Last night I was on Press Row with Jordan Breen on Sherdog.com to discuss problems with officiating and judging in MMA. It's an oft-discussed topic, but honestly, one I haven't written much about. Like most people, I've wailed and complained with each and every horribly rendered decision, late stoppage, or clear conflict of interest. But with Breen guiding the conversation, I've been able to piece together some thoughts about the problem, its history, and how we might fix it. Ten thoughts:

I. Officiating in the UFC has been a mess from the beginning. Who can forget the very first UFC with Joa Alberto Berreto not stopping the Royce Gracie- Ken Shamrock match despite Ken tapping the mat several times. And Barreto was a Helio Gracie blackbelt, a man who had been an instructor at the Gracie Academy with Carlos Gracie himself, a man who had been a Vale Tudo fighter, who had been an official before - it's not just ignorance or bad training. Sometimes people just freeze. And sometimes they are bad at their jobs.

II. In some ways it's a great thing for a small commission to bring in John McCarthy or Herb Dean. They have a ton of knowledge to share and it's one area a smaller commission, which is going to be overwhelmed, understaffed, and ill prepared, doesn't have to worry about. On the night of the fight, "Big John" can simply say 'Guys, I've got this.' And the commission can move on to other business. But I maintain, in the face of Breen's pragmatic reasoning, that there is too much potential for fraud if officials are counting on promoters to earn a paycheck.  New Jersey told me their rule is simple. If you request an official it is guaranteed that official won't be assigned, because the prospects of collusion and impropriety are so strong. Not to question integrity - but it's inherently suspicious.

III. Keep in mind I'm not saying John McCarthy doesn't have the fighter's safety in mind. He, by all accounts, is a very good referee. But John McCarthy isn't an impartial person and John McCarthy doesn't always untangle the webs that cocoon him. And he hasn't always been clear about his preexisting biases and relationships.

Look, it was ludicrous for John McCarthy, starting at UFC 2, to officiate Royce Gracie matches. He was a Gracie student and was involved in their business, to my understanding, as an instructor. He also helped secure teaching gigs with the police department - I mean, when Gracie fought Keith Hackney or Kimo, or whoever, "Big John" clearly wasn't impartial. So he kind of started on the wrong foot for me, ethically.

IV. Here's another example of a time McCarthy might have been more proactive in removing himself from a potential conflict of interest - at UFC 8 in Puerto Rico, Tank Abbott got into a situation with Alan Goes in the crowd. John's wife Elaine said something to Tank's girlfriend and Tank ended up threatening her. Multiple sources told me John wanted to fight Tank Abbott that night. And they succeeded in getting him suspended for several shows. Yet when Tank returned, there was Big John....reffing seven more of Abbott's fights. The thought of recusing himself never crossed his mind. To me that's not a well defined sense of what is an isn't appropriate.

V. While I agree judging is a very important issue, I think officiating is even more important because of the safety issues. When a judge makes a bad decision, feelings are going to be hurt. When an official makes a mistake, bodies are going to be hurt. To me, that's a much more serious consequence, but generally refereeing in MMA seems to be well in hand. There are two officials, Dan Mirgliata and Steve Mazzagatti who are pretty conservative when it comes to stopping fights. In fights like Frank Mir-Shane Carwin or Jay Hieron-Georges St. Pierre, the ref can actively endanger fighters. And it's problematic to me that our two biggest celebrity refs, John McCarthy and Herb Dean, can't even agree on what the back of the head is. But for the most part, fighters are well taken care of inside the cage. That's my primary officiating concern and mixed martial arts is at a place where fighters can breathe easy, knowing that in the major leagues at least, they are in good hands.

Five more thoughts after the break

VI. We have the Unified Rules but they aren't enforced uniformly. And we don't have uniform training. What I'd like to see is a national program to teach judges and referees their trade. I don't mean one of these commercial products sold by a celebrity official - I'm talking about a real program designed by the Association of Boxing Commissions and mandatory before anyone ever sits cageside or gets inside the Octagon. Officials and judges should learn the sport from the same curriculum and to a national standard. Right now the ABC strongly suggests officials come to a seminar -but can't mandate it. And frankly that's not enough.

VII. I called Nick Lembo's office in New Jersey because they have what is in my opinion the best athletic commission in the country. And they are getting MMA right - 61 of 63 scorecards at UFC 128 were on point...so they are doing something right as far as looking at the same criteria and making the right calls. While identical scorecards doesn't mean the right decision is being made, it does point to judges understanding the criteria and analyzing the visual data the same way. That's a good start.

VIII. Some keys to New Jersey's success:

A. Separate the boxing and MMA operations.It seems obvious, but most people making important decisions on MMA cards are boxing refugees. That has to change.
B. Hire mixed martial artists. They have Ricardo Almeida joining them as a judge and Gasper Oliver is an up and coming ref who had amateur MMA experience and was a high school wrestler.
C. Walk before you run policy: start with a  seminar, spend several shows as an assistant inspector, shadow amateur judges, judge amateur cards, shadow pro judges, judge lower level pro cards. By the time someone like Oliver is ready for a major card, he's been tested hundreds of times.
D. Courses are not enough. Thinking you know the sport - not enough. You have to prove it under fire. New Jersey requires it and it's important other states do the best they can to get officials substantive experience before they are assigned a meaningful bout.

IX: There are two wildy divergent positions about the state of MMA officiating and judging. I talked with Marc Ratner once after Machida-Rua I in Los Angeles and even in the face of that travesty, he was clear that there is no MMA judging crisis. Any system, any sport, under any rules, when something is close - there will be disagreement. That's almost a mantra for Ratner and his protege Keith Kizer in Nevada. Nick Lembo from New Jersey had the opposite view point. He doesn't believe MMA officiating is where it can or needs to be. Very different positions from the sport's two most respected regulators.

X. There are four systems that make sense when you start thinking about judging fights and declaring a winner:.

1. Fight to a finish (i.e. old UFC rules)

2. 10-9 Must System (i.e. boxing and unified rules)

3. Totality of the fight (i.e. Pride)

4. Nelson Hamilton's half point system.

I prefer the 10-9 must system, understanding that the modern sport doesn't allow a fight to the finish. The problem with 10-9 must is definitional. What is a 10-8 round? What is a 10-9 round? In Kalib Starnes vs. Nate Quarry, Starnes literally ran for much of three rounds. One judge scored 30-27 Nate  and one scored it 30-24 Nate. There seems to be no consensus about what defines a 10-8 round. In boxing it is simple - a knockdown.With MMA everything is more complicated. Dominance and damage seem to be the main criteria. But what does that mean?

And that brings us back to training. A national standard, one that ensures every judge and official are on the same page when it matters most, is an important first step in getting things right.

Listen to my interview with Jordan Breen here.

Shameless sent him to the States – but now Paul Abbott is back with Exile. On set, Amy Raphael hears about Alzheimer's, how to get an all-star cast, and where British TV should head next

When Paul Abbott was in his early 20s, he would regularly do a 10-hour day as a scriptwriter on Coronation Street, spend 90 minutes driving home, and then visit his grandmother. She was in a nursing home and suffering from Alzheimer's; he was, by his own admission, exhausted and bored. "I used to lay different objects down in front of her and see how many sentences I could get out of her. The smell of lavender, for example, would stimulate an anecdote. I wanted to see if something like a clothes peg would force her to make sense. Otherwise our conversations were dominated by her random amnesia."

Abbott is playful, but not without compassion – this we know, of course, from Shameless, the long-running comedy-drama series drawn from his own childhood as one of eight kids growing up on an estate in Burnley with absent parents. He says that his grandmother's illness wasn't life-changing for him, but those odd, one-sided conversations stuck at the back of his mind. Then, more recently, he watched a couple trading insults in a row. "It was the epitome of social deafness. It gave me the idea of writing about a character wanting to unpick a monumental event that happened many years earlier. But it's a unilateral argument – the other character hasn't got the capacity to argue because he's got Alzheimer's. I thought it would be interesting for a 40-year-old British male to return home and instead of it being the typical story in which the problem is fixed, he finds it's not fixable."

Initially Abbott was thinking of locating the story in America and writing it as an indie film. But then he talked about the idea with Danny Brocklehurst, a writer he mentored and who won a Bafta for his work on Shameless. Eventually, the story moved to Lancashire and was sold to the BBC as a three-part psychological drama called Exile, written by Brocklehurst with Abbott as executive producer. Exile casts Jim Broadbent as a retired campaigning journalist called Sam, now consumed by the ebb and flow of Alzheimer's; John Simm as his frustrated son Tom, back from a failed career on a lads' mag in London; and Olivia Colman as his worn-out younger sister, Nancy, still living at home. Tom attempts to piece together a major investigative case that Sam was forced to abandon decades earlier and that caused a devastating family rift. Hard as he pushes, however, Tom is faced with an angry, bewildered father who insists he did nothing but sell carpets.

Exile is heartbreaking – from the moment Tom arrives home to find his father barely recognises him, to the scene in which Sam goes jogging in the snow in his vest, pants and socks, to the one in which he reaches absently for a shirt to dry the dishes. It's also brilliantly acted. "John Simm, who I worked with on State of Play and Clocking Off, is easily one of my top five actors ever," says Abbott. "He can walk on and look like a walnut and then his eyes suddenly become magnetic. We talked to Pete Postlethwaite about playing the father, but he was too ill. Then we asked Jim. I thought I'd had a stroke when he confirmed. These days you can't afford actors at this level as a matter of course, but with a good script you can get them."

While Abbott, now 51, is widely acknowledged as one of the best TV writers of his generation, 39-year-old Brocklehurst is proving himself to be an equally exhilarating one. Broadbent tells me that, "Danny is to Paul Abbott what Paul Abbott is to Jimmy McGovern" – suggesting a kind of dynasty of British TV writers. Brocklehurst is currently working on an HBO crime drama called Dirty with Fish Tank director Andrea Arnold; he and Abbott go back a decade, co-writing the second series of Shameless. "Paul's almost become a brand, with the movie of State of Play and Shameless going to America," says Brocklehurst. "But I try to be me rather than the new Paul Abbott."

Brocklehurst has also worked with McGovern, most recently writing an episode of the intense courtroom drama Accused. "It was pretty much a laugh-free zone," he concedes. "There's something about working with Jimmy that sucks the laughs away. I keep telling him to put more jokes in! The Lakes was very funny and now he's very serious. It's possible to be both serious and funny. It can work." Brocklehurst has achieved the balance with Exile; one minute Tom is wiping his father's bottom and wishing out loud that he had "something quick like heart disease or cancer", the next there's a diverting, comical duologue between Tom and Nancy.

On the set of Exile in Ramsbottom, on a chilly January afternoon, Simm is full of cold and doped up on Lemsip. He boasts that he's never had a day off work and then stifles a sneeze. Last seen in blokey Sky1 thriller Mad Dogs, he is in almost every scene in Exile, and, as the shoot comes to an end, is shattered. "I turned 40 last summer and I haven't even had time to have a mid-life crisis," he says. "Mad Dogs was one of those jobs you do for yourself – we shot it in Mallorca in spring and not on a council estate in Manchester in the middle of winter [unlike Shameless] – and I followed it straight away with Hamlet at the Sheffield Crucible. When I was approached about Exile, I initially said no way, I don't want to do anything."

He rubs his eyes and smiles. "But then I read it and thought, 'If I don't do this, some other fucker is going to do it.' I haven't read anything this good since State of Play or Abi Morgan's [2004 drama] Sex Traffic. It's that good. And then at the read-through, there were moments when I'd look up and see Jim across the table and think, 'Wow.' I am in awe of him; he is –" he pauses, embarrassed "– godlike. I knew I couldn't wing it in Exile. I've had to make sure I'm really on it."

'You remember the pain'

Simm did no research into Alzheimer's because his character is not supposed to know anything about it. Broadbent, however, played Iris Murdoch's husband John Bayley in the film Iris, in which the writer's memory slowly but relentlessly dissolves as Alzheimer's sets in. Broadbent's own mother also had the disease. Did that make it distressing to play a character with it? "It was upsetting when mother was ill; in a way that was more upsetting than any acting will be," he says. "But you know, you just use all that. You remember what was painful about it. But it's not a disease-of-the-week drama, it's a thriller with Alzheimer's as the backdrop."

Exile is everything Brocklehurst wanted it to be: authentic, sad and funny, propelled by the motor of a thriller. I expect Brocklehurst to complain, as writers do, that he had to squeeze the story into three episodes, but in fact he immediately says he didn't want any more screen time that that. "I think some things can outstay their welcome. I didn't want that." Abbott, meanwhile, appears to be free and easy about producing rather than writing Exile. He doesn't even seem to mind that it never became an indie film. "I don't aspire to writing movies for their own sake. I'd rather write really good television because it's more powerful. And it's more satisfying when you actually write, or commission somebody to write, the kind of drama you actually want to see."

Perhaps Abbott's generosity is due, in part, to his new-found success in America. He now spends part of the year there, co-writing US Shameless and not quite believing the monumental budgets. "We'll never have those resources, which makes me so proud of what we've got in this country," he says. "I encountered nothing in LA that has made me feel in any way amateur. I just don't think we get enough practice at writing, we don't have enough opportunities. British writers underperform and are underused." He smiles. "Which is why a writer like Danny is so special. He's never bought me a fucking drink in his life, but his writing takes me to a place I didn't know I wanted to go."

• Exile starts on 1 May at 9pm on BBC1.

The final country Grand Prix is over.  The Grand Prix Final is set (until the inevitable withdrawals trickle out).  Here is what I thought of Trophee Eric Bompard.

Wake me up when ice dancing is over

Ice dancing is the only event of the Grand Prix that has had zero competitiveness for gold this entire season.  And although Pechalat and Bourzat have mounted a vigorous PR campaign to convince the judges that they should compete with the likes of a Davis and White, I really don't see that they're up there.  That being said, the French Trophee Eric Bompard champs are a delight to watch this season.  They have confidence and two good programs (I am partial to the Chaplin free dance, however overused that music might be).  If anyone IS going to challenge Davis and White in the Grand Prix Final, it has to be this team. 

Disappointed as I was that USA's Chock and Zuerlein couldn't climb up a podium spot and propel themselves into the Grand Prix Final, another bronze is still nothing to sneeze at.  I'm actually excited about seeing the competition for silver this season at U.S. Nationals.  And there's something that I really liked about Russia's Riazanova and Tkachenko, which I did not expect.  Looking forward to seeing them get together a bit more and improve. 

They're not tricks, they're illusions

Poor Mirai Nagasu.  She has turned into one of those skaters who looks like they are skating really well and actually is leaving so many points on the table with underrotations and edge call GOE deductions.  Her free skate at Trophee Eric Bompard (the winning free skate!) was a vast improvement over Cup of China.  And she didn't fall.  But I have to admit, from the moment she lost focus on that spin onward, I was not feeling any connection between Nagasu and the program.  And I was nervous the whole time because so many jumps looked underrotated.  Nagasu got credit for four triples, but one of them had an edge call so it was negative GOEs all over the place anyway.  Two triples were underrotated.  And of course, that spin!  That spin that lost her the gold medal.  Ugh.  Still, it was her first senior Grand Prix medal and that will hopefully be a shot of confidence for her en route to nationals.

I have decided that Kiira Korpi's Evita program is my favorite Evita of the season (sorry, Ksenia Makarova!).  She really did have some passion going on during that free skate and she sold her program to the audience and the judges.  However, this was not quite a tour de force performance.  The hardest jump she did was the triple loop and she had a fall and a pop on other attempted triples.  Korpi's triple toe/triple toe may well be her trump card this season, as few of the competitive ladies are successfully completing triple/triples.

Haruka Imai's free skate was just painful - could she just not catch up to the music?  So many errors but what struck me was how crazy frantic it was...I think she started a spin literally after the music ended.  Sad follow-up to a third place short program.  I thought Imai had a bit of a more mature vibe than Murakami until this free skate. 

Czisny being Czisny.  That's all there is to it.  She managed to cling to a medal and a spot in the Grand Prix Final more due to other people being bigger messes than she was.  But I could watch her free skate day in and day out.  I loooove it.

Oops I almost forgot to talk about Mao Asada again.  Not sure what to say.  I feel like Asada exempted herself from criticism at NHK Trophy by stating that she is reworking her jumps and everything is going according to plan.  I am getting a bit more of a desperate vibe after Trophee Eric Bompard, and to be honest, I found the free skate at Trophee Eric Bompard to be almost as disappointing as the free skate at NHK where she fell all over the place.  I am always more disappointed by a skater who gives up on her jumps before she even tries them than a skater who falls.  The Japanese nationals will determine who goes to the world championships and I would assume that if Asada doesn't make the team she might be saying adios to Nobuo Sato and moving on.  I also would think she should halt the triple axel for now as she has zero confidence in them this season.  But I thought the same thing last season, so what do I know...

Perspective

Wow, the direct comparison of Florent Amodio's Once Upon a Time in Mexico short program with Brian Joubert's Once Upon a Time in Mexico short program is kind of jarring.  Amodio seems limber, creative, and artistic. Joubert seems arthritic, dull, and contrived.  I don't think Joubert is a bad skater but I think he indulges in terrible choreography.  The spectators at Trophee Eric Bompard have seen the future, and its name is Amodio.  The man's jumps were not QUITE as perfect in the free skate as they have been elsewhere, but they were great nonetheless.  Nice to see someone feed positively off of a home crowd for once rather than crumble. 

Sadly, Amodio's great skating did not necessarily mean he could contend with Kozuka.  Kozuka followed up a not so hot short program (which I still hate, by the way) with a better effort in the free skate (although the quad wasn't quite there).  The free skate fits him so much more and he has such wonderful components.  Not sure he can share a rink with Daisuke Takahashi yet (although perhaps Amodio can, since he plays to the crowd), but when his jumps are there he is definitely a medal contender anywhere. In my opinion, the three best skaters this season in the men's competition are all from Japan.

Happy to see another medal for Brandon Mroz of the USA, although what a disappointment that he couldn't hold on for a Grand Prix Final spot.  He is second alternate, I believe, behind Jeremy Abbott.  I think Mroz's artistry has improved but he's still far behind the top men. Will he challenge an unsteady Jeremy Abbott and a quad-less Adam Rippon at January's nationals?  The question has officially been raised. Although, Nationals are kind of Abbott's thing, so who knows.

In their next program, they will dress as anvils

Savchenko and Szolkowy are not a subtle pair (see clown costumes 2009).  But I will give them credit..when they commit to something, they truly commit.  Though I don't particularly like their Pink Panther free skate, every move (death spiral, spins, lifts) fits the theme that they have chosen.  Which is to say...giant, slightly awkward, fuschia cat.  I find them to be the most exciting pair to watch right now because they have the skills, they have the programs, and they have the presentation.  They are the pair to beat this season. 

Bazarova and Larionov, however, are more like the sedative that you give the Pink Panther before you take it on the plane or something.  They are so calming and languid.  I loved their short program here, though they had some ugly troubles in the free skate.  Excited to see them in the Grand Prix Final.  How will they fare against a team like Sui and Han, who have the bigger tricks but none of the presentation that this Russian pair has?

Germany's Hausch and Wende were also a joy to watch here...they didn't have a perfect free skate either but they just seemed so confident and they went out and grabbed that bronze medal by the throat.  And would not let it go, wonky lift dismount be damned.

Predictions

I was 6/12.

The second-to-last Grand Prix country event is this weekend in Moscow - the Rostelecom Cup.  We're going to see some skaters scrambling for Grand Prix Final slots.  Here's what I'll be looking for:

Pairs

Why to Watch:  It's the first competition for Russia's Kavaguti and Smirnov following her shoulder surgery earlier in the year.  If they've had enough time to recover and work together, this should be an absolute cakewalk.

Keep an Eye Out For:  USA's Evora and Ladwig should really medal here.  Their personal best score is more about ten points more than the next closest pair.  But they looked so lackluster at Cup of China that I wouldn't necessarily bet on them.  Then there are two bronze medal teams:  Japan's Takahashi and Tran and Canada's Lawrence and Swiegers.  I didn't find either team impressive in their last outings but I'm sure at least one of those two pairs will make the podium.

