The Whole 6.270 Story

The Whole 6.270 Story In mid-December a friend of mine, Jared 10, asked if Id be interested in being on a team with him for a LEGO robot competition during IAP. It would be him, me, and Dan 11. Sure, why not? I replied, and one $50 registration fee later I was enrolled in 6.270 for IAP. The official description of the class is: 6.270 is a hands-on, learn-by-doing class open only to MIT students, in which participants design and build a robot that will play in a competition at the end of January. The goal for the students is to design a machine that will be able to navigate its way around the playing surface, recognize other opponents, and manipulate game objects. Unlike the machines in Introduction to Design (formerly 2.70, now 2.007), 6.270 robots are totally autonomous, so once a round begins, there is no human intervention (in 2.007 the machines are controlled with joysticks). The goal of 6.270 is to teach students about robotic design by giving them the hardware, software, and information they need to design, build, and debug their own robot. The subject includes concepts and applications that are related to various MIT classes (e.g. 6.001, 6.002, 6.004, and 2.007), though there are no formal prerequisites for 6.270. Weve found that people can learn everything they need to know by working with each other, being introduced to some material in class, and mostly, by hacking on their robots. The students work in teams of two or three. Each team is given the same kit containing various sensors, electronic components, batteries, motors, and LEGO. The kits are handed out in the beginning of January and they have three weeks in which to transform the parts into a working robot. It started off fast. I was unable to attend the first lecture because of a conflict with my physics class but Dan and Jared attended, were told the rules of the contest, and came home with a big box of LEGOs. $1500 worth of LEGOs to be precise. I dont know how much you know about LEGOs, but when youre given as many LEGOs as we were, its completely overwhelming and insane. We had bags full of different pieces laying all over the floor, pieces wed never even seen before. The scene looked something like this: Our first assignment was to build the Car of Awesome. It was a pdf file containing a LEGO car that we could use as an example for our gear train and chassis. This was the most useful tool, by far, of the entire month. General consensus is that without the Car of Awesome we would have been completely sunk. In honor of said car, we decided that our team name should be Team Awesome. Simple, yet just awesome enough to be awesome. In addition to being completely overwhelmed by LEGOs we were also given the rules for the competition. After it was explained to me I was a little stunned. I looked at my team and all I could say was Thats really hard! and all they could say was an exasperated Yeah! The playing table would look like this: There are two starting corners and then three slots along each wall. The slots are painted black so the robot can see them. Next to each slot is a bin to collect balls. Each robot is responsible for different bins, depending on where it starts. Each slot/bin pair is assigned a number between 1 and 4. Heres a schematic to clear things up: Ignore the skunk ball for now. As you can see, robot A is in charge of scoring in the middle bin on the side nearest to him and in the nearest/farthest bins on the opposite wall. The same is true for robot B. Each robot can start with 6 balls in it, meaning they can score a maximum of 24 points (all balls in the 4 bin). How many points is the robot supposed to score though? That number is determined before each round. A number between 15 and 24 is picked and you have 1 minute to calibrate your robot. The robot then has one minute to drive around, deposit the correct number of balls in each slot, and try to score closer to the number than the opposing robot. The closest to the number wins. The skunk ball is a penalty ball. If your robot can capture the skunk and then take it back to your opponents starting area then they receive 4 penalty points. Complicated enough? Meh, manageable. Hard enough? Yes. We played around with a ton of strategies, everything from line following, gyroscopes, cutting across the middle of the field, a rotating turret, going for the skunk, flipping the opponent over, dropping pieces to confuse the other robot, and countless other strategies. I mean, were MIT students, we try to find as many work-arounds to the rules as possible. One thing we did decide on was to keep the robot simple and to have a rotating turret that dispensed balls over the slot and into the bin rather than into the slot. I set to work on building the chassis and gear train while Dan and Jared worked on the turret. Work on these continued for over a week and a half. Refining, tweaking, reinforcing (you could punch our robot and drop it onto the table and it wouldnt break at all). Eventually we had a basic little robot with a turret that could release one ball at a time. This is when we had our breakthrough. Jared came up with a strategy that was absolutely brilliantly simple, if not a bit cheap, but perfectly legal. Instead of our robot trying to score the given number of points, we planned on having it drive straight forward, deposit all the balls in the two