Bill Wright, Kilda West, Vict. Australia

Your article on Aussie Rules football in Chall 22 is spot on as far as it goes but it doesn't deal with the annual finals series, which is at the pointy end of the rapture and excitement of the game.

The winter season consists of sixteen clubs from five of Australia's six Capital Cities playing 22 weekly home & away games. The eight winning clubs in each round earn 4 premiership points (or 2 premiership points in the rare, but not uncommon, event of a draw). During the season, clubs are ranked in a premiership table according to points earned to date. Top team at the end of 22 rounds wins what is called the Minor Premiership. Then follows a four-week finals series of matches.

Finalists are the top eight of the sixteen clubs in the premiership table at the end of the home & away season. Yes, that's right, half the teams. In the first week of the finals series, all eight teams play one another according to their rankings in the minor premiership table. The games are 1st v 4th, 2nd v 3rd, 5th v 8th and 6th v 7th. The top four sides on the ladder after the home and away season are guaranteed a double chance after the first week of the finals while sides finishing 5th to 8th need to win every game to win the premiership. The winners of the games 1st v 4th, and 2nd v 3rd proceed straight to the preliminary final in week 3. The losers of those games receive the double chance and play in the semi-finals in week 2.

The games 5th v 8th and 6th v 7th are cut-throat qualifying finals with the losers being eliminated and the winners proceeding to the semi-finals.

The remaining three weeks of the finals are cut-throat. The winners of the semi-final in week 2 proceed to the preliminary final, while the losers are eliminated. There are two preliminary finals in week 3, with the winners both proceeding to the AFL Grand Final. The losers are eliminated.

The above describes only the Main Game. There are many lesser leagues, including their analogues in fandom. Here is a group photograph of stars of the Great Fannish Football Game held under the auspices of the late John Foyster at Ponderosa Farm near the Victorian regional city of Kyneton in September 1973. Also included is a less flattering photograph of the writer being ordered off the field by Foyster, who refereed the match.

In my last segment of comments on Chall 22 I refer to Australia's six Capital Cities. I didn't include the National Capital, Canberra, or the Capital of the Northern Territory (bigger than Texas), Darwin. So that should be eight Capital Cities. Sorry for the error.

For the record, following is a list of Australia's eight Capital Cities

Canberra, the National Capital
Darwin, Capital of the Northern Territory
Sydney, Capital of New South Wales
Melbourne, Capital of Victoria
Brisbane, Capital of Queensland
Adelaide, Capital of South Australia
Perth, Capital of Western Australia
Hobart, Capital of Tasmania

Thanks for straightening that out.

James P Hogan is to be congratulated for his sensible and timely parable outlining the decontamination of Earth. Unquestionably, the piece serves as a powerful testament to the doctrine of Intelligent Design that hammers on the intellectual bastions of fandom. Those who are dismayed by Chaos must rely on Faith and blessed are those whose genius gives us reason to Believe.

The idea of a Great Architect overseeing the micro workings out of macrocosmic affairs is not new. What is fresh and exciting is the concept of carbon-based life as akin to a slime mould retarding the progress of a superior electro-mechanical species. Consideration of the virtues of purity and cleanliness makes it patently obvious that machines are at the apex of creation. So, logically, unbelievers who find (or fabricate) evidence to the contrary, including the laughable suggestion that mere men created machines, must be mistaken.

Humans are an untidy froth of nerve endings whose insane activities have polluted the planet. The sooner they are done away with to make way for a benign symbiosis of virus and machine (a corruption of which already exists on the Internet) the better. The Prophet James P Hogan discerns the hand of the Great Architect in the process. ‘Twere blasphemy to deny it.

I read with interest the views of your guest editorialist, Alexander R Slate, on the whys and wherefores of the invasion of Iraq. The main Blair-Bush justification for going to war, although subsequently shown to be false, was compelling at the time to the extent that many initial skeptics were reluctantly convinced of the necessity. Some of us, including Mr Slate, warned of consequences either way - ie. of invading or not invading. What has become evident after the event is that invading Iraq without moral or adequate ethical justification exacerbated predictable consequences.

Unlike the situation in earlier conflicts such as Vietnam, America cannot simply withdraw. This time the power interests of the United States are fully in play. The Coalition of the Willing must win this one decisively and that means unwavering commitment to massive recurrent haemorrhages of blood and treasure over the next ten to fifteen years. Should there be a failure of political will to see out this conflict, America might be left with nothing but a short-term advantage in deployment of weapons of mass destruction. Certainly America's credit would be exhausted, leaving it in the same bankrupt state as Great Britain found herself after being shafted with the initial burden of World War II. The choice would be between abject capitulation and global catastrophe unless, of course, India and China were to take the nations of the West into their very expensive nursing homes. Thankfully, before that happens I shall be safely and cosily dead.

Mr Slate's Black Plague analogy is apposite, but he doesn't take it far enough. Yes, the Black Plague meant a tremendous decrease in population pressures in Europe but it also immunised the survivors and their descendants against future outbreaks of the disease, which is a Good Thing. Perhaps the workings out of the Iraq experience will imbue our leaders with a sense of history and so immunise them against impulsive aggression. One can only hope.