I find myself quite concerned with public health policy and behaviour of the general public. As is my wont, with sober senses, I quietly compose my thoughts on matters, ensuring that I have brought together grounded evidence to generate considered convictions, this time comparing the public health policies of elimination from last year to this year ( Read more... )

There's been a small flurry of the articles on the Isocracy Network in the past few days; my own contribution, just posted, is a comparison between New Zealand and Sweden for dealing with the novel coronavirus. Wes Whitman has contributed a piece on the economic policies of James Meade, a rather under-rated 20th-century economist. Finally, there is ( Read more... )

"This holiday sucks!", I exclaimed earlier this week as the continuing and requisite movement restrictions are applied in lieu of travel and the social interactions that I would otherwise be taking. But one must adapt to our circumstances and make the best of The Plague conditions. Some people have become obsessive cooks, others have broadened ( Read more... )

It seems that I skipped my regular beginning-of-week journal entry, and it's not surprising either. Much of my time has been spent on "Project Melomys", a day initially inspired by First Dog on the Moon's cartoon about the first mammal extinction due to climate change. FDontM predicted that we would forget about the little brown rat but, as is my ( Read more... )

Apropos my last entry on seeing We Lost The Sea, I have two reviews up on Rocknerd of said band. The first is of the concert itself, where I do express my appreciation of the work. The second (posted on the same day!), is of their latest album, Truimph & Disaster which was released only a couple of months ago. My considered opinion is that it's ( Read more... )

A good portion of the past few days have consisted of moving various furnishings around in preparation of getting part two of our flooring done; thirty plus years old carpet goes out, laminate floorboards go in. The problem of being a somewhat bookish person is that one ends up with literally dozens of bookcases, and these aren't much fun to carry ( Read more... )

The weekend was RuneQuest Glorantha Con Down Under IV. It had roughly the same attendance as last year (around 50), but was a much longer conference, spread over two days. I was greatly assisted by Ninjadan who helped run around collecting the tote bags and printed journal for the last day. Anyway, everything went pretty much to plan. Jason Durall ( Read more... )

The past few days have been throwing myself into various activities after getting (mostly) over the cold last week. I have prepared myself for all the bits and pieces required for RuneQuest Glorantha Con Down Under, and I'm feeling quietly confident that it should all fall into place. Tonight we had a committee meeting of the Cooperative and pretty ( Read more... )

I guess it was inevitable. After a 24 hour sleepless flight, followed by two days of teaching, jumping from temperatures from just over ten to mid-thirties and back again, I would, of course, come down with a cold. Sunday I struggled through a session of RuneQuest Glorantha with a bit of a headache and sneezing, that evening I was utterly smashed ( Read more... )

The second half of the visit to Stuttgart included a visit to the Maulbronn Cloister, formerly of the Cistercians and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. With parts 850 years old, the monastery complex is in astoundingly good condition, effectively a preserved medieval village. It is unsurprising the local council now uses one of the buildings as ( Read more... )