Predictions:

1) Kavaguti and Smirnov

2) Takahashi and Tran

3) Evora and Ladwig

Men

Why to Watch:  I can't wait to see how many times Canada's Patrick Chan will be able to fall and still win.  In years past I might have said this would be a tough competition between the USA's Jeremy Abbott and Chan, but I just don't know if Abbott can get near Chan's program components scores.  I am interested to see Abbott's short program again; it is a very different style for him...lots of melodramatic arm movements.

Keep an Eye Out For:  Basically, everybody.  You have the Czech Republic's Tomas Verner, fresh off of his Cup of China bronze medal.  Then there's last season's World Junior champ Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan, who came in fourth at NHK Trophy; his country mate and this year's Nebelhorn Trophy champ Tatsuki Machida;  and Russia's Konstantin Menshov who came in second to Machida at Nebelhorn.  If Verner errs, any of them could step in, or even Italy's Samuel Contesti, Spain's Javier Fernandez, or France's Alban Preaubert.  I think that leaves only three people who I don't think have a shot at medaling.  Knowing my luck...

Predictions:

1) Chan (Canada)

2) Abbott (USA)

3) Verner (Czech Republic)

Ice Dancing

Why to Watch:  To see if Italy's Faiella and Scali cut the skirts, of course.  I don't think they're looking prepared this season, but considering their abilities and experience they should be able to win this competition, even though they recently came in after Bobrova and Soloviev of Russia at Skate Canada.

Keep an Eye Out For:  Bronze medal will be contested here.  There are quite a few fourth place finishers hoping to leap onto the podium.  World junior champs Ilinykh and Katsalapov will try to fend off world junior silver medalists Paul and Islam of Canada.

Predictions:
1) Faiella and Scali (Italy)

2) Bobrova and Soloviev (Russia)

3) Ilinykh and Katsalapov (Russia)

Ladies

Why to Watch:  There are so many interesting skaters here!  While I think Miki Ando of Japan is the favorite, her country mate Akiko Suzuki will look to challenge her more than she did a few weeks ago at Cup of China.  And Russia's Alena Leonova will try to hold off the young rising star Ksenia Makarova, silver medalist at Skate Canada.

Keep an Eye Out For:  I'm hoping USA's Ashley Wagner has a better showing here than she did at her last Grand Prix.  I'm also wondering if Agnes Zawadzki can pull together a better free skate than she had at Skate Canada.

Predictions:

1) Miki Ando

2) Ksenia Makarova

3) Akiko Suzuki

Here's a tip for young media consumers: when journalists covering a political controversy slip into the passive voice, there's a good chance they are trying to disguise their own involvement in the controversy in order to maintain the facade that they are mere observers.

Case in point: the latest dreary controversy concerning the Opposition Leader's plans to travel to Afghanistan. The Prime Minister is predictably making hay from Abbott's unfortunate remark that he put off his Afghanistan visit due to worries about jet lag. But she's doing it while attending an important international conference in Brussels. And according to the Herald Sun, that means:

The issue overshadowed the second and final day of the Asia Europe Meeting Ms Gillard has been attending in the Belgian capital.

AAP was even more emphatic:

Her spat with Mr Abbott, who she used to share a weekly spot with on breakfast television, has easily overshadowed Australia's uneventful first appearance at ASEM.

In both cases, the use of passive voice deliberately evades the question of who's responsible for the overshadowing. Because the answer is obvious: it's the news media itself which chooses to focus on these controversies. It's not like there's some supernatural force out there deciding what today's news priorities ought to be; reporters and their editors get to make that call.

The Herald Sun story illustrates how important the choice of news priorities can be. The passage immediately after the sentence quoted above goes like this: 

(Gillard) said the meeting had been useful because it had addressed key issues of importance to Australia including the need to continue the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan, and the need for stronger and more concerted regulatory reform and greater transparency in the international finance system. She said the leaders acknowledged that there was still some "fragility'' in the global economic system, and "that we need to continue to pursue fiscal consolidation, and work together to promote economic growth.''

Yes, at a superficial level, these are all dry, dull, dusty topics. And maybe the ASEM Meeting didn't produce any actual news – it wouldn't be a first for an international conference. But for goodness sake, the world is still coping with the effects of the financial meltdown and there's a war on in Afghanistan. Aren't those more interesting stories than Tony Abbott's jet lag?

Campaign has taken four-and-a-half months and strained family ties. The Milibands are about to learn their fate

In Manchester on Saturday afternoon, in a private room, the five candidates in the battle to be Labour leader will be told the outcome. Many would give a lot of money to be in that room to observe the two Miliband brothers as they hear the result. For many people still doubt, despite the protestations to the contrary, that David Miliband will be able to stomach defeat if his younger brother has stolen the crown from him.

There is much talk of brotherly love, but only David and his closest family can know how defeat would treat him. Bitter resentment is not easy to control; careers, from Edward Heath to Gordon Brown, have been consumed by it.

From the beginning, this leadership campaign has been shaped by Ed's decision to challenge his older brother. Even though they both insist they are mainstream social democrats driven by the need to narrow society's inequalities, Ed insists that the decision – the most difficult of his life – is driven by his political differences with his brother, and not by ambition.

Whatever the reason, that decision dramatically transformed the campaign's dynamic. Andy Burnham, for instance, had been calculating throughout the general election that he could come through the middle of a David Miliband/Ed Balls contest. He probably did not foresee Ed Miliband standing. Balls, for his part, had vacillated. He did not have much support inside the parliamentary party, and he must have been struck that nobody in the cabinet, apart from his wife, came out to back him.

Miliband D launched on 12 May, the day after Cameron was appointed prime minister. He was worried his brother was due to stand on the following Saturday, and he would be accused of indecision yet again. Ed duly launched that Saturday at a thinktank event, at which observers were struck by his nerves as he prepared to take the stage.

In an interview in the Guardian, followed by a speech to the Fabian Society, Ed Miliband talked about how the Iraq issue, a "casualness" about civil liberties, and a failure to regulate the banks properly, had cost Labour the election. Immigration at the election had been a "class issue", he said, because it depresses wages. He said he felt liberated to say finally what he believed.

By contrast, David Miliband talked about how Labour had "lost focus" on education and anti-social behaviour, and was playing catchup on political reform, immigration and housing.

But David Miliband's team, padded with David Sainsbury's funding and berthed in ultra-modern offices in Smith Square, were torn. "David was faced with the central dilemma – whether to be a full blown Blairite or not – and has ended up falling in between," says one of his strategists. "He has understandably been wary of definition as New Labour, but that has meant that there was really nowhere else for him to go. And he ended up competing with Ed Miliband on the left. I'm not saying he necessarily made the wrong decision, but I am saying that it was a big dilemma. If Ed Balls had been the other [lead] candidate, that would have been a clearer contest."

With many more nominations inside the parliamentary party, David Miliband was frontrunner, but unnerved by his brother. He pulled off a strategic move to which many attribute a larger significance: urging supporters to back Diane Abbott's inclusion on the ballot. The leftwinger's arrival would, and did, blur some of Ed Miliband's attack lines.

"This was probably the most astute thing David's team have done," says a union insider. "If Ed doesn't win, he could probably pin it to that moment."

Throughout June, at five hustings at the GMB union, the New Statesman magazine, the Compass grouping, the Fabians, and on the BBC's Newsnight, Ed Miliband started defining himself as the candidate of Obama-style change, in contrast to his brother as the candidate of the Labour establishment.

He repeatedly held out the suggestion change was possible, if the party could only be guided by its values. Symbolic hints were given. The 50p tax rate would be permanent. A Living Wage. A graduate tax. Trident put in the strategic defence review. He put his criticisms in a wider framework, reminiscent of his father Ralph. "Britain's big question of the next decade," he has written, "is whether we head towards an increasingly US-style capitalism – more unequal, more brutish, more unjust – or whether we can build a different model, a capitalism that works for people and not the other way around."

Meanwhile Ed Balls, too, started to reveal his doubts about the previous government's record – the 10p tax, deferring the 2007 election, tuition fees.

David, too, moved left. He hired two professionals to help train 1,000 community organisers, a project to which, in four months of the leadership campaign, he devoted a huge amount of time and which he credits with changing him profoundly. While it was principled, it was also strategic – David needed to counterbalance the idea it was his brother who was creating the movement. And there were surprisingly leftwing pronouncements: ending charitable status for private schools, support for a mansions tax.

The first briefings on character began in late May, with an article, Android smear divides Milibands. Supporters of Ed were accused of suggesting David lacked the human touch.

David's irritation at Ed, and Ed's disapproval of David's adopted positions, began to show at the first hustings held by the New Statesman. The pair stood at their podiums and sparred, with the other three largely watching, on Iraq and Trident. After the answer to one question David's younger brother said sardonically, "Now THAT was a good answer."

Many have criticised the format, but Andy Burnham insists it was useful. "The received wisdom in the Westminster establishment is that we should sneer at the hustings," he said. "But the Labour party was, and is, deeply demoralised and disenfranchised at its grassroots. It needs a long period of care and attention. The hustings meant members felt they had a stake again, and that is of incalculable value." One of David's team agrees, with caveats. "It's been good for the candidates but bad for the Labour party. Good for them, because most of them have got better; but what's been bad is that the government has got away with so much."

On 9 July David Miliband finally put together his big speech, the Keir Hardie lecture, and apart from the later Ed Balls Bloomberg lecture, the only truly substantive speech of the five-month campaign. Having defiantly defended Labour's 13-year record in the previous six weeks, David Miliband now launched a direct assault on the weaknesses of the Blair-Brown era.

Comparing his views with those of the previous prime minister, Miliband said: "I agreed we needed greater moral seriousness and less indifference to the excesses of a celebrity-drenched culture. I agreed with [Brown] when he said that we needed greater coherence as a government, particularly in relation to child poverty and equality. I agreed with him on the importance of party reform."

But where he and Brown agreed on "a civic morality", he said, it hadn't happened. "Far from correcting them, failings (tactics, spin, high-handedness) intensified, and we lost many of our strengths ... We did not succeed in renewing ourselves in office; and the roots of that failure were deep not recent, about procedure and openness, or lack of it, as much as policy."

It went down a storm; David Miliband himself was surprised. "They actually stood up to applaud it," he later said, revealing some of his insecurity over how he is viewed in the party.

The launch of Peter Mandelson's book in July was a turning point for Ed Miliband. A friend says: "People who said they supported Ed at Mandelson's book launch were mobbed by the Blairites. They were told Ed would take us back to the 1970s, that he was a Bennite. Soon after that, those views took root in the media, that Ed was pandering to the left. That shocked Ed.

"For a week he was asking: why are they saying this? Some in his campaign said he should come up with something for Middle England that is Blairite."

He resisted. When had it become a crime for the Labour leader to be leftwing? he asked. "Ed was personally transformed by that moment," said the friend. Mandelson was told to give Ed the space to get on with it his own way. "Since then Ed has been less and less awed by David. He is much more confident. He then really started enjoying the campaign."

By mid July the discussion was focused on the deficit. David refused to budge from the deficit reduction plan set out by the previous government. The Tories were "trying to make us believe that if you don't believe in the masochism of Mr Osborne then you're in denial — we're not in denial. We've got a growth plan and a serious plan to halve the deficit over four years." Ed Miliband hinted he would not tackle the deficit as harshly as Darling had planned in his pre-election budget. But there was a feeling his campaign was becalmed.

On 21 July Unison followed the GMB lead and backed Ed Miliband, a shock to Ed Balls. Three days later the political committee of Unite gave Ed Miliband 24 votes compared to 4 votes each for Burnham and Balls. It has been said the Unite leadership settled on Ed before the contest as the best man to stop his brother. This was the low point for David's team. One lieutenant said: "That 24 hours was a blow; you think, 'How'd it come to this?'"

In the run-up to despatch of the ballot papers, the contest came alive. In the Times on 25 August David Miliband argued "Strong opposition, while necessary, is not sufficient. Simple opposition takes us back to our comfort zone as a party of protest, big in heart but essentially naive, well-meaning but behind the times. This is the role opponents want us to play." Ed Miliband responded that the party had to be wary of the New Labour comfort zone.

This exchange over "comfort zones" was, according to an aide to Ed Miliband, the "tetchiest moment" of the campaign. "It got a bit edgy. Ed was annoyed about that. There are zealots in both camps who are diehards. On the whole it has been pretty civil. There have never been any personal attacks."

But Balls, frustrated the contest was not focused on policy, railed against the daily Miliband soap opera, saying it was like the general election "when serious questions went unasked or unanswered as the media obsession with personalities dominated all discussion. Getting lost in debates about New and Old Labour may generate lots of headlines, but will get us nowhere with the public," he complained.

In the last week of August, Miliband D fired his last weapon, when Jon Cruddas, the leftwing constituency figurehead, endorsed him in the Mirror. Cruddas challenged the view, nurtured implicitly by his brother, that Miliband D was the no-change candidate. He said: "It's functional for people to caricature Miliband as some sort of late Blair, but that was never the guy I knew … He didn't embrace some of the more full-on versions of what [Blairism] became. It was a much more balanced, radical political movement in its early knockings. Now you have a bastardised Blairism that people are trying to define Miliband as [part of]." This endorsement was followed by that of Dennis Skinner.

One week later, much of that good was undone. In a coincidence, just as ballot papers were posted out to members, Blair emerged with his blockbuster, A Journey, and Mandelson condemned Miliband E's politics as that of the cul-de-sac. The reemergence of the Blairite big beasts is a sign of the degree to which the tide might be turning in the party, that an association with the man who won Labour three elections was problematical for David Miliband. He despatched an email to party members saying "I will move us on from Blair-Brown. I'm sick and tired of the caricature that this leadership election is a choice between rejecting and retaining New Labour."

Four days later came what David Miliband described as a wake-up call for his campaign. A YouGov poll in the Sunday Times had Ed Miliband ahead by two points. back on 29 July David had been ahead 54% to 46%, after the elimination of the other candidates, including a lead in the union vote.

The poll energised the David campaign to argue even more strongly he was the candidate to beat Cameron, in a manner that angered some supporters of Ed Miliband. One complained: "A veteran CLP secretary who I know was rung this week by the David Miliband campaign, and when she said she was not voting for David was accused by the caller of 'wanting Labour to stay in opposition'. Maybe it was someone going off script, but whether scripted or not it's not good politics."

Ed Miliband, meanwhile, was insisting the momentum was now with him. Using a formidable phone banking system – including enabling people to use the internet to phone bank from their own homes – he remorselessly went after the second preferences of Abbott and Balls.

The David campaign remained bullish, saying that with its 60,000-strong phonebank contacts it is 10% ahead on constituency activists. It is ahead on MPs' first preferences and it insisted only eight MPs are undecided on their second preferences. By the end, having made up so much ground, it felt as if Ed's campaign had the momentum."Ed has grown more confident through the campaign," says a staffer. "He has thrived on being underestimated. He slightly froze in the early Newsnight hustings. Maybe it was [the presence of] his brother, or because it was the first setpiece event. He became more confident with his performances."

The campaign, said the aide, had been the younger Miliband's training ground. "He simply had not had the same exposure as David had as foreign secretary and Ed Balls as schools secretary. But Ed's inner confidence he could win was soon matched by public performances in which he argued why he should win.

"People are coming to us rather than something organised from the centre.We were funded by lots of small donations. It was more chaotic than David's campaign. But we were bottom up."

By: Belinda Otas

While the world focused its attention on the political cliffhanger in May that led to Great Britain's first coalition government in 70 years, the U.K.'s minorities were making significant gains in national representation.

A record turnout of minority voters in the closely contested race doubled the number of black, Asian (in the U.K., "Asian" usually refers to South Asians) and other ethnic-minority MPs in the House of Commons from 14 to 27 (out of 650). The government of David Cameron appointed the first Asian woman to a cabinet position, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, who was named minister without portfolio and co-chairman of the Conservative Party. She is also the only member of Britain's ethnic-minority communities in the coalition cabinet.

Now two black women are vying for positions that minorities have never held. Dianne Abbott, who became the first black woman elected to Parliament in 1987, is on the ballot for the next Labour Party leadership contest. The winner will be declared in September at the party's annual conference, the first since they were ousted from power by the Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition that Cameron pieced together. If she can win the leadership, only then can she steer the Labour Party back to 10 Downing Street, Britain's seat of power -- and potentially serve as the country's prime minister.

A New Day for Black Britain?

Meanwhile, Oona King, a biracial politician whose father is African American, announced that she is running for mayor of London in 2012.

The success of minority candidates is a sign that "Black Britain is arriving," says Simon Woolley, co-founder and national director of Operation Black Vote (OBV), which encourages blacks and other minorities to participate in the political process. However, he quickly adds that there is much work to be done in order to achieve racial and social justice. Black Britain can never relax.

Lee Jasper, a political commentator and activist in the U.K., says that while the gains are significant, Britain's minorities, who make up 8 percent of the population, are still vastly underrepresented in Parliament. "Although we now have 27 MPs, to be represented proportionately, we need 70," he says. "Hence, we are only achieving 25 percent of the necessary representation needed in the House of Parliament."

Meanwhile, he adds, the Liberal Democrats, half of the coalition government, remain the only major political party without an MP from Britain's minority communities. And while those communities have advanced at the national level, they have actually lost ground in local elections, according to Jasper. More engagement is needed at the grass-roots level, he says; minorities represent less than 2 percent of those on the local councils. "It has taken 10 years to achieve this level of representation, and at this rate of progress, it will take another 50 years to get up to full proportional strength," Jasper explains.

It remains to be seen how an increase in the number of minority MPs will translate into action on issues at the core of their communities -- especially racial inequality in housing, health and education, with continuous restriction in employment and social mobility. Employment of minorities in the private sector is still very low -- 80 percent work in the public sector.

Still, Woolley says, the mere presence of minority MPs "is a quantum leap and makes an impact in itself because our parliamentary class now have to readjust themselves to seeing their fellow politicians that don't look like them." But, he adds, their presence isn't enough. "We need our black politicians to talk about black concerns. My worry, particularly on the Conservatives benches, is that the new crop of black and Asian MPs will not talk strongly and boldly about the inequalities our communities face."

The Perils of Political Gains During a Crisis

As Jasper sees it, it's no coincidence that minorities are taking leadership positions during a time of deep economic trouble. "It's the nature of the black experience that when inclusivity comes our way, it's usually at a time of national crisis." He cites the example of President Barack Obama and the huge deficit he inherited. In the U.K., Jasper points out, there are more minority MPs in Parliament at a time of unprecedented public-sector cuts. "But one thing is for sure: Unless there is a cross-party, nonpartisan approach on the issues of race equality and tackling deprivation," Jasper says, "we may be in a sad situation of having more MPs, but at a time of increased levels of poverty, unemployment and deprivation in black communities."

In the past few weeks, the coalition government has enacted the biggest budget cuts since World War II, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies, an economic think tank. Harriet Harman, current Labour Party MP, describes the budget cuts as "reckless." The budgetary cuts, of course, translate into dramatic cuts in public spending and services, cuts that will have a disproportionate impact on the black community.

According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), a nonpartisan political think tank, an estimated 750,000 jobs will likely be lost in the public sector. The U.K.'s minority communities are already suffering from acute levels of high unemployment, with an estimated 60 percent poverty level among Britain's Asians, 49 percent for black Britons and 20 percent for white Britons.

"A 20 percent cut by the government translates into an 80 percent cut for black communities on the ground because a majority of those in employment are employed by the public sector," says Jasper. With Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne aiming to reduce the nation's £156 billion deficit by 2016, it is reported that the cuts will push the U.K.'s current unemployment figures of 2.5 million to the 3 million mark. This begs the question: Where does black Britain go from here?

What is certain, according to Woolley, is that Britain is entering a brave new political world, from its draconian downsizing to its unprecedented coalition government -- not to mention the two black female politicians striving to make political history. The level of political ambition in the black community has been ratcheted up several notches.

A Black Woman Makes Herself Heard

So far Abbott, who is still campaigning, has come out strongly against plans by the new coalition government on immigration. She has described the announcement of a new targeted immigration cap of 24,100 non-European Union workers between now and April 2011 as a "bogus policy designed to placate people who don't like immigrants."

