SINGING SUBJECTS AND SACRED OBJECTS: MORE ON MUNN'S ‘TRANSFORMATION OF SUBJECTS INTO OBJECTS’ IN CENTRAL AUSTRALIAN MYTH

Nancy Munn's ‘The Transformation of Subjects into Objects in Walbiri and Pitjantjatjara Myth’ is a landmark in our understanding of the processes by which the Aboriginal world is created and sustained. Her paper is summarised and then related to similar concerns extant among the neighbouring Aranda. Munn's account of relationships between people and country is shown to be part of a wider reality encompassing all stages of the life-cycle and characterised by a triple dialectic between ‘surface’ and ‘depth‘, between male and female, and between life and death. The study is preliminary to a psychological account of these dialectical processes to be published at a later date.     

Elimination of Source A and B Errors in p-Median Location Problems

The p-median problem is a powerful tool in analyzing facility location options when the goal of the location scheme is to minimize the average distance that demand must traverse to reach its nearest facility. It may be used to determine the number of facilities to site, as well as the actual facility locations. Demand data are frequently aggregated in p-median location problems to reduce the computational complexity of the problem. Demand data aggregation, however, results in the loss of locational information. This loss may lead to suboptimal facility location configurations (optimality errors) and inaccurate measures of the resulting travel distances (cost errors). Hillsman and Rhoda (1978) have identified three error components: Source A, B, and C errors, which may result from demand data aggregation. In this article, a method to measure weighted travel distances in p-median problems which eliminates Source A and B errors is proposed. Test problem results indicate that the proposed measurement scheme yields solutions with lower optimality and cost errors than does the traditional distance measurement scheme.     

Recursive Algorithm for Determination of Proximal (Thiessen) Polygons in Any Metric Space

A new and recursive algorithm for determining proximal polygons is based on quadtree concepts. The algorithm can use any distance metric, and produces a quadtree of the image of the proximal polygons. This can be converted to vector form, or be incorporated directly into a quadtree-based geographic information system, in order to solve a number of closest-point problems. The algorithm can also produce the Delaunay triangulation, which is the dual of the proximal polygons. Empirically, the running time of the algorithm is proportional to the number of centers raised to the 1.6 power.     

Reviews of books

Historical Archaeology -     

Illicit Drug Production and Supply-side Drugs Policy in Asia and South America

This paper examines the feasibility of current policies of supply limitation as an instrument for the control of dangerous drugs (principally South American cocaine and Asian heroin). The structure of production and distribution is examined, and revenue estimates are made. A range of supply-side policy options are evaluated by means of a simple game-theory approach. In all cases, it is concluded that supply-side policies are likely to prove ineffectual as a means of drug control.