FYI January 06, 2020

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On This Day

1941 – United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers his Four Freedoms speech in the State of the Union address.[27]
The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Monday, January 6, 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people “everywhere in the world” ought to enjoy:

Freedom of speech
Freedom of worship
Freedom from want
Freedom from fear

Roosevelt delivered his speech 11 months before the surprise Japanese attack on U.S. forces in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii that caused the United States to declare war on Japan, December 8, 1941. The State of the Union speech before Congress was largely about the national security of the United States and the threat to other democracies from world war that was being waged across the continents in the eastern hemisphere. In the speech, he made a break with the tradition of United States non-interventionism that had long been held in the United States. He outlined the U.S. role in helping allies already engaged in warfare.

In that context, he summarized the values of democracy behind the bipartisan consensus on international involvement that existed at the time. A famous quote from the speech prefaces those values: “As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone.” In the second half of the speech, he lists the benefits of democracy, which include economic opportunity, employment, social security, and the promise of “adequate health care”. The first two freedoms, of speech and religion, are protected by the First Amendment in the United States Constitution. His inclusion of the latter two freedoms went beyond the traditional Constitutional values protected by the U.S. Bill of Rights. Roosevelt endorsed a broader human right to economic security and anticipated what would become known decades later as the “human security” paradigm in social science and economic development. He also included the “freedom from fear” against national aggression and took it to the new United Nations he was setting up.

Read more ->

 
 

Born On This Day

1921 – Marianne Grunberg-Manago, Russian-French biochemist and academic (d. 2013)
Marianne Grunberg-Manago (January 6, 1921 – January 3, 2013) was a Soviet-born French biochemist. Her work helped make possible key discoveries about the nature of the genetic code.

Early life
Grunberg-Manago was born into a family of artists who adhered to the teachings of the Swiss educational reformer Johann Pestalozzi. When she was 9 months old, Grunberg-Manago’s parents emigrated from the Soviet Union to France.
Education and Research

Grunberg-Manago studied biochemistry and, in 1955, while working in the lab of Spanish-America biochemist Severo Ochoa,[1] she discovered the first nucleic-acid-synthesizing enzyme.[2] Initially, everyone thought the new enzyme was an RNA polymerase used by E. coli cells to make long chains of RNA from separate nucleotides.[3] But although the new enzyme could link a few nucleotides together, the reaction was highly reversible and it later became clear that the enzyme, polynucleotide phosphorylase, usually catalyzes the breakdown of RNA, not its synthesis.[4]

Nonetheless, the enzyme was extraordinarily useful and important. Almost immediately, Marshall Nirenberg and J. Heinrich Matthaei put it to use to form the first three-nucleotide RNA codons, which coded for the amino acid phenylalanine. This first step in cracking the genetic code entirely depended on the availability of Grunberg-Manago’s enzyme.[citation needed]

In 1959, Ochoa and Arthur Kornberg won the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for the synthesis of the nucleic acids RNA and DNA.” She was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978[5] and a Foreign Associate Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1982.[6]

Grunberg-Manago was the first woman to direct the International Union of Biochemistry, and she was also the first woman to preside the French Academy of Sciences from 1995 to 1996.[7]

Later life and death
Late in her career, Grunberg-Manago was named emeritus director of research at CNRS, France’s National Center for Scientific Research.[7]

Grunberg-Manago died in January, 2013, three days before her 92nd birthday.[8]

Awards and nominations
Member of the EMBO (1964)
Charles-Léopold-Mayer Prize from the French Academy of Sciences (1966)
Foreign member of the American Society of Biological Chemists (1972)
Member of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology)
Member of the French Society for biochemistry and molecular biology
Foreign member of the Franklin Society (1995)
Member of the Spanish Society for molecular biology
Member of the Greek Society for molecular biology
Member of the Executive Board of the ICSU
Foreign member of the New York Academy of Sciences (1977)
Foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1978)
Foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States (1982)
Honorary foreign member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1988)
Member of Academia Europea (1988)
Honorary foreign member of the Russian Academy of sciences (1991)
Foreign member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1991)
Grand Officer of the National Order of the Legion of Honor(2008)

 
 

FYI

By Jessica Yu, Doodle Team Lead: Doodle for Google 2020: How do you show kindness?
 