bin, and then drive backwards to block the opponents 4 slot. The opponent wouldnt be able to put any balls into its 4 slot, meaning in order to even tie it would have to dump all of its balls in its own two slot. All of the possible numbers, 15-24, required at least 3 balls in the 4 slot, meaning unless their robot dumped all of its balls in the 2 slot (which it probably wouldnt be programmed to do) we would win. Realizing all of this was a very happy day for us. We changed our method of ball deployment from one by one to all at once, cut the rotating turret, and starting working on programming. This is when it started getting rough. Now that we had a strategy it was time to start integrating the non-LEGO elements, mainly the sensors. This was one of my roughest days. Try to imagine breathing lead for 9 hours. I had to solder all of our components together and I decided to get it all done in one day. It was a loooooong day, believe me. At the end of it we had 3 motors, 3 distance sensors, 3 dark/light photo transistors, and 4 bump sensors. Lightheaded maybe yes? 6.270 was abruptly interrupted by Mystery Hunt, cutting down on the amount of time we had by three days. My pistol tournament the next weekend also took me away from our robot, until all of a sudden it was Monday, the robot was due on Wednesday, and it didnt work. This is when things started to get really rough. We essentially lived in lab for the next several days. Jared and I headed to lab at 7 pm to begin work. A lot of things happened. Some were good. They were quickly countered by things that were VERY VERY bad. Id go into detail but some of the details are still a little to painful to recount. Heres the gist of what happened: Our break-beam sensors, that we used to drive straight, worked for a while and then just stopped. After messing around with them and re-soldering our board we managed to get one to work. Our gyroscope, our new strategy for driving straight, started to drift the instant we turned it on. After fixing the gyroscope the gear train on the right side began to skip. This caused the robot to drive straight, um, never. Our dark/light photo transistor failed. Our caster broke. By now its 3 in the morning. Jared was tired and went back to the dorm but I stayed a while longer. I fixed the photo-transistor and wrote some orientation code but was having a hard time being productive since Id been awake for almost 24 hours. Whats one to do? I curled up into a ball under my workbench in lab and fell asleep for a couple of hours. When I woke up I had no motivation to try and figure out what was wrong with the right gear train so I stumbled for a while, sending sporadic and desperate text messages to Dan and Jared to relieve me. At 12:30 I was finally relieved and went back to the dorm to sleep. I took a nap, went to pistol, and at 7 I headed back to lab. I got there and was hoping that somehow, miraculously, everything was done. It wasnt. In fact, spirits were pretty low and almost nothing had been done. This was the low of the entire process. Two days left, a robot that didnt work, and no clue how to fix it. We worked through the night on repairing the gear train and fixing the gyro. Our gear train began at a gear ratio of 75:1 which was ideal. In order to get rid of the skipping we had to re-route some gears, accidentally making the gear ratio 225:1. The robot just quivered when it tried to move forward. To compensate for this we added more gears in order to bring the ratio back down to 75:1. Now, when you look at our robot, it looks as if somebody vomited gears into it, but it works, so were not complaining. To this day Im still not quite sure how we did it, but by some miracle of coding we managed to get our gyro (which drifts 5 degrees) accurate to within .1 degrees. That made it a very useful tool. By three in the morning we were far from done, but we thought we had most of the big stuff fixed. Dan and I planned on getting some sleep, returning at 10 am on Wednesday, and then finishing everything up on Wednesday. Before we left we wanted to make sure we had the code necessary for completing one of the 8 possible orientations. We decided to make a video log of a lot of our failures. The last clip in this movie is at 3 am Wednesday morning, 14 hours before the robot was due. Jared stayed in lab while Dan and I slept, but when I woke up at 9 am to get ready I saw the following e-mail in my inbox: Hey, So I am having problems with calibrating the robot. The main issue is that the gyroscope fails too often to be used alone in this manner. I think this problem can be solved by using a bump sensor, but am having issues installing it. The idea is similar to the physical bump that moves the robot back in line, but much much much more reliable. As is, the robot simply runs into a wall and is not able to correct. The gyroscope has to be absolutely perfect, and this perfection is nearly impossible to achieve, and not all that reliable when achieved. Another alternative is to use motor current as a defacto bump sensor, but this is very difficult. Even though we were able to get the gyro to work alone for one case, in the long run it will be much more efficient and practical to implement a system in which wall following acts as a check to the gyro. Right now I am too tired to get much done, so I will go get some sleep. Good luck guys. Wonderful, the