Ukiah Daily Journal from Ukiah, California • Page 10

10 THURSDAY, MAY 13, 1993- -THE UKIAH DAILY JOURNAL- COAST COMPUTER WHIZ Educational video games written by Mom. for kids By UNDA STAMPS for The Journal Slime the gruzzles! Find the secret passages in the ice cave. Meet Benny the bookworm, rescue words and numbers nimbly with a garbage can lid. Get a bonus bucket or two of extra slime to navigate successfully through Gruzzleville. Welcome to Karen Crowther's world.

Crowther, the Coast's own computer game developer, has spent the last two years creating non-violent and gender neutral software programs with an educational component. Surrounded by four personal computers equipped with sound and color in a room in her home, the Mendocino mom pursues her quest "to cause no harm with what she does. "I just started writing stuff for my kids, (Chris and Nathan Taylor) in T89 or T90.1 thought why not make a game that has educational value and is not violent," she recalled. The works with a team of creators including a writer and artist. Crowther's task is to make the story and its characters come to life on the computer screen.

Children exposed to Crowther's two most recent creations find themselves rescuing words and numbers. "Word Rescue" features Benny the Bookworm pitted against the Gruzzles, who are intent upon stealing all the words from books. The player can save the words by sliming each gruzzle she or he encounters. The slime does not actually destroy the gruzzles, but sends them away to regroup and take a bath. By the time Benny rescues all the words and saves the books, the child orchestrating the mission has the opportunity to spell the words and understand their meanings.

"Math Rescue" provides a similar format for learning about adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. However, Benny the Bookworm has evolved to become Benny the Butterfly. Crowther confesses she was never part of any particular political movement and is motivated by her experiences. "Most of the computer games are aimed straight at 14-year-old adolescent boys with high levels of violence and a distorted view of what a woman's purpose is in the world," explained Crowther. "I've seen increased levels of aggression in kids that are video game addicts.

They tend to get in more fights with people and tend to be more physically aggressive," she explained. In a recent exchange with her 8-year-old son Chris, Crowther encountered the gender issue. The youngster reported to his mother that the boys at school believed that "girls can't do things" and he thought it unjust. "How can he hold out against his entire peer group especially when he becomes a teen-ager," she lamented. Her games are designed to eradicate gender stereotypes.

"None of my games are strictly male games. You get to choose to be a male or a female or you are forced to be both," she said. Crowther's publisher, Apogee, distributes these games Karen Crowther along with her first commercial success, "Talking ABC's," throughout the United States, Australia, Europe and New Zealand. Recently, Crowther has had several requests to translate the games into Spanish, Swedish and Hindi. The software may be purchased at Wal-Mart or from Crowther directly.

The 43-year-old mechanical engineer is somewhat of a programming whiz, who is self- taught. "I've never taken a formal programming course. My first exposure to computers was in 1972 when I took a course from Larry Salmon at the College of the Redwoods," she said. Crowther earned her engineering degree from UC Davis and after graduation went to work for the U.S. Department of Energy because she "wanted to save the world with energy." She worked on solar houses and gradually drifted into computer programming when her employer wanted to generate energy predictions.

She is currently under contract to a large computer game company and has recently founded Redwood Games, a corporation that she and another partner have created to begin publishing Crowther's work. Her word and math software have been nominated for awards given by the Shareware industry in three categories, T92 Best New Home Hobby Educational Software, T93 Best of the Best, a category that covers games developed over the last 11 years, and T93 Best Educational Software. She is optimistic about her chances of winning and if she does she will receive a trophy and broader mainstream visibility. Her latest project will feature a game for all ages entitled the "Pickle Wars" starring Linda of the Coast Guard. It takes place on the peaceful planet Arcadia and involves a race with aliens to capture a doomsday machine.

There are three alternative endings. Distribution is planned for sometime this fall. Crowther is clear about the role a computer should play in education. "We make educational games but we don't believe a computer can educate a child. What's really going to teach them is instruction by a human being.

A computer is like a pencil and trying to replace a human teacher with a computer is not the way to go," she said emphatically. Brazilian politician ready and willing to destroy rain forest for its wealth EDTTOR'S NOTE He's Brail's Huey Long, a blunt-talking-man who looks at the Amazon jungle and sees billions of dollars to feed the poor, a flamboyant campaigner who labels geologists as nuts. They' ve even written a novel about this man so hated by environmentalists but adored by the peasants. Meet GUberto Mestrinho Kaposo de Medeiros. By TODD LEWAN Tht Associated MANAUS, Brazil The Amazon's most powerful politician is a portly populist with a dream to level the rain forest to pave the way for mines, ranches and a Disney-like animal park with thrill rides.

Ecology, to him, is a dirty word. Oilberto Mestrinho Raposo de Medeiros is governor of Amazonas state, a mile-swath of pristine jungle that contains trillions of dollars worth of minerals and hardwoods, huge deposits of natural gas, uranium, and fertile areas that would allow Brazil to increase its farmland by 40 percent. Mestrinho wants to crack this natural treasure chest, even if it means cutting every last Amazon tree to do it. "I don't want to be a caretaker for humanity's big zoo," he snorted in an interview at his spacious mansion in the upscale Estrada de Ponta Negra district of Manaus. "We can't be condemned to eternal misery because some nutty ecologists insist that Amazonia remain untouchable.

