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Siegfried Gevatter: Sudoku solving with Python and SAT

- 6 hours and 39 minutes ago

At Logic class last week we saw how to solve a Sudoku using SAT and for fun I decided to actually try this out using Python. It turned out to be pretty trivial to implement and I thought I’d share the experience.

First of all let’s see how the Sudoku problem was described at class: we have a table with 9 rows and 9 columns;

1. Each field [i, j] (where i=1..9 and j=1..9) has at least one value (between 1 and 9).
2. Each field [i, j] (where i=1..9 and j=1..9) doesn’t have more than one value.
3. There isn’t any repeated value in any row, column or 3×3 group.
4. Some of the fields have a predefined value.

Now to implement this in code, first of all I needed a Python module implementing SAT solving. A quick search in Debian’s repositories gave me python-logilab-constraint, which I’ve found to be quite nice to use, even though it could definitely take some speed improvements.

Conditions 1 and 2 aren’t a problem at all, as logilab.constraint can be used quite naturally [0]. We just define a variable for each field (eg., x11 to x99, where the first number is the row and the second number is the column) and the domain in which they operate (integer value from 1 to 9):

values = range(1, 10) # [1..9] variables = ["x%d%d" % (i, j) for j in values for i in values] domains = {} for variable in variables: domains[variable] = fd.FiniteDomain(values)

The 4th rule is also straightforward, we just need to hardcode the values. If we have a bidimensional list sudoku containing the initial numbers and None in all empty fields, we add each of them as a constraint:

constraints = [] for i, row in enumerate(sudoku): for j, field in enumerate(row): if field is None: continue variable = "x%d%d" % (i+1, j+1) constraints.append(fd.make_expression((variable,), "%s == %d" % (variable, field)))

Now only rule 3 remains; here we basically have to set up three more groups of constraints: one for rows, one for columns and one for the 3×3 groups. My initial implementation checked each row/column/group at once; for example, for the first row «x11 != x12 != x13 != … != x19», for the first column «x11 != x21 != … != x91», etc. However, this proved to be extremely slow, and after checking the «Performance considerations» section of Logilab Constraint’s documentation I split up the row and column conditions [1] to lots of smaller conditions, as in: «x11 != x12», «x11 != x13», «x11 != x14», etc. I also moved the constraints for the initial numbers to the top (I had them at the end of the constraints list before), as they are the simplest ones. With those changes resolution time changed from several minutes to some tenths of a second.

And this is it. After all constraints have been added, we just need to run the solver:

repository = Repository(variables, domains, constraints) solutions = Solver().solve(repository)

The complete code is available via Bazaar at lp:~rainct/+junk/sudoku-sat. Being completely new to the logilab.constraints module, or implementing any such stuff at all, it took me around half an hour to write this, which shows how SAT makes such sort of problems really straightforward.

[0] Using logilab.constraint it’s possible to assign arbitrary Python data to variables (here we just give each an integer, but variables could also take tuples or whatever else). When this problem was presented at class using pure propositional logic it was a bit more cumbersome, as we couldn’t just say “there’s a variable x11 with domain [1..9]“. For instance, rule 1 was «(p111 | p112 | p113 | … | p119) and (p121 | … | p129) …», where “p111″ would be True if field [1,1] is supposed to contain a one, “p112″ is True if it’s supposed to contain a two, etc.
[1] I didn’t bother also splitting up he 3×3 group constraints since the other two changes already gave me enough of a speedup; changing that may squeeze a few msecs more out of it.
P.S.: If you’d like a more formal explanation of this, a search on Google found this paper: A SAT-based Sudoku Solver.

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© Siegfried-Angel Gevatter Pujals, 2010. | Permalink | License | Post tags: logics, python

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John Terry runs over security guard

Guardian Unlimited

- 7 hours and 33 minutes ago

Former England captain inadvertantly hit official - who was dealing with scrum of photographers - as he pulled away from stadium

Just when it seemed things could not get any worse for John Terry, the disgraced former England captain has found a novel way to land himself in trouble. Terry has already been stripped of the England captaincy in World Cup year over an extramarital affair with a lingerie model and last night he was part of the Chelsea team eliminated from the Champions League at the hands of his former mentor José Mourinho.

But as if that were not bad enough, Terry was then questioned and breathalysed by police in the small hours after accidentally running over a Chelsea steward as he left Stamford Bridge.

Terry, 29, inadvertently hit the steward as he pulled away from the stadium in his Range Rover after the 1-0 defeat to Mourinho's Internazionale. Terry and his wife Toni, alongside him in the passenger's seat, were oblivious to the accident until he was contacted by the club on returning home to Oxshott, Surrey.

The official had been attempting to clear a scrum of photographers and fans awaiting the defender outside the ground and had waved Terry through on to Fulham Road. The car was travelling at a snail's pace but the 35-year-old steward was still caught under the wheel, with initial reports suggesting he had broken his leg, a diagnosis that later veered from bad bruising to a sprained ankle. He was treated by paramedics at the scene before being taken to hospital. He was dischargedtonight.

"John hadn't even had his foot on the accelerator pedal as he drives an automatic and was just easing through the queue of traffic," said the player's spokesman, Phil Hall. "When he reached the front of the queue there was a melee of photographers banging against the car to get his attention. A security man waved him on and he just drove off. He was completely unaware that there had been an accident until Chelsea telephoned him an hour or so later."

Surrey police breathalysed the player, who was found to be within the legal alcohol limit. Hall said: "He hadn't had a single drop to drink. John found out who the gentleman was and telephoned him to apologise, and is going to pop round to see him. He was really upset with what had happened."

Terry's evening had already been miserable enough â€“ albeit not as bad as the steward's â€“ with his side eliminated from the Champions League after Mourinho, his former manager at Chelsea, inspired the Italian club Inter to a 1-0 victory and a place in the quarter-finals.

John Terry

Dominic Fifield guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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A Year of Cool Comics - Day 76

Comics Should Be Good!

- 11 hours and 52 minutes ago

Here is the latest in our year-long look at one cool comic (whether it be a self-contained work, an ongoing comic or a run on a long-running title that featured multiple creative teams on it over the years) a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here's the archive of the moments posted so far!

Today we take a look at Chris Yost and Scott Wegener's Killer of Demons...

Enjoy!

The gist of Killer of Demons can be described in these sample pages from this fun 3-issue mini-series from Image last year.

As you can see, demons exist on Earth. They are not allowed to KILL humans, but they can seduce them into killing each other (or do various other repugnant things, like commit adultery or do hardcore drugs).

So Dave Sloan is tasked to kill the demons, with the help of his angel advisor.

The problem is that only Dave can see the demons, so it brings to mind the question - is Dave killing these demons because that's what God wants, or is he just imagining things and he is actually one of the worst mass murderers alive?

Those are the questions Killer of Demons grapples with (along with the fact that Dave's significant other happens to be a police officer, so that brings the pair into conflict on the whole "seeming mass murder" thing.

