Polari and the History of Secret Languages

24th March 2023

You’ve probably heard of Pig Latin before – it’s a secret language (or cant) popularised on school playgrounds and children’s TV. The initial consonant is moved to the end and an extra syllable, usually ei, is added (Pig Latin would therefore be igpay atinlay), making a sentence sound like gibberish. Or maybe you made up a secret language when you were young to talk to your siblings or friends with in front of your parents. Secret languages exist everywhere, driven by the need to communicate without wanting surrounding people to know what you’re saying. This is, of course, even more important when your message could make you a target of hate or violence.

Polari and the History of Secret Languages

Are We Trying to Buy an Aesthetic?

24th March 2023

I enjoy observing (and participating in) the modern culture of consumerism. I also enjoy writing about these observations – previously tackling the topic from the perspectives of sustainability and the culture surrounding it. Today, we will be contemplating whether we have subconsciously taken to ‘building our own brand’, by trying to neatly fit into designated aesthetics, whether these categories guide our choices more than they should and whether we are trying to buy our idea of a product, rather than the product itself.

Are We Trying to Buy an Aesthetic?

Diseases that Discriminate

18th March 2023

Your immune system depends upon one key thing – the ability to differentiate between self and non-self material (which involves the detection of antigens – proteins on the surface of non-self cells), and when this ability fails, autoimmune disorders can occur; healthy body cells are attacked and damaged, leading to a range of symptoms and conditions from rheumatoid arthritis (which affects the joints) to psoriasis (which affects the skin). However, these disorders don’t occur indiscriminately – in fact, women are far more likely to have an autoimmune condition, and they make up around 80% of all patients diagnosed (with some variations depending on the condition).

Diseases that Discriminate

The Weight of a Human Soul

18th March 2023

Twenty-one grams was the answer given by the English scientist Duncan MacDougall in a scientific study he published in 1907. The 19th century was filled with classic Gothic novels, so, like many people of his era, MacDougall was fascinated by death and what happens after it. He surmised that if we have a soul then it ought to have a weight, thus the weight of the diseased must decrease when the consciousness has left the body. To prove the theory, MacDougall set out to find people near the point of death – and additionally, people that were incapable of moving so that the beam of the scales could be kept balanced.

The Weight of a Human Soul