Political Quotes

“Madam President, a few weeks ago I met a remarkable group of young people. They call themselves the Fighting Pi, and they are the FIRST Robotics Competition team from the Macomb Academy of Arts & Sciences in Armada, MI. FIRST is an annual, international robotics competition for high school students. Teams have 6 weeks to design, build, and test robots to compete in a game, which changes every year. For this year, teams competed in the ``Rebound Rumble,'' which required them to design robots capable of shooting small basketballs into baskets as high as 8 feet off the ground. This competition demands many things of its teams. They must demonstrate the ability to plan and work together, to follow a budget, and to meet demanding timelines. They must master complex technical fields such as computer-assisted drafting, electrical engineering, radio control systems, pneumatic systems, and sensors and signals. So the intellectual demands are great. But just as great is the demand for vision for the foresight to look at a stack of diagrams and a pile of electronic parts and see what it can all become. Thirty-six teams from Michigan traveled in April to St. Louis for the national championship, the Fighting Pi among them.…”