It is a really fun comic book, especially the stuff that the demons get humans to do - demons are everywhere, including at the fast food drive-in trying to get you to super-size your order!

Chris Yost really does a wonderful job getting all the humor out of the concept that he can, and everyone already knows from Atomic Robo how great of an artist Scott Wegener is, so I don't need to say how great he is (He's great, by the way).

This is a blast of a series, and I really hope this initial series isn't the last that we see of these characters!!

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At March 17, 2010, Matt K wrote:

Dammit Brian, you forgot to talk about Dave's brother, a FBI agent in the MMO division.

Honestly probably the ...

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Analysis: Soren Johnson On Playing The Odds

GameSetWatch

- 20 hours and 33 minutes ago

[In a column originally published in Game Developer magazine, former lead designer on Firaxis' Civilization IV and current EA 2D staffer Soren Johnson examines the role of luck in games, which he describes as "a social lubricant â€“ the alcohol of gaming, so to speak."]

One of the most powerful tools a designer can use when developing games is probability, using random chance to determine the outcome of player actions or to build the environment in which play occurs. The use of luck, however, is not without its pitfalls, and designers should be aware of the trade-offs involved â€“ what chance can add to the experience and when it can be counterproductive.

Failing at Probability

One challenge with using randomness is that humans are notoriously poor at accurately evaluating probability. A common example is the Gambler’s Fallacy, which is the belief that odds will even out over time. If the Roulette wheel comes up black five times in a row, players often believe that the odds of coming up black again are quite small, even though clearly the streak makes no difference whatsoever.

Conversely, people also see streaks where none actually exist â€“ the shooter with a â€˜hot hand’ in basketball, for example, is a myth. Studies show that, if anything, a successful shot actually predicts a subsequent miss.

Also, as designers of slot machines and MMO’s are quite aware, setting odds unevenly between each progressive reward level makes players think that the game is more generous than it really is. One commercial slot machine had its payout odds published by www.wizardofodds.com in 2008:

* 1:1 per 8 plays
* 2:1 per 600 plays
* 5:1 per 33 plays
* 20:1 per 2,320 plays
* 80:1 per 219 plays
* 150:1 per 6,241 plays

The 80:1 payoff is common enough to give players the thrill of beating the odds for a a big win but still rare enough that the casino is in no risk of losing money. Furthermore, humans have a hard time estimating extreme odds â€“ a 1% chance is anticipated too often and 99% odds are considered to be as safe as 100%.

Leveling the Field

These difficulties in accurately estimating odds actually work in the favor of the game designer. Simple game design systems, such as the dice-based resource generation system in Settlers of Catan, can be tantalizingly difficult to master with a dash of probability.

In fact, luck makes a game more accessible because it shrinks the gap â€“ whether in perception or in reality â€“ between experts and novices. In a game with a strong luck element, beginners believe that, no matter what, they have a chance to win. Few people would be willing to play a chess Grandmaster, but playing a backgammon expert is much more appealing â€“ a few lucky throws can give anyone a chance.

In the words of designer Dani Bunten, "Although most players hate the idea of random events that will destroy their nice safe predictable strategies, nothing keeps a game alive like a wrench in the works. Do not allow players to decide this issue. They don’t know it but we’re offering them an excuse for when they lose ('It was that damn random event that did me in!') and an opportunity to â€˜beat the odds’ when they win.”

Thus, luck serves as a social lubricant â€“ the alcohol of gaming, so to speak â€“ that increases the appeal of multiplayer gaming to audiences which would not normally be suited for cutthroat head-to-head competition.

Where Luck Fails

Nonetheless, randomness is not appropriate for all situations or even all games. The "nasty surprise" mechanic is never a good idea. If a crate provides ammo and other bonuses when opened but explodes 1% of the time, the player has no chance to learn the probabilities in a safe manner. If the explosion occurs early enough, the player will immediately stop opening crates. If it happens much later, the player will feel unprepared and cheated.

Also, when randomness becomes just noise, the luck simply detracts from the player’s understanding of the game. If a die roll is made every time a StarCraft Marine shoots at a target, the rate of fire will simply appear uneven. Over time, the effect of luck on the game’s outcome will be negligible, but the player will have a harder time grasping how strong a Marine’s attack actually is with all the extra random noise.

Further, luck can slow down a game unnecessarily. The board games History of the World and Small World have a very similar conquest mechanic, except that the former uses dice and the latter does not (until the final attack). Making a die roll with each attack causes a History of the World turn to last at least three or four times as long as a turn in Small World.

The reason is not just the logistical issues of rolling so many dice â€“ knowing that the results of one’s decisions are completely predictable allows one to plan out all the steps at once without worrying about contingencies. Often, handling contingencies are a core part of the game design, but game speed is an important factor too, so designers should be sure that the trade-off is worthwhile.

Finally, luck is very inappropriate for calculations to determine victory. Unlucky rolls feel the fairest the longer players are given to react to them before the game’s end. Thus, the earlier luck plays a role, the better for the perception of game balance. Many classic card games â€“ pinochle, bridge, hearts â€“ follow a standard model of an initial random distribution of cards that establishes the game’s â€˜terrain’ followed by a luck-free series of tricks which determines the winners and losers.

Probability is Content

Indeed, the idea that randomness can provide an initial challenge to be overcome plays an important role in many classic games, from simple games like Minesweeper to deeper ones like NetHack and Age of Empires. At their core, solitaire and Diablo are not so different â€“ both present a randomly-generated environment that the player needs to navigate intelligently for success.

An interesting recent use of randomness was Spelunky, which is indie developer Derek Yu’s combination of the random level generation of NetHack with the game mechanics of 2D platformers like Lode Runner. The addictiveness of the game comes from the unlimited number of new caverns to explore, but frustration can emerge from the wild difficulty of certain, unplanned combinations of monsters and tunnels.

In fact, pure randomness can be an untamed beast, creating game dynamics that throw an otherwise solid design out of balance. For example, Civilization 3 introduced the concept of strategic resources which were required to construct certain units â€“ Chariots need Horses, Tanks need Oil, and so on. These resources were sprinkled randomly across the world, which inevitably led to large continents with only one cluster of Iron controlled by a single AI opponent. Complaints of being unable to field armies for lack of resources were common among the community.

For Civilization IV, the problem was solved by adding a minimum amount of space between certain important resources, so that two sources of Iron could never be within seven tiles of each other. The result was a still unpredictable arrangement of resources around the globe but without the clustering that could doom an unfortunate player. On the other hand, the game actively encouraged clustering for less important luxury resources â€“ Incense, Gems, Spices â€“ to promote interesting trade dynamics.

Showing the Odds

Ultimately, when considering the role of probability, designers need to ask themselves "how is luck helping or hurting the game?" Is randomness keeping the players pleasantly off-balance so that they can’t solve the game trivially? Or is it making the experience frustratingly unpredictable so that players are not invested in their decisions?

