Diplomacy Zine -- EP #173 Chapter Five

From: Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com

Date: Tue, 05 Jun 1990 04:49:42 +0000

Issue #173 of ELECTRONIC PROTOCOL:

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Contrary to what he had been led to expect by watching hundreds of TV
police shows, the precinct station house was drowsily quiet this
Saturday morning.  A few uniformed officers were standing off in the
far corner of the room he entered, quietly talking together.  Along
the side wall stood four squat blue robots, silent and inert.  The
Writer paid careful attention the the equipment on the human police
officers: pistols, stun wands, gas and concussion grenades,
bulletproof vests, protective helmets with built-in radios and
shatterproof sliding visors.  Yes, he was in New York, all right.
********************************************************************

Chapter One contains:

BLITZKRIEG, GETTYSBURG, RED STORM RISING, and COMRADES IN ARMS

And is published by daybell@aludra.usc.edu/Donald Daybell

Chapter Two contains:

DRAGONSLAYER, BISMARK, COLD WAR, JACAL, MANHATTAN, VERSAILLES,
and DRESDEN

And is published by tedward@cs.cornell.edu/Ted Fischer

Chapter Three contains:

MULHOUSE, DAWN PATROL, SNIKKEL-2, BERLIN, SNIKKEL-1, EL ALAMEIN,
SQUALANE, UNGAWE, CAPTAIN CAVEMAN

And is published by cwekx@htikub5.bitnet/Constantijn Wekx

Chapter Four contains:

FIRE WHEN READY, DREADNOUGHT, JUGGERNAUGHT, BIG WILLIE,
NICKEL, and OZARK

And is published by lord_zar@ucrmath.ucr.edu/Wayne Wallace

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Chapter Five
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No game reports in this issue.

Publisher comments:

Quote from p. 89 of Cyberbooks by Ben Bova.

From The Boston Globe Monday, May 21, 1990:

CREATING LIFE - FROM SCRATCH
Mimicking nature, chemist concocts molecule that reproduces!
                     By David L. Chandler

In an ordinary chemical laboratory in Cambridge, a chemist has taken
the first small step - small, but dramatic, toward the creation of
synthetic life.

With a single experiment that a rival scientist says may merit a
Nobel prize, MIT's Julius Rebek has created a molecule that does
something that only living organisms have been known to do:  It
reproduces itself.

It is an achievement that may shed some light on how all life began,
and that may even lead someday to the creation of real, living
organisms from scratch.  In the meantime, it may also produce a host
of useful applications in everything from medicine to chemical
manufacturing.

Rebek's simple, two-part molecule is capable of attracting copies of
its two constituent molecules and holding them together long enough
for them to join, forming an identical copy of the "parent" molecule.
The original molecule and the copy then split apart, and each can
create another copy.  Once started, this reproduction takes place a
billion times a second.

This accomplishment, Rebek wrote tn a scientific paper describing the
research, can be considered "a primitive sign of life."

It is the first time any scientist has achieved this kind of
mimicking of one of the key, distinguishing characteristics of living
creatures.  The work is "a very interesting and significant
development," said Cyril Ponnamperuma, director of the laboratory of
chemical evolution at the University of Maryland and one of the
leading researchers on the origins of life.

The molecule Rebek created is different from the natural molecules of
life, and that adds to its importance, said Ponnamperuma.  It means
that "we need not narrow down the concept of life just to amino acids
and nucleic acids.  So life is probably very much broader."

The work suggests that life on other worlds, with possibly a variety
of different chemical bases, could be "much more universal than we
think."

The self-replication of molecules that forms the basis on all known
life is a vastly more complicated process, of course, but it has
important similarities to Rebek's experiments.

Every living thing contains a molecule of DNA inside every one of its
cells.  This molecule, whose corkscrew or "double helix" shape has
become familiar to all students of biology, contains all of the
information that provides a blueprint for the development and
functioning of the whole organism.

To reproduce, the two-part DNA molecule "unzips," or splits
lengthwise into two halves.  Each half becomes a template to which
the constituent molecules of DNA, called bases, attach themselves.
The result is two identical copies of the original double helix.

