Race isn’t real. There is no consensus among scientists, biologists and anthropologists that race exists. Or how many there are. Or how to differentiate between them. Racial categories that we use are arbitrary. Moulded by social and cultural constructs. Race, at best, is a spectrum: think analogue (continuous range of values) and not digital (discrete, defined values). Race is forced to map onto human variation. It’s two millimetres of dead skin. There is no gene or variant of any gene, that has been found to exist in every one of one “race” and not of the other. There is no…

“When researchers in one study attempted to prompt participants to see a gender-neutral animal as female by using female pronouns, children, patents and carers still overwhelmingly referred to the animal as ‘he’. The study found that an animal must be ‘super-feminine’ before even close to half of the participants will refer to it as she rather than he.”

Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women

Immaculately researched, lucidly written and passionately argued. Perez’s data-driven expose of the seen and unseen inequalities that plague our 21st-century world is unputdownable. …

From harrowing descriptions of chainsaw mastectomies to advances in laser-gunning cancer, Bill Bryson’s sprawling, acerbic masterpiece is unputdownable. Bryson’s informative treatise takes us on a head-to-toe examination of every nook and cranny of the human body. Fact-filled, slapstick, poetic, heartbreaking.

Jampacked with information, this is a forensic study of the history, and present, of our uniquely human condition. It fired up my synapses, turned me into a medical acolyte and left me with a whirlwind of thoughts that I articulate below.

DNA

We have a metre of DNA packed into every cell. We have trillions of cells. Stretching out all the…

“If you ask them, why are you not using that latrine? They would tell you, ‘Are you sure I should put shit in that structure…that is even better than my house?’” Kar realised that open defecation was not a hardware problem, it was a behavioural problem.

Chip & Dan Heath, The Power Of Moments

The argument put forth in the Heaths’ bestseller is simple: our lives are shaped by a few “defining” moments. A few seconds make (or break) us. Our problems are mostly behavioural. Fleeting moments have profound, long-lasting impacts. Manufacturing such moments propels us to greater intellectual and…

One week of #nowriting. I thought it’d help the creative juices flow. No such luck. Mojo needs some cajoling. Will get there. Hacking through writer’s block with pure, brute force until then.

Pink Lady apple for brekkie. Paired with a buttery croissant. Lots of tea. Car still at the bleeding mechanic. Travel restrictions lifted here today. And I still can’t get out of my housing estate.

Gingerly open Outlook. Expecting a barrage of work emails. Disappointingly, I am right. Spend inordinate hours of time replying, skimming, deleting, and forwarding. Such fun.

Pay-week this week. That new Tesla is ever so…

Nothing like a bank holiday weekend. No Sunday night dreads. Saturdays that feel like Fridays. Chill out on the couch and watch Superstore all weekend. Walk to the park and back in the freezing early-Spring sunlight. Woeful Arsenal performance didn’t deter my mood either. Actually attempt to clean the oven. Stop myself. It’s just a bank holiday. Not Christmas.

How much has modern capitalism gaslit us that a single day off work evokes such positivity? Madness.

Work is #SuperSlow today. Thankful. Gentle workload, short week and spurts of sunshine. Yas queen.

Pick up new book. Plan out blog posts for…

“…at the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes — an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive, and the most ruthlessly sceptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.”

Carl Sagan

There are no “scientific facts”. Science is a living, changing, dynamic document. Unlike religious texts, it isn’t set in stone. It’s constantly updated with new data and evidence. Yesterday’s fact could be today’s fiction could be day after’s fact.

Proven hypotheses are the paradigms of our day. In the early…

Hope Kills

1st/2nd April 2021

So I am back in the market for a new car. The Beemer has let me down for the last time. The mechanic can’t figure out what’s wrong. I am beyond annoyed.

A new car is the most luxurious route to work-poverty. That perilous condition where you earn a significant sum of money but have less than nothing in your account. Cash is king and cars are the ultimate sieve. But I need a bloody car!

Do I take the used route? All three cars I’ve owned in my life have been second-hand. None of…