robot doesnt work and its due in 14 hours. Dan and I showed up in lab to find a sleep-deprived Jared doing busy-work on the robot and not looking very productive at all. We relieved him and took over. This is when we buckled down and settled in for the final grind. We messed with the gyro, break-beam sensors, and orientation. Eventually things started to come together. The robot started doing what we wanted it to, and with 2 hours until it was due we were making real progress. We ended up finishing our robot on time and getting it turned in at the deadline, which is more than what most teams could say. We spent that night doing very little, taking a break until the competition the next day. Before the main competition on Thursday we had a seeding round. Each robot competed twice and was then placed into the bracket for the competition based on how well it performed. Our robot won both times so it was seeded very high. That night was the competition. Our team, Team Awesome, decided to be a little goofy/awesome and bring an R2D2 to the competition. Dan also decided to dress like a pirate. The competition was very fun, and we ended up getting 3rd place overall! Out of 30 teams at an MIT robot competition, Im happy with 3rd! Id describe the different matches we were in, but theres no need because due to my 1337h4x0|P skilz I have managed to pull the live webcast from the internet, convert the file format, edit it, and post each of our matches to YouTube. For those of you with dial-up, the video youll want to really watch is Round 4, so dont bother loading any of them but that one for starters. Without further delay, I bring you the adventures of Team Awesome in the 2008 MIT 6.270 competition: Round 1: Round 2: Round 3: Round 4: Round 5: Round 6: Both losses were fairly disappointing, but what loss isnt? In the end, after treating ourselves to some ice cream afterwards, we decided that 6.270 was a really cool experience and that it was all worth it. The sleep deprivation, the anger, and the lack of personal hygiene for 3 days was rough, but in the end it all paid off. We won 2 webcams and a keyboard for coming in third and were thinking of installing one of the webcams into R2D2 and streaming it somewhere. Ill let you know how that goes. Hope you enjoyed! -:-

Dr. Sigmund Freud s Theory Essay - 1662 Words

Icebergs, sexual relations with parents, and repressed memories are what every student understands as they walk out of introductory psychology classes. Until my graduate level class I had no idea that there was more to Dr. Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) thoughts and theories. In my mind Freud was the reason for victim blaming in today’s culture and helped contribute to the systematic sexism that women face in today’s society; I even wrote about that in my response to some of his readings that he was the cause of all evil in the world essentially. While Freud is the cause for a lot of these ideas, and he was a sexist, he is not the perpetrator of these ideas, and he was not a sick pervert who was into children. He was a devoted father, passionate researcher, and a spearhead for new and innovated research into a new field that has led to further research today and has helped to keep psychologists thinking and moving forward—whether it be to disprove his thought s or to validate them, he got people talking. Since 1987, he has been cited more than 458,000 times (Google Scholar, 2016) over a 300 different original sources from him (Cherry, 2016). He has led to massive amounts of research being done and without his contributions psychology would not have been able to progress to where it is, but people do not understand the scope of his impact because they become distracted by what he â€Å"said† and what his theory claims according to the current translations. There are many ways peopleShow MoreRelatedMoore 1. Kristen Moore. Mrs. Kristy French. English Iii1443 Words   |  6 Pagespsychologist named Sigmund Freud. 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Performing Rhetorical Analysis - 590 Words

Performing Rhetorical Analysis The intended audience of this source is adults. They are targeting adults that would watch the Super Bowl and the Puppy Bowl. They also target adults with enough education, work experience, and perspective to appreciate or engage in an article that offers a meta-view or macrocosmic view of trends in media consumption. The adults are likely in and over their thirties, with moderate to exceptional knowledge of their indigenous culture (American), including the traditional popular cultural practices. It is uncertain as to whether there is a specific ethnicity targeted, as the content is regarding puppies and other cute baby animals, which appeal to people of all ethnicities. The content has a universal appeal; the writing style of the article appeals to middle class white Americans, or those who relate most to that culture or at least have a moderate understanding to that culture. The assumptions the article makes regarding the audience is that they watched one or both bowls and that t hey have a neutral or friendly audience. They assume an audience that is moderately informed as well as moderately uninformed; this article is for those who know about the Puppy Bowl and for those who do not. The article does not definitely identify the type of audience they want. The information regarding the audience is implied and contextual. The purpose of the source is to be informational or to provide exposition regarding the Puppy Bowl. There is also aShow MoreRelatedRhetorical Analysis Of `` A Letter And The Editor ``987 Words   |  4 Pagesengaging in rhetorical writing, it can be difficult for individuals to remain objective and grounded. Often times individuals will neglect to properly employ the rhetorical appeals in a manner that supports their claim. The author who wrote â€Å"A Letter to the Editor† failed to construct a compelling argument. 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Was the English Civil War a War of Religion Free Essays

