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: Reviews

  • FYI: I Will Not Watch You Die

    Is it just me, or has the Guardian embarked on a project of excessive tastelessness[1]? In the last two days they have shown video footage of 17 people dying in a hot air balloon (apparently you can see people jumping to their deaths) and of a man being dragged to his death by a South…

  • Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Beginner’s Game

    Today I received my copy of Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, along with some necessary WFRP3 materials. Edge of the Empire is described as a “beginner’s game,” which means that it essentially doesn’t have any character creation rules, has a very stripped down combat system, and contains a well laid out…

  • Peter Jackson’s Hobbit: Too Many Goals for One Movie?

    In the last week I have watched the Hobbit twice, first with my partner and then as part of an end-of-year party with my players. In both cases, the people who attended the movie with me gave it the thumbs up – we all really enjoyed it – and I can definitely say that it…

  • Bruce Dickinson Reciting Blake at Canterbury Cathedral

    Last night I stumbled on this video of Bruce Dickinson, from Iron Maiden, singing William Blake’s Jerusalem with Ian Anderson (from Jethro Tull) accompanying him on flute. It was performed at a Christmas concert at Canterbury cathedral last year. He performed GK Chesterton’s Revelations, the inspiration for Iron Maiden’s song of the same name, at…

  • Should Smokers Require a License?

    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…

  • Rushdie vs. le Carre: the Battle from the Land Before Time

    Today’s Guardian reports on an exchange of letters between Salman Rushdie and John le Carre, from 1997, in which they disagree vehemently about the limits of free speech. At this point in his career Rushdie was in hiding from Islamic fundamentalists, and le Carre was in trouble for criticizing Israel – which of course put…

  • Reassessing the Stern Review in the Light of Superstorm Sandy

    One possible consequence of the collapse of the summer arctic ice cover is that storms like Sandy will become the new normal. There are reasons to think that the freak conditions that caused Sandy to become so destructive are related to the loss of arctic ice, and although the scientific understanding of the relationship between…

  • Ethical Concerns in the Study of Online Communities

    A few weeks ago I put up a post about the research challenges in studying online communities, in which I suggested that online surveys are  an essential but flawed tool for the study of communities that are largely defined by their internet rather than their physical presence. My post was in the context of the…

  • In Which Faustus Eats Grasshopper

    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…

  • Letters from Iwojima: Deep Insight into the Futility of War, or Defense of Noble Sacrifice?

    Or both? Last night I had the pleasure of watching Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwojima, which is a superb and beautiful movie with a genuine sensitivity to both Japan’s sad war history and to its wartime culture. It’s all the more impressive for having been directed by an American (and from a generation not renowned…