If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour… you’re gonna see some serious shit.

2012:

The year is 2012 and an email has just reminded me of a blog I planned to post last year. I am of the belief that we should start posting again and I can’t think of a better way to go about it than to step back in time to the year 2011 when blogging was the fashion.

2011:

I, Stuart Glasgow, have recently entered a competition entitled “The Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize 2011 In association with the ‘Guardian’ and the ‘Observer’ in which one of the five judges is Dara O Briain. There are two categories that can be entered into: one is for professional post graduate scientists and the other is anyone with a non-professional interest in science including undergraduate students.

The winner from each category will have their articles published in the Guardian or Observer newspapers, this being the main prize. Surprisingly enough the secondary prize of £1000 cash gave me more motivation to enter than the main prize but it’s not all about the money. The top 30 shortlisted entrants are also invited to attend a science writing workshop at the Guardian offices.

Here is a two paragraph quote from the competition webpage to show what the judges are looking for:

We are looking for short articles that address any area of science and would be suitable for publication in the ‘Guardian’ or the ‘Observer’ in print and online. You must demonstrate that you have thought about and understood your audience and can bring a scientific idea to life.

The judges are looking for originality, bright ideas and a distinctive writing style. Your 800-word article should show a passion for science and encourage the general public to consider, question and debate the key issues in science and society.

Let’s see if I managed to meet the specifications; (I honestly never know whether to use colons or semi-colons so the article may be full of grammatical failures but feel free to tell me off, that’s how I’ll learn) here is my entry:

No doubt all you’ve heard the last few years is global warming damages our environment, it is a threat to “our” oceans, and the polar ice caps are melting and so on. But there is another lesser known yet extremely damaging threat to the oceans known by most humans as fishing, or over fishing to be precise.

Over fishing is defined as the catching of so many fish that the fish can no longer sustain their population through breeding, as opposed to cloning; the other method fish use to form their population. Since the 1950’s the number of big fish has been reduced drastically and now only a mere 10 percent of all big fish species in all areas of the ocean remain, so it seems fair to say that over fishing is ripe in the society of the sea. However it is not just big fish that are disappearing, it is entire ecosystems that are being lost and this is resulting in damaging global consequences including huge economical travesties for many fishers leaving fisherman with the dilemma of continuing to fish thus continuing to earn some money while reducing the number of fish in the sea, or reducing the extent of their fishing therefore cutting their income and increasing job losses but improving the possibility of the growth of fish stocks so that in the future there will be more fish to catch and more money to earn.

This is just one of a long list of problems affecting the planet but it is an item that the public may want priority for because of the trouble it causes to penguins. The wonderful penguin: famous for its tuxedo like feathers, ambitious waddle and ability to slide along the ice on its belly. And as we all know penguins are becoming ever more popular thanks to the recent penguin movies, or povies, such as “Mr. Popper’s Penguins,” “Happy Feet” and “March of the Penguins.”

“Happy Feet” even touched on the fact that humans are fishing too much krill from the oceans which has resulted in the parent penguins being unable to provide for their customary, for most species, two child penguins a year. This has seen a huge amount of cute baby penguins being left alone in the harsh conditions of the Antarctic, at the end of the breeding season, unable to fend for themselves.

Climate change has also had a large effect on the life style of penguins, in particular Emperor penguins. The increase in ocean temperature causes a change in the migration pattern of some fish that Emperor penguins eat meaning that penguins must travel further from their nests in order to feed on the fish, in some cases they travel up to twenty-five miles further than they used to. These longer distances increase the time it takes for the female penguin to return to the nest where the male penguin is warming the egg. The female is expected to arrive back in time for the egg hatching so she can feed the chick but if she is late the chick could starve or the male penguin could abandon the chick as he will need to leave in order to feed himself.

Another human inflicted inconvenience destroying the lives of the beautiful penguin is oil pollution; killing tens of thousands of penguins each year. Penguins are particularly susceptible to oil spills because they swim low in water and have to come up for air every so often causing the penguins feathers to become oil ridden. The penguins, for some reason, find the need to eat the oil and this usually kills them or makes them vulnerable to disease.

So all that remains now is the questions: How do we solve these serious marine life problems? Do we reduce the amount of global fishing that takes place and therefore reduce the number of jobs available? And what will happen to poor wee Tuxedo Tommy and his baby penguin friends…left alone…on the cold ice…with no krill…choking on oil?