One factor which helps ensure the former is making the probability as explicit as possible. The strategy game Armageddon Empires based combat on a few simple die rolls and then showed the dice directly on-screen. Allowing the players to peer into the game’s calculations increases their comfort level with the mechanics, which makes chance a tool for the player instead of a mystery.

Similarly, with Civilization IV, we introduced a help mode which showed the exact probability of success in combat, which drastically increased player satisfaction with the underlying mechanics. Because humans have such a hard time estimating probability accurately, helping them make a smart decision can improve the experience immensely.

Some deck-building card games, such as Magic: The Gathering or Dominion, put probability in the foreground by centering the game experience on the likelihood of drawing cards in the player’s carefully constructed deck. These games are won by players who understand the proper ratio of rares to commons, knowing that each card will be drawn exactly once each time through the deck. This concept can be extended to other games of chance by providing, for example, a virtual “deck of dice” that ensures the distribution of die rolls is exactly even.

Another interesting â€“ and perhaps underused â€“ idea from the distant past of gaming history is the “Element of Chance” game option from the turn-based strategy game Lords of Conquest. The three options available â€“ Low, Medium, and High â€“ determined whether luck was only used to break ties or to play a larger role in resolving combat.

The appropriate role of chance in a game is ultimately a subjective question, and giving players the ability to adjust the knobs themselves can open up the game to a larger audience with a greater variety of tastes.

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Oops: Google Denied Trademark on Android Nexus One

Read/WriteWeb

- 1 days ago

It's been a rough day for Google's Android phone, the Nexus One. First we learned this morning that initial sales have been far weaker than the iPhone saw when it first came out of the gate. Now it's being reported that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected its application for a trademark on the name Nexus One.

The name "Nexus One" was ruled too close to Portland, Oregon based Integra Telecom's own registered trademark for its Nexus fixed bandwidth integrated voice and internet T1 product.

Sponsor

Mike Rogoway, of Portland's The Oregonian newspaper, got the following statement from Integra:
"We appreciate that the PTO is protecting our trademark rights. Integra has over $60 Million in annual revenue associated with our Nexus brand and it represents millions of new revenue for the company each year. Google hasn't contacted us since the PTO issued its objection but we hope we can work together to achieve our respective business goals."

Does that mean Google will rename the Nexus One, or that it will end up paying the trademark holder for the privilege of using the name? Google just expanded the Nexus One onto the AT&T network today.

Either way, we wouldn't be surprised if the hunt for a new name is already on. What would you suggest, readers?

It's tempting to say this is another example of the Patent and Trademark Office moving too slow, but note that Integra was granted its trademark in December 2008. The Nexus One was just release January 5, 2010.

Meanwhile, the open Android operating system marches on. XML co-creator Tim Bray announced this weekend that he has joined Google to work on Android. He called the iPhone in a blog post "a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord's pleasure and fear his anger."

Discuss

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Questioning Collapse

Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog

- 1 days and 1 hours ago

In an unfortunately-forgotten bit of 70s academic bloodsport, Marvin Harris and Marshall Sahlins battled it out in the pages of the New York Review of Books over the origin Aztec cannibalism: was it, as Harris argued, something Aztecs were driven to as a result of a protein deficiency? No, Sahlins answered, but even if it was all of the symbolism and institutions surrounding it would still have to be explained as a result of culture, not nutrition. Sahlins’s argument was devastatingly convincing because it explained two phenomenon with a single maneuver: Aztec cannibalism was a result of culture, not nutritional needs, just as Harris’s belief in it was motivated not by facts, but by his own (American) cultural tendency to see human behavior as shaped by biological factors.

A disagreement with similar contours is afoot today. The latest skirmish in the Jared Diamond wars deals not only with issues of scholarly accuracy, but also the cultural/personal motivation of the protagonists as well as the social effects of their arguments. The main protagonists are the authors of Questioning Collapse, an edited volume in which expert scholars take issue with Jared Diamond’s reading of their specialty topics: the Rapa Nui (Easter Island) specialist discusses Diamond’s use of the Rapa Nui data, the Incan specialist discusses Diamond on Pizzaro and Atahualpa, and so forth. The book is critical of Diamond, who has responded with a review in Nature that is none too friendly itself.

The Usual Denunciations are already issuing from Stinky Journalism.org, which mostly focus on how unethical it was for Diamond to write a review of a book that criticized his book without explicitly telling readers the book he was criticizing criticized him. You can check it out if you want, but I think its much more interesting to see how the back and forth between Questioning Collapse and Diamond exemplified some of the issues that played out twenty years earlier in the Sahlins/Harris debate. How do we tack between the social effects of our work and its accuracy? How can we address the cultural underpinnings that motivate an author’s writing without falling back into ad hominem attacks? How well does Collapse stand up to scholarly scrutiny? And how good a job does Questioning Collapse do of reaching out to Diamond’s popular audience? These questions are worth asking — even if you are a little burned out on the Jared Diamond wars.

In this piece I want to review Questioning Collapse through the lens of these issues. I’ll start by working backwards from Diamond’s review in Nature to the book itself. In the end, I find Questioning Collapse’s critique of Diamond extremely compelling, particularly for the way it highlights the theoretical difficulties of Diamond’s position. That said, however, Questioning Collapse’s (henceforth â€˜QC’) authors often don’t do the readers any favors â€” as a piece of public anthropology I feel it has a long way to go.

Diamond’s piece is actually a review of two books, Questioning Collapse and The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age. In the event, however, only about 400 of its 1300 words focus on the later volume. In the review, Diamond pulls a classic Sahlins maneuver, arguing that the authors are driven by a tendentious preference for a “positive message about human behavior” is “laudable” but, unfortunately, does not mesh well with the facts. The result is a “naively optimistic redefinition” of the data which “inevitably forces one to distort history and to avoid trying to explain what really happened.” Indeed, Diamond even claims that although they take issue with his work the authors of QC “do not offer a substitute thesis” for facts which “cry out for explanation, even if one relabels them as something other than collapse”. Political correctness, it seems, blinds Questioning Collapse to The Facts. Or, as the subtitle of the review puts it, â€˜realism’ (i.e. Diamond) must trump â€˜positivity’ (i.e. QC).

In fact there are four themes in Questioning Collapse: that of resilience (as opposed to collage), of colonialism (â€˜empire expansion’), of the similarity of current environmental issues to the past, and that of what constitutes an adequate popular anthropology. Diamond deals mostly with the first two topics in his review, and I will skip the third here but I’ll address the rest as well as make a few points about the factual errors each side accuses the other of having.