One day, the First World will tell us we're incapable of handling the Amazon, as an excuse to take it over." The nationalist, anti-ecology rhetoric may unnerve environmentalists, but it strikes a sympathetic chord among die region's poverty- ridden masses, besieged by rising inflation and unemployment. Amazonas, a basin of human despair, is fertile ground for populists like Mestrinho who cast environmentalism as an attempt to block growth and lock the Amazon into perennial backwardness. Mail still moves by mule and canoe, people by riverboat. Forty-three percent of all children under suffer malnutrition. About half of the state's 2 million residents earn a wage of 37 cents an hour.

In the interior, jumbles of shacks line waterways murky with tons of human waste and cholera. Only 2 percent of Amazonas' cities have treated water. In Manaus, the capital, four We can't be condemned to eternal misery because some nutty ecologists insist that Amazonia remain untouchabk. One day, the First World will tell us we're incapable of handling the Amazon, as an excuse to take it over. Mestrinho Raposo de Medeiros governor of Amazonas of every 10 people live in a slum.

"Poverty leads people to look for scapegoats," says Walder de Goes, a Brasilia-based political scientist. "Mestrinho tells the poor that ecologists are bottling up the forest's riches and they love it." On the stump in 1990, Mestrinho ridiculed those he called "Green telling crowds that most Amazon trees were hollow and needed to be cut down before termites and bacteria killed them. Mestrinho campaigned in favor of hunting the law-protected Amazon alligator for its shoe leather and the uncontrolled use of chain saws in the forest. And he promised to jail federal environmental inspectors, whose work he called "absurd." The electorate responded by giving the two- time governor of Amazonas state a whopping 57 percent of the vote and his third term in office. Last year, Mestrinho wrote a book titled "The Eco-Pinochios Speak Out On Amazonia" that typified his unromantic view of ecology.

"Ecologists want the good life for themselves," he said. "They adore caviar, car trips and "Paris conventions. They like the Arc de Triumph more than Amazon mosquitos." A big fan of Disney World, Mestrinho dreams of building "Eco-City," a massive amusement park for animal lovers in the heart of the forest. Mestrinho envisions in his park electric cable cars, natural gas-powered roller coasters and hotels built on treetops. Wild sloths, howler monkeys, cobras, panthers and alligators would move freely among the tourists.

"I'm reviewing plans from architects the world over," he says. "Ecotourism is a natural we could pull in $9 billion from Eco-City." Mestrinho, 65, a squat man with a mincing step, always appears at public rallies in a trademark red shirt that stretches to accommodate a sagging paunch. Conversation excites him. His almond- colored eyes, glow when he speaks, as if words fanned them. Mestrinho enjoys obvious jokes, loves turtle meat and piranha, Marlboro cigarettes, and brandy.

His greatest gifts are a remarkable memory for print and a barbed jollity that disarms his critics. He's in his third marriage and has 10 children. Marcio Souza, who satirized Mestrinho in a best-selling novel, said the governor reminded him of "a 1950s B-movie leading man, a Latin Brian Donlevy." Mestrinho was bom the first of six children on Feb. 23,1928 in Labrea, a tiny hamlet on the bank of the Purus River. His father, a tax collector, moved the family to Manuas in 1939 where Mestrinho learned the value of connections and patronage.

When he was 23 his father died, and Mestrin- ho supported the family by riding around Manaus in a dilapidated car selling milk to the poor. Lacking a college degree, he opened an academic institute that prepared students for jobs at the Banco do Brasil and City Hall, bureacrats who later helped him climb the political ladder. Within two years he owned a Ford dealership, a small paint factory and a cement business. Opponents claimed his overnight fortune came from numbers rackets, contraband and drug smuggling, but no proof ever surfaced. At age 26, he became mayor of Manaus and was elected governor in 1959.

Mestrinho worked in short sleeves, kept the doors to thepalace open to the public, and handed out candy and pocket change to children. As governor, he championed the causes of businessmen, such as a free-trade industrial park and a duty-free zone. "People laughed at Galileo too," he said. me in office and I will fight to protect men, not trees." Jonathan Hitzman M. D.

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Highway 101, Hopland, CA 744-1890 More money available to local districts As the result of recently enacted legislation, about $8.5 million will be available to local California school districts over the next two years to start up and operate new adult education programs. School districts in Mendocino County eligible to receive funds are Potter Valley Community Unified, Laytonville Unified, Anderson Valley Unified, Mendocino Unified, Point Arena Joint Union High, Round Valley Unified, Willits Unified, Leggett Valley Unified and Fort Bragg Unified. "Assembly Bill 1321 (Wright) corrects inequities in the existing adult -education system," said acting state Superintendent of Public Instruction William Dawson. "With the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, it has been impossible for school districts that had not previously received state funds for adult education to receive start-up funds." Up to $4.2 million will be made available in both the 1993-94 and the 1994-95 school years to start up and continue adult education programs. Through another piece of legislation (AB 1891), existing funds allocated for concurrent education will be redirected to implement these programs.

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