She also has harsh words for David Cameron's newly proposed "Big Society," in which charities would pick up the slack for government programs. Cameron's plans for a "dramatic redistribution of power" are, Abbott said shortly after Cameron's announcement, "nothing but a gimmick. The Lib-Cons are attempting to come across as cuddly and friendly just weeks after making some of the most savage cuts we've seen in years."

The daughter of Jamaican immigrants, Abbott is the first person from Britain's minority community to compete for a leadership position within a major political party. "I followed the Obama campaign, and it seemed strange that when the U.S. has a black president, we didn't even have a black candidate for our leadership," she says. "I looked at the front-runners -- all male, all white, all former policy wonks -- and it just seemed wrong."

Abbott, who has been an MP for 23 years and who voted against the Iraq War when Tony Blair was prime minister, is one of five contenders, and the only woman in the race. She has described herself as the alternative candidate. "I put myself forward for the job because I believed we needed to offer the party someone different, someone who wasn't part of the ruling elite of the last 13 years. We need a new beginning. I'm that new beginning," she told The Root.

She has a hard road ahead of her, however. Since 1997 the Labour Party has lost more than 5 million voters. Her decision to run was met with a certain amount of criticism. Some accused her of egotism, while others described her inclusion in the final ballot as tokenistic. Others still accuse her of hypocrisy: She's a Labour Party member who sent her son to private school.

Still, Abbott reached the threshold of 33 votes to make the ballot within the final few hours of the deadline. Even her election rival, Milliband, voted for her after a 'huge surge' of e-mails by party members demanding a wider choice of candidates. "The odds have been stacked against me in this election," Abbott says. "I'm not a former adviser or minister, and I have not met rich 'New Labour' donors at wine-and-cheese evenings, but I have always spoken my mind."

Of Abbott's historic candidacy, Woolley says, "[She's a] woman who knows about struggles and taking the fight on; whether or not she wins, she is already a winner because she will have blazed the trail for many black men and women to follow in her footsteps." Her candidacy, Woolley adds, is akin to Jesse Jackson's historic 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns. "[He] actually laid the foundation for Obama to arise years later," Woolley says.

Then there's King, who in 1997 became the second black woman to win a seat in Parliament. If she goes on to win the Labour nomination and unseat the current Conservative mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in 2012, she will be the most senior elected female black politician in the country.

Abbott and King are from opposite wings of the Labour party, with different political perspectives. King, for example, voted for the 2003 Iraq invasion. Abbott recently backed outspokenly left-wing Ken Livingstone as the Labour Party's London mayoral candidate. Jasper says the presence of two black female politicians with distinctly different political philosophies demonstrates "the sheer diversity of political opinions within black communities. We are not a homogeneous political group."

Belinda Otas is a freelance journalist based in London. Follow her on Twitter.

Like The Root on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

[Abbott's Habit is a monthly GameSetWatch column by writer and Brainy Gamer blog author Michael Abbott. This month, he looks at DeathSpank and the evolving role of comedy in games.]

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl. --Charlie Chaplin

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different. --Kurt Vonnegut

Hothead and Ron Gilbert's DeathSpank has me thinking about humor in games and the challenge of creating an integrated design for comedy. As I've noted previously on my blog, fully-realized comedy is a system. It can't be delivered on a separate channel or stirred into a recipe to add spice. Comedy is a self-contained unified aesthetic. A game that wants to be a comedy must be a game directed through a comic vision that defines the whole project.

As a comedic game, DeathSpank advances the ball down the field in some creative ways, and I'll discuss those in a moment. But I also think DeathSpank exemplifies the conundrum faced by video games that try to be funny. We can illustrate that tension with two apparently contradictory claims:

Claim 1: Video games are well-suited to making us laugh. Like a well-crafted game, a successful comedy is highly technical, based on a set of clearly-defined rules, and carefully engineered to trigger a calculated response. It relies on the precise execution of a final build, fine-tuned through iteration and feedback.

Comedy, as Henri Bergson observes in his seminal "Theory of Laughter," is "something mechanical encrusted on the living." One could easily apply the same phrase to describe games. Game developers understand how to build complex systems for interactive communication, and that's exactly what a successful comedy is. Comedy is aimed at the intellect, and gamers are smart. We can do this!

Claim 2: Video games are hopeless vehicles for comedy. They may manage to deliver wordplay and 'wackiness,' but desperately trying to 'be funny' usually results in an outmoded brand of one-liner comedy that died with the Borscht Belt. Furthermore, player agency in an interactive world (a defining feature of modern games) is mostly antithetical to comedy.

When choice, pace, and timing are handed off to the player, the potential for comedy dissipates. We may play an interactive role watching a live stand-up comic, but we don't write the punchlines; nor do we decide when to deliver them. In the same Bergson essay referenced above, he describes comedy as a "social gesture." Nearly all the 'funny' games we've seen are single-player affairs, lacking the spontaneous group-mind formed when we experience comedy in other media. We're out of our league!

DeathSpank makes good on the promise of the first claim and goes some way toward refuting the inexorability of the second.

At first glance, DeathSpank appears to be Hothead Games' and Rob Gilbert's attempt to update the old LucasArts dial-a-joke adventure game formula, with lite-RPG and hack-and-slash mechanics stirred into the mix. First glances can be deceiving, however, and DeathSpank brings far more cleverness and ingenuity to the table than "Diablo meets Monkey Island" (despite Gilbert's fondness for describing his new game as exactly that).

DeathSpank extends its comedy through the player's experience, from its menu screens to its voice acting; from its art style to its quest-giving system; from its character animations to its wacky-answer puzzles. Nearly everything in DeathSpank is funny, and the comedy operates on two simultaneous levels. Characters such as Freen the Felt Salesman and Eubrick the Retired (formally known as Eubrick the Bitter, Eubrick the Undefeated, Eubrick the Bastard of Hillhaven, Sally the Stable Girl, and Eubrick the Bed Wetter) are funny creations regardless of how many games you've played.

But if you happen to be a video game veteran, DeathSpank operates as an inspired parody, sending up RPG and adventure game chestnuts left and right. Even the game's UI has a comedic personality, behaving with a mind all its own. One of my favorite DeathSpank moments accompanies a trivial event: the sudden appearance of a quest window.

A little orphan girl has been running DeathSpank ragged, insisting he fetch her one thing after another. Finally, she demands "I want a pony!" and the game offers me a range of possible responses. Hoping to deny her request, I choose one and listen to a snippet of dialogue...then BANG, a quest window appears with a clank, as if to say, "Sorry pal. Can't help ya. Get her the pony!"

DeathSpank's writing is consistently clever, with a wonderful spirit of self-mockery and a refreshing absence of mean-spiritedness. DeathSpank himself is a vainglorious idiot (voiced by Michael Dobson), a digital braggart soldier worthy of Plautus. The remaining gallery of oddballs is expertly voiced by actors who fuel the game's parody, affecting not-quite-right 'game character' dialects and generally elevating Gilbert's script. By the way, the two ex-World of Warcraft orcs in Lord Von Prong's vanity museum make a visit there an absolute necessity...that, and the quest item you'll need to finish the game.

DeathSpank revels in silliness. The demon witch's name is "Ms. Heybenstance." She lives in the ramshackle house with candy cane pillars. Tina the Taco Vender, earning money for college, runs the Pluckmuckel Taqueria located across from Bong the Potioneer, who makes really good brownies. Each time DeathSpank teleports to another area (via an outhouse), just before handing control to the player, DeathSpank defiantly hitches up his codpiece. That is, I assumed it was a codpiece. The game clears up that mystery near the end.

The Diablo-style combat has you battling legions of menacing goofball enemies, including little gingerbread men that attack you in hordes, dead-certain they can deal damage. These wee men die, pathetically, with a single swat. You collect chicken lips. You hurl poop at your enemies. On the outskirts of town, a wise cow awaits you with philosophical ruminations.

Visually and sonically, DeathSpank has far more up its sleeves than you may expect. Its score blends Morricone-esque guitar strums and whistles with a pastiche of mod-60s Our Man Flint action music, ala Jerry Goldsmith.

Its art design is a colorful blend of 2D objects in 3D environments, bearing an unmistakable Hanna-Barbera vibe (fused with Animal Crossing's rolling orb), but with far more texture, movement, and whimsical detail. Do yourself a favor and visit the lake in the north-central part of world. The stylized water and fluid waves artfully integrate with DeathSpank's lush comic visuals. How can a lake be funny? I'm not sure, but this one definitely belongs where it is.

Game designers who want to create a unified comedic world face a task that can't be answered with humorous dialogue or cutscenes: how do you make the gameplay funny? DeathSpank doesn't fully answer this question, but it takes a few promising stabs at it. For one thing, the frenetic pacing of a hack-and-slash game is more conducive to comedy than a point-and-click adventure. DeathSpank slows when it's time for conversation, encouraging the player to gradually prune each dialogue tree to get all the jokes. But in general the fast pace of play in DeathSpank enables the game to gather and sustain its comic momentum.

A fine line separates 'fun' from 'funny,' and DeathSpank attempts to deliver both in its active play elements. Killing unicorns (in itself an absurdity) is a stiff challenge in DeathSpank, and from a purely ludic perspective, the game makes it fun. DeathSpank delivers enough useful loot, incentivizes leveling up, and offers combat sufficiently addictive that it strikes the Diablo-fun chord its creators clearly wanted.

But...you're killing rabid unicorns in a whack-job wonderland of pastels and storybook visuals (and those pathetic gingerbread men I mentioned). Clearly, these add a demented comedic dimension to the challenging combat. So is DeathSpank's gameplay comedic? I say yes, most of the time; though I realize nothing is more subjective than humor.

After a couple of hours of continuous play, DeathSpank's steady stream of jokes can begin to feel numbing, which may put DeathSpank's writing, best enjoyed in limited spurts, at odds with its gameplay, designed to lure the player into long sessions of Diablo-style marauding. DeathSpank's UI is a bit cumbersome, requiring frequent menu visits; and I wish the game helped me better manage my inventory and make optimal equipment choices. These are fairly inconsequential niggles.

Where DeathSpank falls down hardest as a game - but especially as a comedy - is in its simplistic dungeons, devoid of the comedic flair and imagination evident throughout the rest of the game. I can't help but see these areas as a series of missed opportunities for Hothead and Gilbert. What if DeathSpank had adopted a playful take on navigating the dungeons (unreliable maps maybe?) or implemented some comedic obstacles that challenged the player to progress or escape?

I can imagine more self-reflexive content might have been fun too - like creating a fake save file you're forced to load, and then finding yourself plunged into a hyper-cheery Farmville-like dungeon that requires you to befriend five hyper-cheery NPCs. Later, another quest makes you go back and slaughter them. I'm just brainstorming here. The consistently high level of cleverness displayed throughout the rest of the game suggest Hothead may simply have run out of time designing DeathSpank's dungeons.

As a comedy DeathSpank does a lot of things well. It's smart and funny, a well constructed parody of other games, game genres, and game culture. It's a gift to longtime fans of Gilbert's previous work and proof that he can still produce a game full of warmth, wit, and tons of laughs.

Some may see that accomplishment as grabbing the low-hanging fruit. Playing with genres and having fun with familiar game tropes - it's the easiest comedy for games to do, right? I'm not so sure.

How telling is it that Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer, who arrived on the scene together over 20 years ago, remain the only two designers most gamers can think of when it comes to comedic games? It's a worn-out cliche, but it remains true: comedy is hard - hard work; hard to produce; and hard to perform. A million things can go wrong and sink the ship. If you want to see what that looks like, play The Return of Matt Hazard.

I've spent my career writing and directing plays for the theater, and I can tell you unequivocally that building a production from scratch designed to make an audience laugh for two hours is a herculean task. A game that can sustain itself comedically for a dozen hours? It boggles my mind.

The autonomy and deep interactivity inherent in recent games argues against the notion of a master jester at the authorial helm, penning quips and stringing together gags. If the player assumes an authorial role in a narrative game, what sort of comedy can emerge? We've seen the sparks of satire emerge from Fallout 3's Museum of Technology and Bioshock 2's Journey to the Surface Ride, both of which deliver their humor situationally when the player chooses to explore a place. The Sims 3 provides a game-world engine for humor based on the player's interactions with the AI and the unpredictable outcomes that can emerge. WarioWare D.I.Y. encourages players to create their own comedic minigames.

At GDC last March, several designers including Tim Schafer conducted a panel discussion of comedy in games. Telltale's Sean Vanaman cautioned against making games strictly to provoke laughs. "If you set out to make a comedy game you're just going to keep telling fart jokes, or keep going back to the same comedy well. If you say 'We're going to be funny,' it'll come off as insincere."

"Unless you're funny," quipped Schafer.

Indeed. Unifying all the elements of a design is a consummation devoutly to be wished, and DeathSpank achieves it to a greater degree than it's been credited for. But I'm not convinced seamless ludo-narrative hyper-convergence would have made this game any funnier or more fun. DeathSpank misses some opportunities, but sometimes tapping a mother lode of well-crafted jokes for the sake of laughter is reason enough to do it. Battling unicorns is icing on the cake.

Last year, the ABC appointed the left leaning, News Limited-fixated, John Howard effigy-bashing (yes, really) editor of Crikey, Jonathan Green to its online operations.

Since then, Green has invested a significant number of tax dollars into publishing the left leaning, News Limited fixated, Howard/Abbott-bashing views from his Crikey friends. He apparently considers this to be balanced out by occasional columns by tokenistic conservatives from the Institute of Public Affairs and near unreadable quotation mark riddled efforts from former Liberal Leader John Hewson.

However, the real test of anyone’s political allegiance is what they write or publish during an election campaign. How then to measure this?

In the following analysis, I have looked at all of the articles published at the ABC’s The Drum and Unleashed sites during Week One of the election campaign and quantified positive and negative mentions of Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. Where there is an opinion expressed about Julia Gillard (or her campaign) that is positive or negative, I have noted it as G+ or G-. For Tony Abbott, I have given the value A+ or A-.

Some stories have a political leaning, but there is not a declarative statement made about one candidate or the other, so it is recorded as having Nil positive or negative statements about either candidate.

The following are these articles, with the value laden items picked out and given a value:

http://blogs.abc.net.au/drumroll/2010/07/too-many-wrongs-might-finish-the-right.html Luke Walladge:

Changing leaders has done no damage to Labor's chances at all - because Tony Abbott is unelectable and his party is a rabble. A-

(I suppose it could be argued that Abbott's inability to even lie convincingly is a positive - but as selling points go its not much of a winner). A-

Serious politicians would put a price on carbon, would rule out playing silly buggers with people's wages and conditions, would stop talking nonsense about debts and deficit in the country with the lowest debt level in the OECD. But Tony Abbott was never that serious. A-

…rather than focus on the Government chaos of the last 6 months Tony Abbott's been content to let the media spotlight burn a searing hole into his credibility. A-

Tony Abbott seems intent on validating all the worst fears of the electorate - refusing to rule out industrial relations changes, making unsustainable promises on maternity leave and climate change, saying silly things about the economy. A-

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/22/2960686.htm?site=thedrum Barrie Cassidy:

So often in the past, the opposition leader has been judged the winner of week one; partly because of reduced expectations; partly because the media loves a contest; and sometimes because they have actually performed well. Abbott clearly hasn't. Tony Abbott is behind… A-

 

The Building an Education Revolution report is coming out at some stage in August before the election and that cannot be free of criticism. That is all Gillard's. G-

http://blogs.abc.net.au/drumroll/2010/07/hey-hey-its-agony.html Dominic Knight

But for Tony Abbott, sitting alongside him and no doubt even more uncomfortable on the show than he usually feels around gay men, it was much tougher. A-

Most unpleasantly of all, when Abbott walked onto the set, he was booed. Which I'm sure is horrible under most circumstances, but must be especially galling coming from people with as low standards as a Hey Hey audience. A-

 

The irony is that Tony Abbott is one of the most natural, comfortable politicians we've got under most circumstances. A+

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2960554.htm Nikki Savva:

Gillard's campaign signature dish so far is best described as a big bowl of rehydrated mashed potato with tomato sauce on top. Bland, boring and unhealthy. And if that doesn't sound tempting, there is always the muddle of Abbott's alphabet soup. G-. A-.

And weeks of restraint and careful management of Abbott evaporated in the space of a few critical hours to reveal a shambolic picture of a man and a campaign caught hopelessly unprepared. A-

No matter how many stakes he tries to drive into the heart of that policy, its demonic force will never be extinguished so long as the messages from Abbott and the party remain contradictory and unconvincing. A-

Although there is only one debate thanks to the timid approach being adopted by Gillard on this and most other issues. G-

With nauseating frequency Gillard says she wants us to move forward together. Everywhere except on population, that is, where she said the other day she wants us to take a breath and "step back". G-

When Gillard says she is opposed to a big Australia, she might be speaking truthfully, but I remain to be convinced that she is pushing anything other than a slogan with a dog whistle dangling from it urged on by the pollsters and the pygmies of the right who have done such a brilliant job getting New South Wales to where it is today. G- (criticised from Left.)

Then again, thinking small has been a hallmark of her campaign so far, so let's assume she does mean it. G- (criticised from Left).

http://blogs.abc.net.au/drumroll/2010/07/a-little-bit-of-howard-07-in-tony-2010.html Dana Robertson

 ...[Abbott's] outward charm belies a chaotic organisation behind the scenes. A-

…from a distance it seems the Gillard campaign too has lacked excitement…G-

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2955762.htm Chris Graham:

Julia Gillard - a former Aboriginal affairs spokeswoman - is not a complete stranger to black politics. G+

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2957493.htm Malcolm Farnsworth:

Abbott's appearance in Brisbane was scratchier than Gillard's. A-

Abbott is a shameless political operator. A-

Abbott gave a stilted interview on the SBS news. A-

Gillard may have made the first linguistic blunder of the campaign. G-

Gillard's speech on population to the Eidos Institute was strikingly clear and replete with vivid imagery. She is good at painting word pictures. G+

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/19/2957224.htm?site=thedrum Annabel Crabb:

Ms Gillard is not a habitual maker of careless mistakes. G+

Julia Gillard, however, is a better communicator. G+

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/19/2957568.htm?site=thedrum Marieke Hardy.

Tony Abbott will eventually be forced to open his mouth and say something…This is like Where's Wally, but with a far greater chance of ensuing foot-in-mouth. A-

Much will be made of Julia Gillard's sartorial choices. And very little, interestingly, about Tony Abbott's. Unless he's been stupid enough to go strolling about the streets wearing nothing but his swimmers and a vaguely predatory leer again. Please note: this is a likely occurrence. A-

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/23/2961948.htm Annabel Crabb:

Julia Gillard, for her part, is doing an excellent job of cauterising the botched bits she inherited. G+

Keeping a straight face in front of a freak show is an admirable skill, and in some circumstances it might be considered good practice for future cabinet meetings, but otherwise it's difficult to see what Mr Abbott's presence contributed to the democratic process. A-

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/20/2958550.htm Annabel Crabb:

Poor Mr Abbott. What do you do when one of your deeply-held views is inconsistent with the majority will of the people? A-

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/20/2958451.htm Madonna King:

And the latest polling shows Queenslanders are not forgiving Julia Gillard yet for her leadership axing of the hometown boy…G-

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/22/2961534.htm Sabra Lane

I think Ms Gillard genuinely has a funny bone, and tries to see the lighter side of situations to charm people and diffuse situations that could potentially get out of hand. G+

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2962828.htm Norman Abjorensen:

When did Australians start cheering for the overdog, the boss and the bully? A-

Julia Gillard, for all her novelty, seems adrift in an unfamiliar sea, mouthing vacuous platitudes such as "moving forward." G- (Criticised from left.)

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2962293.htm Glenn Milne:

Every time he does it he reminds Queensland voters that Gillard not only took him out, but along with him Queensland's long awaited claim to political pre-eminence. G-

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2961200.htm Bob Ellis:

...Gillard's complicity in these failures. She bought and supported his policy cowardice, and is now in the habit, like him, of putting things off for yonks until years and far decades I, for one, won't see. G- (Criticised from Left.)