END OF ARTICLE

To be honest I don’t read either the Guardian or the Observer so straight away I don’t understand my audience. I also finished after 668 words because Stewart Lee was on TV, so there are a couple of specifications I probably haven’t met already. Hopefully I will get bonus points for the 100 word long sentence which is therefore just over one seventh of the full article.

This seems like the perfect time to link in Stewart Lee with penguins by showing you this video recommended to me by Morgan Freeman.

2012:

And welcome back to 2012, I hope you enjoyed the trip. I’ve still not heard back from Dara yet and the entry deadline for this year’s competition is 25-04-2012 (which I am not entering) so I don’t think I won. However, hopefully this will motivate others to post more blogs.

Peace to the Penguins.

This is just like what the Greeks done at Troy. ‘Cept they was in a horse instead of dresses. A wooden horse.

I swear i had a blog planned out, i just can’t for the life of me remember what it was. Not gonna lie though, i barely read any blog now, the content is secondary to the title. I’m just gonna put these videos in here so i know where to find them, archiving them for myself really.

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

actually, fuck it, i’m tired.

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Nothing is impossible, Mr. ******. What you want is simply expensive.

I had to censor the quote cause having a character’s name is bound to give it away.

So I’ve been reading books like Bill Bryson’s ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ and Ben Goldacre’s ‘Bad Science’, books from the genre called “popular science” so I thought I’d give it a try, now my understanding is that “popular science” literature should be easy to understand as well as interesting to read, so hopeful mine is.

So here is my piece of “popular science” literature on black holes:

A black hole is a region in space, where the gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. You hear that sentence, or some variant of it any time you ask a scientist about black holes (I doubt people do this often), but what does that really mean? The story of black holes starts way back in the 1780s well before Einstein and General Relativity (which we’ll get to a bit later). In 1783 a geologist named John Mitchell wrote a letter to Henry Cavendish in which he observed that if an object with the same density as the sun but five hundred times the size (and therefore 500 times more massive) existed, it’s gravity would be so strong that any light given off by it would immediately be attracted back by gravity (this can all be worked out quite simply from Newton’s law of universal gravitation).
In other words the escape velocity from the object would be greater than the speed of light, for this to be the case the mass (in kilograms, since units matter) of the object would have to be about seven hundred million million million million times larger than the radius (in metres). For this to be the case you’d have to squeeze all of the mass of the earth down into something just 9mm in radius, the circumference of which would be only slightly more that 2 inches. The only problem with John Mitchell’s theory was, that at the time no one in science could explain how gravity affected light, so the idea was forgotten about and Cavendish went on to measure the density of the earth and discover hydrogen (John Mitchell didn’t really do anything much after that).
So the problem of the ‘dark star’ as it was called, didn’t rise again until 1915 when Albert Einstein did have a good model as to why light was affected by gravity in his theory of general relativity. Which Sir Arthur Eddington and his team then proved during a solar eclipse in 1919; they showed that the gravitational force of the sun bent the light from a distant star. Einstein gave us a way to explain how gravity acted on light; he also gave us spacetime. Spacetime is a mathematical model in which space makes up the first three dimensions (the usual x, y and z or up and down, side-to-side and back and forth) and then the fourth dimension is made up by time (this is a really difficult thing to imagine, since we only have three dimensions). Mass bends spacetime in the same way as a heavy weight will bend a trampoline and things in the gravitational pull of a mass are simply rolling down the slope towards the central (gravitating) object (but in the case of planetary orbits the rolling down the slope is evened out by angular momentum, caused by the spinning, which is why we aren’t moving closer and closer to the sun each year).
Right, so now gravity can be viewed a slope in spacetime and the stronger the gravity; the steeper the slope and the more massive the object; the deeper the bend in spacetime. So when a massive star dies and collapses under the force of gravity forming a black hole, the large mass and the huge gravitational force produces a very steep, very deep bend in spacetime. It is this steep, deep bend from where the light is failing to escape. But what is it like inside a black hole from where the light can’t escape? Well the thing is…no one knows, and it’s impossible to know. It’s a singularity; what’s a singularity? Well a singularity is a point where our understanding of physics breaks down, similar to the time before the Planck time, which is 5.39×10-44 seconds after the big bang and to things smaller than the Planck length, 1.61×10-35 metres. Modern physics just doesn’t work.
So I know what you’re all asking now, what happens if you happened to fall into a black hole? Well you’ll be turned into a big strand of spaghetti. The most interesting part is that the spaghettification would appear instantaneous to you but say I was watching you fall into the black hole; you’d appear to fall forever. Why? That’s a different story for a different time.

