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Showing posts from November, 2019

A New Leaf for the Looking Glass 2026/27

Dear all, Upon inheriting the Looking Glass from our predecessors, we identified a number of key issues. Firstly, there were simply not enough articles being published, due both to a lack of submissions from the school community and limited responsiveness from the previous Academic Team. Secondly, the Looking Glass had not been advertised or explained effectively enough to the wider school community. As a result, we plan to implement a more consistent and engaging stream of articles on the Looking Glass. As part of this initiative, we are looking to recruit a select group of keen writers from across the lower school who would be willing to produce one high-quality piece of writing, discussion, or media each month for publication on the Looking Glass. We believe this will be hugely beneficial both to the school community, which will gain access to a wider range of opinions and viewpoints, and to prospective writers, who will be able to reference their experience contributing to the Look...
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Dealing With The Challenge Of Climate Change

"A carbon tax is insufficient to deal with the challenge of climate change and instead we should invest in new technologies." Do you agree? According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), unless global carbon emissions are halved by 2030, the Earth will face global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels (Allen et al., 2018). While this figure may appear negligible, it actually could spell devastation for all life on Earth. For humanity, more extreme weather patterns will affect the livelihoods of many, particularly the poorest, despite the fact that most of the damage has been inflicted by rich nations. This inequity is one that must be dealt with, spearheaded by those nations that have contributed so greatly to this global crisis. In assessing the best solution we must consider which policy or which combination is the most cost effective i.e., which approach achieves the target of halved global emissions by 2030 at a minimum cost to society. One way...
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Melting of Black Gold

DHANUSH VYDYAM The United Arab Emirates. Tall skyscrapers, fast cars and luxury lifestyle. But what led to it becoming one of the most sought after destinations to live in? The single and most direct answer to that question would be petroleum. But it wasn’t all oil. Before the independence of the UAE from the British empire in 1966 and the unification in 1971, each emirate was responsible for its own state of the economy. The main income for those emirates was pearl diving, seafaring and fishing, until 1950, when oil was discovered. Since then they have nothing but capitalised on it, with H.H. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (the then president of the UAE) using all the revenue from the oil exports to make necessary development to the country. Since then, oil has been the biggest income to the UAEs economy, accounting to almost 85% of the economy in 2009. There’s no need to ask what the UAE government has done with the huge load of money they received from the exports of their oil we...
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The Falklands War, 1982

LUKE DALE The finding and founding of the Falklands Looking back, the British Empire can often feel alien and distant. The patriotic imagery of Britannia in Bronze; the Union Flag billowing over India; soldiers in pith helmets drinking tonic water - just over a century ago, such depictions of our country were commonplace, reflective of the vast power of Great Britain in the 1800s - but now it can be hard to imagine such power ever existed. After the Second World War, winds of change swept across Africa and Asia and nations gained independence as bankrupt Britain skulked back into her rainswept homeland. Within a matter of decades, an Empire that had taken a third of a millennium to build ceased to exist, and with its disappearance, so too disappeared the role of Britain as an economic and political superpower.  But, while Britain’s colonies were lost, remnants of Empire inevitably remain. These include a  spattering of islands and holdings around the Globe, tiny and often spar...
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A review of 'Climate Change and the Arctic' by Dr Simon Boxall

DANIEL BEARS On the 30th of September, Watford Grammar Old Boy Dr Simon Boxall returned to the school to give a lecture about the work he has done in relation to his position as an oceanographer, and his work in changing the culture of perceptions around Climate Change. The engaging and insightful talk opened with a section discussing our changing climate, including patterns of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere (it has risen alarmingly since the 1960s, in a way that has never occurred naturally); the extent of Arctic Sea Ice (with one turn of the 21st century model getting it so optimistically wrong that the extent of ice at the end of the summer in September is so small that the model did not predict this occurring until the end of the century) and fluctuations in the offshoot of the Gulfstream (The North Atlantic Current) that keeps the UK’s climate warmer than other areas at similar latitudes- such as Alaska! Dr Boxall pointed out that though Global Warming and Climate...
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Can listening to music enhance sporting performance?

ROBBIE CURWEN To answer this question, one must understand the variables involved: The context in which the music is played in i.e in training/exercise, pre-competition ‘psyching up’ or during sport. The role of music in these contexts for example background or synchronous music during training. The genre and tempo of certain music and how this can have either a damaging, positive or no effect on performance in sport. IS MUSIC DURING TRAINING AND EXERCISE WORTH IT? There are a plethora of benefits to listening to music whilst training or exercising and so improve sporting performance and overall output.  Synchronous music can enhance the performance of the participant regarding aerobic activities such as long distance cycling or spin cycling. Synchronous music essentially refers to performing repetitive movements ‘in sync’ with the rhythm and the beat of the music. Research has indicated that synchronous music acts as an ‘ergogenic aid’ and has been used typically to increas...
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