Scalded by the pink batts, the school-halls blow-out, the laptop delays, the multiplying boat-people and East Timor's audible anger at being treated like houseboys, she prefers to do nothing at all and hope to smile and patronise her way to August 21 and then crawl under the lino and pray a miracle happens in Queensland. G- (Criticised from Left.)

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2958206.htm Bob Ellis:

Gillard seems royally calm and Abbott boyishly, sweatily edgy. G+, A-

Abbott seems all over the shop. A-

She might ask Abbott if he stands by this. She might ask him how the Derwent Hospital is doing, and whether his treatment of Bernie Banton hastened his death only six days later. A-

She might emphasise the rogue-crocodile side of Abbott that has lately been concealed… A-

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2960955.htm  Jeff Sparrow:

Gillard seizing every opportunity to denounce Ruddite slogans like 'Big Australia' despite playing a key role herself in formulating them. (Criticised from Left.) G-

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2962199.htm Ben Pobjie: Nil.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2959105.htm Dominic Knight: Nil

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/22/2961379.htm Annabel Crabb: Nil

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/20/2959150.htm Marius Benson: Nil

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/17/2956534.htm?site=thedrum Lyndal Curtis: Nil.

http://blogs.abc.net.au/drumroll/2010/07/hewson-quick-thoughts-as-campaign-begins.html#more John Hewson: Nil

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/16/2955950.htm?site=thedrum Lisa Millar: Nil.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/22/2960732.htm?site=thedrum  Jonathan Holmes: Nil.

http://blogs.abc.net.au/drumroll/2010/07/day-5-in-the-arena.html Malcolm Farnsworth: Nil

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/21/2960252.htm?site=thedrum Nick Ross: Nil

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2960238.htm Ben Eltham: Nil.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2957700.htm Ben Pobjie. (Pobjie is a leftie, but I have given his assertions a nil-value, because sometimes a joke is just a joke.)

Summary

For the week starting Saturday 19 July and ending Friday 24 July at the ABC’s online website, The Drum and Unleashed, Prime Minister Gillard had and 14 negative mentions and 7 positive mentions. Nearly half of all critical mentions of Gillard came from the Left, so did not reflect conservative opinion.

Over the same period, Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott had 24 negative mentions and one positive mention. None of his criticism came from the Right. Included in his criticism was a suggestion by Bob Ellis that he caused the premature death of Bernie Banton.

The only positive comment for Tony Abbott during the first week of the election in The Drum or Unleashed came from the Chaser’s Dominic Knight: “The irony is that Tony Abbott is one of the most natural, comfortable politicians we've got under most circumstances...” which then went on to criticise him for his appearance on Hey Hey It’s Saturday.

Thus in the first week of the election campaign, the ABC online opinion websites are running two negative comments for every positive comment about Julia Gillard, and 24 to one against Tony Abbott.

...

Stop for a minute and ask yourself: what is this election all about, actually?

There's been a lot of photo opportunities already. Babies have been kissed, speeches have been given and shopping centers have provided backdrops for speedo stunts and media opportunities.

Obviously, this election is partly about who gets to run the country, and there is certainly nothing wrong with an election platform that pledges simply to be the most competent government.

But what about the policies? So far we've heard precious little about them - particularly from the media, which has tended to concentrate on the stunts, the slogans and the spin. This is unfortunate, because the major parties are in fact putting forward significant policy platforms.

The Liberal Party, for instance, has a 12-point "action contract" of "realistic, modest and prudent election commitments that are achievable and deliverable over the next three years."

I'm not sure how you can have a contract with an entire electorate, many of whom would be quite hesitant to sign up to any such document. But contract is a stronger word than "pledge" or "commitment", and has some nice allusions to the US Republican Party's successful 1994 "Contract with America".

The Coalition's Action Contract is clear enough, reinforced by Abbott's four-point plan television commercials. It canvasses policy commitments such as returning the budget to surplus, abolishing the new mining tax, ending wasteful government spending initiatives like the schools stimulus and home insulation programs, "direct action" on climate change (while promising no price for carbon), protecting Liberal shibboleths like the private health insurance rebate, appearing as tough on seaborne asylum seekers as possible by promising "rigorous offshore processing of those arriving illegally by boat", as well as some smaller more local policies like promising more CCTV cameras in high-crime areas.

Taken together, however, they amount to broadly similar policies as the current government, save in a few key areas like health insurance and resource taxation. Despite the low-tax rhetoric, the record of the Howard years suggests that the Coalition would not in fact run a smaller government than Labor, but instead use bracket creep and other less visible aspects of taxation policy to deliver a budget with less centralised government spending and more non-means tested government payments to families. Tony Abbott's plan to increase company tax to pay for a generous parental leave scheme fits this mould.

Modest? Certainly. Prudent? That depends on your definition of prudence, which many people think should cover the risks of inaction in equal measure to the risks of imprudent action. The Coalition's committed campaign against "Labor's debt and deficit" may have kept it ahead in the opinion poll figures for which party voters trust to manage the economy. But it also means Tony Abbott has little in the way of a war-chest with which to fund promises.

Labor's policy platform is also more detailed than Julia Gillard's endless repetition of phrases like "moving forward" would have you believe. Although no formal election policy document has yet been released, Labor's website has a long list of the government's achievements, starting with health and hospital reform and running through Wayne Swan's mining tax and superannuation policies, the stimulus program, MySchool, the National Broadband Network, the government's legislated Paid Parental Leave Scheme, Labor's innovation policies, and a link to the 2010 budget. Climate change is conspicuously absent.

One of the things that immediately becomes apparent when perusing Labor's policies is that they are largely the policies of Kevin Rudd's government. That's not surprising, given how quickly Julia Gillard rushed to the polls. But when you see health reform, the tax reform plan and the nation building stimulus program as the three top points on Labor's Agenda, the policy continuity with Kevin Rudd's administration is obvious. The only identifiable policy from Gillard is the $200 million "Building Better Regional Cities" plan announced this week.

What does "moving forward" really mean, anyway? It's hard to define the true content of a phrase so carefully designed to be content-less. It might just have something to do with education, which has been a consistent theme of Gillard's speeches since becoming Prime Minister. Or it could be a very oblique reference to Labor's belief in representing the progressive forces in society. But you don't have to be deep green environmentalist to see the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in the concept of progress. Progress for whom? For individuals? For society? For the environment? There are knotty conceptual problems here which will scarcely trouble the ALP strategists, but which may come back to haunt Julia Gillard in her next term - should she get there.

Comparing the two sets of policies at the start of the campaign, one is struck by the similarities of the two major parties', not the differences. As Lenore Taylor pointed out today, both major parties are committed to relatively stringent fiscal policies in order to return the budget to surplus by 2013. Both major parties are committed to absurdly punitive anti-asylum seeker policies. Neither major party will promise a price on carbon.

One useful exercise in comparing the party policy platforms is to ask yourself what the real problems facing Australia in 2010 really are, and whether either party addresses them. If you think unauthorised arrivals by seaborne asylum seekers are the most pressing problem, then you can be satisfied that the major parties are taking your concerns seriously. The same can be said for those worried about Australia's government debt and budget deficit: both parties have realistic plans to return to surplus and eventually pay down that debt.

I don't happen to share those concerns, and I wonder how many other Australians really do either. The latest Essential Research poll asks respondents what they thought were the most important issues; treatment of asylum seekers polled down the bottom of the list. Only 7 per cent of those polled thought the issue was the most or second-most important issue. In contrast, "management of the economy" was a clear winner, with 38 per cent rating it the single most important issue. "Ensuring the quality of Australia's health system" came second. "Addressing climate change", which I think is the biggest long-term issue facing the nation as a whole, ranked well down the list.

And here is where the polls can be a political curse, as well as a blessing. What does "managing the economy" mean, anyway? Low unemployment and a cheap cost of living? Economic growth? Or a more personal definition, along the lines of "a steady job at a decent wage for myself and my family members"? Polls can be difficult to interpret, even for those who know the difference between a statistical blip and an election-winning bounce.

It's also worth thinking about what issues are not on that list, or on any of the major party platforms. Petrol prices, for example, are likely to re-emerge as a key issue in the electorate in the next term of government, as a global economic recovery pushes the price of oil back over $100 a barrel.

Internationally, many experts and analysts are warning of the medium-term risk of another oil crunch, as expanding demand in Asia and India rapidly outstrips a global oil supply that may now have peaked. In the UK, industry there is taking the issue very seriously indeed, as a recent report backed by multinational giant Arup and the Virgin Group demonstrates. In Australia, we remain blissfully ignorant of the likely consequences, despite the serious pain awaiting airlines, resource companies and ordinary commuters should petrol shoot over $2 a litre. In the longer term, the CSIRO has forecast that petrol will reach $8 a litre by 2018.

Neither major party has a viable policy for preparing Australia for peak oil, or even for much more expensive fossil fuels. A price on carbon would go some way to addressing the situation, but massive government investment in renewable energy and transport infrastructure will also be required. But, in the wake of the Coalition's successful campaign against the CPRS and Labor's insulation programs, it may be a long time before a Liberal or Labor government will be prepared to promise another ambitious infrastructure program for renewable energy.

2018 is three elections away. For the tacticians in Abbott and Gillard's offices, we might as well be talking about the next century. The media is scarcely less culpable: this campaign has so far produced little in the way of in-depth media analysis, or even careful description of the various policies being put forward. In modern politics, the next 24 hours is about as "long-term" at it ever gets.

Tomorrow is not just another day: it's another opinion poll.

Ben Eltham is a writer, journalist, researcher and creative producer.

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With a bit of luck and the right questioning, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott will be plated up and served for dinner on Sunday night in a slightly more appetising way than they have been in the past few days.

They will be small serves of entrée, main course and dessert in one sitting lasting just one hour but hopefully it will give Australians a better taste of what they might expect to get for the next three years than they have had in the campaign to date.

Although there is only one debate thanks to the timid approach being adopted by Gillard on this and most other issues, both leaders should do themselves and us a favor and forget the slogans, abandon the negativity, put the dog whistles back in their pouches, give us positive agendas, and - this could be asking for too much but it's worth a try - a bit of inspiration.

Gillard's campaign signature dish so far is best described as a big bowl of rehydrated mashed potato with tomato sauce on top. Bland, boring and unhealthy. And if that doesn't sound tempting, there is always the muddle of Abbott's alphabet soup.

If they had been contestants on Masterchef, they would have been evicted from the kitchen long ago for serving up the kind of pap we have seen and smelled the past couple of weeks.

Within days of being anointed by her colleagues Leader of the Labor Party and Prime Minister, the woman who promised so much has been transformed into little more than Kevin Rudd with a red wig.

And weeks of restraint and careful management of Abbott evaporated in the space of a few critical hours to reveal a shambolic picture of a man and a campaign caught hopelessly unprepared.

The polls tell us that Gillard is ahead, but really we are no further advanced than we were when Rudd was prime minister.

Any hint of reform or policy debate which might be challenging or contentious is squelched because the parties and their leaders are running scared. In the process they do a disservice to themselves and the voters.

Instead of staking out territory and fighting for it heart and soul and trusting Australians to make the right decision, today's breed of politicians operate in very limited spaces, and too often are doggedly reduced to defending the indefensible.

With nauseating frequency Gillard says she wants us to move forward together. Everywhere except on population, that is, where she said the other day she wants us to take a breath and "step back".

When Gillard says she is opposed to a big Australia, she might be speaking truthfully, but I remain to be convinced that she is pushing anything other than a slogan with a dog whistle dangling from it urged on by the pollsters and the pygmies of the right who have done such a brilliant job getting New South Wales to where it is today.

Then again, thinking small has been a hallmark of her campaign so far, so let's assume she does mean it.

If she does mean it and she wants to prove it is more than an appeal to baser instincts tied up with the arrival of asylum seekers, then she needs to do three things immediately: end the baby bonus completely; eliminate all benefits which help families with children and gut the immigration program.

Maybe four things. Legalise euthanasia.

The baby bonus, which Peter Costello announced in one of his last budgets, urging couples to have one for mum, one for dad and one for Australia, was designed to boost fertility rates, and has had some success.

Maternity leave, childcare rebates, family allowances all make it easier for couples to have and care for children. Obviously this is a good thing, but doesn't it help foster an environment to create more of us? How does that fit with a "sustainable" population?

Shouldn't we be providing less so we can have fewer?

Or is it a question of the makeup of the population. More of us and fewer of them. You know which ones I mean, the ones with the veils and the prayer mats.

The population size which Ms Gillard appears to find unacceptable is the 36 million which Treasury's Intergenerational Report projects will be reached by 2050. Kevin Rudd's support for this got him into trouble, and is clearly one of the things the pollsters and the New South Wales right machine men worried about losing western Sydney seats want her to move forward from.

But that Treasury figure was a projection, not a target. It was based on current birth/death rates, and assumes an average net migration intake of 180,000 a year, about half the present immigration intake.

Even if every boat was stopped forever from tomorrow, we would still get to say, 35.9 million.

We are not "hurtling" to a big Australia, as she claims, it is simply happening, and will continue to happen without massive intervention by her to stop it.

She has so far avoided any critical examination of how she proposes to prevent it, but if the media does its job she should be forced to explain, and soon, how she proposes to limit growth.

As well as what any limits on population growth would mean for economic growth and jobs and the standard of living.

The problem is not one of overpopulation, but under-resourcing and poor planning from successions of state governments, most of them Labor, manipulated by the same people who have now sunk their claws into her, without the courage or foresight to put in place the infrastructure to cater for the expected number of people.

Abbott on the other hand, worried that the ghost of WorkChoices would come back to haunt him and perhaps help cost the Coalition another election, tried to declare it dead, buried and cremated.

No matter how many stakes he tries to drive into the heart of that policy, its demonic force will never be extinguished so long as the messages from Abbott and the party remain contradictory and unconvincing.

So there we have it. Two Leaders deliberately shrinking away from decent policy reform or difficult issues.

The real losers are the voters. They become the ultimate victims of the scare campaigns run by the parties, and the leaders' shirking of their responsibilities.

Great. Thinking small, talking small, acting small, being small.

Niki Savva was one of the most senior correspondents in the Canberra Press Gallery. Her book, So Greek, confessions of a conservative leftie, has just been published by Scribe.

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In a collaborative effort, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is joining the global health care company Abbott and Feeding America, the nation's largest domestic hunger-relief charity, to help with preparation for the 2010 hurricane season. This year, FEMA's staff has volunteered to help with pre-positioning of disaster relief packs at the Puerto Rico Food Bank. Since Puerto Rico is located in the Atlantic hurricane corridor, the Abbott-Feeding America initiative strategically stocks disaster relief packs in food banks located in high-risk areas. This will expedite emergency relief distribution to people affected by hurricanes, in particular, low-income families. "We are pleased to volunteer and support Abbott and Feeding America's initiatives to be ready and set those vital resources at the Puerto Rico Food Bank. FEMA continues committed to building partnerships and helping them fine-tune their emergency readiness capabilities to successfully address potential challenges after disaster strikes," said Alejandro De La Campa, FEMA's Region II Caribbean Area Division Director. "We are very grateful for Abbott’s donation and for the volunteer commitment by FEMA's staff. This partnership will allow us to continue serving those who need our help every day and to expand that support to include those newly in need following a hurricane," said Angela Menchaca, Executive Director for Banco de Alimentos de Puerto Rico. "This collaboration for disaster preparedness is a tangible example of the team approach required by corporate, government, and NGO partners for an effective and coordinated disaster response." "Abbott is pleased to work together with FEMA and Feeding America to help communities in Puerto Rico to prepare for hurricane season," said Katherine Pickus, divisional vice president, Global Citizenship and Policy, Abbott. "This initiative is designed to get the right nutritional products in the right places – before a disaster strikes – to empower local food banks to provide a 'first wave' of immediate relief following a hurricane." Abbott is donating nutritional products to supply a total of 400 disaster relief packs in Puerto Rico. The relief packs can help meet immediate nutritional needs for three days for approximately 1,200 people. They are designed for various family sizes and age ranges, and contain unique nutritional products to meet children's needs. Abbottss donation supplements other local, state and federal government operations to assist disaster survivors in the aftermath of a major storm, floods, earthquake or other emergency in the island. About Abbott Abbott is a global, broad-based health care company devoted to the discovery, development, manufacture and marketing of pharmaceuticals and medical products, including nutritionals, devices and diagnostics. The company employs approximately 83,000 people and markets its products in more than 130 countries. Abbott's news releases and other information are available on the company's Web site at www.abbott.com. About Feeding America Feeding America provides low-income individuals and families with the fuel to survive and even thrive. As the nation's leading domestic hunger-relief charity, our network members supply food to more than 37 million Americans each year, including 14 million children and 3 million seniors. Serving the entire United States, more than 200 member food banks support 61,000 agencies that address hunger in all of its forms. For more information on how you can fight hunger in your community and across the country, visit http://www.feedingamerica.org. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/FeedingAmerica or follow our news on Twitter at twitter.com/FeedingAmerica. Emergency readiness not only involves the government and the private sector, but individuals and families, as well. FEMA encourages citizens to visit www.ready.gov for information on preparing a family disaster kit, and get ready now. FEMA's mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.

Kevin Rudd lost his populist touch and started to speak as a technocrat, but Gillard is a robust performer

"Kevin07, Gone by 11", was the taunt in Canberra when I was there last month – and so it proved. Kevin Rudd, who returned Labor to power in Australia after 12 years in opposition, and who achieved some of this highest approval ratings in Australian history, was unceremoniously dumped by his party today. What does this mean for the direction of the Australian government?

In broad political terms, probably not much. Though Julia Gillard is, in Labor factional terms, from the left, she was put there by the right. They made the same calculation as James Purnell did over Gordon Brown last year – that the party would go down to electoral defeat with its current leader. However, as Martin Kettle notes, the Australian Labor party has none of the sentimentality that dogs British Labour and it acted.

What went so badly wrong? Rudd was at his best when making big political stands – signing Kyoto and making the apology to the indigenous people of Australia, and in particular the Stolen Generations. He was at his worst when he lost his populist touch and started to speak as a technocrat.

Ultimately, though, he lost his way over climate change. He called it the "greatest moral challenge of our time", but when facing parliamentary defeat deferred his legislation. His thoughtfulness became his undoing. A more populist leader would never have embarked on an emissions trading scheme in advance of other countries, a more Machiavellian one would have manoeuvred his legislation to defeat in the Senate at the joint hands of the Greens and the Liberals. Kevin Rudd chose to delay. That caused a catastrophic rupture with voters. Young urban voters split to the Greens and middle Australians to the Liberals. This left Labor facing a wipeout.

Can Gillard turn it round? Almost certainly. She has grown in stature as deputy prime minister and was responsible for education – a central pillar of the domestic reform agenda – and the difficult industrial relations portfolio. She is a robust parliamentary performer, more than able to hold her own in what is a far more rowdy chamber than the House of Commons. In opposition, she was named by the Speaker and excluded for 24 hours for calling Tony Abbott "a snivelling grub". (I was in the opposition box that day: it was a towering performance.)

And she is a very effective communicator who more than has the measure of the Liberal leader, Tony Abbott – with whom she has often sparred in good-nature when appearing on television together. Abbott's populism rattled Rudd who couldn't find a voice to deal effectively with it. But Abbott's appeal to the Liberal base is more than balanced by his difficulty with women voters. He is a devout Catholic who is on the record as saying that women should not give away their virginity lightly. Gillard led the attack.

Women are probably the key swing group in the forthcoming election. If she can draw a line under Rudd's errors, get a grip and establish competence quickly, Julia Gillard is likely to get Labor back on track for re-election. After all, there's been no one-term Australian government since the 1930s.

If Diane Abbott's place on the Labour leadership ballot is purely down to her gender and race, progress is only an illusion

At the New Statesman Labour leaders' debate last night, Diane Abbott announced: "My parents [as immigrants] would have been so proud to see me on this platform with so many distinguished men." There you have it. Her debut as a Labour leader candidate tied inextricably to her race and gender. Instead of distancing herself from cries of alleged tokenism, she seems to have embraced them.