string(141) " but regarded as an illegal tax; men refused to pay the ship tax and argued that the tax was illegal in court, but most lost and were fined\." Was the English Civil War a war of Religion? The English Civil Wars of 1642 to 1651 had religious connections indefinitely, yet to say that they were wars of religion is slightly blindsided. Economics, national and foreign policy and the rule of King Charles I all played pivotal roles in the wars, in particular, the role of the King and his failings to rule. Such failings lost support for the King on a large scale and led to the argument that this was the beginnings of democracy where the people wanted to look elsewhere from the monarchy for a better governed country. We will write a custom essay sample on Was the English Civil War a War of Religion? or any similar topic only for you Order Now The wars were not fought intently for religion but instead against the monarchy and the dreadful rule of King Charles I for a better led democracy. Such democracy was largely connected and associated with the Parliamentarians who offered opposition to the failing Royalists and hope for change. With the Royalists and the Parliamentarians fighting for power and for leadership of their country, two parties with no major religious qualms were set to go to war. For the Roundheads, the ultimate desire was not religious but was to â€Å"safeguard parliaments place in the constitution from the creeping threat of royal absolutism’ that had seemed to be prevalent since at the least 1626. † The parliamentarians offering opposition to the Royalists were in a political sense, seen as the answer in the search of democracy through which they gained mass support. However in answering the question, religious connections must be analysed with a mind on the importance to the civil wars. Importantly, England was a strictly protestant nation after the Reformations of the 16th century and King Charles struggled with Parliament in connection to religion and caused much tension and ill feeling within England. In keeping with his high Anglican faith, the King appointed his main political advisor, William Laud as the new archbishop in 1633. The Protestant people of England accused Laud of Catholicising the Church of England and in turn Laud imposed fines for not attending Anglican Church services. He aroused further public anger in 1637 by cutting off the ears of three gentlemen who had written pamphlets attacking Laud’s own views. Such strict and brutal behaviour caused fear in the people and alienate Laud’s church. Further still, the marriage of King Charles to the Roman Catholic French princess Henrietta Maria 1625 had previously caused a general fear of Catholicism to emerge in England but this was only built upon by the measures Laud had instigated. Clearly religion did have an impact yet it is the subsequent effects that matter. These religious matters crucially caused a lack of support for the monarchy and the realisation that the monarchy needed Parliament to govern effectively. The King was blind to this and this forced the people to look elsewhere for democracy. This was the true nature of the war to fight for control and a new democracy. To continue, King Charles the First showed incompetence throughout his rule losing the support of his people gradually but surely. A series of failings displayed his inability to rule yet first and foremost was the manner of King Charles. Michael Young describes Charles as ‘a stubborn, combative and high-handed king, who generated conflict† whilst Richard Cust continues that â€Å"he was not stupid, but he did suffer from what Russell calls ‘a tunnel vision’, which made it very difficult for him to understand anyone’s perspective other than his own. † Shy and obnoxious, Charles was unwilling to conform to parliament insisting that he was chosen by God to rule in accordance with the doctrine of the â€Å"Divine Right of Kings†. Many parliamentarians feared that setting up a new kingdom as Charles I intended might destroy the old English traditions that had been integral to the English monarchy and its country and this belief from King Charles I of the divine right of kings only exacerbated this. Importantly at this point, parliament was subject to dissolution by the monarchy at any time and they had to weary of this. In all, King Charles was unsuitable to rule England and his character flaws along with his beliefs and reluctance to compromise left him on a one way path to disaster and crucially, unpopularity. He needed parliament yet he himself did not know it, instead his own policies and decisions would alienate him from the people and would be his very