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

  • Library Wars: A Chaotic Disquisition on Librarian Vigilantism

    I’m in grim London for a week, doing some work at Imperial College while the looming skies glower down on me. One great thing about flying ANA to London is you get to see Japanese-language movies with English subtitles, something that’s almost impossible if you live in Japan. Since my Japanese is not yet good…

  • Without Lemmy we are all Nothing

    But it don’t make no difference ‘cos I ain’t gonna be, easy, easy the only time I’m gonna be easy’s when I’m Killed by death I first encountered Motorhead when I was 14, at school in Australia. I had just moved to a new school (again!) and was getting bullied in my home room, so…

  • The End of the World: Zombie Survival One-off

    For our final session of 2015 my group and I tried a short run through the Fantasy Flight Games zombie apocalypse role-playing game The End of the World, a rules-lite system intended to simulate zombie survival in a collapsing world. I’m going to give a very brief summary of the game we played, and then…

  • The Force Awakens: An Entertaining but Disappointing Addition

    [This review contains SPOILERS so please don’t read it if you haven’t seen the film]. I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Sunday, and really enjoyed the spectacle and the homecoming feeling of it, but reflecting on some of the things that niggled at me during the movie, I have decided now that it…

  • The New York Times Editorial is Weak

    The New York Times has today published an editorial on the front page of the printed issue, demanding an end to the gun epidemic in America. This is apparently the first time since 1920 that the NY Times editorial has been on the front page, and this is apparently a sign that the editorial is…

  • Are the New Atheists Finally Losing It?

    Recent events in global politics seem to have brought the spit-flecked anti-Islamic radicalism of the New Atheists out into the open. Dawkins has had a bit of a thing about Ahmed Mohamed that is perhaps a little strange, but his most recent tweet drawing some kind of weird parallel between Mohamed and some poor child…

  • Why are there so many Daddy Issues in American Action Movies?

    On the plane back from Italy I watched Ant Man, which my friend told me was better than expected and because I saw Jurassic World on the way over to Italy. Ant Man was an okay movie – the action scenes were okay, the ant-dude got a few decent moments of humour, the ant-control stuff…

  • Cyberpunk History: A Siberian Druid in Venice

    Date: 2nd November 2166 Weather: Sunny! I got laughed at for carrying an umbrella by all the old ladies in the square … Outfit: Yoga pants and a jacket. I thought Venice was meant to be the centre of fashion so packed all my shortest skirts and my coolest tights, and I had such a…

  • Is Health Insurance Really of no Value? (Spoiler: No)

    Today Vox had an article about a new study of health insurance in America that annoyed me in a number of ways, and highlighted both Vox’s patronizing know-it-all style, and the simplistic economics-worship of some of its writers (in this case Ezra Klein). It’s one of those Economics-101 “Yes, you think A but really this…

  • Mad Max Fury Road: A Savage Masterpiece of Eco-feminist Violence

    Mad Max: Fury Road is a masterpiece of Australian cinema, that makes the rare achievement of building on its predecessors in the series to bring post-apocalyptic film-making to what must, surely, be its apotheosis. Visually stunning, with a brilliant sound-track, incredible pace, and a simple joy in hedonistic old-school road wars violence that is deeply…