Wendy? Darling? Light of my life. I’m not gonna hurt ya. You didn’t let me finish my sentence. I said, I’m not gonna hurt ya. I’m just going to bash your brains in.

Eilidh

Eilidh is my sister and she has recently turned 15 years old. She is very loud and she never stops talking. Her sentences often include segments such as ‘no offence but…’, ‘I’m not gonna lie but…’ and the improper use of the word ‘literally’ as in ‘I literally just broke my arm’-she never broke her arm. I think she is addicted to lying, maybe this is why she starts so many of her sentences with ‘I’m not gonna lie but’. However this is often followed by something that is obviously not a lie or an opinion making the first half of the sentence pretty unnecessary. I feel like the previous two sentences are slightly contradictory but I know what I mean. Anyway, despite these rather scary attributes, once in a while she comes out with something that I find utterly hilarious. Here are some of my favourite quotes from Eilidh:

1.            at the dinner table

“I never want to have a baby cause when you’re pregnant you get fat and I don’t want to be fat. No offence mum”

2.            to a group of ten girls in her year at school who all claim to be lesbians

 “Your sleepovers must be really fun”

3.            to me

 “I am not a liar!!!”

4.            to me

 “Stop being so horrible to me! The other day you tried to trick me into believing that ‘The Hills’ isn’t real and now you’re calling me a liar.”

5.            to me

“Stuart you’ll never guess what… ‘The Hills’ isn’t real”

6.            to our gran while pointing at the postman

“Look gran there’s my dad”

I should explain that the running joke in our family is that the postman is Eilidh’s real dad.

7.            to three sets of unsuspecting ears

“Me and Jessica could laugh until the wolves come home”

8.            in a story made up by Eilidh where someone says to her “I never knew your sister was a lesbian” Eilidh replied:

“Ano, shocker. She does go to the library a lot though”

9.            to our mum while outside somewhere

 “Mum I thought I saw you in a field there but it was just a cow”

 10.          at the dinner table

“My career choice is a prostitute but you don’t see me doing that”

Bonus Items

I don’t know if anyone will understand what this means but it’s probably for the best if you don’t because it’s not a very nice image.

11.          to Mhairi (obviously)

 “Mhairi I think we should get matching vajazzle”

12.          at the dinner table (in fact the majority of these quotes were at the dinner table)

 “I was trying to put a necklace on the hamster and it bit me, actually.”

Today, Listverse sued me. FML

Yeah, he’s a nice kid, pretty kid, don’t know whether to fuck him or fight him.

Took me a long time to think of a quote. Long time.

As usual this is just going to be a bit of a ramble.  Was out at Loch Lomond filming some stuff for my Gaelic film.  Left the flat at about 10 got back to Glasgow at about 4.30 and we expect to use about ten seconds of footage from this.  I think we just did it for the fun of going to Loch Lomond, honestly the film could probably have been fine without those ten seconds, but perhaps it will be better for it.

On another note, Stuart is an excellent actor.  His deadpan humour is reminiscent of Nicholas Cage when he is being funny and not just DRIVING ANGRY IN 3D.  Only Iain and Drew weren’t there when we were filming, so this is really just for your benefit, Stuart plays a teucthar hating, seething racist, with three short lines.  But somehow, there is so much depth in his performance.  When I say depth I mean possibly deliberate, possibly accidental humour.

Not sure that made too much sense that last paragraph but I’m listening to some subcity radio show just now and not paying too much attention to what I’m writing. 

What else is happening, oh yeah, Iain you coming to america?  Stuart said you are but then my mum said she had no idea?  I definitely think you should, its gonna be fuckinA.  Also, once you have decided to come convince Abbey to come cause the gov just gave her shitloads of money.  hmmm,  I feel like there should be some good video or something to finish this off, and unfortunately this is only thing I can think of….hannah showed me this, I didn’t go searching for it.

dont say i didnt warn you for this next one, you thought the first one was weird.

we’ll see if I’ve worked out how to embed videos or not yet.

Gary.

I hate the way drivers never look at the road in old American movies.

 

 

Sorry this took so long. There are full blogs dedicated to funny family portraits but i dont really know what else to do and I think these pictures are funny.

 

Nice to have a hobby but a lot of them are gay….

This is a gay hobby. The argument for a strong father figure.

I like denim, all shades, but these people should be on a spike and rotating in a dirty shop window.

This family is also wearing matching clothes (apart from that cool as fuck badass motherfucker, breaking boundaries, making his/her own rules ... dancing with the wind).

 



This is the last picture taken of the Fritzls together outside. They went for a picnic then to Homebase.