But DNA needs a lot of help to reproduce.  A variety of enzymes,
small chemical bundles that promote specific chemical reactions, are
needed to help the molecule unzip, and to get the bases to line up
and attach themselves to each half to make the copy molecules.

NO HELP NEEDED

One of the remarkable features of Rebek's molecule is that it needs
no such help.  As long as it is immersed in a "soup" containing the
right constituent molecules, it will keep reproducing itself.

The molecule mimics the self-replication that is characteristic of
life, and although it is related it is chemically different from the
molecules that are the basis of life.  Rebek's creation is called
amino adenosine triacid ester, or AATE, and was designed using a kind
of atom-by-atom architecture at the molecular level.

Rebek says his molecule was "engineered".  He knew what he wanted to
accomplish, and figured out the shapes and chemical "stickiness" the
molecule would have to have.

Over a period of months, working with graduate student Tjama Tjivikua
of Namibia and visting student Pablo Ballester from Spain, he
synthesized the molecule and, after a few false starts, got it to
work as expected.  They described the accomplishment in a paper in
the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The molecule is made up of two component molecules - an ester and an
amino acid - stuck together so it "opens up like a jacknife", Rebek
explained.  In this shape, the molecule has "sticky" surfaces - which
have a propensity to bind chemically with other molecules - at each
end.

When the molecule is in a solution containing more of its
constituents, each sticky surface binds with another ester or amino
acid.  When the two new molecules have attached to the original
"template" molecule in its open-jacknife position, they quickly fuse
together in the middle, where each has another sticky surface.  And a
new, duplicate molecule has been born, attached to the first.  The
two then split apart because of the natural thermal jostling that
takes place between molecules in the test tube, and each can go on to
start the process again.

THE DRIVING FORCE

Many other scientists have attempted to create such a chemical
process but none has succeeded.

"He beat us fair and square", said chemist Jonathan Sessler of the
University of Texas, who has spent years trying to produce a self-
replicating molecule.  "It's a great coup that he's achieved this.
Making the first self-replicating system is a Nobel prize-level
accomplishment."

The driving force for such research, Sessler explained in an
interview last week, is to try to understand better how life came
into being.  "We look at nature and we see some very complicated
processes that almost seem magical."

The natural processes are still "one step beyond what we as human
beings can do at the moment", and producing a chemical system capable
of transmitting genetic information from one generation to the next -
Rebek's achievement was the first step - represents "an intellectual
challenge of the first order."

Rebek hopes his work may someday help scientists understand the basic
"code" of life. DNA's blueprints are written in a seemingly arbitrary
code in which each sequence of three "letters" - one of four
different chemical bases - stands for a specific protein.  But there
is no apparent connection between the code letters and the structure
of the various proteins they relate to.

"Thirty years of intensive research has failed to turn up some
plausible relationship", Rebek said in an interview in his office at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  "But you can't help but
think that there had to be one."

A SEARCH FOR LOGIC

He thinks that there may be some underlying connection, and he hopes
that work on hybrid molecules such as AATE may help to reveal an
underlying logic that can be described in a simple rule that first-
year chemistry students will someday be taught; they would be able to
glance at a three-letter code and know immediately what protein it
represents.

That doesn't mean anyone will be able to reconstruct the exact
molecules that may have existed 4 billion years ago when life on
Earth began.  "Some people think the road's washed out" and that it
will be impossible to go back and tell exactly how life evolved,
Rebek said.  "It's pretty hopeless to try to find the original"
molecules of life.

But Rebek hopes to build much more complicated self-replicating
molecules that will help to illustrate how life might have gotten
started.  He hopes to produce longer chain-like molecules that could
carry information, a coded sequence of constituent parts, in a
simplified version of the information-carrying ability of DNA.

What he has already accomplished could have a variety of practical
applications as well.  "When an expertise is developed that allows
you to design and build molecules that will do what you want", said
chemist T. Ross Kelly of Boston College, "that has all sorts of
applications."

It might lead, he said, to the creation of artifical enzymes that
could have important medical applications, perhaps curing conditions
that involve an excess or deficiency of specific hormones or other
compounds in the body.

"The kind of work Rebek and other people are doing is leading to the
ability to design enzymes", Kelly said.

The same kind of technology could have industrial applications as
well, through the creation of enzymes that would foster the
production of certain chemicals.

