making use of records which have been released from official secrecy, they assert that between 1986 and 2004 some 985,000 people died of cancer that was directly caused by the Chernobyl meltdown. The release of the radioactive poisons of Cesium-137, Plutonium, Iodine-131 and Strontium-90 were tracked to spread across the globe. It consumed the Ukraine, Bulgaria, Finland, France,Germany,Greece,Italy,Poland,Sweden and the UK, with some 10% of fallout across eastern Turkey and Central China, and with an additional 5% dropping upon Northern Africa. It is thought that the radiation from the disaster was 100 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
These figures are, and always will be, under furious debate.
Historically, the records and crisis-management of Chernobyl were tempered by the politics of the still chilly Cold War. Attempts at secrecy meant that the full extent of the disaster was not discovered until the Swedish Forsmark nuclear power plant in Stockholm registered unusually high radiation levels. When other nuclear plants across the world had similar readings they contacted the Soviet Union, who denied all knowledge about the disaster until 9pm on April 28th. Even now, the admission of the extent of the disastor is one that brings a very heavy political burden, and therefore it is debatable how much still remains in secrecy, and how far studies are potentially manipulated to serve these motivations. Nuclear power offers an efficient alternative to the world's fossil-fuel energy crisis, and has the potential to work with far greater power and efficiency than it's greener options. The greatest fear of Nuclear power comes in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, and with the recent Fukushima disaster this fear has been reinforced as history is repeated. The public and policy makers must weigh up whether the scale of nuclear disaster balances with the scale of energy advantages for the future. The tenuousness of this balance will always make this a very controversial subject indeed. The Soviets began trying to clear up the disaster in secrecy. It took nearly two weeks to put out the fires. Pipyat, the nearby town that housed the workers and their families, was evacuated on April 27th, but the rest of the population were only advised to stay indoors and were not evacuated until almost a week later. Chernobyl was sectioned off into various 'exclusion zones' which were chosen based on the measurement of radiation in those zones, and which still remain to this day. Now, over 25 years later, some of the outer zones are being declared suitable for tourism and limited settlement. The burning, burying and containment of radioactive materials began soon after the blast and the reactor itself was contained in a concrete 'sarcophagus' which, by 1997, leaked. In 2013, the 'New Safe Confinement' sarcophagus was being built to replace the damaged container.
The New Safe Confinement construction, filmed by Bionerd23
The eyes of the world are still firmly on Chernobyl's exclusion zone, and work is continually being undertaken to manage the damage done and create a place that, while perhaps never 100% safe, can be of use to future generations. Unique in it's scale and infamy, Chernobyl can teach us some valuable lessons.
One fascinating lesson is the growth of ecological diversity in the exclusion zone: the 'Wildlife Park' of Chernobyl.
Photography by Sergei Gaschak
Amongst the forest and marshland of the exclusion zone, despite the radiation, there seems to be impressive ecological recovery. Amongst the ghost town of Pipyat and even around the reactor itself, bears, wild boar, wolves, deer, wild horses and even rare animals such as eagle owls and even Lynxes have been spotted. In the irradiated pond that acts as a cooling system for the reactors there are teams of fish, including catfish grown large and thriving through a lack of predators. The Przewalski wild horses, which had escaped from captivity to be introduced into the quarantined area seem to also thrive, growing in number from 21 to 64. It seems that without human occupation Chernobyl can act as a niche for animals to prosper, and for rare animals to gain an ecological foothold once again. The disaster erased much of the invertebrates from the area, and 20-40% of all pine trees died to create the 'Red Forest'. Yet certain types of plant seem to be impressively resistant to radiation damage. Soy beans which grew near the reactor, for example, were studied in 2009 and showed remarkable adaptation in order to protect themselves against radiation. Could it be that through radioactive disaster, we have inadvertently created an Eden that is so rarely seen on this planet: where humans cannot settle and intrude on a natural habitat for wildlife?
The Przewalski horses of the exclusion zone, filmed by Bionerd23
Like everything about Chernobyl, this topic is cause for further controversy. For every radiation-resistant soy bean there are examples of wheat and pine trees, both of which show severe mutation in the wake of radiation, even 25 years later. In the wired article Is Chernobyl a Wild Kingdom or a Radioactive Den of Decay?Adam Higginbothan examines both sides of this ecological argument. For many, the notion of a 'wildlife park' is a false optimism created by misinterpreting the ecological data. The main proponents of this view are Møller and Mousseau who, in 2005, did a chemical study on the feathers of barn swallows captured in the Ukraine and Denmark in order to track their winter migration. While optimists point to the Przewalski horses' population growth, it seems that the barn swallows paint a more pessimistic picture of ecological diversity that is likely to apply to many species of animals across the exclusion zone. Instead of the swallow population sustaining itself over time through successful breeding, when compared to pre-1986 population data, it seems that greater numbers of swallows were coming into the zone for the summer from elsewhere. The area was a population 'sink', absorbing more individuals than it produced. They also argued that this was shown clearly at work in various deformities in the 7,700 individual swallows that they recorded. They pointed to dead and deformed sperm within the birds and outward mutations such as deformed beaks, eyes and toes, tumors, and malformed tails.
