Page 12 - Best of the Week

Closing down sweatshops often leads to an increase in child prostitution!

In 1997, economist Jeffrey Sachs spoke publicly about sweatshops in developing nations, and the BENEFITS of having them in the world. Sachs argued that it's not that we have too many sweatshops, it's that the world actually has too few. Sachs says that sweatshops, although have poor working conditions compared to a developed nations work conditions, provide more 'good' than they do 'bad'.

Sachs says that the jobs provided by sweatshops often have better working conditions than other jobs provided in that country. He later went on to argue that if the job wasn't an improvement from the workers previous living conditions, than they wouldn't continue to work at the factory.

Jeffrey Sachs also makes the point that children are unable to work pretty much anywhere else - but they genuinely need the money to survive. When a sweatshop closes and relocates, many children and teenagers are without an income which they so desperately need - so most of them resort to street hustling, stealing, and prostitution.

Sachs goes on to argue a variety of points including sweatshops help build the developing nations economy, and the fact that eventually, the wages will rise in these factories to the point where they are equal to minimum wage in places like America.

These arguments are extremely controversial, and you should click the source to read them in their entirety!

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Volkswagen made a car that had fuel efficiency of 235 miles per gallon!

Volkswagen is a car manufacturing company from Germany, famously producing the Volkswagen Beetle, or as you may know it, the Punch Buggy. Besides making cars that are destined to create a punching war among friends and family, Volkswagen has produced a car named the L1, or rather 'the 1-litre car'.

On a single tank of diesel fuel, the car is able to drive 100km, which is an incredibly fuel efficient turn around. Don't worry, the car is completely road safe and up to all the necessary qualifications the vehicle needs to drive on the road legally.

The reason the car can get so far on such little fuel, is through a combination of elements that make up the car. The car is made of lightweight materials, designed with a streamlined body, and with an engine and transmission designed and tuned for someone who's looking to drive cheap.

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Spaghettification: the process of getting torn apart by a black hole.

At the center of every non rotating black hole, is a single point in which the mass of the black hole is contained. This region is infinitely dense, which basically means the weight is condensed into a region that is infinitely small.

Unfortunately, if you enter the horizon of a black hole, it is physically impossible for you to escape. There is literally no way out - you can only prolong your death by delaying your acceleration into the black hole. Scientists suggest it is best to just free fall in order to get the grueling death you are going to encounter out of the way. When you get far enough into the black hole, your mass will be condensed and then added to that of the black hole.

But, you're lucky, because before you are crushed to an infinitely small spec in the universe, you will be torn apart by the tidal forces in the black hole through a process called Spaghettification, or rather, 'the noodle effect'. Basically, your body will become stretched in a comical looking sort of way, but it will be excruciatingly painful for you - but hey, at least it has a funny name.

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There are now MLA guidelines to cite a tweet!

The Modern Language Association (MLA), or rather the bane of every high school student's existence, is an association that has designed official ways in which people can cite references on their essays without being charged with plagiarism. Fortunately, the MLA format is staying up to date with modern trends, because students are now able to cite a tweet properly. So, how do you do it?

Well, if you were writing an essay on an awesome website that gives you lots of cool facts, you would have to follow a few steps in order to cite it properly. Begin with the author's real name, as well as their username is paranthesis (the brackets that I'm using around this sentence). Next, provide the tweet in quotation marks, keeping it as originally posted. Conclude with the entry date and time of the publication and the medium of publication (Tweet).

Here's an example: OMG Facts, Celebs (OMGfactsCelebs). "A Chicago High School played Bieber’s “Baby” between classes and had students pay to stop it. The campaign raised $1,000 in 3 days." May 12, 2013, 11:30PM. Tweet.

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There is a bush that's over 11,000 years old!

King Clone is known as not only having the coolest name ever, but as being one of the oldest known living organisms on the planet. The creosote bush ring in the Mojave Desert is estimated to be 11,700 years old. The plant is located 0.6 miles North of California route 27 on Bessemer Mine Road near the towns of Lucerne Valley and Landers.

King Clone was identified as being 11,700 years old by Frank Vasek - a professor at the University of Riverside California. After Vasek hypothesized that the ring was one living organism, he found that the plants around the ring all had identical characteristics that differed from other plant clusters.

Vasek used two methods to guess the plants age. His first method, was to count the rings in the planet and measured the annual growth. The next, he used radiocarbon dating on chucks of wood found at the center of the ring. To his amazement, the dates he came up with for both methods were the exact same.

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