Resilience versus collapse, or, seven million Mayans can’t be wrong

Is Diamond correct when he says QC’s feel-good agenda prevents it from seeing the truth about collapse? On this first major claim, I think Diamond and QC are talking past one another. At the broadest level, QC takes issue with the three key words in Collapse’s title: â€˜collapse’, ’success’, and â€˜choose’. What, specifically, counts as collapse? The authors of QC argue that there is more to societal continuity than Diamond’s focus on population size and social complexity. There are, they point out, millions of Mayan people alive today â€” how then can we say that Mayan culture has disappeared? They also point out that it is hard to tell where one society starts and another begins. Is agriculture in the Netherlands an example of ecological success once we think about the effects their importation of fodder has on countries like Brazil from which they import it? And â€˜success’: how long does a society have to be around before it is officially considered to be one? In his excellent article in the QC McNeill points out that Diamond plays fast and loose with dates â€” the Greenland Norse, for instance, survived longer than all of the modern societies that Diamond lists as successes. And â€˜choice’: many of the authors of the volume point out that societies are not people â€” different parts of them make different decisions for different reasons. Often times â€˜choices’ are the emergent property of many individual decisions. And in a world where actions have unintended consequences, even selfish choices might end up being sustainable ones, and vice versa. It is for this reason that the authors tend to focus on â€˜resilience’ rather than â€˜collapse’ â€” on the way that populations change over time, but tend overall to endure.

In sum, QC argues that Diamond’s notion of collapse is too simple. Societies are not externally bounded and internally homogeneous. They do not make decisions like humans do. They change through time, making it difficult to identify when they change beyond recognition. Long-term trends are, they argue, mostly for continuity, which is why they use the term â€˜resilience’ rather than collapse. Mayans are still around. Easter Islanders are still around — in fact, QC has little boxed-in sections highlighting contemporary descendants of supposedly-collapsed societies.

Diamond is not having any of it. He responds that “It makes no sense to me to redefine as heart-warmingly resilient a society in which everyone ends up dead, or in which most of the population vanishes, or that loses writing, state government and great art for centuries… Even when many people do survive and eventually reestablish a populous complex society, the initial decline is sufficiently important to warrant being honestly called a collapse and studied further.” Diamond’s model of collapse is that familiar to us from the video game Civilization by Sid Meier: civilizations all grow in one direction towards more and more complexity with bigger and bigger cities, and if they go down in size, you lose. The authors of QC have a more anthropological understanding of societies, insisting that they not internally homogeneous or externally bounded, that they persist in time, and that we must understand their ups and downs.

At heart, then, the resilience/collapse debate is a discussion of interpretation, not facts. Many readers will probably find Diamond’s civilization-or-bust definition of collapse compelling, and agree with him that â€˜positivity’ leads QC’s authors to a tendentious interpretation of the facts. This is a pity since I think QC takes a principled and satisfying theoretical position on collapse. Still, one can see why popular readers might not be swayed.

It’s the Colonialism, Stupid

Diamond does remarkably less well when it comes to â€˜empire expansion’. One of the most egregious howlers from Diamond’s review is his claim that “although the authors of Questioning Collapse may wish it were otherwise, students and laypersons alike know that Europeans did conquer the world” and that “the authors seem uncomfortable with the glaring fact that it is Europeans, not Native Australians or Americans or Africans, who have expanded over the globe in the past 500 years.” The kindest thing one can say about Diamond’s position here is that it is unintelligible, because the alternative options are that a) Diamond’s personal animus against the authors was so intense he could not understand the content of the book or b) he simply did not read the book he is reviewing.

As far as I can tell, Diamond believes the book argues the exact opposite of what it actually says. He appears to think that the authors of QC are arguing that the hand of European rule lay lightly on the colonized world, which never suffered population loss. QC doesn’t admit that there is such a thing as â€˜empire expansion’? How about the ending of Michael Wilcox’s essay in the volume (one of my favorites):

Diamond’s tidy explanation of conquest and global poverty is not only factually incorrect; it gives us the sense that its origins lie somewhere out there, beyond the agency of the reader. The implication is that if conquests were situated long ago, somewhere else, then we are powerless over their contemporary manifestations. Conquests are never instantaneous, transformative, or all encompassing. They are enacted, reenacted, and rewritten for each succeeding generation. In this sense Diamond’s narrative of disappearance and marginalization is one of conquest’s most potent instruments. (p 138)

Does this sound like someone who didn’t get the memo that “Europeans did conquer the world”?

Diamond accuses QC of down-playing the role of colonialism in human history, and not offering an alternate explanation for the collapse of indigenous society, when in fact colonialism is their alternate explanation for the collapse of nonwestern societies. Wilcox writes “a more appropriate troika of destruction [than guns, germs, and steel] would be â€˜lawyers, god, and money’”. Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo write that “ancient deforestation was not the cause of population collapse. If we are to apply a modern term to the tragedy of Rapa Nui, it is not ecocide but genocide.”

In sum, QC attempts to take the moral high-ground out from underneath Diamond when it comes to colonialism, arguing that he underplays the horrors of colonialism because his cultural blinkers prevent him from seeing the truth. Indeed, one of the major arguments of the book is that Diamond (and other social scientists) aid and abet on-going oppression of indigenous people. The proper response from Diamond — had he noticed — would have been to cast the authors of QC as a bunch of lefty radicals who have given up on Scientific Accuracy in the name of advocacy. Except of course he didn’t notice.

Some readers may find Wilcox’s invective overheated, and find the anti-colonial agenda of QC too â€˜pc’ in their denunciation of the book’s social effects. That is why it is so gratifying that the volume also takes up the issue of accuracy and never lets go: Diamond is not just tendentious, he is also wrong. The fact that Diamond simply missed this major part of their argument really detracts from his credibility.

Fact Checking

Beyond these overarching themes there are a number of particular factual disputes between Diamond and the authors of QC. In his review, Diamond argues that the Yali he met and the Yali that Gewertz and Errington’s volume is about are different people; he argues against Wilcox that Chaco canyon was deforested; he argued against Berglund that the Greenland Norse died out, rather than emigrating; he argues against Taylor that ecology was a factor in the Rwandan genocide; and he argues against what he calls David Cahill’s “absurd rewriting” of the Spanish conquest of the Inca.

None of Diamond’s factual claims are very convincing. Which Yali was which does not matter, because Gewertz and Errington’s merely use the conversation with Yali as a set piece to raise a series of other claims about colonialism in Papua New Guinea, none of which Diamond addresses. Diamond offers as evidence that overpopulation was a factors for genocide in Rwanda a school teacher’s assertion that “The people whose children had to walk barefoot to school killed the people who could buy shoes for theirs.” Which seems to me to be an argument about inequality rather than population pressure â€” if it is not just a statement about shoes. Wilcox provides two citations to back up his claim that Chaco canyon was forested, while Diamond never cites his sources in the review or in Collapse, and so it is impossible to verify his claims. This also makes his claim that there is archaeological evidence of the death of the Greenland Norse impossible to verify. His claim that David Cahill’s paper is an “absurd rewriting” of Incan-Spanish relations seems to miss Cahill’s careful and, as far as I can tell, uncontroversial point that conquerors often keep local systems of social stratification intact and install themselves on top of them.

