I'm miffed I did not get that job I applied for, which in my gut tells me, that I do really want to move on to a piece of work that will really challenge and engage me. To be honest it is not the money, or the status, it is just that I want to work on something that stretches and engages me.
HOWEVER - not challenging in the frequently used sense,
"this is a challenging post, which requires a good sense of humour"
which is translated as, you will have to be able to laugh about how stupid you were to take on the job in the first place, and it certainly is challenging, in the same way that repeatedly hitting your head off a brick wall is challenging.
At the moment I just feel that I am caught up in the rather dull process of stuff, rather than having the responsibility to make anything happen.
I suppose that I am getting clearer on where I want to be, and it is not too difficult to figure out how to get there, it is just a case of pressing on.
Sunday 28 September 2008
Sunday 14 September 2008
Is regeneration a myth?
Is regeneration a myth?
I was at some event, and one of the people attending, someone who actually lived in one of these areas that was being regenerated, said that the best thing to do would simply be to knock down the whole place. These places are often deeply unloved, even by those that live there.
The money spent on regenerating some places, you could probably have gold plated them over the years. And yet they persist as deprived areas for generations, they were deprived when I was young, half a lifetime later, I come back and it is still the same places that are run-down despite the best efforts to regenerate and shed loads of money.
We are told that regeneration has worked, for example a run down but thriving community is regenerated with dockside houses for the middle classes, and some posh restaurants. Have you really regenerated anything, or is it just a landgrab by the middle classes, shoving aside those without money, to get new houses with nice views.
Or the gorbals gets art, big arty developments. But the south side of the Clyde still feels like a post-blitz city.
Is it handy in policy terms to lump together lots of deprived people into a deprived area, and then anything you do there, is well targeted at the most deprived. But is that good for anyone, you are not deprived because you live in a bad area, nor are you well off because you don't.
Are areas deprived, because it offends our refined middle class sensibilities.
People apparently loved the gorbals, but they knocked down the tenements to build high rises, and all sense of community was lost.
Central heating does not equal civilisation, you are not deprived living in Brideshead simply because the heating is something out of Evelyn Waugh. Similarly Cold Comfort Farm, is it deprived.
Is it just that some places are more flagrant in their deprivation, or do some communities just work better, being better designed and laid out, more livable and human. Do we all want to live round a village square, sitting on the deck chair watching the village cricket team.
Why do architects design housing that they would not live in themselves, for example council housing that is so grim that you would struggle to sell it on the open market. Tower blocks that are no more than a box to exist in.
Should our houses be boxes to thrive in, our communities big boxes to thrive in. Are we predictable little sprouting seeds that just need the barest of moist cloth to exist on, or something wilder and stranger that does not really know what it wants.
I was at some event, and one of the people attending, someone who actually lived in one of these areas that was being regenerated, said that the best thing to do would simply be to knock down the whole place. These places are often deeply unloved, even by those that live there.
The money spent on regenerating some places, you could probably have gold plated them over the years. And yet they persist as deprived areas for generations, they were deprived when I was young, half a lifetime later, I come back and it is still the same places that are run-down despite the best efforts to regenerate and shed loads of money.
We are told that regeneration has worked, for example a run down but thriving community is regenerated with dockside houses for the middle classes, and some posh restaurants. Have you really regenerated anything, or is it just a landgrab by the middle classes, shoving aside those without money, to get new houses with nice views.
Or the gorbals gets art, big arty developments. But the south side of the Clyde still feels like a post-blitz city.
Is it handy in policy terms to lump together lots of deprived people into a deprived area, and then anything you do there, is well targeted at the most deprived. But is that good for anyone, you are not deprived because you live in a bad area, nor are you well off because you don't.
Are areas deprived, because it offends our refined middle class sensibilities.
People apparently loved the gorbals, but they knocked down the tenements to build high rises, and all sense of community was lost.
Central heating does not equal civilisation, you are not deprived living in Brideshead simply because the heating is something out of Evelyn Waugh. Similarly Cold Comfort Farm, is it deprived.
Is it just that some places are more flagrant in their deprivation, or do some communities just work better, being better designed and laid out, more livable and human. Do we all want to live round a village square, sitting on the deck chair watching the village cricket team.
Why do architects design housing that they would not live in themselves, for example council housing that is so grim that you would struggle to sell it on the open market. Tower blocks that are no more than a box to exist in.
