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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.
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Daily Blah for... Wednesday, September 11, 2002
Fly Me to the Moon
Huzzah! Mankind's first commercial flight to the lunar surface, by a company called TransOrbital, has been given the green light by the government and will launch in the next nine to twelve months. You can send a bit of yourself along in a time capsule that will crash-land on the surface: $17-$60 for pages of text, $2,500 if you want to splash out and send a business card, and $2,500 per gram for mementos: place your order here. Before you scoff, imagine the bragging rights. "Here's my card. Yeah, it went to the moon. No, not just in any old lunar time capsule. Remember that first ever commercial flight to the moon in '03?"
For it will no doubt be the first of many. And it will, once we figure out ways to make the Moon pay (lunar-orbit satellites are a good way to start) usher in a whole new era of commercial space exploration. This to me has always made more sense than leaving space in the hands of lumbering old government-funded dinosaurs like NASA. Not only will they be beholden to government (read: military) interests in space, they'll always be way too slow in getting there. Remember, most all early trips to the New World -- the ones that established all-important trade routes -- were conducted by private entrepreneurs. Sure, Columbus got government funding, but look how long that took him. See, all you have to do is tell the entrepreneur class that there's enough wealth in the metal content of a single asteroid to make one man richer than all other men in the history of the world put together, and just watch them go -- setting up companies like Transorbital, conducting rocket tests, chasing the money. If you want to see something done within your lifetime, like a Mars landing, make it a capitalistic endeavor.
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