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.

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