 
 
 

The YouTube Team: Better protecting kids’ privacy on YouTube
 
 
 
 

By Jim Wyss,Miami Herald: Puerto Rican natural wonder, Punta Ventana, collapses amid 5.8 magnitude earthquake
 
 
 
 
The Rural Blog: VA puts telehealth sites at Walmarts and VFW posts; Reporter who moved to rural Minnesota debunks five myths about rural America that misrepresent political reality; Competing weeklies welcome county’s new health director, who says human trafficking is a problem in rural areas; Journalists should remind readers how to be responsible with social media, and how that differs from news media and more ->

 
 
 
 
By Alia Wong, The Atlantic: The Real Legacy of Crazy Horse The Oglala Sioux leader prophesized an economic, spiritual, and social renaissance among Native American youth. Now the Seventh Generation is here—and they’re determined to live up to the legend.
 
 
 
 

By Rocky Parker, Beyond Bylines: Blog Profiles: Book Blogs
 
 
 
 

Ernie at Tedium, David Buck: Four Songs A-Listenin’ Celebrating weird, wonderful, and somewhat less heralded holiday music as we continue our yuletide celebration. Bring headphones with a built-in Santa hat.
 
 
 
 

Joanne Guidoccio: 10 Authors on my Keeper Shelf
 
 
 
 
Open Culture: Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save Available as a Free AudioBook and eBook: Features Narrations by Paul Simon, Kristen Bell & Stephen Fry; A Brief History of John Baldessari (RIP) Narrated by Tom Waits: A Tribute to the Late “Godfather of Conceptual Art”; The Vatican Library Goes Online and Digitizes Tens of Thousands of Manuscripts, Books, Coins, and More and more ->

 
 
 
 

Zat Rana Design Luck Community
Here is the new essay of the week:

Beyond Insecurity: The Right Kind of Ambition – There is a subtle difference between ambition driven by insecurity and ambition driven by the desire to self-actualize. The former is born out of not feeling enough; the latter is an affirmation of life. And as a new decade rolls around, I kindly wish you the right kind of ambition (Pocket).

Here is another piece that I wrote:

The Purpose of Life From a First Principles View – Biological life is strange. On a local scale, it violates the second law of thermodynamics. This is a fun exploration of what that means, inspired by Karl Friston’s free energy principle (Pocket).

A quote that I’ve been pondering:

“Beauty will save the world.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A book that I’ve been enjoying:

Mythology – Something I ponder a lot: as technology and science have decoupled from religion and mythology, the power-dynamic in culture has shifted to make our current reality different from what it has been historically. This is an exploration of some of the great Greek and Roman myths. It’s a fascinating contrast of worlds.

An idea that I’ve been playing with:

Technology is a tool to augment the body, not replace it. Texting is a gift but it can’t replace face-to-face interaction, nor can it replicate human touch. A smile is more than an emoticon. The internet is shifting the experience of consciousness from our body to our imagination, and for many, something crucial is being lost in the process.

An interesting question to think about:

In finding your balance: do you need to act > self-reflect, or self-reflect > act?

As always, thoughts and criticisms are more than welcome, too. Press reply.

Talk soon,

Zat Rana

 
 
 
 

Today’s email was written by Stevie Borrello, edited by Whet Moser, and produced by Tori Smith. Quartz Obsession: Formula One: The steep price of a Grand Prix
 
 
 
 
By MessyNessy 13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CDLXXXV): Louisiana’s Louis XV Tower; Tesla at Work (sort of); That this exists:; Inside the Wanderer, the World’s Oldest Caravan; A Simple Formula for Living in 2020 and more ->
 
 
 
 

 
Native to Anchorage? Located at 9:20 in video. Maybe footage is from The Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center

Kevin’s tiny house life in Alaska is centered around his 3 loves–nature, music, and teaching. He built his tall-man friendly THOW in collaboration with Bartlett High School. His tiny home is very much in the style of historic Alaskan dry cabin, but road-worthy, with a fold-down awning and removable porch. It’s 15′ tall, the max road-legal height in Alaska.

 
 
 
 

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