McPheet.com

I’m playing hooky.

Well, sort of. It’s midday as I write this, and I really should be “back from lunch” now, but I’m having a hard time focusing on work today (yesterday, too), and I’ve decided to put a few notes here.

Really interesting article on “Why Crunch Mode Doesn’t Work” by Evan Robinson. I dropped an e-mail to Evan asking a follow-up question about this article, and he was nice enough to reply within a day. His blog, which I haven’t read yet, but I’m looking forward to when I get my life back, is here.

Sound Politics is largely up in arms about the gubernatorial election and its aftermath. It’s fun to read, but not something about which I’m terribly concerned: I suspect the most likely good outcome from the whole debacle will be a court ordering the state of Washington to make recount procedures uniform throughout the state. I’d guess the odds of having the election nullified are less than 1 in 6. But Dino Rossi’s still a young man, and he’ll beat the crap out of Gregoire in ‘08 — she’ll have a record of being a lousy governor by then.

I’ve also been looking at Number 2 Pencil. Kimberly Swygert is a professional in the field of measuring academic progress, and has interesting insights on what’s broken in the American educational system. Oh, and check out this story on NPR’s Morning Edition about why college costs are really going up. Richard Vedder’s primary theory is that there’s too much federal money in the system. That’s been my idea for a while now, and it also explains why the cost of health care keeps going up. If Vedder’s theory is true, it should predict that the President’s prescription drug benefit will cause drug prices to skyrocket even more.

P.S.: I got a letter from my sister, Sandy, recently. She’s been having some health issues — if you’re the praying type, could you please add her to your list of people to pray for?

Ye gods! I’ve gone dark.

Actually, it’s been quite a while since I went dark. My MovableType settings display only postings from the past three days, and it’s been considerably longer than three days since I last posted.

In fact, my good friend Allan Rousselle sent me an e-mail the other day: “Update your site.” OK, Allan, here goes.

(By the way, Allan’s posting a neat series on the construction of his new house. You should check it out.)

Anyway, since I last reported in, I’ve mostly been working. It can now be revealed that I’m the senior designer on this baseball game, and I hope to God that it ships on time; we’re certainly working hard to make sure it does. Since we came back from our Christmas holidays, we’ve been at the office most days until 9 PM, including usually one and sometimes both weekend days. It’s been pretty tiring; Amy’s pretty tired of it, too.

When I do get a little time off, I’ve been watching Battlestar Galactica (both the new series, and the 1978 original series, both courtesy of BitTorrent), and playing some Halo.

And, of course, I’m following the Gregoire / Rossi saga, mostly over at Sound Politics. If you’re conservative and live in the Puget Sound area, this is a pretty good site for keeping up with the local shenanigans.

My dear niece, Shelly, gave me a copy of Ann Coulter’s latest book, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must). I’m not a Coulter fan (it’s not something I would have bought myself), but I was glad of the opportunity to see what the fuss is about.

The problem with Ann Coulter is that she sees her ideological opponents only as stereotypes, not as human beings. In her world, any mention of Ted Kennedy requires a reference to Chappaquiddick, and every idea Bill Clinton ever had is, was, and forever shall be CORRUPT, IMMORAL, SELF-SERVING, and EVIL! (I, on the other had, figure Bill as a smart guy who’s come to some wrong conclusions about the world, and thus as someone I’d rather not have had as my President.) So, while Ann may be (and often is) quite entertaining, she rarely adds value to the public debate. At least Rush Limbaugh admits in his books that his primary job is entertainment. I hope, someday (when I get my life back from this game) to go through Ann’s books and point out some more concrete examples of differences in her approach and my approach to public issues, but that will have to wait.

Well, enough of that. It’s almost the end of my dinner break; another couple hours of game development, straight ahead.

P.S.: Happy Valentine’s Day