[Babyhueyhnx]

Hey all, I emailed Jamie last week and he sent me a reply:

Phil,

Thank you for contacting me. I have known about FIRST for quite a while, and Grant Imahara, who is also a mentor for
a FIRST team, is a friend and co worker; he is a new addition to the Mythbusters group of builders here in San Francisco.
I believe, as I am writing this email he is at the Atlanta FIRST competition as a representative of Discovery and
Mythbusters. I would have gone as well except that I have had to do alot of promotional work for Discovery recently
and as we are shooting the show, I opted out for lack of time.

As to these kinds of competitions, for the record, I applaud all of them because they encourage young people to learn to
build and engineer. The events are a venue for bringing that engineering and labor to the public eye, as well
as providing motivation and direction. All of that is great. It happened at Battlebots, Robot Wars, it is happening at the
FIRST competitions. There is no other sport that requires such a wide range of skill and imagination.
I was fascinated with the evolution that I saw during the years I was competing - most of the bots
evolved into spinners or wedges (myself being the or one of the originators of the spinner) however that natural selection into
those areas was also unfortunate in a way because of the demolition derby flavor of the competitions that ensued - and
the resulting discontinuance of the tv show. It was telling that the producers of the show had to do desparate things like
get builders into hot tubs with Playboy bunnies to make the show interesting. That along with putting more and more intricate
obstacles in the arena.....
FIRST has an opportunity to carry on the sport of robotic competition, and the types of competitions and their rules will
determine the direction and longevity of the sport. Seems to me that it is doing a fair job of that, and the fact that it is a
competition first and not a tv show is a good thing.
I would encourage the organizers of the sport to continue to be aware of the need for diversity - I think the comparison of the sport to nature, and the need
nature has to maintain diversity, is really powerful.

Mythbusters is also doing its part to encourage young people to be interested in the sciences and engineering - something
we are very happy about.

Feel free to post this to the forum or wherever, kudos to you and FIRST for your hard work and contribution.

Best regards
Jamie