As a black female, I feel it is disingenuous of me not to celebrate Abbott's nomination. But as someone who has worked in white middle-class, male-dominated industries for most of my adult life, I am acutely aware of the tendency to make token, disembodied gestures of promotion of minorities only for the good will and good PR this engenders. Cath Elliott said in her article yesterday that even if Abbott's nomination is tokenistic, she doesn't care as long as a black female is on the ballot. We should care if the nomination is purely symbolic. Not only is it a dead-end, it is dangerous, for such lip service masks the real problem and gives the illusion that progress is happening when only the minimum of compliance is being achieved.

Apart from her race and gender, what differentiates Abbott from the rest of the candidates? Is the ultimate purpose to conduct an empty exercise and promote those that are good for the party image, or source somebody who can truly lead and is electable by the nation? Even Harriet Harman, who nominated her, reportedly will not vote for her in the leadership race.

The subtext is that the party recognises it has some time out in the wilderness and therefore can afford to experiment and indulge itself. Her nomination did not swell up with momentum from the belly of the party. Labour Uncut reported that "what passes for a PLP establishment machine in these days of interregnum is making serious efforts to get Abbott onto the ballot paper" with Jack Straw weighing in at the 11th hour as the deadline approached. "Creaking, chaotic and late, what's left of the machine got it done in the end."

What is sad it that due to the way she has fought this campaign, Abbott let herself down. She is a great performer and by all accounts was the star of the Labour leadership hustings last night in Westminster. But in her eagerness to secure a position in the race she played to the gallery and overstated the gender and race aspects of her nomination and by doing so, undermined her own position.

She had a stab at taking the high ground, but lost it when she reneged on her promise to withdraw if she got fewer nominations than John McDonnell. Little on her views on Trident, the Iraq war, and the fact that she increased her majority in her constituency was voiced, lest we be distracted by this verbal strobe from the more relevant "facts" that the other candidates are all white, male, went to Oxbridge and "used to play football together". Positioning herself in these (forgive the pun) black-and-white terms unfairly dwarfs her stature and ultimately may alienate her from the majority of voters who I believe genuinely are only concerned about her political credentials.

There is always the risk with minority candidates that they will be disregarded as "cause" runners given a leg up because of their non-mainstream status. But Barack Obama is an example of someone who deliberately downplayed and thus, transcended his race.

Abbott's nomination may be a start, but it may also well be a false start.

Rules are designed to strangle the left, says leadership contender, who is struggling to gain enough votes to get on the ballot

Diane Abbott, the only female MP to put herself forward for the Labour leadership race, said today that the "ridiculous" threshold set by the party to formalise candidates' place in the race was designed to "strangle the left".

The MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington hit out at the system requiring each contender to secure 33 nominations from fellow MPs to stand in the leadership race.

With just six days to go before nominations close, the leftwing backbencher has secured just five of the nominations necessary, inluding her own. Backbench rebel John McDonnell, who is attempting to contest the leadership for a second time, has seven (including his own) and has echoed Abbott's concerns about the threshold, calling for it to be lowered.

In an article in today's Times, Abbott said the current system meant it was likely that Labour would be asked to select a leader from "the narrowest gene pool in history".

Abbott, who in 1987 became the first black woman to be elected to parliament, announced her decision to throw her hat in the ring two weeks ago to offer a fresh voice to the debate as a woman and daughter of Jamaican immigrants.

The only contenders to have passed the threshold so far are David Miliband, the shadow foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, the shadow climate change secretary, and Ed Balls, who shadows education. Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, has 20 nominations, including his own.

In a quip about the two brothers in the race, Abbott said that, while it was "undoubtedly heart-warming for Mrs Miliband that two thirds of the candidates are her lads ... there are things to make the rest of us pause."

She went on: "That they are all white may be inconsequential; it may be of only passing interest that all were political advisers under New Labour and that none has had a proper job; it is probably of only minor significance that they all used to play football together. Probably more salient is that you cannot put a cigarette paper between their beliefs. But most blindingly obvious is that there will not be a single woman on the ballot paper."

She claimed that Charles Clarke, the former MP who she said had been responsible for setting the threshold of when he worked for Neil Kinnock, had "boasted" to her that the system in place was to "block the left".

This was in danger of strangling party democracy, she said.

Abbott wrote: "Yesterday, Labour's acting leader, Harriet Harman, called for half the shadow cabinet to be women. A worthy aim. But, as the public watch increasingly desperate interviewers this summer trying to tease out any genuine differences between Messrs Miliband, Miliband and Balls, what impression will they get about Labour's commitment to equality and diversity?"

David Miliband earlier this week rejected calls to make it easier for MPs to be nominated. He said: "I think that if you don't get 33 then you're not on the ballot paper. Those of us who are candidates in elections shouldn't be trying to change the rules as we go along."

But he pledged to lend his own vote to any of the three leadership contenders struggling to get on the ballot if they could show his backing would make the difference.

Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, has yet to secure all the nominations needed.

Feeding America, the nation's largest domestic hunger-relief charity, and Abbott, the global health care company, today announced they will once again partner to pre-position disaster relief packs containing donated Abbott nutritional products at 23 food banks in preparation for the 2010 hurricane season. Local food banks often serve an important role in providing immediate relief in communities impacted by hurricanes. This initiative is designed to provide food banks in at-risk areas with disaster relief packs that can be distributed directly to affected families. The food banks are located throughout the Southeastern United States and in Puerto Rico, and were selected based on their vulnerability to hurricanes, population coverage, and their capacity to assist in disaster response. Volunteers from the participating food banks will turn more than 120 tons of Abbott-donated nutritional products into a total of 6,400 disaster relief packs, designed for various family sizes and age ranges. Together, the packages will be able to support approximately 20,000 people in the aftermath of a hurricane or other natural disaster. "Feeding America has been at the forefront of disaster response for decades, helping to coordinate nationwide relief through effective distribution of food and grocery products," said Vicki Escarra, President and CEO of Feeding America. "Our strategic partnership with Abbott will enable us to do even more in the vital area of pre-positioning supplies. When disaster strikes this year, our member food banks in affected areas will be able to offer free nutritional products that families can utilize while rebuilding their lives, thanks to Abbott." "It's critically important to help at-risk communities prepare for hurricane season," said Katherine Pickus, divisional vice president, Global Citizenship and Policy, Abbott. "Abbott's partnership with Feeding America is designed to get the right nutritional products in the right places – before a disaster strikes – to empower local food banks to provide a 'first wave' of immediate relief following a hurricane." If the donated supplies are not needed for disaster relief this season, the participating food banks will combine them with their regular inventory, providing extra assistance to people struggling with hunger on an ongoing basis. The Abbott disaster relief packs will be pre-staged at the following Feeding America member food banks: Texas

• Food Bank of Corpus Christi
• Victoria--Food Bank of the Golden Crescent
• McAllen-Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley, Inc.
• Houston Food Bank
• Beaumont-Southeast Texas Foodbank

Louisiana

• Alexandria-Food Bank of Central Louisiana
• Monroe-Food Bank of Northeast Louisiana
• Shreveport-Food Bank of Northwest Louisiana
• Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank
• Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans & Acadiana

Alabama/Mississippi/Florida

• Theordore, AL—Bay Area Food Bank

Florida

• Tampa Bay - Feeding America Tampa Bay
• Jacksonville – Second Harvest North Florida
• Sarasota-All Faiths Food Bank
• Tallahassee--America's Second Harvest of the Big Bend, Inc.
• Ft Myers--Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida
• Miami--Daily Bread Food Bank
• Orlando-Second Harvest of Central Florida

Georgia

• Savannah--America's Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia, Inc.
• Valdosta-America's Second Harvest of South Georgia, Inc.

South Carolina

• Charleston-Lowcountry Food Bank

North Carolina

• Elizabeth City-Food Bank of the Albemarle

Puerto Rico

• Bayamon- Banco de Alimentos de Puerto Rico

Feeding America is now in its twentieth year of providing disaster relief services, and was a significant player in response to recent hurricanes. During the past five years, the Feeding America network and our national corporate donors have provided more than 100 million pounds of emergency food and disaster relief supplies to individuals and families affected by disaster. About Feeding America Feeding America provides low-income individuals and families with the fuel to survive and even thrive. As the nation's leading domestic hunger-relief charity, our network members supply food to more than 37 million Americans each year, including 14 million children and 3 million seniors. Serving the entire United States, more than 200 member food banks support 61,000 agencies that address hunger in all of its forms. For more information on how you can fight hunger in your community and across the country, visit http://www.feedingamerica.org. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/FeedingAmerica or follow our news on Twitter at twitter.com/FeedingAmerica. About Abbott Abbott is a global, broad-based health care company devoted to the discovery, development, manufacture and marketing of pharmaceuticals and medical products, including nutritionals, devices and diagnostics. The company employs approximately 83,000 people and markets its products in more than 130 countries. Abbott's news releases and other information are available on the company's Web site at www.abbott.com.

A whistleblower filed a lawsuit today to force the federal government to halt operations at another massive BP oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, alleging that BP never reviewed critical engineering designs for the operation and is therefore risking another catastrophic accident that could "dwarf" the company's Deepwater Horizon spill.

The allegations about BP's Atlantis platform were first made last year, but they were laid out in fresh detail today in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Houston against Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Minerals and Management Service, the agency responsible for regulating offshore drilling in the Gulf.

The whistleblower is Kenneth Abbott, a former project control supervisor contracted by BP who also gave an interview to "60 Minutes" on Sunday night. In a conversation last week with ProPublica, Abbott alleged that BP failed to review thousands of final design documents for systems and equipment on the Atlantis platform -- meaning BP management never confirmed the systems were built as they were intended – and didn't properly file the documentation that functions as an instruction manual for rig workers to shut down operations in the case of a blowout or other emergency.

Abbott alleges that when he warned BP about the dangers presented by the missing documentation the company ignored his concerns and instead emphasized saving money.

"There were hundreds, if not thousands, of drawings that hadn't been approved and to send drawings (to the rig) that hadn't been approved could result in catastrophic operator errors," Abbott told ProPublica. "They turned their eye away from their responsibility to make sure the overall design works. Instead they are having bits and pieces fabricated and they are just hoping that these contractors who make all these separate pieces can pull it together and make it safe. The truth is these contractors see a piece of the puzzle; they don't see the whole thing."

BP did not respond to a request for comment from ProPublica, but has previously addressed Abbott's concerns in a January letter to Congressional investigators stating that the allegations are unfounded and that the Atlantis platform had final documentation in place before it began operating.

According to an email sent to Abbott by BP's ombudsman's office, an independent group employed by the company to address internal complaints, BP had not complied with its own rules governing how and where the documentation should be kept but had not necessarily violated any regulations for drilling. The email does not address the specifics raised in the lawsuit.

A spokesperson for the Department of Interior said the agency would not comment on pending litigation.

Congress and the Minerals and Management Service have been investigating Abbott's concerns since last year, when he and Food and Water Watch, a Washington D.C.-based environmental organization, first filed the complaints. But according to both Abbott and FWW, little has been done. After the Deepwater Horizon Gulf spill underscored their concerns, they decided to jointly file the lawsuit. Abbott was laid off shortly after he raised the concerns to BP management.

According to the lawsuit, by Nov. 28, 2008, when Abbott last had access to BP's files, only half of the 7,176 drawings detailing Atlantis' sub-sea equipment had been approved for design by an engineer and only 274 had been approved "as built," meaning they were checked and confirmed to meet quality and design standards and the documentation made available to the rig crew. Ninety percent of the design documents, the suit alleges, had never been approved at all.

The Atlantis rig is even larger than the Deepwater Horizon rig that sank in April. It began producing oil in 2007 and can produce 8.4 million gallons of oil a day.

The components include some of the critical infrastructure to protect against a spill. According the suit, none of the sub-sea risers – the pipelines and hoses that serve as a conduit for moving materials from the bottom of the ocean to the facility had been "issued for design." The suit also alleges that none of the wellhead documents were approved, and that none of the documents for the manifolds that combine multiple pipeline flows into a single line at the seafloor has been reviewed for final use.

Directions for how to use the piping and instrument systems that help shut down operations in the event of an emergency, as well as the computer software used to enact an emergency shutdown, have also not been approved, the lawsuit says. According to the lawsuit, 14 percent those documents had been approved for construction, and none received final approval to ensure they were built and functioning properly.

"BP's worst-case scenario indicates that an oil spill from the BP Atlantis Facility could be many times larger than the current oil spill from the BP Deepwater Horizon," the lawsuit states. "The catastrophic Horizon oil spill would be a mere drop in the bucket when compared to the potential size of a spill from the BP Atlantis facility."

It is not clear from the lawsuit or the limited statements made by BP or federal regulators if BP has corrected the documentation problem since Abbott was laid off.

Abbott told ProPublica he raised the documentation issues repeatedly in emails and conversations with management, "saying this was critical to operator safety and rig safety."

"They just ignored my requests for help," he said. "There seemed to be a big emphasis to push the contractors to get things done. And that was always at the forefront of the operation."

With so much playoff series preview content out there, trying to keep up can be overwhelming and disorienting.  Take off your coat and sit down.  I'm glad to help you work those feelings out.  

Here's our Blazersedge preview content so far...

Poll | Dave's Preview 1 | Dave's Preview 2 | Wingcast Preview | Friday Practice Report

Now that you've savored every word and every second of audio, let's expand our vision.  I've sludged through the entire internet's worth of Blazers/Suns preview content and pulled together the following humongous batch of excerpts and links. Click through to check it out.

Also, the last 72 hours have probably been the greatest 3 day stretch in FanShots history.  Read them.

-- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com | Twitter

The Blazers are hosting a viewing party at the Rose Garden.  Here are the details...

Sunday, April 18... Watch the game broadcast at the Rose Garden Arena...

• 5 pm | Live music, entertainment and games outside on the Commons
• 7 pm | Doors open; pre-game broadcast and chalk talk with Trail Blazers Alumni
• 7:30 pm | Watch the game broadcast on the biggest screen in town

Free admission and parking in the Garden Garage. Free player bobbleheads for first 500 fans through the doors.    

I'm biased but if you're looking for one series preview (besides Dave's) check out this one by Kevin Pelton.

Nate McMillan will surely also look to exploit Miller against Nash, both with post-ups and in the pick-and-roll. The crafty Miller remains effective at getting to the basket and finishing, and he was a big part of Portland's Feb. 10 win at the US Airways Center in a game Roy missed, scoring 20 points on 8-of-15 shooting. It will be interesting to see whether Gentry considers hiding Nash on Rudy Fernandez or Martell Webster, both of whom are bigger but function primarily as spot-up shooters for the Blazers.

If Roy sits, it will be important for Portland to get scoring from at least one other source besides Aldridge and Miller. In Monday's key win over Oklahoma City, that player was Camby, who scored a season-high 30 points on 12-of-16 shooting. It's safe to say the Blazers cannot count on getting that kind of offensive production from Camby on a regular basis. In Sunday's win against the Lakers, the third player was Webster, who came off the bench to score 16 points. The streaky Fernandez is another candidate, as is Batum, who posted a sparkling .657 True Shooting Percentage in a limited offensive role after returning from injury.

The offensive glass should also be another source of easy points for Portland. The addition of Camby reignited that aspect of the Blazers' offense, and the team finished the season fourth in the league in offensive rebound percentage. Phoenix, meanwhile, ranked 29th on the defensive glass and was even worse than that without Lopez.

TNT's Kevin Harlan did an interview with Matt Moore over at Hardwood Paroxysm.  Regarding the Blazers, Harlan says...  

Well, you know, they're used to playing without superstars. They lost Przybilla, and they lost Oden. Now they lose Roy, and he's their leader in points and second leader in assists. So they lose a lot with him. But they've got better play from point guard with Andre Miller, LaMarcus Aldridge has really developed, and Camby has been a Godsend for them. They had all this guard depth, and then they lost their bigs, so they used that depth to trade for Camby and that's how they've stayed above water. Camby has just been gigantic for them on and off the floor.

One thing people around the league will tell you is the veterans they've brought in, Camby, Juwan Howard, they've been so good at leadership, and tutoring, and professionalism. And with all that they've got a balanced coach in Nate McMillan who has weathered the storm. Camby gives them a chance, but without Roy? It'll be tough. We'll see.

John Hollinger includes LaMarcus Aldridge in his list of players that have the most to win or lose in this year's playoffs.

The injury to Brandon Roy, along with all their other maladies this season, means the Blazers are basically playing with house money. The one exception is Aldridge, who was completely outclassed by Houston's Luis Scola in the first round a year ago.

He'll need to make amends against a Suns squad that doesn't appear to have anyone who can reliably cover him. Aldridge took a slight step back statistically this season, but if he can deliver in the postseason it will renew faith that he can eventually ascend to All-Star status -- an expectation that's already priced in to his $55 million extension.

John Hollinger also makes his series prediction (Insider)...

The odds and head-to-head matchups say the Blazers have a chance; common sense says otherwise.

Forget the fact Phoenix is the hottest team in the West at the moment and that the Blazers are ill-suited to take advantage of the Suns' biggest weakness (a lack of quality size), because there's also the little matter of Portland's best player being unable to perform.

Brandon Roy wasn't as good this season as he was in 2008-09, but there's still a serious diminution in production when he's off the court. Portland was 8-9 in games he missed in the regular season and had a negative scoring margin in those 17 games. While the rest of the Blazers were good enough at times to hammer Orlando by 15 and even beat the Suns in Phoenix without him, they also were bad enough to lose to Washington and New Orleans.

We'll talk more about the Suns down below, but suffice it to say, I'll be surprised if they're tested in Round 1, buying them more time to get Robin Lopez back into playing shape.

Pick: Suns in five

Paul Coro on the new-look Suns...

"Alvin changed their mentality," Barkley said. "He got them playing defense and integrated the young guys. They're better because (Jared) Dudley and the Lopez kid are terrific defensively. Grant (Hill) has always been a solid defender. Let's be honest, the two guys who can't play defense are Steve (Nash) and Amar'e."

Barkley is still on Stoudemire's case, noting Phoenix has not made the conference finals since the season he was out. Barkley blistered him in the past because of his 7.8 career rebounding average. He averaged 8.9 this season.

"Kenny!" Barkley yells, seeking the attention of fellow TNT analyst Kenny Smith. "What do you call a power forward averaging eight rebounds a game? . . . (laughter) . . . That's right, a small forward."

Henry Abbott picked the Blazers...

But for Portland's meaningless Travis Diener-laced special last night, the two teams would have identical records (Suns 17-4, Blazers 16-5) since March 1. Meanwhile, guards who muscle into the paint can cause Steve Nash problems on defense, and Miller does that like crazy, especially in Roy's absence. Big men who rebound have also wreaked havoc for the Suns, and Camby has that potential. Not to mention, the Blazers are not the young team we know them as. They're Miller and Camby and veteran tricks galore, including and especially in how they relate to referees. 

Having watched every minute of those two teams going head-to-head all season, it's impossible for me to see that series as anything other than a toss-up, which is more or less how I called it.     

So did Henry Abbott's Mom, who was the only member (out of 8) of the annual True Hoop Stat Geek Smackdown to pick the Blazers.  The rest of the geeks write...

"Phoenix has been red-hot over the final 20+ games of the season (outscoring opponents by over 10 points per game)," Ilardi writes, who thinks the Blazers "may be lucky to eke out one win at home."

...

"Strictly by the numbers," Pelton writes, "this is the series most likely to produce an upset, in large part because the Blazers took the season series 2-1. Brandon Roy's injury throws that for a bit of a loop, however. While Portland beat the Suns in Phoenix without Roy, his absence will make things more difficult on offense for the Blazers, and they'll need to score to keep up with the Suns."

"Amare Stoudemire is finally playing like the dominant force he should be," Ma says. "The Blazers just don't have enough offense to run with this Suns team."

Dwight Jaynes lays out what needs to happen for the Blazers to win this series without Brandon Roy.  

Rudy Fernandez is going to have to be the player he thinks he is. You know, I always say that in his mind, he came over here from Spain to be a star, not somebody's backup. So now, let's see it Rudy. Here's your chance on a big stage - go show the world who you are.

Martell Webster is going to have to consistently make shots and continue his solid defensive effort. I don't worry about him as much for one reason - Webster's effort level has been high all season long. He shows up.

Joe Freeman takes a look at the second time around for Nicolas Batum...

