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: off-topic ranting

  • Agricultural Heritage Systems

    This is a completely off-topic post, but I thought it covers an interesting topic in one of those areas that it benefits everyone to know something about. Last night I found myself accidentally at diner with the director of the Land and Water Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).  His particular interest at…

  • Are the margins of AFL grand finals getting closer over time?

    Introduction This is a bit of a weird diversion from normal programming, but I thought I’d give it a go. On the weekend it was the final of the Australian Rules Football League, the AFL, and – rather remarkably for the game – it ended in a draw. Those of you who know anything about…

  • Health Savings Accounts

    I note that recently this blog has been getting a more political bent, but I’m trying to avoid it with a recent flurry of role-playing/fantasy related posts. I fully intend to restrict the political analysis to a) health-related stuff, b) stuff I can apply stats to and c) very occasional commentary on really big stuff.…

  • Healers in the Crimea: a factual account

    I am presenting a Special Lecture on Global Crime and Public Health this semester, which is really the culmination of my work on international drug cartels, prohibition and harm reduction. In preparation for the lecture on harm reduction, at the end of the lecture on sex work and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) I thought I…

  • Obligatory Australian Election Post

    We just had a national election in Australia. As I have done for every other election, I held an election party, this time sans-partner (who was in Oz), and sans-Australians (since I was in Japan). It was attended by an Iranian, two Japanese, one Australian, an American and a Thai. So, it seems I should…

  • Alternative NHS Reforms

    So previously I mentioned that I don’t think the Tory’s reforms of the NHS will work, and there was a bit of discussion (well, me waffling, really) about alternative models. Today via the Guardian I discovered this gem of a website, in which the Treasury has put up a list of suggestions that British people…

  • Fucking Linux

    I’m going out for a drink now. I spent much of this afternoon and evening trying to install Linux on a PowerPC iBook G4. The only reason I’m doing this is that I thought it might be nimbler than mac os 10.4. We use this iBook purely for watching movies (it’s plugged into the tv)…

  • Why Tory reforms of the NHS won’t work

    Over in the UK, the long period of flirting with market-based solutions to the NHS’s problems has finally come to a head, with the new coalition government deciding to abolish the cap on fee-paying patients at public hospitals. This means that the big hospitals can compete for a supposedly lucrative health tourism and private health…

  • Have casualty rates in Afghanistan actually increased?

    The release of the wikileaks data on the “secret story” of Afghanistan has led to a frenzy of the usual shallow reportage one comes to expect of the media, and nowhere more shallow than in the sensational finding that death rates of coalition soldiers have increased over the last 7 years. The Guardian even has…

  • Foundling

    Found on the street in front of my house, an alley cat with two broken legs. The leg in this picture has a compound fracture, the bone completely severed and moved around inside. He spat and hissed a lot, but once I got him by the scruff he gave in. I think he was injured…