Should our houses be boxes to thrive in, our communities big boxes to thrive in. Are we predictable little sprouting seeds that just need the barest of moist cloth to exist on, or something wilder and stranger that does not really know what it wants.
Saturday 13 September 2008
thoughts on criminology #2
I have not troubled myself to re-read my blog posting on criminology, but I have that nagging feeling, that it is not quite right.
I suppose that I should change my perspective. Crime is not an issue that can usefully be understood on a personal/individual basis.
What we need to do is to create social environments in which people can prosper. Not everyone will do well, but there should be the capacity there for people to do well. It is easy enough to look at social environments that seem to work well, or point to ones that do not work well.
An underlying problem is that, in science your first instinct is to lock down all the variables, and then just work with one, and see how it impacts on your system. Within a social environment, you cannot lock down the membership. On the one hand you are working with free individuals, they are free to leave when they want to. If someone has done well for themselves, and they want to leave your area, then you cannot forbid this. On the other hand, if people are coming into the area, similarly you have little scope to vet them either.
However, although you are dealing with different individuals, you might well have a steady state, with the population staying within certain broad definitional parameters. By making positive changes, would it be possible to encourage the population towards a different equilibrium. More people staying, different people coming.
Is the key to simply create attractive places to live, that then become so popular that not just anyone can get in. Is exclusivity the answer?
While that might work for one area, does it just do so at the expense of another area. Is this just a zero sum game, where you chuck more resource at one area, attract the mobile and choosy, beggaring another neighbourhood, that has not had the money spent on it.
Maybe the key is to create an attractive neighbourhood, but one which has not arrived there on a cost free basis. You can live in the neighbourhood but the cost of doing so is ....
volunteering and participating
being neighbourly
donating money, if you cannot donate time
keeping your garden tidy, and maintaining your house
Perhaps it is possible to extrapolate a list of activities that contribute to the local community, and those that detract from the community. That is not to say that the virtuous never do anything that detracts from the community, or that merely doing certain activities makes you an asset to the community.
Activities that contribute to the local community
using the local shop
using public transport
using local amenities, such as schools, community centres, parks
walking a dog
cycling
gardening
maintaining your house
maintaining an interest in what goes on in your street
being open and accessible
speaking to neighbours, smiling at strangers
getting involved, attending, joining, helping to run local organisations
tidying up things a bit
looking out for people
keeping an attractive front garden
getting involved in local issues
knowing the prominent people in your local community
etc.
On the flip side, there are activities that detract from the community
parking a car in the street - everyone does it, but if everyone parked three cars in the street there would be no street
untidy front garden
dropping litter
not engaging in the local community
basically the negatives of all the positives.
There are time banks, which count up all the time people put into some activities, so that you can then draw upon other people's time and expertise, there is also peer pressure where people feel compelled to behave like everyone else. I think the latter might be a more productive way of encouraging behaviour.
Stepping back, how do you encourage a community to shift from one that is not working, over to one that is. How can you achieve this sort of social engineering, is it something that government can do, can anyone do it?
Alternatively, maybe the lesson is that you need to fight hard to keep neighbourhoods working, where they are working, because once they are broken, it is near impossible to fix them again. Like the broken window, once broken, it does not easily fix.
I suppose that I should change my perspective. Crime is not an issue that can usefully be understood on a personal/individual basis.
What we need to do is to create social environments in which people can prosper. Not everyone will do well, but there should be the capacity there for people to do well. It is easy enough to look at social environments that seem to work well, or point to ones that do not work well.
An underlying problem is that, in science your first instinct is to lock down all the variables, and then just work with one, and see how it impacts on your system. Within a social environment, you cannot lock down the membership. On the one hand you are working with free individuals, they are free to leave when they want to. If someone has done well for themselves, and they want to leave your area, then you cannot forbid this. On the other hand, if people are coming into the area, similarly you have little scope to vet them either.
However, although you are dealing with different individuals, you might well have a steady state, with the population staying within certain broad definitional parameters. By making positive changes, would it be possible to encourage the population towards a different equilibrium. More people staying, different people coming.
Is the key to simply create attractive places to live, that then become so popular that not just anyone can get in. Is exclusivity the answer?
While that might work for one area, does it just do so at the expense of another area. Is this just a zero sum game, where you chuck more resource at one area, attract the mobile and choosy, beggaring another neighbourhood, that has not had the money spent on it.