McMillan insists Batum is a ways away from earning a "defensive stopper" moniker. After all, at his core, Batum considers himself a nice guy, and no defensive stopper has ever been referred to as a nice guy. McMillan says he will -- literally -- see it on Batum's face when he has earned the reputation.

"Right now he's not scarred up," McMillan said. "He's not scratched up. And that's going to come from him just harassing people. His face is still cut, babyish, and he doesn't have any stitches. He's still put together well. But when you're talking about the best offensive players and really (defending) them, then you're not going to be a liked guy. Right now ... he's a pretty likable guy." 

When he hears McMillan's words, Batum smiles and acknowledges his shortcoming. 

"I try sometimes but I cannot because I'm too ... I'm a good guy, you know," he says. "But I do sometimes. I walk on their foot, grab jerseys and pinch sides sometimes."     

Geoffrey C. Arnold says the pressure is on Rudy Fernandez...

Who's going to replace that Roy's multi-faceted contributions? That will have to come by committee if the Blazers are going to upset the Suns. But the key player for the Blazers will be Rudy Fernandez.

 Fernandez, who has been stealthily complaining - usually in a Spanish-language newspaper or magazine - about his minutes, role and touches off and on throughout the season, will finally get his chance to show what he can do. His adoring fans complain that coach Nate McMillan is mis-using him and they talk about what he could do if given the minutes. Well, he'll start against the Suns and get plenty of minutes in this series.     

Kerry Eggers quotes Andre Miller...

"We match up well with them," Miller said. "It'll come down to controlling that little fellow (Nash). He'll be a Hall of Famer, I know that."

What will Miller try to do against Nash?

"You just want to keep him in front of you, force him to take tough shots, try to keep him out of the lane," Miller said. "A lot of things he gets, he brings the defense to him and drops it off to Stoudemire for dunks."

Seth Pollack sums it up...

So basically what you have is a Suns team that shoots the ball better, creates hard shots for their opponents and plays much faster versus a disciplined Portland team that values each possession more by creating turnovers, taking care of the ball, and controlling the glass.

The contrast is striking and in theory favors Portland in a playoff environment where things slow down, get more physical and each possession matters more.

It also means that each team has a clear path to victory in the series if they can continue to do well and limit their weaknesses.

Matt Moore says Phoenix must get tough...

1. Punish the punishers: A favorite tactic teams have emulated from the Spurs against Nash is to have the defending guard go under the screen, then grab Nash's wrist, just for a minute. It's so slight, it avoids a call, but not only slows down Nash, but tweaks his back at the same time. The Suns need to counter this with a significant screen. Send a message. You mess with Nash, you reap the whirlwind.     

Kurt Helin includes Marcus Camby on his list of players who will make the Western playoffs wild...

Marcus Camby (Portland Trail Blazers): At some point during this series, Marcus Camby is going to end up in an Amare Stoudemire poster. If you try to defend the rim against Phoenix that is going to happen now and again. Hazard of the job. 

But Camby is going to be the guy matched up on STAT, and if the Blazers (without Brandon Roy) are to have any chance Camby is going to have to win that battle. He is going to have to be the man on the pick and roll that slows Nash and Amare. Camby is one of the few players in the Association with the skills to pull this off -- he can show out on Nash and still recover well, he is long and plays smart. Nobody stops the Suns, but Camby could make them less efficient. That's a start, then all the Blazers need to do is find some scoring.    

Coup and SJ go back and forth on Rip City Project before making their predictions.  Coup writes...

A lot of people talk about Utah being a bad matchup for Portland because of their toughness, but a huge problem with them is that their offense is predicated on off-ball movement and passing - they led the league in Assists-per-FGM. Utah kills you if your help rotations aren't up to snuff, and Phoenix isn't too far off, relying more on shooters spacing the floor rather than backdoor cutters. So while Phoenix isn't going to push anyone around, Portland can get killed just the same if they aren't helping. Fortunately, that's the area the Blazers have improved the most in since the trade deadline, especially the last couple of weeks.

Staying with defense, how would you use Batum? Grant Hill and Jared Dudleycannot be treated lightly, but similar to Camby I'd like to see Batum moved around the defense just to keep Phoenix off-balance with his athleticism. Play Batum on Hill, switch him on to Jason Richardson, send him to double Amar'e, everything. You can even put him on Nash for a possession or two, but not for long because Batum will probably struggle to get around the Stoudemire screens.

Paul Coro quotes Amar'e...

"It's going to be a hard-fought series," Stoudemire said. "Portland has been playing well. They have got great guys who can score ball. Marcus Camby is one of the best defenders in the league, so it's not going to be easy. We've got to know them better than ourselves."

Trevor Paxton says the Suns bench are a good reason for fans to join their bandwagon...

The Suns' bench has been truly remarkable, playing with heart and passion. However, even more than the spirited fist pumps and all out play, the Suns' bench is telling of a deep playoff run. In years past, the Phoenix Suns were always one of the best teams in the league. They were always one of the favorites to go home with the ever elusive Larry O'Brien trophy.

However, a lack of depth and true talent beyond the first six or seven players is what hindered the Suns from ever achieving that goal. One might blame it on bad luck, saddle up and get on the "I Hate David Stern" bandwagon, or simply resort to apathy when discussing years past. But, with the emergence of young Slovenian point guard Goran Dragic, Lou "My Ponytail Is Better Than Yours" Amundson and deep range threat Channing Frye, the Suns make the case that they can rely on their bench in crunch time, providing rest for their starters. Oh, and we can't forget Jared Dudley, fierce competitor and possessor of the most athletic hands in history.

Dave gives plenty of reasons for fans to join the Blazers bandwagon, including...

A chemistry experiment going right. The Blazers have been an odd petrie dish in the last few years. They started from less than nothing five seasons ago. Their best players were also their worst malcontents. They weren't winning. They blew it up and started over completely. Through some shrewd maneuvering and a little luck in the draft they stocked up with talented, young players. Too many talented, young players really. There wasn't court time for all of them to develop. Last year's playoffs showed obvious holes in the armor. The Houston Rockets bushwhacked the Blazers early and the youngsters couldn't make it up. But in the past year Portland has focused on mixing veterans in with their young talent. Andre Miller, Marcus Camby, and Juwan Howard provide a solid base from which those young guys can launch. All three veterans are playing good-to-great basketball. The team looks more cohesive and controlled. Whether that transformation makes any difference in the post season remains to be seen, but it's interesting to watch nevertheless.     

Casey Holdahl on the Blazers slow pace approach...

It's tricky playing early or late when your opponent refuses to do the same, as many of them do. Teams like the Suns, Nuggets, Warriors and Kings like nothing more than to get teams playing at their pace, which is something the Trail Blazers have had difficulty with in past season.  

"You get drawn in as opposed to sticking with what you do," said McMillan. "You get caught up in playing their style of basketball because you're going to get some open looks. It's an easy game to play, as opposed to attacking the basket and putting pressure on their defense. If you work a little longer, set a few more screens, you'll get an even better shot than maybe that first shot you get."    

Portland Roundball Society chats with Valley of the Suns...

I love where the team is at. They are not burdened by the weight of expectations like they were in previous seasons. There's kind of a loose, carefree attitude that has enveloped the team. My only worry is that they start reading their press clippings and get cocky. That's what happened during the 12-18 slump that followed the 14-3 start. They came out in November with a chip on their shoulder and then they stopped playing with the same intensity. Yes, everybody knows this could be it for the Nash-Amare era, but with where expectations started I don't think they feel the pressure that they did in previous seasons.

And Valley of the Suns chats with Ezra Caraeff of Portland Roundball Society...

There was a point in this season where the Blazers really should have packed it in and headed for the John Wall sweepstakes: December 23rd, 2009 to be exact. Oden had already gone under the knife, Nicolas Batum hadn't played a single game all season long, Joel Przybilla was in a crumbled pile of sadness and torn ligaments, Brandon Roy was out, and the team was playing in San Antonio. If this was a movie, the Blazers beating the Spurs 98-94 that night would be the moment where the triumphant band of losers realizes that they can beat anyone if they just believe in themselves.

Truth told, no one knows why this team has been capable of winning 50 games. The Blazers are still a very young team, but have made a seamless transition to the next level thanks to Andre Miller and Marcus Camby. It's insane to say it, but this team is better right this very second (even without Roy) than they were before playing the Rockets in the first round last season - with Oden in the lineup and home-court advantage.

Trey Kerby on LaMarcus versus Amar'e...

This can only go one of two ways. Either LaMarcus Aldridge realizes that Amar'e Stoudemire is eminently capable of putting him on the wrong side of highlights in every game of this series and responds accordingly. Or, he doesn't, and ends up on the wrong side of highlights in every game of this series.

Amar'e thrives on lithe big men. Nothing delights him more than putting them on a poster, and in the second half of this season, he's been doing that a lot. If the depleted Blazers want to see Brandon Roy this postseason, they need to win this series. And to win this series, they need LaMarcus Aldridge to get mean

Dennis Tarwood writes on Slam Online...

Phoenix Suns head coach Alvin Gentry pointed out before the final Suns home game of the season that the results don't reflect the trials of being a Trail Blazer: "To win 50 games in the West with all that going on... What Nate has done is just a little bit better." Gentry called McMillan his coach of the year.

Will Carroll says the Suns chemistry is great...

Since the outset of this season, we have heard from coaches and players alike how tight the Suns players are with one another. The locker room is loose and the players hang out with one another off the court. Amare Stoudemire took the whole team out to dinner on a recent roadtrip -- and paid for the whole meal. During the annual trade Amare deadline, when the static of voices and rumors surfaced, Amare endured the noise, and didn't let it all adversely affect his play or attitude. This is evidenced in his heightened level of play leading up to and after the All-Star break. Not only has Amare increased his defensive output, he's also become a beast on the offensive end, in becoming the 4th leading scorer in the league post All-Star break.

Credit the Suns' veteran leadership for the excellent team chemistry. Steve Nash averages something like 239 high fives a game (an intern actually counted during one game), while adding a calm, philosophical approach to the game. Grant Hill is the consummate professional charged with showing youngsters including rookie Earl Clark the ropes of the NBA, and Amare Stoudemire has accepted a more vocal leadership role on this team. Add in Jared Dudley's incessant comedic chatter and the Phoenix Suns have become a team who thrives off of their love of winning, which is a product of their brotherly love of one another.

Mike Schmitz writes off the Phoenix December loss to Portland...

A 35-point fourth quarter outburst and a 29-point performance from former Arizona Wildcat Jerryd Bayless led Portland back from a 15-point deficit to hand the Suns their sixth consecutive road loss. Jason Richardson was out, and Alando Tucker actually played nine whole minutes, so this wasn't exactly the Suns team fans have grown to love.

These were the days when Channing Frye was the starting center, the Suns were still dealing with the TNT curse (the loss was their 17th straight on TNT) and they would surrender any lead at any time. This was the team that was on a downswing (3-6) after starting the season 14-3, and the injury-riddled Trail Blazers stole a win from the struggling Suns.

Charley Rosen expects Phoenix to win...

On offense, Steve Nash and Amar'e Stoudemire are as perfectly coordinated as Siamese twins. Nash's crafty handling coupled with Stoudemire's resurrected quickness is a potent combination that Portland simply cannot contain. 

Especially since Andre Miller, Rudy Fernandez, Jerryd Bayless and (especially) Juwan Howard are all deficient defenders. For sure, Marcus Camby can run and jump with Stoudemire, but Portland's center is also strictly a finesse player who tends to pick up early fouls. 

Because Stoudemire and Little Stevie Wonder are playing at the tops of their respective games, the Blazers defense absolutely must concentrate on jamming them - which will inevitably eventuate in uncontested treys for Channing Frye, Jason Richardson, Jared Dudley and Goran Dragic.     

Britt Robson loves the idea of this series...

This could be a classic, even if Blazers star Brandon Roy is sidelined or limited by a knee injury. Since March 1, Phoenix is 17-4 while Portland is 15-5. Given the significant injuries that have hit both teams, they have probably maximized their existing talent better than any two teams in the West. It will be a battle of tempo: The Suns play at the league's fourth-fastest pace (95.4 possessions per game), the Blazers at the slowest (87.6 possessions). Their three regular-season matchups averaged 89.4 possessions, with Portland winning twice. But Phoenix prevailed in their final meeting and it was the slowest-paced contest of the bunch.

Ian Thomsen considers the Suns an outside title contender...

Phoenix Suns.How did the frontcourt-thin Suns earn -- and earn it they did -- the No. 3 seed? The answer is they execute better on the fly than most teams can manage in the halfcourt, thanks toSteve Nash's run-and-shoot quarterbacking, Amar'e Stoudemire's finishing andGrant Hill's versatility. Now they've been handed a first-round pass with Portland leading scorer Brandon Roy sitting out for knee surgery (torn meniscus). How can Portland control tempo without its best player?

So the Suns will move into the second round as enormous underdogs against the Mavericks or Spurs, but neither of those opponents will take victory over Phoenix as granted so long as Nash is pushing the ball and his shooters are making threes.

Brian T. Smith with more on LaMarcus Aldridge, option one...

"I would say my game is growing more toward the block," Aldridge said. "I looked at some chart - I haven't made that many 18-footers in the last two months; all my points are in the paint. "I think as you get older and you get stronger and you learn the game more, you tend to go either way. I think my game is going more toward the block, which I like. Because I think I still make an 18-foot jump shot every now and then."

Aldridge's final sentence was followed by laughter, and he appeared comfortable, confident and at ease while being swarmed by the media Friday. The former Texas standout also showed no ill effects from a stomach virus that forced him to be hospitalized overnight Tuesday, and sit out Portland's regular-season finale against Golden State.

Andrew Sharp says the Blazers rash of injuries is Biblical...

Until you realize Camby's mostly okay, it reads like a bad April's Fools joke...

...Or something far more grave. Like, say, a biblical plague from the Basketball Gods. If that's what we're dealing with here, then let's break it down, side-by-side with the acutal biblical plague.

The death of the first-born in all Egyptian families ... This is clearly the Greg Oden injury.
All of Egypt's livestock becomes diseased ... Rudy Fernandez and Nicholas Batum injuries.
Hail mixed with fire rains down from the skies ... Brandon Roy's injury on the eve of the playoffs.
All bodies of water turn to blood ... Joel Pryzbilla slips in his bathtub, ending his season.

Mike Rose asks and answers some questions...

3: Is there anyone that is bodying with F Amare Stoudemire in the paint for Portland? This is the one facet of the game that the Blazers may have controlled, believe it or not. No, there isn't anyone that can keep up with Stoudemire by himself, but between C LaMarcus Aldridge and C Marcus Camby, both of which are built awfully similarly to the Phoenix superstar, one may be able to slow him down enough to frustrate him and pick up some cheap fouls. Getting Stoudemire in foul trouble will be key, because that is when the inside guys for Portland can take this series over in the paint and rough up the then very undersized Suns.

4: Is this really G Steve Nash's year? Why not? Nash, who is a Hall of Famer in waiting, dished out just short of 900 assists this year and was once again one of the league's best point guards. However, he also shot 50.7 percent from the floor and 42.6 percent from downtown, both of which were amongst the team leaders. Nash knows that this is probably his last chance at winning it all, as Stoudemire is almost sure to have his bags packed to leave town once this season is over.

Phillip Barnett writes...

Point Guard - Steve Nash vs. Andre Miller
Andre Miller is having a good season with the Blazers - much like he's had good seasons with Philly, Denver, The Clippers, and Cleveland. That's just what he is, good. Andre Miller is, by no means at all, Steve Nash. The only reason anyone would ever mention them in the same sentence is when they're writing playoff previews. Steve Nash isn't having the greatest season of his career by any measures, but he looks like he's having more fun on the court than he's had since 2006. When Nash is having fun, it means trouble for opposing basketball teams. In games against Portland, Nash has a 10 to 3 assist/turnover ratio. That, my friends, is fantastic. 
Advantage: Suns

Quick Hits

• This playoff simulator from What If Sports.com has the Blazers reaching the NBA Finals.
• NBA.com video preview.
• NBA.com audio preview.
• Two outstanding photo galleries from Bruce Ely: Season in Review and Behind the Scenes of a Road Trip
• 4 out of 4 Yahoo! experts agree: Suns will win.
• A thorough, albeit generic, position-by-position preview.
• The Satirical Rudy Fernandez blog goes after Amar'e.

Don't you feel better?

-- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com | Twitter

What a week this has been. A week in which the strong flexed their muscles, and the weak cowered in awe before their magnificence.

The week began with a sense of hope and celebration, after the weekend's Earth Hour finally ended global warming, having reached the critical tipping point whereby the number of people reading by candlelight outweighs industrial carbon dioxide emissions, and begins to reverse the greenhouse process. Those critical of Earth Hour as meaningless feel-good tokenism were left eating their words as emissions plummeted and the climate returned to equilibrium. In Victoria alone, energy use dropped 3.5 percent during Earth Hour, a trend which, if repeated across the globe, would see up to a billion people smile smugly to themselves.

The news was less good for embattled Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu, who was convicted of "accepting bribes" by the Chinese "justice system", having made a "confession". This result caused some concern among Australian officials, who expressed concern over the Chinese courts' lack of transparency and over-use of quotation marks, to which China gave its traditional measured response of "tough titties". Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was particularly saddened by this dubious treatment of an Australian citizen. Having been assured that the Chinese are putty in the hands of anyone who's bothered to actually learn their language, the PM was shocked to discover that in fact, Australia has less clout with gigantic military-industrial superpowers than he had thought, and is thus now attempting to piece together his shattered worldview.

Meanwhile, Bob Brown denounced the Chinese system, and called on the Australian government to demand a free and fair trial, or else have Hu repatriated, a demand which drew an immediate response from China, mostly in the form of uncontrollable giggling.

It was the sort of failure of diplomacy that made one yearn for a strong leader, and by lucky chance, just such a thing was seen this week, looming over the horizon in Spandex and bike helmet. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, sensing the Australian public's yearning for a politician of strength, determination, and low BMI, set off on a gruelling triathlon, showing the electorate just what an Opposition Leader can achieve when he really, truly, enjoys intense physical pain. It put the lie to left-wing media's claims that Abbott was incapable of formulating coherent health policy, successfully managing the economy, or completing an ironman challenge in under fourteen hours - clearly, he is capable of at least one or more of these things.

And yet, bizarrely, following Abbott's triumph, fresh polls showed a drop in Liberal popularity, and a boost for Kevin Rudd, which is a bit like a poll showing that a majority of voters think Iron Man would lose in a fight against Dilbert. Some analysts saw the polls as an indication that Australians consider peak physical fitness as less important in a Prime Minister than is generally thought, while others, more credibly, saw it as pure jealousy.

And no doubt jealousy was also behind some of the mockery of Barnaby "Whoooooo!" Joyce this week, as he made some scathing assessments of government policy and claimed that he only used Productivity Commission reports when he ran out of toilet paper. His remarks sparked a storm of controversy, with some blasting Joyce for his lack of respect, and others demanding a Senate inquiry into the chronic toilet paper shortage at Parliament House, or at least a directive to the Productivity Commission to make its reports less scratchy. Joyce's leader Abbott dismissed the quip as a "colourful remark", and suggested the media concentrate on bigger issues, such as his skin-folds. Joyce himself defended his remarks as an attempt to "keep people awake", cannily drawing a real point of distinction between the Opposition and Kevin Rudd.

Another point of distinction may be that the Opposition does not consider Australia to be basically a huge holiday resort for illegal immigrants, which apparently the government does, with the 100th boat of the Rudd era arriving this week amid reports that the Christmas Island detention facility is now so overcrowded the refugees are being forced to breathe in shifts. The government has thus been forced to move some detainees to Darwin in an attempt to refute claims there aren't strong enough deterrents to boat-people. "Come to Australia, you'll end up in Darwin," thundered the government, sending a shiver down the spine of refugees everywhere, who had previously been enticed by the life of luxury enjoyed by their fellows in places like Maribyrnong, which was exposed this week in News Ltd papers as a sort of five-star funhouse, where X-Boxes and exercise bikes flow like water, and volleyball games are plentiful. Indeed, so magnificent are the facilities enjoyed by asylum seekers, the only people with a higher standard of living in Rudd's Australia are inmates of high-security prisons.

