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Mahmoud Tammam
Learning a language is difficult at the best of times. I don’t know about you, but when I see a different alphabet with unfamiliar characters, it’s quite a challenge to even begin. I have faded memories of learning to read and write, choosing a hand to use my pencil with (I chose left and never looked back), and finding spelling particularly difficult. Holding the image of the word in my mind with the letters was just not how my brain wanted to work. I heard the sound, felt the valency of the word, the way it made me feel. I suppose it’s just a bit of neurodivergence. These illuminated Arabic letters struck me as useful straight away. Bridging the categories between literal and illustrated, the linking of the characters with the emblem makes the work of comprehension that little bit easier. In today’s political and social environment, small differences are being magnified and used as weapons of fear. Weaponising different behaviour, beliefs, and language is only possible when people don’t understand them and can imagine all kinds of malevolence within something usually harmless. This puts another level of utility on these Arabic letters, demystifying the script for us Westerners is going to break down a lot of the walls of ignorance that keep us anxious. I personally think that’s a vital part of communicative art in today’s world, as the borders disappear under internet social spaces and resources, our different ways need addressing in a constructive way. Designed by Mahmoud Tammam, the beautifully designed words provide just enough of the meaning in their embellishments to keep the lettering intact and point to the literal meaning. It’s a clever and imaginative way of bringing the language to life for non-native speakers and young learners alike. It requires a significant amount of creative thought to find the best way of displaying the emblem so that both elements of the design remain fully accessible. Reported in My Modern Met almost ten years ago, it’s a great time to bring this back to the front. A large selection of Mahmoud’s images is on display there. I’ve shared a couple of them for examples, I recommend viewing the rest. Also, you can browse online language courses that let you learn for free or as part of a qualification with FutureLearn. You reward this journal with any purchase. If you take a free course, I feel rewarded too. Please share this article. 
Mahmoud Tammam
Let There Be Light – Giant Sun Sculpture To Display In Birmingham To Illuminate And Educate25/3/2026 
Sun Sculpture University of Birmingham
A museum dedicated to the Sun is a wonderful idea, we all know what it is, we all live because of it, and it’s also something we can’t really look at. That’s unusual enough, like a metaphor for God, we know and feel it, we catch glimpses, but anytime we directly look, we end up burned. We’ll never be able to recreate a true Sun in a museum; the human version must be a smaller and scaled artefact that sits comfortably in our world. That doesn’t mean we can’t tell the truth about it, from what we have already discovered.
A 5-meter-wide sculpture of the Sun has been acquired permanently by Birmingham University. On display to the public until November, there is plenty of time to catch that train or bus and visit the Black Country, absorb the old industrial heritage, and get up close and personal with our very own star. The sphere is covered in true to life photography of the Sun’s surface, bringing home the particulate nature of its convection currents and cells. Although plasma, immense pressures and magnetism create a kind of solid structure with visible pieces. Studying these individual parts helps us to understand a lot more about how the Sun works. The illuminated Sun sphere shows all the known motions of stellar physics. Sunspots, flares, solar wind, and more are shown in real solar images that bring the dynamic entity to life. Being this close to the Sun is not something we can normally do, and in this safe and scientifically accurate environment, it’s a chance to do something not many have ever dreamed of. The things we see through telescopes and satellites can be drawn down to our level and provided in a way that still inspires awe and wonder. Blending science and art, the exhibition is hoped to bring visitors closer to both subjects with a valuable and memorable contribution to both fields. We enjoy art for its own benefit, and there need not be a scientific or explanatory side, and we enjoy science too. Without the need for artists’ impressions and computer-made videos, the information is enticing enough. Yet, when we do blend the two fields, we expand the scope of our learning and our experience many times over. Finding the balance between the two aspects of communication is never easy, sometimes we need someone to shed some light for us. If you want to get yourself on a learning curve, try FutureLearn. They support this journal with any purchase, plus you can also study for free. Via BBC 
We all know that cigarette smoke is harmful to your health. Prolonged exposure can lead to several deadly illnesses. It’s also highly addictive, meaning that even though you know it’s dangerous, you still want to do it. We live a lot longer these days, and when it became apparent that people who smoked died younger on average, we began to wake up to the facts. Of course, big business wanted to do what they could to hide them or spin them another way. Did you know that once Philip Morris Tobacco did a study into how much money a government would save in pension, housing and extra healthcare costs when smokers died young? It was rejected outright and they apologised. Now cigarette packets carry health warnings and smoking is banned in contained public spaces. People who openly smoke are often judged as immoral or stupid, and the smell can be interpreted as a sign of neglect.