This just makes me think of fake wood paneling. BEIGE.

If these people are being funny then I fancy a trip to the pub with them. If not, I want them shot dead.

I smell a sitcom, or is this already a Stanley Kubrick film. Ive got quite a lot to say about this picture but I would like to do it on a one to one basis.

I like the tiles. This is the actual description of this picture "LES and SHARON, with son STEWART, fiancee RACHEL and baby RUBY."

Guy at the back left could be mistaken for a cool arty Londoner, if it wasnt for the casual inclusion of a possum.

These people have gone one better and have a half shaved pig and a white box in their holiday photo. When they try and put Disney Land on the blue screen, the jeans are going to cause a problem.

I think these people are just really funny. Hideous princess dresses and a big cigar, excellently complement the peace dove. Im going to try and persuade my family to do this this year, so expect a card in about 10 months.

 

Images courtesy of ihatemyparents.com.

 

Also check this for a website http://hoverhands.org/ Its a wee cracker.

 

 

Almost forgot the worst family photo ever…..

 

Christ.

 

“No Mr Dempsey, you have to believe it before you can see it!”

Happy New Year Fish Bloggers.

2011 is upon us and here is the first blog of the year. i hope it lasts a while, because i was thinking that we could do a joint blog as im quite ill and dont have the brain power to be very funny right now. im currently alone in my flat watching lord of the rings: fellowship of the ring; its a sad state of affairs.

(tibbs did you like my use of a semi colon?)

2010 deserves a bit of reflection i think. But lets mix it up with a bit of depression and instead of saying “my best moment of 2010 was …bla bla..oh my god best day ever” i think we should say some of our worst moments. just for fun. we’re a moany lot anyway and i think you would all enjoy this style of reflection rather than discussing happy memories (especially tibbsy and iain…….you know its true).

No.1 Worst Moment of Abbey’s 2010: FACE VS POSTCARD RACK! 

***RoUNd OnE: KNOCK OUT!!!!***

 

 

 

This is pitiful. A thousand people freezing their butts off waiting to worship a rat.

Film has possibly been done before but i’m not checking, so have at it. Also, i said i’d post funny shit, so here is my attempt.

[funnier with sound muted i think]:

Personally, i gave it a go and held in the laughter until the Mick McCarthy get’s scared at nothing video. I even laughed when i previewed this blog post. Gabby may have heard me from across the flat.

Fuck, shit, cock, ass, titties, boner, bitch, muff, pussy, cock, butthole, Barbra Streisand!!

Easy Peasy. I currently have a blog half written and another one about 15 words from completion but they are taking too long so here’s a wee quick one to keep you company for now.  With this blog im going to do what Gary did with his first blog except I’m going to change it slightly to make it my own. The previous sentence was supposed to be a joke but you probably shouldn’t understand it yet… I don’t know, maybe you will have (confusing tense(s)). Speaking of jokes, I met a friend at a bus stop the other day and tried to tell him a joke but failed. I said “My friend told me that I just don’t understand irony… which is ironic because we were standing at a bus stop at the time.” That never actually happened but if it did i think the world would collapse or something.

Anyway, covers? Yes please.

I’m not the biggest Biffy Clyro fan so here’s a cover of Lightspeed Champion’s Galaxy of the Lost performed  by Little Boots back when she had brown or red hair and nobody knew who she was.

Unnecessary fact: The highest rated youtube comment to this video is from Lightspeed Champion.

Owen Pallett background info: worked with Arcade Fire (on all three of their albums), Beirut, Grizzly Bear and shit loads of other artists. Sometimes performs under the name ‘Final Fantasy’.

He has another couple of covers if you enjoyed that.

‘Street Sweeper Social Club’ covering ‘Paper Planes’

The fuck off bitchin’ guitar was Tom Morello of RATM.

One last video that is not a cover but I love to watch this:

Stuart over and out

What do you think? Think they stand a chance?

The idea for this blog came to me in a dream last night, I can’t remember much of the dream, infact the only thing I can remember is that Tibbsy had a bad-ass Tom Selleck-esk moustache. So I thought to myself, what would the rest of the blogoteers look like Tom Selleck-ed. What follows is my findings.
Get y’all eased in with the Tibbsy Selleck

Looks good right?
Next up we have Stuballs Selleck

And his little cousin Iain Selleck

This their middle cousin Gary Selleck (this one was hardest cause most photos of gary he has a beard)

Then the woman in Gary Selleck’s life Abbey Mary Jane McArthur-McLean-Selleck

And lest but not least Me Selleck

Thanks
Drew Fish