Meanwhile, Tony Abbott scoffed at the weakness of the government, claiming his government would do "whatever it takes" to stop the boats coming, up to and including sending Wilson Tuckey north in a rowboat with a megaphone and a shotgun.

And indeed, it was this "whatever it takes" attitude that ran through the week. From environmentalists' determination to do whatever it takes to sit in the dark for an hour, to Abbott's willingness to do whatever it takes to stop boats/feel the burn, to the government's drive to do whatever it takes to "stand up" to China, to Barnaby Joyce's desire to use whatever it takes to get the job done, no matter how rough or economically detailed it may be, we've seen the strength of the human will, and will no doubt be all the better for the example set thereby, as we head into another Easter, which is itself a shining example of our ability to do whatever it takes to make every occasion, no matter how solemn, sad or spiritually meaningful, a reason to stuff our faces.

Happy Chocolate Day to you all.


Ben Pobjie is a writer, comedian and poet.

• Read all responses to this article

[Abbott's Habit is a monthly GameSetWatch column by writer and Brainy Gamer blog writer Michael Abbott. This month, he wonders what kind of realism sports sims like MLB 10: The Show represent.]

Back in 1985, Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower conducted a series of interviews with Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver, widely considered one of the great baseball minds of his era. They wanted to understand Weaver's managerial philosophy and decision-making process in a variety of baseball strategy scenarios.

What they learned formed the basis for the AI in Earl Weaver Baseball (1987), one of the seminal computer baseball sims and an early cornerstone title for what would later become EA Sports.

Earl Weaver Baseball was the first game to allow players to quickly sim through an entire season. It was the first to depict real-world stadiums and adjust its outcomes to account for their dimensions. It was the first to include both arcade and manager modes, offering players a choice between controlling the on-field action directly, or calling the shots from the dugout. And it was among the first graphical sims to rely heavily on stats, both real-world player data and game-generated stats for the player to digest.

More importantly, Earl Weaver Baseball attempted to deliver what every major graphical sports sim has strived to achieve for the last 25 years: realistic gameplay via representational visuals, responsive controls, and accurate statistical outcomes.

The holy grail of graphical sports sims is an experience that feels realistic, and we routinely measure these games by their ability to convey that experience. If you'd like to test that contention, peruse the reviews of the latest high water mark in graphical sports sims - MLB 10: The Show - and count how many times reviewers deploy "realistic" in praise of the game.

To understand the nature of MLB 10 as a sports sims, it's useful to look back at EA's Earl Weaver game as a kind of swan song in sports game design. Its sequel, EWB 2, employed a 3D camera that radically altered the player's perspective, and the series shifted from simulating the experience of playing baseball to the experience of watching it on television. For the graphical sports sims to follow, there was no turning back.

MLB 10: The Show is the culmination of 25 years of game development devoted to simulating a televised broadcast of Major League Baseball, and its fidelity to its source material is astonishing. Sony San Diego has been knocking on this door for years, refining player animations, expanding situational commentary from announcers, generating post-game highlights, and generally wrapping the game in a slick, network-quality audiovisual package. The latest edition is the first sports game to pass my 'sit back and watch' test: put the CPU in charge of both teams, sit back, and enjoy watching a virtual game of baseball from beginning to end. Hardly a substitute for the real thing (especially when the commentary repeats), but for baseball junkies like me, it's a satisfying fix until the real boys of summer return in April.

"In MLB 10: The Show, we have taken it further and added more to your gaming experience...All these realistic enhancements to the game make MLB 10: The Show feel and sound like you are actually at the ballpark."[1]

As much as I admire MLB 10: The Show (and I like it a lot), it represents a concept of 'sim' very different from the one Daglow and Dombrower pursued when they were picking Earl Weaver's brain 25 years ago. In their perpetual quest to accurately simulate the presentation of sports, modern games appear to be moving farther away from simulating the sports they claim to simulate. Contrary to Sony San Diego's claims, MLB 10 does not "feel and sound like you are actually at the ballpark." It feels and sounds like a television broadcast - which is no small feat - but as a baseball simulation, it's not very smart or convincing.

For all its graphical prowess, MLB 10's AI makes a lot of boneheaded mistakes. Managing my beloved Cubbies in Franchise Mode, 2nd baseman Mike Fontenot has a nasty habit of throwing the ball into the stands on plays that should be easy outs. It can happen, I suppose; but three times in one game and at least once in five consecutive games? I enjoy wheeling and dealing, but should I be receiving an email during the first month of the season informing me the Giants are looking to deal two-time Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum? And why didn't somebody teach the AI that running into an out at 3rd-base is a cardinal sin of baseball? I could go on.

Despite obvious AI advances in games across genres, graphical sports sims continue to struggle. Baseball fans like me looking for a deep and accurate sim experience are likely to avoid MLB 10 altogether, choosing instead a text-based sim like the masterful Out of the Park Baseball. While I'm thrilled such an option exists (you really must play OOTP if you enjoy exhaustive feature-rich sims), it's a shame we're limited to either/or depictions of of 'realism.' In my heterosexual male sports sim fantasy world, I'm looking for the Anne Hathaway of baseball games: the one with the looks AND the brains.

Ironically, the disconcerting gap between 'looks great' and 'plays smart' grows wider with each graphical iteration of the MLB: The Show franchise, but not because Sony hasn't improved its AI. In fact, MLB 10 plays more competently than last year's game, especially in its fielding. The problem is that we have reached a sports game 'uncanny valley' of sorts where graphical verisimilitude jars more than it immerses.

Lance Berkman rounding third, digging for home on a base-hit is a thing to behold. Infield dust kicked up from his cleats; uniform dirty from a diving stop earlier in the game; facial features meticulously rendered; his full range of motion captured in fluid animation - and he's out by 15 feet. Lance Berkman has bad knees, but the Skipper inside MLB 10's code gives him the green light nearly every time. When it all looks so real, the disconnect between life-like appearance and life-like behavior feels more confounding than ever. Franchise mode, with its alluring veneer of realistic human interactions, is even more befuddling in this regard.

So maybe the problem here isn't 'realism,' but which realism. How exactly does Sony wish to convey realism to its audience? A post on Sony's Playstation blog by one of the game's designers is illuminating:

We went into the making of MLB 10 asking the question, “What can we do to make this game more realistic?” Our community and fans wanted even more detail and realism. If your favorite team, stadium, or crowd does things a certain way, we want to make sure it’s reflected in The Show. This attention to detail is what makes us stand out. From new fireworks, splash counters, thundersticks and more, we want you to feel the sights and sounds of real live baseball.[2]

Maybe presentational realism is exactly what most fans want, but it seems to me that 25 years of ever-more faithful televised sports simulations haven't brought us much closer to simulating the sport of baseball than Earl Weaver Baseball did.

Fireworks and hecklers certainly add ambiance, and I don't mean to downplay the significance of atmosphere in a game designed to convey the sights and sounds of baseball. But MLB 10 heralds itself as "the richest and most immersive baseball experience available" with "unsurpassed attention to detail...authenticity and true-to-life gameplay." Earl Weaver the TV color commentator might have agreed with that assessment; but Earl Weaver the Hall of Fame manager probably wouldn't.

"Borg Dog," by Lynn Scholl, is made largely of typewriter parts.

Has contemporary art gone "green"?

A visitor to Sacramento's Second Saturday art walk might notice the galleries exhibiting art made from previously used materials – recycled art, if you will.

But what might at first glance seem to be an environmental statement, many artists and gallery curators say, is not just about recycling but is about the artistic process and its result.

It's not about the green.

"It's such a buzzword," said Gwenna Howard of Skinner Howard Contemporary Art.

Her gallery has featured a number of artists who have employed cast-off materials, but when new artists bring her work, recycled isn't what she's looking for.

"We look at the result, mainly," said Howard. "It's just what people do with it."

"I often thought of marketing my art as 'green' because I recycle so much," said Ann Mueller, a Sacramento artist who used to be with Solomon-Dubnick Gallery but now shows during studio tours.

She figures used items – much of which she buys – make up about 40 percent of her materials. She works with photos, bobbins, buttons, bits of metal and household utensils because she finds them visually compelling.

"I find them fascinating," she said. "Some of this stuff, the photos especially, they have a history. I also feel like I'm giving them new life."

The works are tactile, have humor, tell stories.

What they don't do is scream "earth-friendly."

Neither do the wire sculptures of Linda Raynsford, which can be seen at Skinner Howard. Raynsford's organic forms are built from wire that she forages from construction sites where it has been used to bind bundles of rebar.

She prefers to consider the materials "found" or "repurposed."

" 'Recycled' – it's such an overused word," she said. "What does it mean?"

As for being environmental, she acknowledges using some toxic materials in her art, such as those required to weld the repurposed wire.

Raynsford grew up in Placer County on land cluttered with the accumulations of previous generations. Her father collected 21 Lincoln Continentals.

She thinks that may have helped her feel at home when she was chosen as artist-in-residence at the San Francisco Dump in 2000. It allowed her to have, so to speak, her pick of the litter for doing her art.

A tradition in art

Using discarded materials for art has a long tradition dating back to artist Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp turned a urinal into art in 1917 to make people question the concept of art.

Picasso used a bike seat and handlebars to make a bull, emphasizing the artist's vision.

Contemporary giants like Joseph Cornell and Robert Rauschenberg also incorporated found materials.

On a lower plane, the California State Fair has had a recycled-art category for at least 10 years, said Carol Buchanan, who coordinates the fair's fine arts programs.

This year, the category will have its own division with its own $700 prize for top work, she said.

Though she believes many entrants have environmental motivations, "it varies from artist to artist," Buchanan said.

Andrew Abbott, a new artist at Skinner Howard, is painting on used brown paper grocery bags because that was what he had on hand.

They were cheaper than canvas or even boards as a painting surface.

Lots of stuff to work with

Other artists are not driven by economic reasons, said Scott Shields, curator of the Crocker Art Museum.

Some are turning to the quickly obsolescent detritus of technology, using circuit boards and cathode ray tubes.

"There's a greater use of things that aren't easily disposed," Shields said.

Modern consumerism drives other artists, said Liv Moe, an artist and associate director of Verge Gallery.

"One of the reasons recycled art has so much appeal is we have too much crap," Moe said.

One of her works was made from an old chair and some Rolling Stone magazines someone had given her. She tore the pages into strips and sewed them together. When she had a lot of them together in a long, looping mass, it began to look like a figure draped on a chair.

For Moe, the work developed organically, though, rather than beginning with the idea that she would make "recycled art."

"It's sort of like the recycled work is like political art or cause art," she said. "You can make a painting of a recycle sign or a bear crying in a forest. It's not a very good piece of art."

Above all, good art is what curators are looking for. As Howard and Pamela Skinner said, it's about what the artist does with the material, not the material per se.

Abbott's painted bags grabbed them.

"That was just very creative," Howard said. "A great idea."

"Grocery Bags," a series of paintings by Andrew Abbott, are there because that's what Abbott had available to paint on.

Tables and benches made of scrap iron, wood and other materials are the specialty of Greg Arlotta.

"Borg Dog," by Lynn Scholl, is made largely of typewriter parts.

Has contemporary art gone "green"?

A visitor to Sacramento's Second Saturday art walk might notice the galleries exhibiting art made from previously used materials – recycled art, if you will.

But what might at first glance seem to be an environmental statement, many artists and gallery curators say, is not just about recycling but is about the artistic process and its result.

It's not about the green.

"It's such a buzzword," said Gwenna Howard of Skinner Howard Contemporary Art.

Her gallery has featured a number of artists who have employed cast-off materials, but when new artists bring her work, recycled isn't what she's looking for.

"We look at the result, mainly," said Howard. "It's just what people do with it."

"I often thought of marketing my art as 'green' because I recycle so much," said Ann Mueller, a Sacramento artist who used to be with Solomon-Dubnick Gallery but now shows during studio tours.

She figures used items – much of which she buys – make up about 40 percent of her materials. She works with photos, bobbins, buttons, bits of metal and household utensils because she finds them visually compelling.

"I find them fascinating," she said. "Some of this stuff, the photos especially, they have a history. I also feel like I'm giving them new life."

The works are tactile, have humor, tell stories.

What they don't do is scream "earth-friendly."

Neither do the wire sculptures of Linda Raynsford, which can be seen at Skinner Howard. Raynsford's organic forms are built from wire that she forages from construction sites where it has been used to bind bundles of rebar.

She prefers to consider the materials "found" or "repurposed."

" 'Recycled' – it's such an overused word," she said. "What does it mean?"

As for being environmental, she acknowledges using some toxic materials in her art, such as those required to weld the repurposed wire.

Raynsford grew up in Placer County on land cluttered with the accumulations of previous generations. Her father collected 21 Lincoln Continentals.

She thinks that may have helped her feel at home when she was chosen as artist-in-residence at the San Francisco Dump in 2000. It allowed her to have, so to speak, her pick of the litter for doing her art.

A tradition in art

Using discarded materials for art has a long tradition dating back to artist Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp turned a urinal into art in 1917 to make people question the concept of art.

Picasso used a bike seat and handlebars to make a bull, emphasizing the artist's vision.

Contemporary giants like Joseph Cornell and Robert Rauschenberg also incorporated found materials.

On a lower plane, the California State Fair has had a recycled-art category for at least 10 years, said Carol Buchanan, who coordinates the fair's fine arts programs.

This year, the category will have its own division with its own $700 prize for top work, she said.

Though she believes many entrants have environmental motivations, "it varies from artist to artist," Buchanan said.

Andrew Abbott, a new artist at Skinner Howard, is painting on used brown paper grocery bags because that was what he had on hand.

They were cheaper than canvas or even boards as a painting surface.

Lots of stuff to work with

Other artists are not driven by economic reasons, said Scott Shields, curator of the Crocker Art Museum.

Some are turning to the quickly obsolescent detritus of technology, using circuit boards and cathode ray tubes.

"There's a greater use of things that aren't easily disposed," Shields said.

Modern consumerism drives other artists, said Liv Moe, an artist and associate director of Verge Gallery.

"One of the reasons recycled art has so much appeal is we have too much crap," Moe said.

One of her works was made from an old chair and some Rolling Stone magazines someone had given her. She tore the pages into strips and sewed them together. When she had a lot of them together in a long, looping mass, it began to look like a figure draped on a chair.

For Moe, the work developed organically, though, rather than beginning with the idea that she would make "recycled art."

"It's sort of like the recycled work is like political art or cause art," she said. "You can make a painting of a recycle sign or a bear crying in a forest. It's not a very good piece of art."

Above all, good art is what curators are looking for. As Howard and Pamela Skinner said, it's about what the artist does with the material, not the material per se.

Abbott's painted bags grabbed them.

"That was just very creative," Howard said. "A great idea."

"Grocery Bags," a series of paintings by Andrew Abbott, are there because that's what Abbott had available to paint on.

Tables and benches made of scrap iron, wood and other materials are the specialty of Greg Arlotta.

"Borg Dog," by Lynn Scholl, is made largely of typewriter parts.

Has contemporary art gone "green"?

A visitor to Sacramento's Second Saturday art walk might notice the galleries exhibiting art made from previously used materials – recycled art, if you will.

But what might at first glance seem to be an environmental statement, many artists and gallery curators say, is not just about recycling but is about the artistic process and its result.

It's not about the green.

"It's such a buzzword," said Gwenna Howard of Skinner Howard Contemporary Art.

Her gallery has featured a number of artists who have employed cast-off materials, but when new artists bring her work, recycled isn't what she's looking for.

"We look at the result, mainly," said Howard. "It's just what people do with it."

"I often thought of marketing my art as 'green' because I recycle so much," said Ann Mueller, a Sacramento artist who used to be with Solomon-Dubnick Gallery but now shows during studio tours.

She figures used items – much of which she buys – make up about 40 percent of her materials. She works with photos, bobbins, buttons, bits of metal and household utensils because she finds them visually compelling.

"I find them fascinating," she said. "Some of this stuff, the photos especially, they have a history. I also feel like I'm giving them new life."

The works are tactile, have humor, tell stories.

What they don't do is scream "earth-friendly."

Neither do the wire sculptures of Linda Raynsford, which can be seen at Skinner Howard. Raynsford's organic forms are built from wire that she forages from construction sites where it has been used to bind bundles of rebar.

She prefers to consider the materials "found" or "repurposed."

" 'Recycled' – it's such an overused word," she said. "What does it mean?"

As for being environmental, she acknowledges using some toxic materials in her art, such as those required to weld the repurposed wire.

Raynsford grew up in Placer County on land cluttered with the accumulations of previous generations. Her father collected 21 Lincoln Continentals.

She thinks that may have helped her feel at home when she was chosen as artist-in-residence at the San Francisco Dump in 2000. It allowed her to have, so to speak, her pick of the litter for doing her art.

A tradition in art

Using discarded materials for art has a long tradition dating back to artist Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp turned a urinal into art in 1917 to make people question the concept of art.

Picasso used a bike seat and handlebars to make a bull, emphasizing the artist's vision.

Contemporary giants like Joseph Cornell and Robert Rauschenberg also incorporated found materials.

On a lower plane, the California State Fair has had a recycled-art category for at least 10 years, said Carol Buchanan, who coordinates the fair's fine arts programs.

This year, the category will have its own division with its own $700 prize for top work, she said.

Though she believes many entrants have environmental motivations, "it varies from artist to artist," Buchanan said.

Andrew Abbott, a new artist at Skinner Howard, is painting on used brown paper grocery bags because that was what he had on hand.

They were cheaper than canvas or even boards as a painting surface.

Lots of stuff to work with

Other artists are not driven by economic reasons, said Scott Shields, curator of the Crocker Art Museum.

Some are turning to the quickly obsolescent detritus of technology, using circuit boards and cathode ray tubes.

"There's a greater use of things that aren't easily disposed," Shields said.

Modern consumerism drives other artists, said Liv Moe, an artist and associate director of Verge Gallery.

"One of the reasons recycled art has so much appeal is we have too much crap," Moe said.

One of her works was made from an old chair and some Rolling Stone magazines someone had given her. She tore the pages into strips and sewed them together. When she had a lot of them together in a long, looping mass, it began to look like a figure draped on a chair.

For Moe, the work developed organically, though, rather than beginning with the idea that she would make "recycled art."

"It's sort of like the recycled work is like political art or cause art," she said. "You can make a painting of a recycle sign or a bear crying in a forest. It's not a very good piece of art."

Above all, good art is what curators are looking for. As Howard and Pamela Skinner said, it's about what the artist does with the material, not the material per se.

Abbott's painted bags grabbed them.

"That was just very creative," Howard said. "A great idea."

"Grocery Bags," a series of paintings by Andrew Abbott, are there because that's what Abbott had available to paint on.

Tables and benches made of scrap iron, wood and other materials are the specialty of Greg Arlotta.

"Borg Dog," by Lynn Scholl, is made largely of typewriter parts.

Has contemporary art gone "green"?

A visitor to Sacramento's Second Saturday art walk might notice the galleries exhibiting art made from previously used materials – recycled art, if you will.

But what might at first glance seem to be an environmental statement, many artists and gallery curators say, is not just about recycling but is about the artistic process and its result.

It's not about the green.

"It's such a buzzword," said Gwenna Howard of Skinner Howard Contemporary Art.

Her gallery has featured a number of artists who have employed cast-off materials, but when new artists bring her work, recycled isn't what she's looking for.

"We look at the result, mainly," said Howard. "It's just what people do with it."

"I often thought of marketing my art as 'green' because I recycle so much," said Ann Mueller, a Sacramento artist who used to be with Solomon-Dubnick Gallery but now shows during studio tours.

She figures used items – much of which she buys – make up about 40 percent of her materials. She works with photos, bobbins, buttons, bits of metal and household utensils because she finds them visually compelling.

"I find them fascinating," she said. "Some of this stuff, the photos especially, they have a history. I also feel like I'm giving them new life."

The works are tactile, have humor, tell stories.

What they don't do is scream "earth-friendly."

Neither do the wire sculptures of Linda Raynsford, which can be seen at Skinner Howard. Raynsford's organic forms are built from wire that she forages from construction sites where it has been used to bind bundles of rebar.