Where did it all begin, why do we do it, and what was the original idea behind it? Smoke as a substance has a quality of the ever-changing and mysterious. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to begin seeing shapes, signs, and motifs within the billows. It likely began with a fire, placing leaves on the flames gave rise to different qualities and colours of smoke. Inhaling these fumes brought about subtle changes in consciousness that eventually became the reason for direct smoking apparatus such as pipes. Smudging – the act of ritual cleansing a space with fragrant smoke, incense, smoke signals, and inhaling all became tools for ritual and ceremony, placing the essence of smoke firmly within the culture. The earliest historical evidence of smoking comes from the Maya. In their surviving images, smoking is shown to be a tool for communicating with gods. A spiritual medium, the influence of the chemical changes in the body and the imagination paired with inkblot style smoke patterns gave rise to shamanism and divination. These records date back to around 250AD. This is a long time before cigarettes and vice, in these earliest times, smoking was seen as a spiritual tool and a cultural activity that built social groups and shared narratives. The three dominant symbols in smoke that appear in the evidence are communication with spirits and the divine with its random shapes and movements, cleansing with its ability to expand into any space and touch each area, and transformation with smoke rising from matter and entering the sky. These qualities still resonate today with many spiritual practices maintaining these principles. The Maya and other indigenous tribes in America, where Tobacco naturally grows, didn’t keep their secret forever. When Europeans ventured over the Atlantic in the 16th and 17th Centuries, they began to uncover the vast landscape and the cultures its people shared. Commodities such as rubber, potatoes, tomatoes, chilli peppers, maize or sweetcorn, and chocolate all gradually found their way to the European market. These as well as tobacco, of course. By the time the settlements had established themselves, Europe and the pilgrims who stayed enjoyed a vastly improved range of food and luxuries. Our culture and that of the native peoples didn’t mix well, however, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience for anyone at the time. Smoking can be seen to enter mainstream European culture during the Dutch Golden Age of Painting. These 17th century painters from the Netherlands saw smoking as a tool for expression and were one of the first groups to include it in their schemes. Iconic painters such as Frans Hals, Adriaen Brouwer, Jan Steen, Gerrit Dou, Gabriel Metsu, David Teniers the Younger, and Hendrick Sorgh all depicted smoking in their works at various times. The two symbols they used it to communicate were Vanitas, which is fleeting pleasure, transcendence and mortality, and Realism, where it was used to show the gritty reality of life in the towns and cities. This dualism of its significance lingers even today. At the crossroads between high society and low society, the artistic device became a symbol that could point in either direction. What began in a clique of like-minded painters soon outgrew its pot and became widespread across the continent. Smoking and its apparatus began to appear in artworks from many different artists, each with their own sense of direction and muse. The primary symbolism of mystery and allure plus grime and common life still maintained its fascination through its evolution from Dutch beginnings. Cigarettes began to appear during the 17th and 18th centuries. Rolling tobacco was another option to the pipe and for some, it was the preferred method. A less cumbersome and more lightweight method, the cigarette soon appeared in art. It was used to distinguish a bohemian style, differing from the ornate curve of the wooden or clay pipe. A cigarette can be bent, half smoked, or perfectly straight and delicate looking. It had a lot of character for art, as a new and interesting device. The art world began to explore the dynamic between smoking and morality, as it was becoming ever clearer that it was detrimental to the health. The act of smoking in art became symbolic for rebellion and rejection of social pressure. It gave rise to a sense of aesthetic self-destruction that opened the door for absurdist and nihilistic forms in later years. During the 18th Century, the shamanic origins of smoking began to reappear in the form of personal introspection. Smoking became identified with deep thought and stress relief, providing a relaxed state of mind and an ability to clear one’s head for thinking. The smoking thinker became a symbol of its own during this period. A prop that set one apart, cigarettes and smoking in general grew into a sign of exception and creative thought. The 20th Century saw the onset of film and photography in a big way, and as a commonplace idea in art already, smoking quickly found its way into these media too. The women’s liberation movement began to push back against social expectations for women, and many glamourous ladies openly smoked. It had previously been seen as a man’s past time, with many men finding it unsightly. Thankfully, women don’t exist for the benefit of men, and they chose to do what