Compromise and Conceit

Infernal adventuring…

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An Australian statistician and role-player living in Japan, interested in the theory and practice of role-playing…

Category: Australia

  • Reflections on the collapse of cultural output in western youth

    When I lived in Sydney my kickboxing teacher was Mick Spinx, a master of Karate, Jin Wu Koon Kung Fu and kickboxing. Mick worked as a builders labourer, and spent the 1980s fighting in no-rules martial arts contests around Asia, before he retired, set up a part-time gym and established a builder’s business. He eventually…

  • Preservation: Survival Horror in the Gaps of our Colonial Memory

    I found Jock Serong’s novel Preservation through the pages of the sadly defunct magazine Great Ocean Quarterly, of which he is the editor. Great Ocean Quarterly is an Australian magazine about the sea that was published between 2013 and 2015, covering miscellanea about life around and in the sea, art and culture connected to the…

  • This is What Adaptation Looks Like

    Australia has been burning since New Year’s Eve, with bushfires spreading across a huge area of the eastern seaboard. The entire New South Wales coastal region from the border of Victoria to north of Sydney has been affected, along with a big swathe of eastern Victoria (Australia’s most densely-populated state) and communities up and down…

  • Did Polling Companies Get the 2019 Australian Federal Election Wrong?

    On 18th May 2019 Australia held a federal election, and the ruling Liberal/National Party (LNP) Coalition scored a victory over the Australian Labor Party (ALP) that was billed by most observers as an “upset” because opinion polls had in general been predicting a narrow ALP victory. The opinion polls predicted that the ALP would get…

  • Arcana Nullius: The Colonial Politics of Harry Potter’s Wizard’s World

    Watching the new Fantastic Beasts series, set in the Harry Potter world but outside of Hogwarts school, has made me aware of the horrible inequalities and vicious politics of the Harry Potter world. I have reported on how the first movie very starkly illustrated the lack of interest wizards have in the welfare of muggles,…

  • Australian Conservatism’s Existential Crisis

    Recent events in Australian politics suggest to me that Australian conservatism’s ideological conflicts are coming to a boil. For my foreign reader(s), the situation is roughly this: The Liberal party (actually our conservative party) had a contest for the leadership of the party which was ostensibly between a right wing nutjob, Peter Dutton, and our…

  • Shadowrun Character: Jayden Roose, Aboriginal Adept

      Standing at the limit of an endless ocean Stranded like a runaway, lost at sea City on a rainy day down in the harbour Watching as the grey clouds shadow the bay Looking everywhere ’cause I had to find you This is not the way that I remember it here Anyone will tell you…

  • Is Transracialism Okay?

    Trigger warning: Long rant; gender and racial theory; I may use the qualifier “cis-” in a non-ironic way[1]; Since saying “male genitalia” or “female genitalia” is apparently bad, I may use the words “cunt” and “cock” to refer to the things they refer to; Aussie pride; excessive footnotes[2]; dead naming of dead dudes[3]; anti-Americanism; as…

  • Solid Evidence of the Effect of Australia’s Gun Buyback Laws

    Last week’s Journal of the American Medical Association had an excellent article by Chapman et al giving a robust analysis of the effect of the change in Australia’s gun laws that happened in 1996. These laws (the National Firearms Agreement) were enacted very rapidly after a major mass shooting (the Port Arthur massacre) in which…

  • When is a National Apology Complete?

    Today is the 70th anniversary of victory in the Pacific (VP Day), when Japan surrendered to allied forces. For the USA, UK and Australia this marked the end of four years of merciless war; for China it marked the end of about 20 years of colonial aggression on the mainland; and for Korea it represented…