downfall. More so disastrous for his reign than his â€Å"indecisive, inadequate and ineffective† personality were the policies of King Charles I. The King wanted to take part in the Thirty Years’ War of Europe at huge costs and with heavy expenditure. Parliament foresaw these impossible costs of the war and refused to support King Charles yet this did not stop the King in pressing ahead with his European Wars. His conquests continued past the dissolution of parliament into his ‘personal rule’ until he was forced to withdraw from the war making peace with Spain and France; the monarchy’s finances were shattered and the King had dissolved Parliament ending any hopes of financial support from taxes. Here the King demonstrates his naivety with the country sustaining incredible financial troubles with little reward to show for it but most importantly he lost further support of the people. People began to question his ability to rule and began to look elsewhere towards parliament. Perhaps the clearest indication though that he was unable to rule without parliament came with his 11 year Personal Rule. For 11 years, King Charles avoided calling a parliament during which time he made several crucial mistakes. Most importantly, without Parliament, Charles was left with little revenue and so he looked to other means of income. Controversially, the King tried to implement Ship taxes, exploiting a naval war-scare and demanding tax from inland counties to pay for the Royal Navy. The tax was questionable at best, supported by law but regarded as an illegal tax; men refused to pay the ship tax and argued that the tax was illegal in court, but most lost and were fined. You read "Was the English Civil War a War of Religion?" in category "Essay examples" Further resentment to the King was growing among the English people and again they blamed the Kings lack of parliament and his inability to rule without it. King Charles I foolishly looked to enforce policies in Scotland also. The King had hoped to unite England with Scotland and Ireland to create a single kingdom with a uniform High Anglican church. This idea scared Parliament with fears of losing traditional English ways evident. Despite this, summer of 1637 saw Charles I interfere with Scottish religion introducing a new high Anglican English book of prayer to the Scottish despite the Church of Scotland having strict traditions. This was duly followed by resistance and riots in Edinburgh followed by a rebellion. Naturally the King responded by leading an army to the Scottish border and challenging the rebellion. A second war followed in 1640 where embarrassingly King Charles’ forces were defeated by a Scottish army who continued to capture Newcastle; Charles now had a rebellion on his hand but with insufficient finances he could not defend anything of the like, he was forced to form a new parliament and seek the taxes that they brought. The Scottish were demanding ? 850 a day to keep them from advancing and this was all Charles’ own doing in trying to change religion in Scotland. It can be argued as indeed C. Russel does that, â€Å"Religion undoubtedly contributed heavily to the outbreak of the Bishops wars. It contributed to the English defeat in the wars, by building up a party in England whose sympathies were on the Scottish side. † However these religious disputes were not a direct cause of the civil war rather that once again King Charles had made a mistake and proven his inability to rule without the credible parliament. The people were becoming all too aware of these failings and his delusions. The dislike for King Charles I continued to climb with his ordered execution of Thomas Wentworth May 1641. The King had sacrificed one of his chief advisors in the hope of preventing war yet it was all in vain. Here his incapability’s had resulted in an execution and the backlash in Ireland was total chaos with the faithful Catholics fearing a protestant resurgence. Further tension between the monarchy and parliament was seen and the King looked very weak at this point. Finally, the end of King Charles of England rule came in 1642, early in which he had attempted to capture five members of the House of Commons. The King had gone accompanied by 400 soldiers to arrest the five members on charge of treason yet upon arrival at parliament the Speaker refused to reveal the whereabouts of the suspects. Crucially, Lenthall replied â€Å"May it please your majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this house is pleased to direct me whose servant I am here; and humbly beg your majesty’s pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this is to what your majesty is pleased to demand of me† voicing his determined allegiance not the King but to Parliament. This portrayed the feeling between Parliament and the King and it was only then that the King saw that he had real opposition. Following his latest failing Charles had fled from London in fear of his own safety but continued to negotiate with Parliament through until the summer to no avail. With the summer passing towns and cities began to voice their allegiance for either the Royalists or the Parliamentarians and the war was beginning to emerge. Quite literally King Charles had got it all wrong and had even sparked off a civil war with his attempts to arrest parliament members. Importantly it was the King’s attempts to