Now, it is surely unfair to ask a 1300 word review to exhaustively respond to all of the criticisms made in a 375 page book. Still, one can’t help but notice that the authors of QC make serious claims that throw Diamond’s entire reading of societal collapse into question, and Diamond’s response is to ignore the forest and call out a few trees. When people like Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo argue that Diamond’s claims about Rapa Nui are fundamentally mistaken, you expect such big-issue claims to merit a response.

Of course, Questioning Collapse was not perfect either

That said, the authors of QC do not always make it easy for readers to be swayed to their point of view. The editors claim that “participants committed themselves to setting aside abstruse academic prose and cumbersome in-text references in favor of a more user-friendly text.” Really? Can we blame Diamond for not lingering carefully over, for instance, Cahill’s prose when it contains sentences like this:

It encoded all the familiar generic facts of colonial conquests as seen by Europeans: the mutual incomprehension and marveling at the mirror-image alterities; the chasm between New World and Old World epistemologies, “true” rational knowledge against heathen superstition; clever Castilian against dullard Inca; true believers versus the unevangelized barbarians, at best seen as promising neophytes; asymmetrical technologies manifest in the flash of steel and the thrust of lance against bronze close-combat weapons, slingshot, cotton armor and buckler; European initiative against the kind of unquestioning obeisance associated with “oriental despotism.”

I am guessing the average reader will quit long before they get to the part of the sentence where they miss the Wittfogel reference. While several of the authors write clearly and passionately, on the whole Diamond still wins the contest for clear prose. In fact, many of the essays employ all the apparatus of scholarly prevarication: introductory sections reflecting on what it means to write for a popular audience, wider theoretical issues of contextualization, and so forth. You must wade through all this to get to the point where they actually talk about why they think Diamond is wrong.

Or you may not. One of the strangest things about this otherwise very ballsy collection is that many â€” maybe even most â€” of the articles do not actually quote Jared Diamond. Sometimes I think the authors are so immersed in the topic that they forget to leave signposts to the reader about what they are doing. Joel Berglund’s piece, for instance, appears to be a valuable detailed commentary on Diamond’s chapters on Norse Greenland, but only if you put the two books next to one another. For many readers it will seem like a tour of various facts about Norse Greenland which mentions Diamond at the start. Cahill’s paper often takes aim at “standard colonial tropes” of “indegnous dullards who â€˜didn’t know what hit them’” or views in which “Andean civilization… becomes a kind of â€˜unenlightened’ primitive polity”. The positions he put in scare quotes are certainly worth criticizing — but are they Diamonds? A close reading — and actual citation — of Diamond’s argument would have made the essay stronger, especially since Cahill’s data so obviously gainsays the claims Diamond actually does make. The best pieces — Hunt and Lipo’s and Wilcox’s, McNeil’s, and so forth — are very strong (disclosure: I share a department with Hunt) and other pieces could have profited by being as tightly written.

Above all, a central argument of QC is that the world is â€˜complex’ and it would be better if popular audiences did not need to have it ’simplified’. As Thomas Hylland Eriksen reminds us, however, this simply will not fly. Public anthropology is, I’ve argued, the bar at the conference — when people tell you straight up and without hedging what they think is really going on in their papers. It is in the nature of the game to “dare to be reductive”. I think QC would have done better to explore how to reduce effectively, rather than lament the fact that such a move was necessary — or attempt to avoid making it at all.

Taking the fight to the streets?

Regardless of what you think about the particulars of Questioning Collapse, it establishes once and for all that mainstream academic authors consider Diamond’s work to be problematic. Coming from a major major press (Cambridge) with a roster of quality specialists, Questioning Collapse is undoubtedly Ivory Tower. If anything, it could have let down its hair a bit more. If only there were some way to reach a popular audience… to take the fight to the streets… in like… say… a blog…? Luckily, they have one, although it has not been updated regularly.

It seems to me QC’s blog could serve two purposes. First, it would also be an excellent place to begin a long and exceedingly detailed analysis of some of the particular factual claims Diamond makes â€” particularly those in the Nature review. This is the sort of intellectual spadework that publishers are not keen on, which should be made available to the public, and works well in small sub-essay size units which can be clearly written and do not take forever to read. Blog posts, in other words.

Second, Questioning Collapse is relatively expensive (US$30) and formally written — not ideal for spreading the word. The website could become a great location for remixed versions of the articles: piece available for download as teaching resources, or for the casual reader, where the authors cut right to the chase, free and open access, for anyone who is interested in reading them.

Conclusion

In sum, QC excels in empirical accuracy, not public outreach. While I find their arguments persuasive â€” in most cases, completely persuasive â€” I think they could have done a better job reaching a broader audience. There is a danger that their accounts of the social effects of Diamond’s work, and his personal/cultural motivations for writing could turn into ad hominem, which would be a shame. Because Diamond is a public figure, the proper course would be to be even more scrupulous in adhering to standards of professionalism and impartiality than a scholar normally would, even though the impulse is (I imagine) to go in rather the other dimension. From my point of view, the central issue has got to be the empirical adequacy of his claims.

As for Diamond, the impression I get of him is of a scholar who increasingly refuses to adhere to the best practices of the university, and who can get away with it because of the power and influence that comes from being in the public eye. Of course, there is nothing wrong with going AWOL from the academy if one wants to become a free-floating intellectual. But Diamond is not Carlos Castaneda, and his audience gives him credence because of his situation within the academy and his role as a translator of technical discourse. It is easy to become complacent when you’re, you know, an ultra-rich Pulitzer Prize-winning author (or so I imagine!). But one must resist the temptation to relax one’s standards. Both lay readers and his colleagues deserve better work than we see in Nature review.

In the seventies, Sahlins and Harris didn’t have the Internet to fall back on. Today, we are blessed with a means of communication that allow incensed scholars to argue endlessly in front of the entire planet! Now that the book is published, I look forward to seeing the authors of Questioning Collapse â€“ and perhaps even Diamond himself? â€” move these issues forward.

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new york,new yorks,open access,images,editors

Understanding Ancient Christian Iconography

John H Armstrong

- 1 days and 1 hours ago

For most of my life religious icons have been of no consequence to me spiritually. There were two reasons for this response as I now understand my journey in faith. First, I thought icons were idols. The fact that the Orthodox kissed them made me quite “sure” this was the case for decades. Second, my understanding of the proper use of icons was limited by my prejudice against them.

The more I have studied the theology of the ancient church, and the practices of that church in public and private worship, the more I have had to deal with a number of subjects that I knew very little about. This was the case with icons. My initial fears were addressed by thoughtful, helpful responses from Christians who were much better able to understand the important role of iconography. Eventually I could no longer avoid the subject of icons when friends became Orthodox and I became more than a little curious. I wanted to genuinely listen to other Christians, since this is at the heart of my own faith journey, and I desire to learn all that I could from those believers who lived the gospel in the earliest centuries of Christianity.