Rebek shrugs off such practical possibilities.  "That's certainly not
my motiviation", he said.  "These are academic questions; we're not
focused on getting better delivery of a drug or a higher octane
fuel."

THE ULTIMATE ACHIEVEMENT

But the academic research could lead in the direction of what may be
one of the most dramatic ultimate achievements imaginable, and
perhaps the ultimate expression of scientific hubris; the creation of
life itself.

Is that possible?

"No question about it", says Ponnamperuma, whose own work has
concentrated on creating the basic chemical constituents of life, the
basic chemical building blocks, under laboratory conditions that
mimic the early Earth.  "I have no doubt at all", he said, that
someday life will be created from scratch in the lab.

"Nature took billions of years", he said, "but the mind of man might
be able to concentrate that into a short time.  How soon, I don't
know."

From the July 1990 issue of Reason:

CANCELING THE POSTAL MONOPOLY
                        By Rick Henderson

By simultaneously proposing a 19 percent postage increase and a
series of service cutbacks, the U.S. Postal Service has inadvertently
fueled the fires for postal privatization.  Supporters of
deregulation are looking closely at New Zealand's competitive postal
service; privatization critics would rather ignore it.

New Zealand "corporatized" and deregulated its postal service in
1987.  The government maintained ownership of the corporation but
ceased subsidies and ended its monopoly on letter delivery.  This
forced the postal service to operate profitably while facing
competitors.  The law requires the postal service to continue serving
every address in the nation.

To restucture its postal service, the government closed more than
two-thirds of its post offices and allowed private retailers to set
up contract stations.  Since decontrol, the net number of post
offices has increased by 17 percent.  On-time delivery of first-class
letters has increased from 84 percent to 99 percent, while automation
and contracting out opperations have reduced the postal workforce by
one-fifth.

Postage rates went up by 40 percent in the two years prior to
decontrol; they have been stable since.  Yet the postal service has
gone from annual losses of $37 million to yearly profits of $76
million.

Will studying New Zealand's experience provide lessons for the United
States?  In the Wall Street Journal, Postal Rate Commissioner John
Crutcher said:  "U.S. Postal Service officials who go to New Zealand
return chastened and silent.  The U.S. post office is not the
cheapest or the most efficient in the world; it's only the biggest."

The following was scribed by loeb@geocub.greco-prog.fr/Daniel Loeb:

From Rats #6:

Taking the Lepanto's Logical Conclusion
        by Pete Swanson

If you don't know what the Lepanto is, you haven't lived! but
for those embryonic readers/players among you, it is basically this: a
suggestion from Edi Birsan that Italy can make a suprise direct attack
on Turkey by the following moves:

Spring 1901: A(Rome)-Apu, F(Nap)-Ion, A(Ven)h
Autumn 1901: F(Ion)CA(Apu)-Tun, A(Ven)h. Builds F(Nap)
Spring 1902: F(Ion)-EMS, F(Nap)-Ion, A(Tun)&(Ven)h
Autumn 1902: F(Ion)&F(EMS)CA(Tun)-Syr, A(Ven)h

Turkey is now up the creek without a paddle, provided
a) he doesn't move F(Con)-Ank in Spring 1901, and
b) Austria attacks Aegean from Greece in Spring 1902.

The Lepanto Opening virtually metamorphosed Italy from being a
boring, predictable country, to an exciting, unpredictable one. Now,
instead of walking virtually suicidally into Trieste or just hanging
around for a few years, watching the other countries have all the fun,
bouncing your armies in Piedmont and Venice around for kicks, and
jumping in on the side of the player with the most units in 1904 or
thereabouts, you can play an active part straight from Spring 1901.
"Avanti, Luigi--let's swim to Turkey!" and pretty soon, most Italian
players were! Lepantos cropped up like dandelions; this became pretty
boring, since any Turk who had seen the Lepanto before was going to
make fairly good efforts at stopping the initial convoy to (Syr) or
(Smy) and then neither Italy or Turkey gets anywhere.