arrest members of parliament that sparked the war as opposed to any religious factors or disputes and the Kings incompetent ruling of the country that continued to fuel the civil wars for years to come. In conclusion, the English civil wars on 1642 to 1651 were not wars of religion. Without doubt religion played a role in the distancing between the King to his people and Parliament and also with the Bishops wars, yet it was not integral to the emergence of the war or indeed throughout the war. Rather the war was a war of power and control with Parliament attempting to provide democracy to the unsatisfied people in contrast to the diabolical failings with the rule of King Charles I. King Charles was incapable of ruling the country, demonstrating his incompetence with endless examples to make the people want for a new democracy and better leadership for their country; and that they did with support for Parliamentarians seen in huge numbers. The Kings failure to rule and govern the country had directly led to intervention from the Parliamentarians and the start of the English civil wars. Word Count – 1920 Bibliography 1. Coward, B. (1980) The Stuart Age; England 1603 – 1714. Pearson Education Limited 2. Cust, R. (2002) ‘Politics, Religion and Popularity’, Charles I and popularity. (ed. ,Cogswell, T. Cust, R. Lake, P. ) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 235 3. De Groot, J. (2004). Royalist identities. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. 4. Hill, C. (1958). Puritanism and revolution: Studies in interpretation of the English revolution of the 17th century. London: Secker ; Warburg. 5. Kishlansky, M. (1999) ‘Tyranny Denied: Charles I, Attorney General Heath, and the Five Knights’ Case. 42: 53 6. Morrill, J. S. (1993). The nature of the English Revolution: Essays. London: Longman. 7. Parliament. uk; Speaker Lenthall defends Parliament against the King. Accessed 27th March 2012. Available from http://www. parliament. uk/business/publications/parliamentary-archives/archives-highlights/archives-speakerlenthall/ 8. Russell, C. (1990) Th e Causes of the English civil War. Oxford: Clarendon Press 9. Sproxton, J. (1995). Violence and religion: Attitudes towards militancy in the French civil wars and the English Revolution. London ; New York: Routledge. ——————————————- [ 1 ]. Coward, B. (1980) The Stuart Age; England 1603 – 1714. Pearson Education Limited [ 2 ]. Cust, R. (2002) ‘Politics, Religion and Popularity’, Charles I and popularity. (ed. ,Cogswell, T. Cust, R. Lake, P. ) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 235 [ 3 ]. Cust, R. (2002) ‘Politics, Religion and Popularity’, Charles I and popularity. (ed. ,Cogswell, T. Cust, R. Lake, P. ) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 235 [ 4 ]. Kishlansky, M. (1999) ‘Tyranny Denied: Charles I, Attorney General Heath, and the Five How to cite Was the English Civil War a War of Religion?, Essay examples

Pre-marital Sex Cause and Effect free essay sample

In our recent, Present, and possibly our future generations of youths, an un precedent amount of youths take part in the contemplation and indulging of premarital sex. Teens of ages as young as 11 to 20 partake in dating and interactions, and sexual intercourse with the opposite sex some of early teenage to adolescent. Statistics show that in a percentage of youths that are dating at young ages lose their virginity within the first week upon dating. Boy likes girl, and girl likes boy. The opposite sexes attracts which ignites desires for interactions which then leads to dating which leads elsewhere and eventually ends with premarital sexual relations. Dating is the primary cause for premarital sex. Although other elements are included, Dating is where it starts. What is dating actually? Really, dating is any social activity in which your romantic interest is focused on one particular and that persons interest is focused on you. We will write a custom essay sample on Pre-marital Sex Cause and Effect or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Whether on the phone or face-to-face, in the open or in secret, if you and a friend have a special romantic understanding and communicate regularly, its dating. Although In many cultures dating is regarded as a legitimate way for two people to become better acquainted with one another, dating should be an honorable purpose -to help a young man and women determine if they want to get married to each other. The period of life when sexual feelings and romantic emotions first become strong is quoted, in the Bible, as the Bloom of Youth-(New World Translation1Corinthians 7:36). It is at these periods in a young person life where the most cautions must be taken. Maintaining close association with one particular member of the opposite sex while in this phase can fan flames of desires and lead to premarital sex. The Bloom of Youth is a crucial element and so is Peer Pressure. Many youths are eager to experiment with sex. Influences from the world today promotes sexual relations outside of marriage. These influences (Pressure) come from our day-to-day interactions with our peers. Individuals experience unrelenting teasing and harassment for maintaining their virginity and values. This pressure gives social awkwardness to young individuals and pushes them to pair up with the opposite sex. Classmates may pressure couples to