Compromise and Conceit
Infernal adventuring…
recent posts
- Did Stalin’s Purge of the Generals Really Hinder the Soviet War Effort?
- Vassily Grossman’s Noisy post-Soviet Interlopers
- Putting the Third Wave of anti-Trans Panic in its Historical Perspective
- The Bone Temple: A Clockwork Orange with zombies (without zombies)
- Shadows of the Firstcome: Unwelcome visitors
about
Category: Meat Life
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Today’s edition of PLOS Medicine contains an article describing a possible cap-and-trade scheme for global health investment, designed around a cap-and-trade carbon permit scheme. Built on the assumption that health is a global public good, it proposes that all countries sign up to a centralized system of permits based on disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). If…
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Yesterday was another Gothic Lolita-styled live event by the crew at A la Mode, the 42nd event of this venerable institution. This night had the same excellent value-for-money line up of 6 or so bands interspersed by DJs, for just 3000 yen, but this time there were less of the pretty little 5 minute floor…
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It’s election season here in Japan, and this morning the full listing of competing parties fell through my mailbox. This multi-page, newspaper-style document lists the major parties and their main candidates, along with a very brief statement of their agenda. It’s a useful summary of the state of policy debate in Japan, I suppose, though…
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The UK Census was released today, and the Guardian is “live-blogging” the details[1]. As a statistician I feel obliged to comment on the census, because it’s a fundamentally important part of modern cultural life. As an opinionated bastard, I also take great joy in the release of figures I can distort to suit my view…
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In October my master’s student had her work on modeling HIV interventions in China published in the journal AIDS, with me as second author. You can read the abstract at the journal website, but sadly the article is pay-walled so its full joys are not available to the casual reader. This article is a sophisticated…
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Today’s issue of PLOS Medicine contains an interesting debate between Australia’s own anti-smoking paladin, Simon Chapman, and a professor Jeff Collin from Scotland, over whether governments should introduce a license for smokers. Chapman puts the case for a license, while Collin opposes it, and the debate is refreshingly free of jargon or paywalls, so quite…
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Last night I went to a work-related dinner with foreign guests, and my students did the stereotypical ’80s Japanese thing of subjecting the foreigners to every gross food that Japanese people eat, without warning. Uterus, raw octopus with horseradish, frogs legs, stewed guts, grilled chicken skin, pickled plums, some kind of tiny fish that tastes…
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At dinner tonight with a couple of Japanese friends, I heard a horror story about student part-time work in the 60s: corpse-grinding. It’s very common for students in Japan to work part time while they study, and this has been common since the war. Such work is referred to as an arubaito, from the German…
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This week sees the simultaneous release of pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge’s breasts, and the release of a Counterpunch article on how a feminist Assistant Professor should be allowed to breastfeed in class. I think everyone is roughly aware of how the debate is proceeding vis a vis the Duchess’s breasts – they’re a…
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While I was travelling in Germany, being forced to eat huge piles of food at restaurants and cafes, I noticed that many of the staff shoveling the food into the trough[1] were middle-aged men, something I also noticed when I was in Paris a few years ago. In contrast, this phenomenon is rarer in Japan…
Compromise and Conceit 