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

  • Statistical Proof Paul the Octopus is the spawn of cthulhu

    I’m not the first person to have considered the possibility that Paul the Octopus is the spawn of Cthulhu, based on his “remarkable” predictive powers. However, being unconvinced, I presented the possibility that he is not a normal octopus to my students last week, as an example of a basic non-parametric test (the runs test).…

  • TV and the demise of European soccer

    So, that festival of the boot is on again, and although since I moved to Europe my interest in soccer has waned considerably[1], I still watch the World Cup quite avidly. Of the 6 European soccer giants – Spain, Italy, Germany, England, France and Holland – only 4 made it to the round of 16,…

  • Current Viewing: Avatar

    It’s as if James Cameron sat down one day 10 years ago and asked himself (as everyone should!), “how can I make a movie that is perfectly designed to please faustusnotes?” and, before he’d even had a chance to put his hand to his forehead, out of the blue came the answer: combine Nausicaa, Last…

  • Daily Mash proves nerds control our economy…

    … by revealing that Cheryl Cole is actually a computer-generated, manga-esque promotional image designed and maintained by a team of priapic teenagers working shifts in a dingy, fetid bedroom in Stoke littered with copies of White Dwarf magazine and a job lot of Triple Velvet. The “Diana in Heaven” article’s pretty funny too.

  • Heian era vox populi

    Because there isn’t a great deal of easy work in steamy Beppu, I’ve taken up some freelance editing work while I wait on certain work opportunities to develop over the next few months. This editing work involves editing about 100 very short (200 word or so) articles by adult Japanese students of English, written casually…

  • The evolution of society through Jethro Tull

    I went on a YouTube wander tonight, starting at Rupesh Cartel and ending up at Jethro Tull, who’ve been around since the 70s. I noted that in their earlier days Jethro Tull sang about very mediaeval stuff, along with the small concerns of ordinary life one might expect to associate with a peasant’s view (think…

  • A long time ago, in an ocean far far away

    Many years ago I ran a campaign I referred to as “The Apocalypse Campaign,” set in a post-apocalyptic Europe in which the sea level had risen. This was back when A4 drawing tablets for a computer were hideously expensive, and scanners were expensive too. So to make my higher sea-level Britain, I photocopied pages from…

  • Some thoughts on black swans, modelling and role-playing

    I have noticed recently a tiny debate going on between two blogs concerning whether or not it is sensible to assign the class of people called peasants a different distribution of ability scores to the class of people called lords. The distinction in question – 2d6 for peasants, 3d6 for lords – seems roughly fine…

  • Never thought I’d see the day, a Pirate Boat coming my way…

    I present this in honour of Sir Noisms’ adventures on the Inland sea, without further comment:

  • Congratulations, America!

    You’ve done it! 120 years after the introduction of the Bismarck system, a mere 60 years after the foundation of the National Health Service, 40 years after you put a man on the moon, and a mere 35 years since Australia introduced Medibank, you finally have a system of universal health coverage. Welcome to civilisation[1]!…