That's checkmate for state gamers

Inter Lake editorial

It was reassuring this week to find out the governor agreed with the Inter Lake and many like-minded taxpayers that Montana state employees had no business playing games during work hours.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer wisely ordered all games removed from computers in departments under his jurisdiction, which includes much of the statewide bureaucracy.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Linda McCulloch also ordered the games off of computers in the Office of Public Instruction, so hats off to her as well.

This whole controversy began when some employees in the Department of Health and Human Services complained that their new computers didn't have any games installed. They felt they were being discriminated against since their fellow employees got to play solitaire and other games. Needless to say, the outcome has not been what they anticipated.

A passion for history and a penchant for geography have earned a Eureka teen a free trip to Washington, D.C.

Joseph Perea, 13, a home-schooled eighth-grader, is the champion of the Montana Geography Bee. That gives him the chance to compete against other state winners in the National Geographic Bee May 20 and 21 in Washington, D.C.

Perea spends from three to six hours a day poring over maps and textbooks to learn all he can about geography and history.

That preparation paid off in the state geography contest, where he topped 100 other students from across the state. He triumphed on a tie-breaker question about Balochistan and Pakistan.

We wish Perea well at the next level of geography competition.

It's not often that truly "free" things of high quality come available. But that opportunity has come with 190,000 copies of a remarkable mapguide outlining out-of-the-way attractions around the "Crown of the Continent."

The MapGuide was developed by the National Geographic Society's capable cartography shop, and its featured attractions were selected through hundreds of nominations from people who actually live in places on the map.

It's a worthy pursuit, and as we noted, it is available for free simply by visiting the mapguide's companion Website at: http://www.crownofthecontinent.net