have sex. Believing that you must have sex to know if youre in love. Contrary to what some may think, taking improper sexual liberties doesnt mean that youre in love nor does it deepen a relationship. Many young ones today view relationships as transitory -which in a sense prepares them for divorce rather than for marriage. Sex is a gift from God, one that we all can really-really enjoy, but in the right way. God condemns fornication. In the Bible, it describes all forms of sexual relations outside of marriage. Consequently, kissing, embracing, or doing anything that causes arousal can lead to premarital sex. The effects of premarital sex can cause individuals to take on life responsibilities that they have not prepared for. For instance, a married couple may have intentions on raising kids and starting a family. So with kids being the expected outcome of sex they make the right preparations to take on these responsibilities, where as a couple who are not married and have no intensions of marriage unexpectedly have children then these responsibilities are forced upon them. When we chose our marriage mates we include them in every aspect of our lives and harmonize together, but in terms to those who engage in activities meant for married couples, they then find themselves forcing there lives upon one another. This ties with the statement Pick the mate you want to Stick with, instead of the mate youre Stuck with. With the effect of young teens engaging in premarital sex we see young teen parents a responsibility given to the inexperienced. Hence the statement Babies raising Babies. In consequence, premarital sex is often an emotionally painful experience. After sex, the typical feelings most youths feel are embarrassment and ashamed. Christians are urged to wait until marriage to enjoy the gift of sexual relations. The Bible illustrates, at Ecclesiastes chap. 3:1-8, that just as there is a time to love and a time to hate, there is also a time to act on sexual urges and a time to refrain from doing so. In conclusion, Dating prior to the Bloom of Youth, Peer Pressure and regular interactions with the opposite sex result in premarital sex. The effects is the shame of immorality.

The Bre-X Gold Scandal, History and Resources

The Bre-X Gold Scandal, History and Resources Start with the biggest deposit of gold ever reported, in the headwaters of the Busang River in the steaming jungle of Borneo. The Canadian company Bre-X Minerals Ltd. didnt know about that when it bought rights to the site in 1993. But after Bre-X hired a high-living geologist to map the ore body, the deposit, along with the fever dreams that accompany gold, grew to monster size- by March 1997 that geologist was talking about a 200-million-ounce resource. You do the math at, say US$500 per ounce in mid-1990s dollars. Bre-X prepared for big times ahead by building a gold-plated website, where you could generate your own Bre-X stock chart to follow its meteoric rise. It also had a chart showing the equally meteoric rise of the estimated gold resource: together, those two pages could infect anyone with gold fever. The Sharks Arrive Bigger mineral companies took notice. Some made takeover offers. So did the Indonesian government, in the person of president Suharto and his powerful family. Bre-X owned more of this lode than seemed prudent for such a small, inexperienced foreign firm. Suharto suggested that Bre-X share its fortunate surplus with the people of Indonesia and with Barrick, a firm tied to Suhartos ambitious daughter Siti Rukmana. (Barricks advisors, among them George H. W. Bush and ex-prime minister of Canada Brian Mulroney, also favored this scheme.) Bre-X responded by enlisting Suhartos son Sigit Hardjojudanto on its side. An impasse loomed. To end the contretemps, family friend Mohamad Bob Hasan stepped in to offer all sides a deal. The American firm Freeport-McMoRan Copper Gold, led by another old Suharto friend, would run the mine and Indonesian interests would share the wealth. Bre-X would keep 45 percent of the ownership and Hasan for his pains would accept a share possibly worth a billion or so. Asked what he was paying for this stake, Hasan said, There is no payment, no nothing. It is a very clean deal. Trouble Arises The deal was announced on 17 February 1997. Freeport went to Borneo to start its own due-diligence drilling. Suharto was ready to sign a contract after this step, locking in Bre-Xs land rights for 30 years and starting the flood of gold. But just four weeks later, Bre-Xs geologist at Busang, Michael de Guzman, exited his helicopter that was 250 meters in the air at the time- an evident suicide. On March 26 Freeport reported that its due-diligence cores, drilled only a meter and a half from Bre-Xs, showed insignificant amounts of gold. The next day Bre-X stock lost almost all of its value. Freeport brought more rock samples to its American headquarters under armed guard. Bre-X commissioned a review of Freeports drilling; the review recommended more drilling. Another review focusing on the chemical assays caused Bre-X to clam up completely on 1 April, and Suhartos signature was postponed. Bre-X, in a novel strategy for the time, blamed the Web. CEO David Walsh told a fawning Calgary Herald reporter that the meltdown began when scurrilous local rumors in Indonesia were picked up by one of the ghostwriters on the