Compromise and Conceit

Infernal adventuring…

recent posts

about

An Australian statistician and role-player living in Japan, interested in the theory and practice of role-playing…

Tag: controversy

  • In Praise of British Cooking

    Yesterday I discovered this excellent essay by George Orwell talking about the joys of English food. Many people will tell you that British food is terrible but actually that’s not true at all, and George Orwell mounts a spirited defense of the English culinary tradition in this article. What is true is the slightly different…

  • Problems and Opportunities in Japan’s Ageing Population “Timebomb”

    Now the world’s population has reached 7 billion, there is some talk of the consequences for the planet, and as always happens at this time attention has turned to Japan’s ageing population. This is usually seen as a bad thing for Japan, with various predictions of population crash and economic catastrophe for the world’s second…

  • Get off My (Maths) Lawn!

    In the Australian state of New South Wales, final year mathematics exams were held a few days ago and the Sydney Morning Herald reports the advanced maths exam was “cruel and difficult.” Students on some message board are posting sad messages saying they might as well not have bothered because it was so hard, and…

  • Can the GM Ever be a Neutral Arbiter

    In comments to my post on shitty GMing it has been suggested that the problem simply came down to a GM who was running the game as a “neutral arbiter” and had I known that I wouldn’t have felt hard done by. Putting aside the particular exigencies of that case, I don’t believe that it’s…

  • Merlin, Daily Mail Reader

    I am reading the Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell at the moment. I’m really enjoying it and will have more to say when I’m done, but as an initial thought I would like to mention that I am struck by how much like a Daily Mail reader Merlin is. He wants to purge all foreigners…

  • A Game of Thrones and the Misogyny of Imagined Worlds

    I have just finished the immensely enjoyable Game of Thrones TV series, which is a thoroughly excellent and engrossing viewing experience and a fine addition to the genre. I don’t really have any substantive criticisms to level against it, except that it was too short. Oh, and that it was awesomely misogynist, and this misogyny…

  • Explaining the London Riots, Japanese Style

    So I was at the gym this morning doing a quick AM session before heading off to see the Ghost Scrolls, when I saw a daytime TV show doing a special report on the “London NEET Riots” (イギリスニート暴動). This was a classic daytime TV formula, consisting of a studio set with a panel of 3…

  • Propaganda, and Labelling Terrorists “insane”

    With typical alacrity, the islamophobic right have moved from claiming the Norwegian terrorist was a muslim, to claiming it was a “false flag” operation to claiming he is just a lone madman. The reasons they have to do this are obvious – labeling him a terrorist places him in a political context, and the political…

  • Censorship of Computer Games in Australia

    On the same day it considers banning facebook for children, the Australian Federal Government has agreed a deal to implement an “R18+” category for computer games. This category brings computer games into line with videos, and has long been sought by the game industry – the alternative method used by the censorship board in Australia…

  • Let’s Read Tolkien Together!

    The latest nerdrage over the depiction of Dwarves in The Hobbit has really hit home to me something I often suspected about fanboys but never really paid much attention to: they don’t actually know much at all about the text they love. They’re much more interested in their personal, often (usually?) quite fantastic misinterpretations of…