The Monday Mix (29/03/2021)
Happy Monday!
Like everyone else, I’ve been fascinated with the images of the Ever Given which was stuck in the Suez Canal for several days up until a few hours ago.
The images were hilarious and revealing at the same time. The sight of a digger trying to remove enough earth to dislodge the ship was comical. But it also highlighted something else.
I’ve worked in construction and around heavy machinery. Diggers such as the one in that infamous photo are impressive pieces of kits. They’re big, powerful and brilliant at what they do. That the digger in the photo was dwarfed by the ship hammers home the size of the Ever Given.
It also highlights the absurdity of sailing a ship the size of the Empire State building, weighing 200,000 tonnes down the Suez Canal. The canal simply isn’t built to handle ships as big as this, which has been amply demonstrated.
The ship shows that bigger isn’t always better. In fact, the fact the ship was so big made it more fragile, more likely to get stuck and to wreak havoc when it did. The modern world is a confusing and increasingly, absurd place. This story summarises that in a nutshell.
How Mary Wortley Montagu's bold experiment led to smallpox vaccine – 75 years before Jenner
This is a fascinating story I read in the paper yesterday. I was well aware of Edward Jenner, but I’d never heard of Mary Wortley Montagu before. It was interesting to read how she came to learn of a vaccination technique while she was in modern-day Turkey and used it on her own daughter when she returned to the UK.
This story highlights two important points. First, that change is often met with scepticism and downright disapproval at first. Second, that women are often written out of history altogether despite contributing so much. This situation is improving today, but I do wonder how many women there are who made an impact on the way we live today, who’ve been forgotten or neglected.
Are sperm counts plummeting?
I almost fell off my chair after reading this article by the brilliant Erin Brokovich. This is something I thought was a non-issue, even in the realm of science fiction. Yet, it seems to be happening.
If you’ve seen the film, Children of Men, you may have thought such a scenario could never play out in real life. Well, it appears it could. Brokovich uses data from a new book published by Shann Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist. Her studies have shown sperm counts have dropped a massive 60% since 1973!
The reason?
Toxic chemicals which disrupt our hormones and affect our fertility. The ubiquity of these chemicals is concerning as is the effect they’re having. This is an uncomfortable topic, but it’s an important one to read about. As absurd as it sounds, we might be the guarantors of our own extinction.
My Latest Article - Picasso’s Guernica
I had the pleasure of living in Spain from 2015 to 2017. It’s a country I love and one which will always have a place in my heart.
My degree was in history, so I’ve always been curious about learning more about the past. When I moved to Spain, I knew little about its past. This changed as I spent more time there. I was aware of the Spanish Civil War, I just wasn’t aware of how brutal it was until I read more about it.
Picasso’s greatest work, his epic painting of Guernica, was inspired by the first aerial bombardment of the twentieth century. When German planes bombed the small town in the Basque Country to aid the cause of General Franco, who eventually won the war and ruled until his death in 1975.
I’m yet to see the piece in person, something I want to do when travel reopens. But I was lucky enough to visit an exhibition on the painting while I lived in Spain. It’s what inspired me to write this piece about Picasso’s act of creative protest.
Book I’m reading - Bullshit Jobs
I linked to the article the anthropologist, David Graeber, wrote about this phenomenon back in 2013, a few weeks ago. The response to the piece was so good he decided to write at length on the issue.
I’m just over two-thirds of the way through the book at the moment and it’s truly fascinating. What’s striking is how many people consider their jobs to be bullshit, yet we all keep the pretence up despite knowing full well that a lot of the jobs out there are nonsense.
I’m not sure whether I should laugh or cry about this!
Quote I’m pondering
Considering I mentioned Graeber’s book above, I’d like to include one of his and most prescient quotes below.
“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is just something we make, and could just as easily make something different.”
That’s all for this week. I'll send out my reading list for March either tomorrow or Wednesday and continue to post the essays I’m writing for Ship30for30 too!
Until next time,
Tom