Internet on the chat page or whatever. Further reviews took the rest of April. Meanwhile, disquieting details began to arise. Industry journalists soon found evidence that the Busang ore samples had been salted with gold dust. Salting of the Earth On Friday 11 April, Northern Miner magazine put a news flash on its site laying out three lines of evidence that Bre-X had been duped. First, contrary to company statements, the Busang core samples had been prepared for assay in the jungle, not in the testing lab. A videotape made by a visitor to the field site showed the humble machines common in assay labs- hammer mills, crushers, and sample splitters. Well-labeled sample bags clearly had finely crushed ore in them. Security was lax enough that samples could easily have been spiked with gold.Second, the local inhabitants had begun panning for gold in the Busang River, but in two years they never found any. Yet Bre-X claimed that gold was visible, a sign of unusually rich ore. And de Guzmans technical report, confusingly, called the gold submicroscopic, which is typical of hard-rock gold ore.Third, the assayer that tested the samples said the gold was predominantly in visible-sized grains. Also, the grains showed signs consistent with being typical river-panned gold dust, such as rounded outlines and rims depleted in silver. The assayer dodged the 64-billion-dollar question, saying that there were indeed ways for hard-rock gold grains to acquire rounded edges- but that argument was a fig leaf. The Curtain Falls Meanwhile, a storm of securities lawsuits arose around Bre-X, which vigorously protested that this was just an unfortunate series of misunderstandings. But it was too late. The collapse of Bre-X cast a cloud over the gold mining industry that lasted into the next century. David Walsh decamped to the Bahamas, where he died of an aneurysm in 1998. Bre-Xs chief geologist, John Felderhof, eventually went on trial in Canada but was acquitted of securities fraud in July 2007. Apparently in selling part of his stock holdings for $84 million in the months before the scandal hit he had not been criminal, just too stupid to catch the fraud. And I have been told that Michael de Guzman has been seen in Canada, years after the scandal. The explanation would be that, as was rumored at the time, an anonymous corpse was thrown from the helicopter. You could say the very jungle had been salted as well as the ore bags.

Globalization, Unemployment, and Recession Links

Globalization, Unemployment, and Recession Links A reader recently sent me this e-mail: It seems to me that we are now engaged in an economy that may look different from any we have experienced. The Globalization of the economy has created huge firm closures in America expecially in manufacturing and forced lower wages on those employed by this sector. Typically and historically manufacturing jobs have created higher wages in this country but now we see all the rules are changing. Do you believe globalization will bring new trends to the relationship between rececession/depression and firm closures? I believe it already has begun. - Before we begin, Id like to thank the e-mailer for her very thoughtful question! I dont think globalization will change the relationship between recessions and firm closures, since the relationship between the two was fairly weak to begin with. In Are recessions good for the economy? we saw that: We do not see great differences in firm closures between periods of high growth and periods of low growth. While 1995 was the beginning of a period of exceptional growth, almost 500,000 firms closed shop. The year 2001 saw almost no growth in the economy, but we only had 14% more business closures than in 1995 and fewer businesses filed for bankruptcy in 2001 than 1995. Competition between firms in periods of growth: During a period of high economic growth, some firms still perform better than others. Those high performing ones can often squeeze weaker performing ones out of the marketplace, causing firm closures. Structural changes: High economic growth is often caused by technological improvements. More powerful and useful computers can drive economic growth, but they also spell disaster for companies that manufacture or sell typewriters. Would 0% Unemployment Be a Good Thing? Cyclical Unemployment is defined as occuring when the unemployment rate moves in the opposite direction as the GDP growth rate. So when GDP growth is small (or negative) unemployment is high. When the economy goes into recession and workers are laid off, we have cyclical unemployment. Frictional Unemployment: The Economics Glossary defines frictional unemployment as unemployment that comes from people moving between jobs, careers, and locations. If a person quits his job as an economics researcher to try and find a job in the music industry, we would consider this to be frictional unemployment. Structural Unemployment: The glossary defines structural unemployment as unemployment that comes from there being an absence of demand for the workers that are available. Structural unemployment is often due to technological change. If the introduction of DVD players cause the sales of VCRs to plummet, many of the people who manufacture VCRs will suddenly be out of work. Thats my take on the question - Id love to hear yours! You can contact me by using the feedback form.