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The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
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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.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
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.
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Daily Blah for... Monday, June 03, 2002
An Open Letter to India and Pakistan
TO: Prime Minister Vajpayee, New Delhi; General Musharraf, Islamabad
If you two don't stop carrying on this second, I'll knock your heads together. I'm sick of your endless whining. "He started it! He sent terrorists into my part of Kashmir!" "Well, he controls more of Kashmir than he should! Mo-ooom, he's on my side! Da-aad, he's looking at me!" Just don't make me stop this car, or I'll give you something to be sorry about.
Except you're not kids playing around in the back seat, are you? You're grown men playing with nuclear weapons. Obviously, you knuckleheads spent too much time thrilling to the exploits of the superpowers during the Cold War, as if you were reading superhero comics. But you weren't watching close enough. Even if we did neatly sidestep global annihilation -- and we did so more through good luck than diplomatic expertise -- the arms race bankrupted the Soviet state out of existence and lumbered the US with trillion-dollar deficits. Continue down this road, and either you kill tens of millions of your people and screw up the global environment and the global economy, or you drive hundreds of millions of your people further into resentful poverty, so much so that they might start showing up in New Dehli and Islamabad with pitchforks, torches and hanging rope. Great statesmanship, guys.
This is, of course, all about your stupid concepts of honor. Anyone who has ever experienced a barroom brawl in the making understands what is going on here. Kashmir, that tiny chunk of mountain range, that's just the spilled pint of beer, the girl, the pool match, the excuse, the scenery behind your egomaniacal macho posturing. Neither of you want to look like the one that backed down. And so you start vaguely hinting at the very large weapon in your back pocket. This weekend, both of your ambassadors -- who are meant to be the ones calming things down, for crying out loud, check the job description -- effectively said that any time you guys ruled out the use of nukes it was pure oratory, mere propoganda. Your military machines are keeping their options open. And you know how military men love big bombs. For Allah's and Krishna's sake, you imbeciles, stop them. Don't let them put this thing on an unstoppable timetable, like the European generals of World War I, beyond political intervention.
You may be a nationalist loon, Vajpayee -- and Musharraf, you're a dictator with the toppling of a democracy on your conscience -- but you're smarter than this. Read up on the medical implications of nuclear war. Neither of you will be safe. Nor will your families. If the dry text doesn't work, try some pictures of nuclear explosions. And when you're done, just remember: as in all barroom brawls, the one who walks away first will be judged the bigger man.
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