they wanted to. Cigars and cigarettes became the main source of tobacco smoke with pipes becoming a niche or old-fashioned method. Showing a pipe in art began to show something deeper than just a person who smokes. It became a person of a type who smokes, the same was for cigars and their smaller counterparts. Tobacco branding soon caught on, and knowing you could tell a lot about a person from what they smoke, they capitalised on this by presenting their products in all manner of ways. Cinema and photography highlighted the creative angst of smoking and used the device as a tool for expressing emotion. A posture, a state of mind, and a facial expression combined with a cigarette could embellish the story much further. For high-class and low-class situations alike, the smoking symbol gave rise to sensation and character. Cigarettes became a tool for seduction, a woman gently pulling on her cigarette then exhaling the smoke became a widely used symbol in film to deliver a sense of desire and sexual innuendo. Later, cigarettes were used to describe a sense of being cool. People would stand in their fashionable clothes, and they would have a packet of branded cigarettes somewhere. Colour film put this into perspective as the various styles carried recognisable designs. Blue jeans, black leather, and Marlboro Reds seem to have been the go-to look for the likeable rebel. That Philip Morris gets everywhere. In later cinema, smoking expanded its social commentary as the public awareness about its toxicity became well-known. Because it has been practiced for centuries already and had been ingrained in the culture, it was not going to disappear because it was unhealthy. People who smoked despite knowing its downsides began to carry a different narrative. For some it became a symbol of control and emotional distance. It put a shield up between one and the other and gave the impression they couldn’t care less about right and wrong. On another level, it was used to demonstrate vulnerability and susceptibility to control. It became synonymous with stress and fatigue, hard work, and unsurmountable odds. From police station interviews and criminal conspiracies to high-class lawyers and distinguished government officials, smoking remained a dominant force in the world of symbolism and narrative. Although the tobacco industry undoubtedly funded the use of smoking in major films and art, the substance and action have clear virtues when used as a scene setting device in film. The movement of smoke against a still background provides a free cinematography acted by the universe itself in a cameo role. All you have to do is put a lit cigarette in an ashtray and film it. You get a few seconds of intrigue and a build up for something much more illuminating. The holding of a device, like a pen but designed to give pleasure and to administer slow poison, also points to a significant mental frame. To hold the cigarette gives the individual an action and a posture, it gives an emotional background that becomes written on their face. Sometimes you can tell a non smoker who is being asked to smoke for the camera, they make subtle signs that they are not enjoying it or enjoying it a little too much. Contemporary music famously used cigarettes and smoking in lyrics, album art, music videos, and photography. The rebel spirit that was nurtured in the 18th Century using cigarettes still flows even today with certain genres of music. Modern art has a different relationship to smoke than it did in the 20th Century. It’s now a faux pas to light one up indoors or to blow smoke into someone’s personal space. Buying cigarettes has become a cabinet and a knowledge thing, with no displays or advertising allowed. You must know exactly what you want. The packets are all the same drab olive-green colour, no symbolism of brand now. It is different in other countries, and it’s still a relevant symbol for art even in the UK where it’s deemed even immoral. Modern painters use smoke to explore many aspects of nature, including the traditional ones of transcendence and transformation, mysticism and divination. Smoke has become synonymous with a certain age, industry and less enlightened times. It has also become a medium itself with smoke artists using it to create abstract and inventive phenomena. It maintains its creative allure as a dialogue between breathing and poisoning, transition from one form to another, meditation and inspiration. It’s used to display one’s sense of inner contradiction and troubled mental state, and it can still be used to look cool and classy when done in the correct and traditional way. Of course, the decline in the desire to smoke and the upsurge of vaping has changed the dynamic once more. Vapes are becoming mentioned in lyrics, they’re turning up in drama and theatre, and it looks like they might soon be taxed like tobacco. The fact that people choose to vape who do not smoke points to that timeless desire to take part in an activity that transcends one’s own lifetime and culturally links us directly to people from long ago. The action of taking breath and feeling an effect is clearly rewarding for some and provided It’s done with harmless vapours and in moderation, it’s not yet been shown to be harmful. Perhaps a water-based vaping might emerge someday, that is as harmless as breathing a flavoured raincloud. 