I assure you that I am not a secret member of an Orthodox Church (there really isn’t such a category of membership since the Orthodox Church would not permit it) but I have learned a ton about iconography from my Orthodox friends. Here, where sights and sounds are so powerfully associated with worship, I have learned to at least ask the right questions and then to listen for the answers, some of which move me very deeply.

The word icon comes from the Greek word for “window.” An icon is traditionally understood as a pathway to prayer, a window to heaven, a door to eternity. But unless you understand how and why icons have been written (I will explain this word “written” later) your perspective will likely lead to a gut-level reaction in the negative. For me, icons just felt totally foreign.

The icon represents something that is “other.” It is much more than art, though it is art in one sense for sure. It is actually a visual drawing written by Christians whose focus was upon theology more than upon painting a picture of representational art. This is why I said above that icons are actually “written.”

Frederica Mathewes-Green, author of The Open Door: Entering the Sanctuary of Icons and Prayer (Paralcete Press) recently told a writer for Our Sunday Visitor (OSV), a Roman Catholic weekly newspaper I read,) that: “People are looking for something that has more authority or authenticity. The baby-boomers thought they could find it in their own contemporary culture. We know that doesn’t work, so we have to go further back into the past.” Mathewes-Green compares the growing interest in icons in modern American religious expression with a cultural shift away from movies like “Godspell” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” from the 1970s to the interest just a few years ago in Mel Gibson movie: “The Passion of the Christ.”

Mathewes-Green believes: “People are saying, â€˜Give me something ancient that I know hasn’t been concocted by some advertising genius in the last 10 years.’ They are trying to get back to the original faith. They are looking for authenticity, and they are finding it in the world that made the icons and in the spirituality of icon Christianity. How far they’ll go with it I don’t know. Will they stay with it when it starts to cross them and they realize they have to live a certain kind of life?”

Christian historians believe icons were drawn by the earliest Christians. Some tradition supports the idea that the very first icon was drawn by Luke, which is believed to have been a drawing of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ child. Before you reject this as utterly impossible you would do well to read further on the subject and consider the possibility that this claim could well be true.

But why are icons said to be written, not painted? Because they are more like theological texts, i.e. exact representations of interpretations of the Christian faith, not an artist’s rendition of what he has conceived in a vivid imagination.

The most typical and classic icons were made before 1054 and thus the Great Schism of the church. Both Eastern Right Catholics and the Orthodox have treasured these icons from before this tragic split in the church East and West.

Frederica Mathewes-Green says, in her new book on icons, that she did not really grasp the power of icons until one day in a museum she saw a processional icon with the Virgin Mary holding the Christ child. When she went around to the other side of this icon she was surprised to see an image of Christ on the cross that was called the “great humility.” She says she was transfixed by what she saw and felt and it was here she began her journey into the ancient world of icons. She soon found that icons helped her better understand her own sinfulness and God’s greatness in the provision of his own son for her salvation. She concludes, “Icons are not just artwork, and they’re not just there to remind you of something. . . . in a mysterious way they make a connection for you.” She told OSV, “If you look at an icon that way, you would gaze at it with love and a sense that it’s drawing your awareness through the icon and to the presence of Christ.”

A Catholic iconographer describes herself as more a “scribe” than an artist. It was this insight that helped me the most when I began to look at and understand icons a bit more. Icons are not meant to be worshiped or made into art for painters who want to make a statement that comes out of their own experience. Iconographers are seeking to be as faithful as possible to a core truth (or truths) that come out of their deeply confessional Christianity. One Catholic writer says icons are used in prayer alongside the Bible to see and hear what God is teaching us. They are meant to pass on the great truths of the faith without embellishment or interpretation. A true icon should be like Scripture, direct and with no changes.

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love,images,truth,tradition,traditions

Scottish Wave Energy Plans Move Forward

The Financial Engine That Could

Live Blog: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s Keynote Interview

TechCrunch

- 1 days and 9 hours ago

I’m here at the last keynote of SXSW, where Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is being interviewed by Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk. Ek will likely be revealing some new announcements about Spotify during this interview. I’ll be live blogging my notes below.

Van Buskirk kicked off the keynote by asking how many people in the audience had used Spotify, leading a significant portion of the audience to raise their hands. This was surprising, because Spotify is only widely available in Europe (you need a beta invite to use it in the US). Ek then took some time to walk the audience through the streaming music service if they haven’t used it before (see our extensive past coverage if you need a refresher).

Q: What drove the initial decision to make this an application as opposed to something in the browser?
A: There are a few things that applications are better for. In our case, we think that applications are better for swift music playback. What we see is that people tend to spend a lot of time on Spotify because it’s so swift. They tend to replace their media player with Spotify, because they notice no difference between playing a song locally (some have even remarked that it’s faster than playing it through iTunes).

Q: Let’s talk about the licensing realities. Spotify is available in Europe. How will the model work in America?
A:There could be slight changes. A year and a half since launch more than 7 users, only in six countries. What we’re working on is the next gen of Spotify. We’ll never be content to just have an app. There are a lot of things we want to fix in Spotify. We tend not to take the ‘release early, often’ approach. What we’ve been working on for last 6-8 months is next gen of Spotify. How to make it more connected. Easier sharing and management of music. We’ve realized people spend a lot of time on Spotify and they tend to manage their music with Spotify.

Q: Which platforms/devices are most exciting?
A: Three years ago if you wanted to develop for mobile, had to support 3-5 major mobile os’s. Long lead times. That shut out all this innovation. More recently, application devs can get the application on phones. We look a lot at bundling with devices. Mostly not for revenue possibility but more for pre-installs. With exception of the iPhone today, most of the other handset manufacturers lack a good media player. Historically hard to get music to other phones if you had in iTunes.

Q: Let’s talk about the business side of bundling. If someone is paying for cell phone bill, they can check off something to get Spotify, seems like easier decision. How has that been going in Europe?
A: We have two mobile operators working with us many more to come. If you go into any Telius store in Sweden, you can go in and pick out a smart phone that comes preinstalled with Spotify. 3-6 months included. Incredible takeup with that. One of the key things Spotify is pushing is that people listen/share to more music than ever, more diverse artists. People will still buy music they love, but vast majority of music they just want access.

Q: We’ve heard services like Spotify people say “oh no we’re not going to buy music any more”. The idea of geting people to play a monthly fee, that seems promising. Why would someone buy something?
A: I think we’re going that route. But we find that music I really love, I tend to want to buy it. Not necessarily a plastic disk, but a special edition for an artist I really like, I’m more than happy to pay $100 for a box set with a t-shirt in it, liner notes. Another person may be willing to pay for a live edition with extended tracks. Or pay for a live concert experience. The reality of the music industry today is that there isn’t one biz model. It’s about figuring out how to use downloads, streaming, promotion, ticketing, all these things. I don’t think streaming music is stream.. with Spotify people label us ‘free’ music. But people pay, either with time (adverts, which are targeting), or actually paying for the service.

