the geek shall inherit the earth

A week of interesting diversions, been listening to the Geekdad podcasts, because, well, I suppose, I am, a geek dad. Though probably not quite fully signed up to all the cultural reference points. I do not have box sets of all the Buffy series, though I did watch them all, and I only have one copy of BladeRunner, but overall pretty geeky.

Also, pretty obviously, I'm a dad.

I've been listening to the blogs back to back, so I've just caught up to 2008, which is feeling a bit more contemporary.


I've also just bought the latest issue of Monocle, I've been watching the podcast for a while, but the city special is the first actual issue of the magazine that I have bought. It is a good read, though like the Economist, there is just so much of it you feel deterred from buying it because you cannot manage to finish it. An entertaining read, though all rather silly in that all the readers are looking at these pricey architect commissioned houses, while commuting back home to their semi's. But I rather like getting ideas from these magazines, and then trying to recreate them myself, a bit of harmless escapism.

It is intriguing to read about what they reckon makes for a great city, albeit for the rich global nomad, more interested in eating out than getting a weekly shop or something to do with the kids.

Consistent features seem to include bicycles, eating out, diversity of shops, arts, tolerance, genuine mixtures of people, good design/architecture.

Not mentioned explicitly but implicit, would be a welcoming attitude. I do wonder if we are all feeling too emancipated now to work in service professions, seeing them as menial. I think that there is a nobility in any job done well, and we would all do well to increase our civility, manners and tolerance. For the very rich stealthy wealthy, the whole world is open to them, so they can easily enough decant following some bad experience. For those of us who are less mobile, it is civility that makes our cities tolerable.


Why I don't like Doctor Who anymore - nowadays Doctor Who is written as a soap opera that happens to be set in a science fiction setting. However it is the set characters who drive the plots. Note how seldom they ever visit anywhere that is particularly alien, the lack of genuinely different looking aliens, the lack of compelling ideas in the plots, the xenophobia. All in all I'm getting bored of Doctor Who, so will probably give up on it, save for the odd Stephen Moffat episode, as he remains an inventive and amusing writer.

Austerity starts to bite - our old fixed term mortgage has ended, and suddenly we are paying nearly an extra hundred a month for what we are getting. It would be good to be able to invest more in the depressed stock market, but the routine outgoings are as ever non-negotiable. Time to hunker down and weather the recession as best we can.