The scientific analysis and debate about the 'wildlife park' of Chernobyl have far reaching consequences, as a study of animals gives many clues about how humans may have reacted and will react in future to the radiation that still affects us over 25 years later. For example, in addition to the noted cancer cases that are directly attributed to Chernobyl, in West Berlin, Germany, the prevalance of Downs Syndrome was seen to peak 9 months after the main fallout. Bteween 1980 and 1986 the prevalence of Downs Syndorome was quite normal (1.39-1.59 per 1,000 births) But in 1987 46 cases cases were diagnosed (2.11 per 1,000 births), especially found in a cluster of 27 cases around January 1987. The next year, the prevalanece was back down to 1.77 and by 1989 it reached pre-Chernobyl values.
Just as the animals move back into the exclusion zone, so too do humans choose to reoccupy Chernobyl.
Starving Ukranians often illegally hunt the animals there, thereby linking themselves to the radioactive food chain. The issue of this impact is even more relevant as illegal 'self settlers' defied authorities to return to their former homes and continue to live in the exclusion zone. To this day, there are around 130 people who are now settled in the exclusion zone out of an original 1,200 people. Almost all women in their 70s and 80s, their husbands having died off from alcoholism, overuse of cigarettes or radiation effects. These 'Babushkas of Chernobyl' feature in a documentary by Holly Morris, where one self-settler Hannah Zavorotnya explains how she snuck back into her village in 1986, defying the soldiers and refusing to leave her home. So long as they were beyond child-bearing age, these people were permitted to stay, and it seems that - despite the dangers - doing so has been beneficial to them. Many old people who were relocated from their homes at Chernobyl suffered relocation trauma, as they were pushed from their links to rural lands in their home and into urban tower blocks. Acoording to studies these women have outlived their relocated counterparts, on average by up to 10 years. "If you leave you die." Holly reports the Babushkas telling her. "Those who left are worse off now. They are all dying of sadness." "Motherland is Motherland. I will never leave."
In conclusion, what is clear from Chernobyl is that it is a place of contrasts, and that it is far from a nuclear wasteland.
Chernobyl's legacy will live on for hundreds of years: physically in it's radiation as it continues to affect the world, and in the lives of the animal and human populations that settle there, and emotionally through its displaced peoples and the policies of the governments that turn their eyes to it. What Chernobyl's wildlife park and its Babushkas show us is that, even in all of this difficulty and hardship, and in this uncertainty for the future, life will find a way.
Chernobyl is, of course, still in living memory. If you can remember the disaster I would love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to leave a message in the comments.
Often branded as 'whores', 'poisoners', 'witches' and worse, many societies in the past had a visceral distaste of women in power, and many of the same issues still face women in power today. 
He describes this story as being very linked with 'Western' cultural symbols. It is partly classical - mimicking Ulysses' wandering - but is mostly Christian. The story of Jesus is mirrored in the story of the hundreds of saints that made up catholic culture: the story of a lowly beginning, a cult status or fame, a trial and sacrifice and then glorious resurrection.
Perhaps it is not so bad that this shift has occurred. While we all know that media is manipulated and opportunistic in its nature, is it any more so than politics? Because media is audience driven, does this instead give our society more control over our own sense of morality and value systems? While on the negative side of things, as Cashmore suggests, we as an audience are pulled into 'buying into' celebrities and basing our own self worth on emulating their example, on the positive side he also suggests that public whim can ultimately destroy and shape celebrities as symbols. After all, a consumer public will only buy what it likes and the media is one that is very much tied to what the consumer will decide to purchase. Control, therefore, ultimately rests with the public audience.
Historically, the records and crisis-management of Chernobyl were tempered by the politics of the still chilly Cold War. Attempts at secrecy meant that the full extent of the disaster was not discovered until the Swedish Forsmark nuclear power plant in Stockholm registered unusually high radiation levels. When other nuclear plants across the world had similar readings they contacted the Soviet Union, who denied all knowledge about the disaster until 9pm on April 28th. 