Q: Are you going to start filtering ads by mood (e.g. if you listen to down tempo music).
A: We want to figure out a lot of things based on how people listen to music. Can figure out mood, brand preferences. We see that from CTRs, if you listen to same music and are from the same place who tends to like a certain brand, there’s a high likihood you will too. Ad model is getting better every month. But this for me is not about free vs paid music, it’s about a model where there’s a free music element and a paid one.

A: Tech savviness at labels is increasing, now more people that love music and know the digital space are working with labels and artists.

Q: How do indy artists get music on Spotify? On ITunes you can submit paperwork. You’re different in that approach.
A: The way to get on Spotify today is we have a bunch of aggregators we work with. Main reason we’ve wanted to work with aggregators is that they tend to understand format/structure. We get quality control, picture, bio, etc.

Q: Are we done with DRM?
A: If you look at Spotify, it has DRM associated with it. We want to make it so that there isn’t really any announcement what’s DRM or not, we can protect and give users flexibility you want.

Q: Let’s talk about Spotify of the future. How do we get to point of ‘music like water’.
A: I see that’s sort of where we’re heading. The music industry needs that happen. I think music and tech are aligned for the first time. We’ve had a lot of proprietary standards, trying to figure out how to get music on a BlackBerry phone vs. getting it on iPhone vs set top box, radically different. We need to open platforms.

Q: With regard to Twitter/FB. Are you thinking of integrating sharing functionality into Spotify?
A: We’re looking at integrating some social aspects. I think genres are non-sane. What classifies rock, or neo-pop, etc. Spotify is quickly approaching 10 mil tracks. How do you manage that? Search is one solution, but isn’t optimal way of discovering new content. We won’t be another social network. We never believed in being our own social network, we’re working with existing social networks.

Q: With your playlists people have read/write access, can delete entire thing, what are you doing about that?
A: Looking from tech angle. We support version updates. One way to solve that is that you can step back in history and go back. What we don’t have is user privilege on playlists. We think Twitter/FB will figure out those privileges, and will use them.

A: I think the total rev matters more than actual conversion rate. But we do want to make sure there are a number people are paying for Spotify and that will grow. We’re making a lot of progress. We’re in six countries, now well in excess of 320,000 paid subscribers. Last time we mentioned a fig. it was 260,000. 100 million playlists. 7 million users. People spend a lot of time on playlists. 30% of all playlists are albums (albums stored in collection). People say album is dead. I don’t agree. I think there’s a lot to develop there.

Q: Let’s talk about P2P element.
A: It was a key decision, and one reason we’re a native app. Helps offload bandwidth. P2P actually helps Spotify and users, it will take tracks on your friends and coworkers on same local network and stream to them so it’s faster.
CrunchBase Information SpotifyInformation provided by CrunchBase

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6,3,7,love,beta

FCC: Wireless spectrum 10x more valuable for wireless broadband than for TV

BetaNews.Com

- 1 days and 10 hours ago

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

The 300+ page National Broadband Plan that the Federal Communications Commission submitted to Congress today contains some logical goals, some ambitious ones, and some that are sure to cause a good deal of conflict between industries.

One of the most contentious issues also happens to be the most important aspect of the broadband plan: the re-allocation of wireless spectrum for the use of mobile broadband.

Last October, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Americans' consumption of mobile broadband has grown so quickly that we are almost at a bottleneck, and that more wireless spectrum is needed for it immediately. The plan, therefore, says that it will increase the 255 MHz - 3.7 GHz spectrum available to "terrestrial broadband services" (a.k.a., non-satellite) by at least 300 MHz in the next five years, and 500 MHz within the next ten.

But where will all of this wireless spectrum come from?

Of the 300 MHz due in the next five years, 120 MHz will be coming from the broadcast television bands.

It's no secret that the radio and television broadcast industry is still sitting on huge chunks of unused wireless spectrum, and the recent transition to digital broadcast freed up a significant amount of spectrum in the 700 MHz band that was auctioned off to mobile network operators in 2008. By re-purposing the wireless spectrum for mobile Internet services, the FCC says it increased its value to about $1.28 per megahertz/pop. Right now, the FCC estimates that the spectrum the broadcast TV industry has is only worth about $0.11 to $0.15 per megahertz/pop.

In short, the spectrum is ten times more valuable for wireless broadband than it is for broadcast television.

This is due to a couple of factors. Firstly, it's because only 10% of the population is estimated to still rely on free over-the-air broadcasts. Secondly, it's because broadcast TV licensing has interference protection built into it, which leaves significant amounts of spectrum intentionally unused.

So to get this extremely valuable wireless spectrum, the FCC is going to try a multi-pronged approach to restructuring the broadcast TV industry:

1. Update the rules on TV service areas, distance separations, and revise the table of spectrum allotments starting at the 6 MHz channel.

2. Fix the licensing framework so two or more broadcast stations can share the 6 MHz channel. (The Commission estimates that two HD video streams or several SD streams can exist within that channel.)

3. Get government approval so broadcasters who have voluntarily consolidated their channels will be able to share the profits of the remaining spectrum that is auctioned off.

If that is not approved, then other methods of restructuring the broadcast industry must be explored, such as by transitioning to a cellular broadcast architecture (smaller, lower power transmitters that cause less interference than the big broadcast towers) or by auctioning off "overlay" licenses where licensees must negotiate directly with broadcast TV stations to clear out the bands.

Some of these alternative methods would be a little more forceful to broadcasters.

"We were pleased by initial indications from FCC members that any spectrum reallocation would be voluntary, and were therefore prepared to move forward in a constructive fashion on that basis," Dennis Wharton, Executive Vice President of the National Association of Broadcasters, said in a statement yesterday evening. "However, we are concerned by reports today that suggest many aspects of the plan may in fact not be as voluntary as originally promised. Moreover, as the nation's only communications service that is free, local and ubiquitous, we would oppose any attempt to impose onerous new spectrum fees on broadcasters."

Now that the value of the wireless spectrum has been clearly proven and outlined, television broadcasters who have faced declining ad revenue and declining viewership could be standing before a huge pile of money. The 700 MHz spectrum block alone garnered more than $19 billion from wireless network operators in 2008 for a little under 100 MHz of spectrum. License holders in the bands to be vacated are holding very strong cards indeed.

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6,1,3,7,2

Now Nexus One Owners Can Bitch About AT&T Too (And This Won’t Help Sales)

TechCrunch

- 1 days and 10 hours ago

There’s a lot of talk today about how the Nexus One’s initial roll-out has been a flop. And while the numbers aren’t official, things do look pretty grim for the first Android device Google is attempting to sell itself. But Google is wasting no time answering its critics â€” indirectly â€” with the launch of a version of the device that will work on AT&T’s 3G network.

To be clear, this isn’t Google teaming up with AT&T on the device. Instead, it’s simply a second version of the Nexus One that works with AT&T’s 3G frequency, which is different than that of T-Mobile’s (the current Nexus One U.S. carrier). The original Nexus One does actually already work on AT&T, but only for 2G connections, so this new version will obviously be significantly faster.

