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Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
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Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
If it's called Daily Blah, how come you don't ... hey, wait, you're writing every day!
See? Told you I'd try harder.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
Praise for Daily Blah:
"It is fun to watch the author's navel-gazing joy." - Sunday Times (UK)
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"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
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Daily Blah for... Monday, April 22, 2002
Crazy Kooks Gouge Google
From the people who brought you the Dmitry Sklyarov case ... yes, the terrifying Hollywood-born monstrosity that is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act strikes again. This time it is being used as a weapon by the even-more-pernicious Church of Scientology to attack everyone's favorite search engine, Google. You see, just as it links to almost everywhere on the web, Google used to link to a website that criticizes Scientology and contains copyrighted Scientology material. Now the breathtakingly stupid DMCA, a law written to protect Big Entertainment's profits in the post-Napster age, says any kind of technology that allows you or me to view copyrighted material without the owner's permission is criminal technology. So the high priests of Travolta were able to bully Google into removing the links. But there's a sunny side to the story -- the church's complaint letter, which contains the offending web addresses, is now the second most popular search result for "Scientology" on Google -- and in a far more prominent place than the link that got nixed. Just goes to show: on the Internet, be extra-careful what you wish for. You might get it.
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