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…

Tag: controversy

  • Current Reading: Woken Furies

    This is the third book I have read in the Takeshi Kovacs series, by Richard Morgan. It’s set maybe 100 years after the last one I read, Broken Angels (which I seem strangely to have neglected to review) and features an older, much angrier Kovacs returning to his homeworld, Harlan’s World, for personal reasons. The…

  • Tyranny and Structure in Role-playing

    Noisms at Monsters and Manuals has written a comparison of gaming systems with political theories, dichotomized into “top-down” games (D&D 3rd Edition) and thinkers (Marx) and “bottom-up” games (OD&D) and thinkers (Hayek). Noisms makes it clear what side he falls on (he’s a “bottom-upper,” oo-er), which he characterizes as “the right” (vs. “the wrong”), but…

  • New Opinion on the Tory Health Reforms

    Recent revelations in the UK have shown that the UK government’s intended efficiency savings aren’t working (shock!) and it faces a huge funding shortfall. This is hardly unexpected, and probably the first of a range of such reports that are going to start filtering around Whitehall soon, but it has spawned a disappointing tirade from…

  • Speculation on the class and culture of role-players from four nations

    I have now had the chance to role-play with gamers from 3 nations – Japan, Australia and the UK – and I’ve seen a lot about American role-players online. From my experiences I’ve begun to get a bit of a sense of the politics, class and background culture of gamers in these 4 nations, so…

  • Thoughts on Zombies and Sociology

    Recently I have been watching The Walking Dead, a new Zombie apocalypse survival TV show from the US. So far – 5 episodes in – it’s awesome, with all the hallmarks of a good zombie show (zombies, good make up, gore, tension, nowhere to run) and all the hallmarks of a good US TV show…

  • Bilbo The Pimp

    The Daily Mash has responded to claims that The Hobbit is racist in its typical style. Their commentary on alcohol tax increases is also hilarious.

  • Science by Press Release

    Today I had an article published in the British Medical Journal, along with an accompanying editorial[1] and a front page press release (which will be visible for about 3 minutes before the next health care fad overwhelms it). The article itself is an investigation of rates of referral to secondary care (that’s “hospital” to the…

  • Will the Tory Education Reforms Reduce Inequality?

    On the weekend I spent an hour in a bathtub with a dyed-in-the-wool conservative[1], discussing the merits of various solutions to the world’s problems – not a very fruitful discussion, since we disagree on many things, but we are easily able to agree on the horrible situation the UK faces, and during the discussion I…

  • The Daily Mash Proves Comics are the Ultimate Chick-Magnet

    The Daily Mash today has an excellent article on how women prefer me who like comics. It even has a warhammer reference: They should make Warhammer condoms, shaped like balrogs and space marines So this is where I’ve been going wrong my whole life…

  • Faustus’s Position on the Legalization of Heroin

    This post has come about because over at Crooked Timber I was outed as one of the authors on this paper, while defending the prohibition of heroin (I’m the third author on that paper, and have a brace like it[1]). I don’t usually like to reveal my identity on the internet, because … well, because…