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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.
Praise for Daily Blah:
"It is fun to watch the author's navel-gazing joy." - Sunday Times (UK)
"It's really funny and informative." - Dave Eggers, author
"The Blah is becoming a daily destination for me." - Richard Marsh, Playwright
"I like it, and I don't." - Fiona Hogg, Teacher
"Better than Xanax." - Lessley Andersen, journalist
"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
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My TIME articles
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Daily Blah for... Thursday, January 09, 2003
Dissing Las Vegas
Two things continue to mystify me about Vegas. One: why do people pay good money to gamble? You could get the same effect if you filled your living room with gaudy neon, swigged repeatedly from a bottle of Jack Daniels and invited your friends round to pilfer forty or sixty dollars out of your wallet every half-hour. Two: why do people pay good money to go to technology trade shows? You could get the same effect if you filled your living room with giant corporate logos, hit your feet repeatedly with a large mallet and invited your friends round to talk excitedly about empty shells of plastic intended to represent The Product Of The Future.
I'm in my booked-at-the-last-minute room at the Monte Carlo, possibly the worst hotel-casino on this godforsaken Strip (where they ask you if you want to pay cash for room service), suffering from trade show overload. Spent the whole day striding purposefully around the Consumer Electronics Show along with 100,000 other idiots and oh, my poor footsies. What did I get for my trouble? A plateful of plastic pasta primavera and a handful of eye-candy products that will look good in the pages of Time. No doubt I, and any journalist so inclined, could have tracked down just as much information about just as many cool new products at home in front of my computer, swigging repeatedly from a bottle of Jack Daniels. So why do we journalists so inclined do this to ourselves? Because everyone else does. Because we might miss something if we didn't. And maybe, just maybe, because it makes the rest of the reporting year feel like a breeze in comparison.
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