Well, it wasn't long before some ex-Turk player invented a
stab-Austria variant. Simply fake a Lepanto in Spring 1901, then
Turkey tries for Greece, and the Italian convoys to Albania and
attempts to slip in the back door into Trieste. With a Russian army
floating in/around Galicia, the only real fighting is between Italy,
Russia and Turkey over who gets Serbia, the last Austrian haven in
Spring 1903.

The Austrians are sometimes a shrewd people. Stung by the
change of direction, they soon were showing the Italians how to switch
the switch.

"Hey Luigi, you know you probably won't get a build if you
stab me from the Lepanto--I'm just going to be A(Tri)-Alb, keeping you
out of both."
        "Oh..."
        "Why don't WE get Turkey?"
        "But me 'an da Sultan, we got dis plan..."
        "I know all that," interupted the Austrian, "but you want a
build don't you?"
        "Uh, yep."
        "So I have a better plan in which you're bound to get a
build."
        "Yeah?"
        "Sure, you move
                A(Ven)-Tri, A(Rom)-Apu, F(Nap)-Ion
and I'll move
                F(Tri)-Alb, A(Bud)-Ser, A(Vie)-Bud."
        "Ok, then what?"
        "Well then, you move A(Tri)-Ser, and convoy A(Apu)-Tun, and I
get Greece. You can build your second fleet and move to EMS & ION in
Spring 1902, and we'll have Bulgaria beseiged and Turkey scared
face-less."
        "Oh, yeah!"

This was the Key Variant, invented by Jeff Key. Basically,
Austria and Itlay bluff everyone else on the board into believing that
they are at loggerheads, and then suddenly, like magic, they are at
Turkey's doorstep.

I have recently completed a game where we put together an
excellant example of a deviant of the Key variant. This was 1974BZ,
started in DER KRIEG in June 1974. I just so happened that Italy (Pete
Cousins) and Austria (me) were at a small game con when the gamestart
was announced, and of course we got to talking, planning, scheming,
plotting, etc---the normal things two dippy freaks do when they get
together. After having agreed that we were the two secret masters of
British diplomacy, we also agreed that we should try a new, fun, but
devastating Austro-Italian opening; this is what we came up with.

The initial aims of Diplomacy were clear--we had to get Turkey
and Russia at each other's throats. I made strong "alliances" with
each of them against the other, claiming a non-aggression pact with
Italy. We also cultivated something healthy up north in the other
corner of the board--like England stabbing France stabbing Germany
stabbing England. Since this Russo-Turkish conflict was essential to
the plan, as it is in any Lepanto, the wait for the first season's
results was nail-biting.

The Spring 1901 moves were:
A: A(Vie)-Gal, A(Bud)-Ser, A(Tri)-Adr!
I: A(Ven)-Tri!, A(Rom)-Ven, F(Nap)-Ion
R: F(Stp)-GOB, F(Sev)-Bla(BOUNCED), A(Mos)-Sev(BOUNCED), A(War)-Ukr
T: A(Con)-Bul, F(Ank)-Bla(BOUNCED), A(Smy)-Arm
E,F,G: Amusing themselves and leaving us alone.

Which moved the GM to comment: "Pet Balloon Burst!" (Pet
Balloon was an unearned nickname I had acquired from John Piggott.) I
use Lakofkaesque notation in the moves. ! means a move of either
certain crassness or sheer brilliance.

God knows what Greg Hawes (R) and Mick Bullock (T)
thought--hopefully they believed I had stabbed Russia and Italy
simultaneously, and VERY badly, and that Italy had stabbed me, and
Russia and Turkey had stabbed each other. At least, that's what I told
them had happened!

The diploming became furious now. I managed to throw myself at
the mercy of Greg Hawes. "We're in the same boat now, mate. We both
have stabbed and have got stabbed (by the way, heh, sorry about that,
ahem). Let's get it together against Italy and Turkey, ok?" Needless
to say, I said roughly the same thing to Mick Bullock, but with
greater credulity, it seems, especially since he was the one I had NOT
plunged by dagger into--"I can hold off Italy while we take care of
Russia, but I need another center--how about supporting me into
Rumania?"

