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: Plain old conceit

  • How Should the Public Interact with Scientists?

    In preparation for a post on the political origins of anti-vaccination ideology, I want to make a point about the way that the ordinary public interact with scientists. My last post on anti-vax and Republicans has been linked to by a climate change blog, and on that blog one of the commenters is making big…

  • The Impact of Obamacare on Ordinary Americans: A Doctor’s View

    This week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine has a perspective piece by a doctor from Kentucky, describing the changes wrought by Obamacare in its first year. The doctor, Michael Stillman, is writing from a clinic serving a relatively poor area with limited health access: 60% of the doctor’s patients had no health…

  • Some Design Principles for RPG Systems

    Over the past few years I’ve looked at a lot of the probabilistic and statistical aspects of specific game designs, from the Japanese game Double Cross 3 to Pathfinder, including comparing different systems and providing some general notes on dice pools. I’ve also played various amounts of World of Darkness, Iron Kingdoms, D&D, Warhammer 2…

  • Will Self Declares War on George Orwell

    Will Self has declared war on George Orwell, anointing him the “Supreme Mediocrity” in a mediocre essay distinguished only by its needless use of the word “lucubrations.” For those of you Americans out there who know of Orwell but have never heard of Will Self (I wonder how that came about?), Self is a novelist…

  • A Few Irritated Thoughts on Western “Culture”

    I have recently been spending a lot of time around (white) foreigners in Japan, much more than usual, and a recent experience with a particular pair of them has helped me to understand a kind of increasing discomfort I have with the way westerners interact and the way they perceive Asia. I guess being largely…

  • What to do About Maths?

    On Monday I was required to monitor at the Tokyo University undergraduate entrance exams. I shepherded 60 terrified 17 year olds through a 2.5 hour Japanese language test and then a 100 minute maths test. These tests were part of a two day examination process for those want to enter the humanities faculty of Tokyo…

  • Is the Blogosphere Really Responsible for Hysteria in Modern Debate?

    A couple of days ago Australia’s prime minister (PM) Julia Gillard found herself in the unprecedented position of having to host an extended news conference to hose down allegations of corruption from 17 years ago. A slightly abridged version of the news conference is available here, and it’s a barn-storming performance by Ms. Gillard that…

  • Privacy Policy at the Faustus Academy

    It’s come to my attention recently that I’ve never actually written a comments policy, or stated what my privacy policy is on this blog. Even though very few people visit this tiny part of the internet, it may surprise both of you to discover that I have actually had to enact an element of my…

  • Gruumsh Hate R

    Gruumsh not think R help much like poetry. Gruumsh need use R to crush human foe. Gruumsh not like read help, but sometimes have to. Here help for round function, Gruumsh quote verbatim: Note that for rounding off a 5, the IEC 60559 standard is expected to be used, ‘go to the even digit’. Therefore…

  • Why Working with R Really Sucks

    Today, doing a little task in R, I had cause to look up the following “warning” that appeared after compiling a script: Warning message: In readLines(file) : incomplete final line found I couldn’t figure out what this warning meant, because the script ran fine, so I did a web search and I came across this…