Appar­ently former U.S. Supreme Court Jus­tice Sandra Day O’Connor is dab­bling in a new field: game design. The Escapist writes:

The game will present stu­dents with “real issues and real problems,” O’Connor said, giving them the oppor­tu­nity to “step into the shoes of a judge, a leg­is­la­tor, an exec­u­tive - teach them how to think through and ana­lyze prob­lems, take action and voice opin­ions to their elected representatives.” As an exam­ple, she cited an early exer­cise cen­ter­ing on First Amend­ment rights, using cases like Tinker v. Des Moines and “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.”

In addi­tion to The Escapist arti­cle, The New York Times also pub­lished the arti­cle “Sandra Day O’Connor’s Plan for Joy­stick Jus­tice” in yesterday’s paper.

One quote that caught my eye in the arti­cle from The Escapist:

“Only one-​third of Amer­i­cans can name the three branches of government,” O’Connor said in a keynote address to the Games For Change con­fer­ence, “but two-​thirds can name a judge on Amer­i­can Idol.”

While I under­stand O’Connor’s point, that doesn’t really seem to be a fair com­par­i­son. Wouldn’t it make more sense to say that that x many people can name all three judges on Amer­i­can Idol? I’m sure that a lot more than one-​third of Amer­i­cans can name at least one branch of our gov­ern­ment, while (pos­si­blly) less than two-​thirds of people can name all three judges on Amer­i­can Idol.

I, for the record, can name all three of both. OMG I’m so smaht¹.

1. Pro­nounce pho­net­i­cally² for Boston accent effect.↩
2. There is a sad, sad irony in the fact that I just had a really hard time fig­ur­ing out how to spell pho­netic (and wasn’t even close). Thank good­ness for Goolge again.↩