Golden artefact excavated from Gran Cocle Cultural site
We know that moral culture changes over time, and we appreciate that our psychology has remained almost the same. Self-protection and self-proliferation seem to motivate most of our intentions, with fun and pleasure taking up the back seat. We try to take them along but sometimes they must be dropped off at the curb while the real work is carried out. How did human sacrifice become an acceptable mode of religious ceremony? From what we can tell, in all sacrificial ceremonies, the offering is given to the deity as a means to appease and to ensure fortunate returns. It is a transaction, a payment for the survival of the culture. Another form of human sacrifice seems to appear when a particular person dies naturally or in battle, at which their servants and slaves are killed and buried with them. This is said to allow their staff to enter the next world.
Belief in the next world is the fundamental moral reasoning for the action of human sacrifice. Although killing is nearly always wrong, criminals and enemies were somehow exempt from this law. Human sacrifice too fell into this exempted blind spot that prevented moral outrage. When people have a firm belief in an afterlife and do not see death as the end of the being but a transition from one kind of existence to another, killing no longer can be said to be an absolute crime. When the killing was done for religious grounds, it became understandable and reaffirmed the assurance of a next life. This practice occurred all over the world in various forms. When people had a firm belief in the legitimacy of the transaction, the inevitable necessity for the sacrifice prevented arguments. Would you dare to challenge the killer priest and bring attention to your fiery spirit? Deep in the mysterious Gran Cocle Cultural Region of Panama, the mix of intermingled native peoples left behind a wealth of artefacts and history. Buildings, graves, artworks, golden designs, and much more lay undetected for centuries until discovered in lucky finds by experts and laymen alike. The area of cultural significance was first encountered during the 1920s. Over the next century, an ever-increasing scope of narrative and understanding has been uncovered. A millennium old tomb was recently excavated after being discovered in 2009, called Tomb 3, no doubt it was part of a set. What they found inside was remarkable, if not a little sinister. Among the gold artefacts depicting crocodile teeth and bats wings, luxurious jewellery, and ornaments, there was a selection of bodies. One was adorned in all the gold and beautifully decorated while the others lay beside him, almost in line with the ornamentation. This was possibly his staff. Built in around 700-1000AD, the tomb was intended for a very powerful individual who commanded immense wealth. The resources of the Gran Cocle Cultures are known to have been vast and the myths of gold do appear to be true. Not every South American culture valued gold, and perhaps when the Europeans are said to have come sniffing around for it, many of them hid theirs away or lost their attraction to it. Can we attribute the end of human sacrifice to the arrival of Catholicism, or would these cultures have evolved away from it in their own time? via Artnet 8 Everyday Scientific Facts We Take for Granted Today (But Weren’t Common Knowledge 40 Years Ago)2/3/2026 
Our worldview is under constant construction. Where we previously have assumed or not been able to see, new information has changed how we see the world and ourselves. As our instruments evolve and our measurements become more accurate, the resolution at which we can explore our universe grows and so does what we know about it. Our advances are operating at a much faster rate than ever before. It may have taken a generation to completely change one idea in the past, but now with scientific principles coupled with modern tools, we can rewrite the textbooks daily.