With the new 3G frequency, the new Nexus One will also work in Canada with Rogers Wireless. And, as Google notes, “And like the first version of the Nexus One, it can be used with most GSM operators globally.”

Certainly, giving consumers more choices is always a good thing, but it seems that Google’s attempt to sell the phone itself is really the problem here. While it makes sense that phones, like most other goods (digital cameras, for example), should be an easy sell online, there’s also some thought that the Nexus One isn’t selling well because customers are so used to walking into a store and playing with a phone for a bit before buying it. Â If that’s the case, the AT&T addition isn’t likely to help sales.

The right play here would be for Google to offer shoppers a full list of plan options for both T-Mobile and AT&T and let them decide which carrier to pick. Unfortunately, that won’t be happening here, because again, this new Nexus One is only being sold as an unlocked phone that can work on AT&T if you get a SIM card on your own (something which most consumers will never do in the U.S.).

Eventually, if Google can offer that list of options from all the carriers (including the CDMA ones like Verizon, which, yes, will require another version of the Nexus One), that could be enough to drive customers online to buy the phone (and has always been the Nexus One’s promise, in my opinion). This move today, won’t be. Also, with all the bitching about AT&T’s network by iPhone owners (though, again, it has been great at SXSW), why on Earth would anyone want to buy a smartphone to use on the network unless they absolutely had to (as they do with the iPhone)?

[photo: flickr/katybate]

CrunchBase Information Nexus One AT&T GoogleInformation provided by CrunchBase

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googles,google,photos,store,rogers

A Year of Cool Comics - Day 75

Comics Should Be Good!

- 1 days and 11 hours ago

Here is the latest in our year-long look at one cool comic (whether it be a self-contained work, an ongoing comic or a run on a long-running title that featured multiple creative teams on it over the years) a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here's the archive of the moments posted so far!

Today we take a look at the initial story arc from Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos' Alias...

Enjoy!

With the news that Jessica Jones would be returning to the superhero game in New Avengers, I thought it'd be a fun idea to re-visit the early days of Jessica Jones in the pages of Alias.

When we first meet Jessica, she is accosted by a jerk of a client and she ends up throwing him through her door after he tries to hit her.

Thus we learn her background...

And soon after, we discover that she is in a dark, dark place in her life right now...

At the end of issue #1, after Jessica is hired to find the sister of a woman, she tapes the sister with a man, who turns out to be, well, someone that Jessica did not expect...

Jessica is then thrown into a whole big mess of a conspiracy that goes all the way to the highest level of national politics, and it all revolves around the world of superheroing that Jessica left behind long ago.

The greatest thing about Alias is that Brian Michael Bendis did such a good job creating a multi-faceted character in Jessica that he basically can just throw her into different situations just to see how she will react.

It makes Alias a very interesting book to read, especially because she's a likable enough character that you WANT to see her make the most out of her life.

Michael Gaydos handles the darkness of the tale quite well - he is a strong storyteller and the sequences in the book are top rate.

This first storyline is collected in the first Alias trade, along with the following story arc.

If you enjoyed Bendis' earlier crime comics, then Alias is right up your alley as it has the same character-driven focus that his crime comics had. Very well crafted comics.

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1,michaels,nationals,crimes,game

IE9 technology preview goes live, Microsoft claims scores 55% on Acid3

UK Lords pass bill to create Internet anti-piracy enforcement office

BetaNews.Com

- 1 days and 12 hours ago

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The British House of Lords has passed a bill that might, if enacted into law, put the UK's Parliament at odds with the European Commission over how best to enforce copyright anti-infringement laws. Called the Digital Economy Bill, it would charge Internet service providers with the task of keeping track of suspected file sharers and copyright violators, and reporting on them to copyright holders as well as to the country's Office of Communications (OFCOM).

As the bill is currently written, OFCOM would be charged with determining the "initial obligations" of Internet service providers with respect to suspected infringers, provided those obligations meet the specific guidelines. It would be up to OFCOM, should the bill be enacted, to determine all the specifics -- the "fiddly bits" -- such as how ISPs monitor their customers ("subscribers"), at what stage it becomes necessary to report on their activities, how long they retain information on those customers, and what else they do with that data. In the UK, regulations enacted by a regulatory body such as OFCOM are called codes.

Specifically, the bill would require that OFCOM "makes provision about how internet service providers are to keep information about subscribers; that it limits the time for which they may keep that information; that the requirements concerning subscriber appeals are met in relation to the code; that the provisions of the code are objectively justifiable in relation to the matters to which it relates; that those provisions are not such as to discriminate unduly against particular persons or against a particular description of persons; that those provisions are proportionate to what they are intended to achieve; [and] that, in relation to what those provisions are intended to achieve, they are transparent." (This page from Parliament.UK contains the exact text of this section.)

ISPs would be indemnified from any responsibility for the infringing activity, but only if they fulfill their obligations as OFCOM would define them. Those obligations would include, according to the bill, expedient response to requests from copyright holders, as well as some sort of "technical measure" to punish the "relevant subscriber." As the bill is written now, it appears the fuzziness of "relevant subscriber" may be intentional, so as not to imply that the customer must first be found guilty of charges.

"A 'technical obligation,' in relation to an internet service provider, is an obligation for the provider to take a technical measure against some or all relevant subscribers to its service for the purpose of preventing or reducing infringement of copyright by means of the Internet," the bill reads. "A 'technical measure' is a measure that: (a) limits the speed or other capacity of the service provided to a subscriber; (b) prevents a subscriber from using the service to gain access to particular material, or limits such use; (c) suspends the service provided to a subscriber; or (d) limits the service provided to a subscriber in another way. A subscriber to an internet access service is 'relevant' if the subscriber is a relevant subscriber to the service...in relation to one or more copyright owners."

From here, the bill proceeds to the House of Commons, where elected officials will debate whether it would be fair, under the terms of the last paragraph, to punish suspected subscribers prior to their hearing in court. Liberal leaders there were quoted by the BBC this morning as having indicated such a law would be contrary to the EU's Technical Standards Directive.

Last week, in a near-unanimous vote of the European Parliament, a resolution was adopted to compel participants in the multi-national Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) to report to the EU Parliament, and eventually publicly, on terms being negotiated between countries. Such terms might compel member countries in ACTA to adopt laws similar to what the House of Lords just passed.

Ironically, this entire affair comes on the same week as MPs begin debate on a measure, first reported by the London Telegraph, to replace the House of Lords entirely with a second, publicly elected body of Parliament. The new upper house -- which may, the report states, be dubbed the "Senate" -- would include members who may very well be lords and landowners, elected for staggered terms of up to 15 years. Some say the Labour Party is unveiling the plan now in order to attract opposition from Tory leaders, who currently have an edge in public opinion polls. Painting the Tories as "pro-Lords" could, in turn, color them as "pro-establishment," and thus out of touch with modern-day British interests.