She prefers to consider the materials "found" or "repurposed."

" 'Recycled' – it's such an overused word," she said. "What does it mean?"

As for being environmental, she acknowledges using some toxic materials in her art, such as those required to weld the repurposed wire.

Raynsford grew up in Placer County on land cluttered with the accumulations of previous generations. Her father collected 21 Lincoln Continentals.

She thinks that may have helped her feel at home when she was chosen as artist-in-residence at the San Francisco Dump in 2000. It allowed her to have, so to speak, her pick of the litter for doing her art.

A tradition in art

Using discarded materials for art has a long tradition dating back to artist Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp turned a urinal into art in 1917 to make people question the concept of art.

Picasso used a bike seat and handlebars to make a bull, emphasizing the artist's vision.

Contemporary giants like Joseph Cornell and Robert Rauschenberg also incorporated found materials.

On a lower plane, the California State Fair has had a recycled-art category for at least 10 years, said Carol Buchanan, who coordinates the fair's fine arts programs.

This year, the category will have its own division with its own $700 prize for top work, she said.

Though she believes many entrants have environmental motivations, "it varies from artist to artist," Buchanan said.

Andrew Abbott, a new artist at Skinner Howard, is painting on used brown paper grocery bags because that was what he had on hand.

They were cheaper than canvas or even boards as a painting surface.

Lots of stuff to work with

Other artists are not driven by economic reasons, said Scott Shields, curator of the Crocker Art Museum.

Some are turning to the quickly obsolescent detritus of technology, using circuit boards and cathode ray tubes.

"There's a greater use of things that aren't easily disposed," Shields said.

Modern consumerism drives other artists, said Liv Moe, an artist and associate director of Verge Gallery.

"One of the reasons recycled art has so much appeal is we have too much crap," Moe said.

One of her works was made from an old chair and some Rolling Stone magazines someone had given her. She tore the pages into strips and sewed them together. When she had a lot of them together in a long, looping mass, it began to look like a figure draped on a chair.

For Moe, the work developed organically, though, rather than beginning with the idea that she would make "recycled art."

"It's sort of like the recycled work is like political art or cause art," she said. "You can make a painting of a recycle sign or a bear crying in a forest. It's not a very good piece of art."

Above all, good art is what curators are looking for. As Howard and Pamela Skinner said, it's about what the artist does with the material, not the material per se.

Abbott's painted bags grabbed them.

"That was just very creative," Howard said. "A great idea."

"Grocery Bags," a series of paintings by Andrew Abbott, are there because that's what Abbott had available to paint on.

Tables and benches made of scrap iron, wood and other materials are the specialty of Greg Arlotta.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has intervened in the divorce proceedings of a lesbian couple married in Massachusetts, denying the couple to right to separate legally in his state.

Angelique Naylor, 39, and Sabina Daly, 41, married in 2004 in Massachusetts, where gay marriage is legal. They returned to their home in Austin and together adopted a son, who is now 4. They have been separated for more than a year. Last week, at the close of a two-day hearing before state District Judge Scott Jenkins on how they should divide their property and share custody of their son, the two reached an agreement that in part called for them to divorce.

According to Naylor's lawyer, Jennifer Cochran, Jenkins granted the divorce orally and ordered the parties to put their agreement in writing and return to court next month for his signature. Abbott's petition in intervention was filed Thursday after the agreement was reached in court. In it, Abbott notes that after Naylor filed for divorce in December, Daly argued that divorce was the wrong legal remedy for the couple and that the court should instead declare the marriage void.

"Petitioner (Naylor) is asking the court to recognize and enforce a marriage between two persons of the same sex which is contrary to the law and public policy of the state," wrote Luther, Daly's lawyer. Abbott's petition said that through legal voidance, "the parties can achieve a legal termination of their Massachusetts marriage, through an enforceable judgment."

Last year Abbott appealed the case of two gay men who were granted a divorce by a Texas court. That case is still pending.

For those of us who were unable to listen to the US Olympic Committee teleconferences yesterday, Lifeskate is here to help!  She has excerpts from the Ashley Wagner and Jeremy Abbott conferences.

Some interesting tidbits from Abbott:

About the quad:  I'm doing it because I wanna be competitive, but mainly I'm doing it because I can. It's in my arsenal and I don't want to water down my program just to skate cleanly. I really wanna put everything I have out there and have no regrets about it. I have the quad, I can do it, I've been able to do it for a few seasons now. Last year, we took it out because we really wanted to concentrate on my consistency and I feel that my consistency has grown so much. I feel so confident in my other jumps that I don't have to worry about them, and now that I feel strongly about that, I can confidently put the quad in my program. It's something that I wanna do for myself and it's something that I also wanna do so that I can be competitive.

Abbott plans to do the quad at Nationals. 

Another interesting part was when Abbott was asked about scoring at the Russian nationals and if he thought it would affect U.S. Nationals scoring:

Scores at National championships across the world are always inflated. I felt that my scores last year at US Championships were very high, deserved or undeserved I don't know. It's always kind of that way, and it's always been that way, but when you come onto the international scene, the nationals scores don't have any affect. So what happens at US Championships this year, whatever happened at Russian championships this year, really won't have any affect on the scoring when it comes to the Olympics or Worlds.

I think some of these skaters are SO genuine.  I love that he says his scores were really high - so many skaters would not say that sort of a thing. 

An odd part for me was when they asked Abbott how he felt about his agent, who is also Johnny Weir's agent.  I assume that is because Johnny Weir is all over the place and it does not appear that the agent is doing as much for Jeremy Abbott...but Abbott is not Weir.  I think it would be much easier to be Weir's agent than Abbott's.  Most of America hasn't even heard of Abbott yet.

There is also an excerpt of Ashley Wagner's conference.She discussed her programs and the triple-triple:

I just have to really keep plugging away at my programs. Whoever's going to make it onto the Olympic team is going to have two solid, well put together programs. Obviously for me it's the triple-triple so what I've just been doing in practice to help me get to that point -- I've just been doing a lot of run throughs, with back-to-back sessions, and anything I can do to help my endurance, because I need to have all the energy I can possibly have to put into my programs for Nationals. That's really what we've been doing in training (with coach Priscilla Hill in Delaware). And then triple-triple wise, we're working on it. At this point, I really think that whatever is going to be the most solid and what I feel is most comfortable is what is going to be in my programs at Nationals.

I am not sure we'll see the triple-triple from Wagner...she does not sound entirely confident about it.

Here is the part where they make her fire up Sasha Cohen with her doubts:

You used "if" a lot in your answer. Are you skeptical about Sasha's return? Well I'm skeptical. I don't know about anyone else. I just think it's very very hard to have your first competition be Nationals, but you know, I'm not counting her out, she's still part of the equation. If she's there, she's there, if she's not, she's not. But I'm definitely not counting her out.

As much as I appreciate that the skaters are candid, I think maybe I would not have said anything if I were Wagner.  I would just assume that I was competing against Sasha Cohen and drop the "ifs." Because some competitors are really motivated by other people doubting them (see:  Lipinski, Tara).

For 10 years, Kathryn Flett held her dream job: watching the box… and being paid for it, too. Now she has written her last dispatch from the sofa. Here she presses the rewind button…

Ididn't plan it this way, honest, but the very last wo rd of the final sentence of the review that turned out to be my last as the Observer's TV critic was "Cowell", and as he currently occupies a metaphorical throne at the centre of primetime TV (though technically, of course, Simon is always on the far right of the screen, next to Cheryl) it feels as though the c-word is a fitting pay-off after frittering away 10 years of my life in front of the telly.

But indulge me while I rewind to the summer of 1999, not only a previous century and a technological aeon ago (when I used to watch the bulk of TV programmes on VCR, as opposed to DVD, Sky+ and online) but a time before Simon Cowell had discovered hipsters (sartorially or otherwise) and was still releasing records by Zig and Zag, Sonia and members of the WWF (nothing to do with Attenborough, apparently, and everything to do with wrestling). Back indeed to a time when the Observer's previous editor took me to one side and told me that in the latest round of editor's-prerogative cabinet reshuffles I'd lose my gig as restaurant critic… but maybe I'd like to have a bash at being the TV critic, if I fancied it, on a six month trial, mind, just in case?

Strangely, nobody who can write a thesis entitled ''A Post-Structuralist Analysis of Themes in Lost'' ever seems to become a newspaper TV critic, because (unlike other forms of journalistic criticism) writers get given the job for no more compelling reason than that they can string a pleasant sentence together and, with a bit of luck, may also have watched some telly.

But what the editor didn't know was that reading Clive James's genre-defining TV criticism in this paper from 1972-82 had been the single most potent journalistic inspiration for a young K Flett. So, in a studied casual manner, I said something like, "Oh yeah, great, thanks boss, that'll be fun", before removing myself to a small empty room inside which I punched the air, fell to my knees and shouted, "Yes! YES! YEEEEEEES!" as if I'd just won my fourth Grand Slam that year.

But though uniquely unqualified for The Greatest Job in Journalism, Ever™, both in terms of gender and intellect (from Clive James to Will Self via Julian Barnes, the Observer has often favoured an Oxbridge grad to watch the telly for it), by 1999 I had at least been watching TV for nearly my whole life (earliest memories? Dr Who and Batman). And thus as early as 1969, when I was allowed to stay up late enough to see The Virginian and Star Trek, I was able to conclude with a degree of certainty that the Perfect Man was a combination of Adam West, James Drury and William Shatner. (Turns out I was wrong about this and the Perfect Man is not in fact an American alpha male/gay icon with a sidekick, who can ride a horse while wearing drip-dry separates and a cape, shouting "Beam me up, Scotty", but it took me almost another 40 years to find this out.)

Anyway, by the summer of 1999, after thirtysomething (ah, now there was a show) years of consuming perfectly ordinary amounts of television, and just as I had made a final payment on a groovy, if compact, 18-inch Sony Trinitron, I went home, picked up a notebook and pen, turned on the TV and (with sincere apologies to Copenhagen and its conference) proceeded to leave it on standby for 10 years.

At the beginning, I'll be honest, I didn't really know what I was doing. But right from the start I did know that I didn't just want to flick through TV listings, choose three or four random programmes to watch and then review them. No, I decided to make my critical life infinitely more complex (and interesting) by watching unnecessarily enormous amounts of telly, the better to a) learn more about it, and, b) spot themes and threads with which I could then construct some sort of over-arching web of a thesis about The Way We Live Now. Yes, I know – what a complete ponce.

Sometimes this approach worked and occasionally it didn't, but it was always very important (if only to me) that the weekly column functioned both as a piece of "proper" criticism and also as light entertainment for readers who conceivably hadn't seen any of the programmes I was writing about – especially (and cab drivers are often very keen to point this out) as TV criticism is all-but-useless, innit?, because while other critics can theoretically assist in shifting a few tickets/LPs/books/whatevers to interested parties, on a good day a TV critic sells only their enthusiasm, on a bad day, their bile. And who wants to buy that on a Sunday?

So, even allowing for the fact that TV criticism is patently not a "proper job" (or as Clive James put it in the preface to his first collection of TV criticism, "it felt straight away almost illegal to be paid for having such a good time"), for the first year I also felt I was winging it, even though the six month "trial" period came and went without a murmur.

For many months I was kept busy proving, if only to myself, that even with the Ghosts of Observer TV Critics Past hovering behind my sofa, I might be able to write joined-up sentences about TV, even if I didn't yet entirely understand what TV was because I hadn't scratched/tickled its dark underbelly quite often enough to find out.

I am a big advocate of vocational training and learning on-the-job because obviously if you do anything for long enough – though preferably not rocket science or brain surgery – you'll learn about it. And now that I've watched tens of thousands of hours of television I am reasonably confident that I know not only what telly is but what it should and can be. But more of that some other time, in some other place.

I was also very blessed by the fact that my critical tenure coincided with the advent of the misleadingly named reality TV – the "me-me-mewling telly-toddler and bastard offspring of the fly-on-the-wall documentary style pioneered by Paul Watson in his original 1974 series, The Family – which, when combined with the potential technological thrills of the interweb generation, was about to drag telly literally kicking and screaming and "omigod"-ing into the 21st century.

By the time Peter Kay's clever spoof Britain's Got The Pop Factor aired last year, the conventions of the reality game show genre were not only understood by all halfway-sentient viewers but taken for granted by a nation near-numbed by several years of I'm Strictly a Celebrity Pop Idol. However, from the vantage point of the end of the century's first decade, it's worth remembering that the first series of Big Brother, in 2000, was revelatory. Who could have imagined that an addictively escapist "game show" could insinuate itself into viewers' lives for weeks on end, create its own "stars", and that this new sub-celebrity virus would be cleverly repackaged and disseminated by magazines like Heat? It was one of the decade's defining mood-swings.

Obviously there were many viewers who considered Big Brother and its ilk to be harbingers of The End of the World as We Know It, but the reality-haters couldn't fail to acknowledge the genre's power and potency, while for an unashamed pop-culturalista-cum-critic this was the proverbial gift that kept on giving, because (for better or worse) reality TV had a whole lot more to say about the way we live now than any portentous drama, especially something by Stephen Poliakoff, heavily-freighted with pointlessness. Though, of course, a brilliant drama would beat them both, hands-down – and I was lucky to see a few, though never quite as many British ones written by someone other than Paul Abbott as I would have liked.

But TV has many mansions, and, thanks to Sky, more channels even than mansions. And those channels which aren't filled with property-porno Grand Designs have to be filled with something – which is probably how a TV critic who has finally worked out what telly actually is will end up, albeit against her better judgment, appearing on TV almost as often as she writes about it. I really didn't plan to go on the telly. Obviously if I had I would have planned it better, done it in my 20s, for example, when I was a size 10, and maybe had pre-emptive veneers and brushed up on meteorology. But I do know that appearing on TV helped me to do my day job better, even if on last year's Miss Naked Beauty I acquired a rep for irritating producers by second-guessing their edits before they'd even finished filming, which I believe may be a s(m)ackable offence, while on Grumpy Old Women (and if I had a pound for every repeat, but I don't…) I swiftly acquired one for being grumpy and old at the frankly precocious age of (when we made the first series) 39.

Then there is the terrible irony that a TV critic will almost certainly have watched a lot more TV than the people who are too busy making the stuff ever to sit down and watch it. For example, at a lunch a few years ago I was seated opposite Greg Dyke, the then director general of the BBC, and asked him: "So, do you have much time to watch TV any more?"

There was a sharp intake of breath from my neighbour but Mr Dyke was unfazed: "No, not much, sadly," he acknowledged with a sigh and a wry smile – though of course it wasn't too long before he was back home and sitting on the sofa in front of Loose Women, just like the rest of us.

So, though thrilled to be given the opportunity to watch it for a living, it actually took a while for me to fall in love with the medium. When I did (and perhaps it was an unhealthy one-sided relationship all along, given that I needed the TV rather more than it needed me), I fell very hard. You know that you're properly hooked when you find you're on your fourth back-to-back episode of The Sopranos before lunch.

I believe that the only way to become a half-decent critic is to feel entirely passionate about the subject, to immerse yourself in it. And although whether or not I ever became a half-decent critic is debatable, I'm not remotely embarrassed to admit that I absolutely bloody love the telly. And my love of television is unlikely to abate simply because I no longer need to sit on the sofa accessorised by a notebook and pen: it doesn't matter how hard Mr Cowell tries to make me hate him, he'll always fail, and even though nobody is forcing me to, I'll still keep watching Top Gear, and probably anything with Phil and Kirstie in it, too. Sorry.

But aside from the above guilty pleasures – and a bit of Kevin McCloud, and some Loose Women, and my favourite TV bulletin C4 News, and I'm a Celebrity… obviously, and The Simpsons and Spongebob – just what did/does a TV critic watch for light relief – ie, without a notebook?

Before Sky's Series Link I'd use Magic Marker on a listings magazine to make sure I always caught, in no particular order, Paul Abbott's Linda Green, Clocking Off, State of Play and early Shameless, plus Waking The Dead, Hustle, Spooks and the big moments in 'Enders.

There were, for me, comparatively few entirely unmissable costume dramas but the very best included the brilliant Bleak House and Cranford, while it was The Office, Marion and Geoff and Peep Show that made me laugh and squirm in equal measures – which I suspect, in comedy terms, is probably better than merely laughing or squirming.

And, yes, I loved Sex and the City, even when it wound me up, which it did often. But I always loved the writing on Sex and the City much more than I loved its clothes.

And though mostly a fluffy lightweight, obviously, I was rarely happier than sitting in front of a heavy-duty Dispatches or Cutting Edge or a particularly grumpy old Newsnight, if only because watching proper documentaries, news and current affairs made me feel slightly less guilty about being a fluffy lightweight.

Anyway, I'm now 10 years and three TV's further down the line from the Trinitron (via a 32in Loewe and a 40in HD Sony Bravia, for the record), and of course me and my hardware have had the occasional ups and downs (believe me, note-taking while watching live television was pretty fraught until the advent of the Live Pause button). And, yes, there is a limit to the number of times a grown woman can watch Amanda Burton squinting slightly and biting her bottom lip while staring into the middle distance without needing to hurl something at the screen.

But having been allowed to stick at it for as long as I was, eventually there are some small rewards, a few critical air-punching moments – perhaps even a reader-dissenter eventually sending an email saying that (much as it pains them to admit it) maybe, possibly, you were, perhaps, just a little bit right about Stephen Poliakoff after all… even though it is blindingly bloody obvious you don't know one end of a post-structuralist Lost theory from the other.

And finally…

It was a great privilege to survive the six-month trial and remain the Observer's TV critic for another nine-and-a-half years, and of course it was always a matter of time before I'd get reshuffled. And though having had The Greatest Job in Journalism, Ever™ for a decade means I don't yet know exactly how to fill the big gaps in my schedule – much less turn on the telly without reaching for a pen – even I can see it's probably time for me to get off the sofa and start thinking outside the box.

Three writers now share the Observer TV critics' role: Phil Hogan, Andrew Anthony and Euan Ferguson

Kathryn Flett's most memorable TV moments, 1999-2009

1 The Millennium celebrations Watching Tony, Cherie and the Queen linking arms for a desultory Auld Lang Syne in the pre-02 Millennium Dome, and knowing that although I was at home watching telly, I was almost certainly having a much better time than they were…

2 9/11 This was the most extraordinary day on so many levels, and one most of us consumed – and were consumed by – via TV. Never before had an act of aggression been tailored to the global audience and made so intensely, painfully filmic. The images of those planes hitting the Twin Towers were replayed on an endless loop for weeks. Bin Laden may believe he was entirely responsible but it was actually TV.

3 Boxing Day, 2004 The demands of 24/7 rolling news were demonstrated to me at first hand when I sat in a Sri Lanka hotel room watching BBC News 24 and Sky's coverage of the tsunami which had hit a few hours earlier. The atmosphere in Sri Lanka itself was, away from the areas hit directly, confused but also extraordinarily still and stoic; the atmosphere on TV, meanwhile, was borderline hysterical.

4 7/7/05 The first time we saw "citizen journalism" trump the traditional news media; in the chaos of the London tube bombings, it was the stills and moving footage from mobile phones that ended up painting the most accurate picture of events – the moment when the technological leaps of the previous few years suddenly found a new context.

5 Children of Beslan and The Beslan Siege Two very fine, multi-award-winning documentaries were memorable on a personal level for being the first films I was physically unable to watch for longer than five minutes. As a consumer of all things televisual, I'd finally hit my personal viewing "wall".

6 From Warriors (1999) to Occupation (2009) My decade in front of the telly was bookended by brilliant British dramas telling intensely powerful stories from two different wars. Never Mind the Bonnets, it was in uniforms that British drama proved just how great it can be.

7 HBO Thank you, thank you, thank you for The Sopranos, Sex and The City, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Entourage, Six Feet Under, The Wire… Can I have the boxed sets now?

8 The West Wing Bush may have been in the White House, but from 1999-2006, Josiah Bartlet (aka Martin Sheen) was the president of our hearts and minds. In our dreams.

9 Big Brother Say what you like about it, BB not only changed the way we watched but gave us reality TV's very own Diana: Jade Goody, RIP.

10 Mad Men The very best drama series on TV. End of.