When something is ingrained in our public knowledge, as it’s taught in schools and mentioned in media as if it’s common sense, we can forget that it was once unknown. Not being conscious of a principle because we have never seen it or heard about it didn’t seem to hinder us, but now we know, it seems backwards to imagine life without this knowledge and the techniques used to obtain it. Extremely complicated principles like quantum physics may take a century to filter into the mainstream conscious, however plain facts about the world can become common knowledge within twenty to thirty years. When we are taught it and our children then are taught it, usually the idea becomes a foundation. As new ideas grow and become permanent fixtures in the public world view, they lose their novelty. We may say it’s obvious, despite it not being so only a few years ago. Obviousness becomes quaintness once the idea is so well distributed that it can be found in examples written in previous generations. Once we forget that it had to be discovered or invented at all, we associate it with eternity and tradition. Garden gates and market stalls come to mind. The past 40 years have given us a whole new tome on the world and on ourselves. Where many of us uncover or redefine sections, steps, and stages, sometimes entire perspectives are changed with one or two discoveries. What were once fringe theories or heretical views become common knowledge once the evidence becomes indisputable and verified by public authority. Being at this defining edge of the sciences is an exciting job, as the books are rewritten, the picture of the world is repainted and never looks the same.
Here are 8 examples of game-changing discoveries about the world that we didn’t know 40 years ago
Birds are dinosaurs. It was only in 1980 when the idea of an asteroid impact arose to explain why they went extinct. The idea that some of them survived and live among us as birds was never mentioned. Now school children know it and when we look at birds, it does seem a little obvious. The discovery of feathered dinosaurs in China during the 1990s helped to prove what some palaeontologists had already begun to examine. Most of the universe is invisible. We used to think the Earth was at the centre and that the stars, planets, sun, and moon orbited us. When this was disproven, even the scientific method was accused of being corrupt. This happened a long time ago, and it was during the 1920s when we first discovered other galaxies. This is something we take for granted now, and even when The Hubble showed us that they extended beyond our imagination, we understood what they were. The maths doesn’t lie, however, and it tells us there is a lot of gravity unaccounted for. It also shows us that a vast energy is at work accelerating the expansion of the cosmos with no source or mechanics we can detect. Like the method itself being put on trial in times past, the idea that the maths of dark matter and dark energy is wrong seems to be the ignorant answer. The hole in the ozone layer. Who would have thought that the small amount of clever gas used as a refrigerant could become the cause of an environmental catastrophe? When it became apparent in the1980s that we had indeed created a hole in the layer of ozone that protects us from UV radiation from space, it was like the lid was taken off the box. The irony was not lost, as we began to realise that our actions on Earth can and will affect the wider chemical systems that the planet carries out. We learned that the balance of chemicals in the atmosphere is keeping us safe and at the right temperature. Fossil records show that during periods of warmer climate and higher sea level, the fractions of greenhouse gasses were much higher. The eco-movement that followed on from this revelation has framed much of the new environment policy in the 21st century. Humans are part Neanderthal. In the 1980s, Neanderthal humans were seen as less than cavemen, mindless monkey creatures that we extinguished in the name of progress. This was completely wrong. Since then, we’ve discovered art, cultural structure, and evidence of interbreeding with Sapiens. It’s assumed they had a language not so dissimilar to our own and could communicate with expressiveness if not in words. We don’t know why they disappeared, but we know they’re not completely gone. Each of us carries a small fraction of their genome. It has been this genetic interbreeding that gave us even more advantage in different climates. Could it be that our societies simply blurred and at some point, cultural preference was given to the more Sapiens appearing partner, thus slowly breeding out the Neanderthal genome? Or did they rarely meet and mingle, and a social geological situation proved to be the distinguishing factor that led to their disappearance? Neuroplasticity, the brain can rewrite itself during your entire life. It was once presumed that only children could truly learn and once adulthood was reached, it was a matter of adding knowledge to the house already built. If the house was built in a dysfunctional