Maybe the key is to create an attractive neighbourhood, but one which has not arrived there on a cost free basis. You can live in the neighbourhood but the cost of doing so is ....
volunteering and participating
being neighbourly
donating money, if you cannot donate time
keeping your garden tidy, and maintaining your house
Perhaps it is possible to extrapolate a list of activities that contribute to the local community, and those that detract from the community. That is not to say that the virtuous never do anything that detracts from the community, or that merely doing certain activities makes you an asset to the community.
Activities that contribute to the local community
using the local shop
using public transport
using local amenities, such as schools, community centres, parks
walking a dog
cycling
gardening
maintaining your house
maintaining an interest in what goes on in your street
being open and accessible
speaking to neighbours, smiling at strangers
getting involved, attending, joining, helping to run local organisations
tidying up things a bit
looking out for people
keeping an attractive front garden
getting involved in local issues
knowing the prominent people in your local community
etc.
On the flip side, there are activities that detract from the community
parking a car in the street - everyone does it, but if everyone parked three cars in the street there would be no street
untidy front garden
dropping litter
not engaging in the local community
basically the negatives of all the positives.
There are time banks, which count up all the time people put into some activities, so that you can then draw upon other people's time and expertise, there is also peer pressure where people feel compelled to behave like everyone else. I think the latter might be a more productive way of encouraging behaviour.
Stepping back, how do you encourage a community to shift from one that is not working, over to one that is. How can you achieve this sort of social engineering, is it something that government can do, can anyone do it?
Alternatively, maybe the lesson is that you need to fight hard to keep neighbourhoods working, where they are working, because once they are broken, it is near impossible to fix them again. Like the broken window, once broken, it does not easily fix.
Why I have not bought Spore!
I was pretty excited about the Spore Creature maker, although truth be told I only made one creature. So I was pretty keen to get Spore when it did come out, my daughters certainly enjoy Sims so this seemed like something that they would also enjoy.
However on the day of the big release, it was not available for Mac, so that put me off for a day or two. Then the links to get a Mac version were down, and it was pretty opaque what the Mac system specifications were. There were a few good reviews on the US Apple store site, one bad one on the UK Apple Store. The reviews of Amazon were phenominally negative.
Wikipedia shed a little more light on things, and checking out some personal blogs via Technorati a bit more.
All in all an interesting story was unfolding, the professional reviews were overwhelmingly positive, a few caveats, maybe not historic, but certainly momentous. The wisdom of crowds was telling a different story
DRM DRM DRM
limited gameplay in some levels
not a lot to do throughout
certainly no classic
only three installations, and immense problems getting any tech support
bugs when playing
buggy installation
won't run unless on an admin account (apple - big deal for me, all users have separate accounts, we run three computers, and I run the only admin account myself)
still fuzzy what machines would actually run the software
The game has been in development forever, and being hyped up for longer, so it can hardly be a case of rushing it out. The more likely explanation seems to be that the game is a shell, albeit a buggy one, that will allow for further expansion packs. An undersea level that was in promos has not been released, and it looks like EA do acknowledge that expansion packs will come out.
After the slating that Apple and Microsoft have had for releasing buggy software, it looks like the media are giving EA games a free ride here, they have released software that is buggy, and difficult to install, providing dismal tech support, but the traditional media have given them glowing reviews, and fail to pick up on issues like all the negative Amazon reviews disappearing through a technical glitch. It would appear that traditional media, and established web media want the same old rules of hype it high, stack it high, sell it in shedloads, to apply. The people that actually shell out money are trying to subvert this message, there is a degree of hysteria, I am not sure that the DRM is that big a deal, or the Amazon glitch, but I am equally certain that this looks to be a shockingly buggy and problematic piece of software that has not attracted the glowing reviews over gameplay that would encourage me to take a chance with it.
I will just let this one run for a while, as they say, wait till it turns up in the bargain bins, or they manage to iron out the bugs.
Had this been Apple or Microsoft it would have been front page news, poor products are hard to forgive, but the games industry still seems to get away with releasing stuff that is bright and shiny, without getting probed on the substance. I hope that we are entering a new world, where companies need to impress lots of vocal customers, and not just a few privileged media folk. On recent performance the average Joes seem to have been much more astute here, and it is their advice that I will be following.
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