Now came the crunch. Autumn 1901:
A: A(Ser)SA(Gal)-Rum, F(Adr)CA(Tri)-Gre!, Builds A(Vie),A(Bud)
I: F(Ion)CA(Tri)-Gre!, A(Ven)-Apu, Builds F(Nap)
R: A(Ukr)SF(Sev)-Rum(FAILS), F(GOB)-Swe, A(Mos)-Sev(BOUNCE), builds F(StPnc)
T: A(Bul)SA(Gal)-Rum, F(Ank)-Bla, A(Arm)-Sev(BOUNCE), builds F(Con)

Suddenly, out of the mess that was Austria, arises
Phoenix-like from the ashes, a less-mess. However, Turkey looks
decidedly more pale than anyone else, since Italy carries out the
usual Lepanto convoy moves, but this time Bulgaria get immediate bad
flak, and Russia shouldn't like what's going on either. Of course, it
helps if you can still keep Russia and Turkey on unfriendly terms,
though if they're smart, they'll kiss and make up pretty quick. These
moves also show the usefulness of stabbing in the Autumn season of a
two-season game [with English rules]. Greg build F(StPnc), which in
this case was the most useless unit he could possibly want--however,
assuming his plans had gone as expected, he probably would have been
able to start an anti-English campaign whilst beating up Turkey with
Austria and Italy.

As it was, Greg carried on with his somewhat tenuous Austrian
agreement (I suppose as an alternative to a non-existant Turkish one)
and Mick tried very hard to pull over Greg to his side. But to no
avail.

Spring 1902
A: A(Vie)-Gal, F(Adr)-Ion, A(Rum)SA(Ser)-Bul, A(Bud)SA(Rum)
I: A(Gre)SA(Ser)-Bul, F(Ion)-EMS, A(Apu)-Rom, F(Nap)-TyS
R: F(Sev)-Bla(BOUNCE), A(Ukr)SA(Mos)-Sev(BOUNCE), ...
T: F(Bla)&A(Bul)SA(Ukr)-Rum(NO SUCH ORDER), A(Arm)-Smy, F(Con)-Aeg

By Autumn 1905, Turkey was out, and Russia was left with two
supply centers, Liverpool and Edinburgh! (An interesting point: Russia
kept these two centers for the rest of the game, and kept F(Bla)
supplied from England until Autumn 1911 when the game ended. Until
then, I needed four units to keep in penned up and out of my supply
centers! Some more funny things about this game: Pete Birks dropped
out (not his fault) as England, and then GMed the game from one
gameyear later. Austria eventually won; however, I was held to a
16-unit stalemate line for a while, and voted "yes" to a four-way draw
with Germany, France, and Russia. But Germany voted "no" hoping to
break me down with French help. He then changed his plan, decided he
would like a two-way draw with me, suddenly switched direction just as
I was having what I thought was a last-ditch effort to sneak in the
other two centers I needed!)

Now, I'm certainly not recommending that you all go out and
try exactly this opening in your next game. Firstly, anyone who has
read this article [or the gamer's guide] will know what's going on.
Secondly, I'm not certain that the opening is tactically ideal. (Why
not just convoy, A(Apu)-Gre from the standard Lepanto for example?)
However, I hope this opening will show a different attitude to the
game than most people subscribe to, ie: the standard opening CAN get
just a teensy-bit tedious, and make the game stereotyped. A far out
play like this can give more fun and interest, and above, can work!

((The opening has been correctly summarized as generally being
a load of rubbish BUT it equally shows that given the right situation
anything can work, and work well. I don't imagine that you'd be so
fortunate as to find such a pair of players playing R&T as occured in
this game. Although to be fair it was Russia who misplayed.))

((A good diplomay player is a player who is willing to change
any ideas he has at the start of the game due to who the other players
are and what they say. Nothing is sacred, but some openings are
tactically sounder than others.))

((The main problem facing Austro-Italian alliances is the
Russo-Turkish alliance, it slows down the advance to what may be a
mere trickle or even complete stalemate. Still, this is much better
than the alternative which is a three-way attack on Austria. I have no
stats, but it would be interesting to learn how these three-way
alliances split up in latter years. Are there more Russo-Turkish
alliances or Italian-Russian alliances? As I was saying Lepanto
openings at least enable A/I to mobilize their forces as quickly as
possible against a R/T alliance.))

I am enjoying publishing this zine.  Keep that mail coming!

Eric Klien