way, that was a shame. It’s now understood that when someone wants to and puts their will into the equation, they really can change the operation of their brain on a biological level. Like the aim of the magicians, changing reality through force of the will, it did seem like a miracle at first. Now therapies and guidance programs such as cognitive behaviour therapy and assertiveness training can help people rebuild the parts of their mind that hold them back or cause problems. Good bacteria, healthy bacteria, the human microbiome. It was common knowledge that germs were bad, any mess or muck was seen as a hazard to health. Bleach and cleaning products flew off the shelves. There was a good reason for it, luminaries like Louis Pasteur had proven that little bacteria and viruses can cause serious illness. We can’t see them, only kill them with certain chemical agents. So kill them we did, in their trillions. During the 1980s, scientists began to examine the biology of the gut in much more detail. The bacteria there seemed to be helping digestion, that was understood, but their chemical signals and particular specialisms seemed to do more for homeostasis than we previously imagined. We learned that a healthy microbiome prevented harmful biology from having an advantage. The specific mixture of supportive and symbiotic bacteria in our gut and in the rest of our body works to prevent disease and reinforce the function of the body. It’s still important to clean, washing your hands and so on, but eating a bit of mud never did much harm to most of us. Plate tectonics, the continents move over millions of years. It was in the 1970s when the evidence for plate tectonics became known and talked about among geologists. For the idea to become mainstream, it took a little longer. The main view of the Earth was of a stable, solid, and motionless world with eternal landmasses and oceans. Accepting that the continents move at fingernail speed and over geological time they can span thousands of kilometres required a completely new story. Now we view the Earth as a living system, a real-life Gaia with not only atmospheric tips and balances, natural webs among living entities, carbon cycles, and nitrogen cycles, we now see geological cycles that take place deep beneath the crust. The whole planet is in continual flux and motion, from the high-speed ordinance of the bluetits to the gradual creeping growth of entire nations. Knowledge of other planets, in and outside of our solar system. Before the 1980s, the outer planets had only been seen through telescopes. We had a good idea of what Jupiter and Saturn looked like from a great distance, Uranus and Neptune were so far mere twinkles in the black sky. When the Voyager probes were launched in the 1970s, it wasn’t known exactly what they’d find once there. Now we know the entire solar system in intimate detail, we’ve had close-up photos of most of its major bodies, and we know about the geological history of many of the planets and moons. All of this new information has quickly entered the global consciousness because it fascinated most of us and it’s not difficult to understand a photograph. During the 1990s, we saw for the first time what had only been written about in science fiction. A planet around another star. Most of us presumed they existed but we also presumed that telescopes would never be able to see them. How wrong we were. Now, with mathematical and light detecting methods, we can detect exoplanets in several ways. Having this ability now feels like second nature, however it certainly wasn’t 40 years ago.
The journey from scientific curiosity and theory to proven fact, then to public knowledge and popular imagination isn’t a simple process. Ideas and perspectives all compete for each other among people with an interest. The ones that get the airtime and the repetition in conversation may not be the right ones, they may be the one discovered by the national last week and not the original foreign team last year, and all manner of other contingencies get in the way of reality and truth. A wacky and outlandish or a culturally relevant perspective may take precedence to the one that makes the most sense.
Once an idea becomes accepted and taught as part of formal education, it begins to enter the wider culture. Those who have been taught the knowledge put it to use, they use it as metaphor, and they build on it in the future. Time goes by, and sometimes what was once a new idea becomes out of date as new information rewrites the picture. When the new perspective is considered, previous ideas are shown to be inaccurate in incomplete. This means that we can never be completely safe in the knowledge of something, especially if the idea is new or still evolving. By capturing the momentum for change and riding the currents of progression, we can protect ourselves from stagnation and becoming the fossils of the future, laid bare for future people to study, coo at, and explain why they went extinct. |
Categories AuthorAlternative Fruit by Rowan B. Colver 
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