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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)
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"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
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Daily Blah for... Tuesday, July 08, 2003
War Without End
So now, according to the CIA, we have another renegade Arab leader in hiding making tapes exhorting his countrymen to attack Americans. Saddam and Osama: two Emmanuel Goldsteins for the price of one. You have to ask yourself why neither has been caught yet. Is our intelligence really that bad, our reward money really that laughable? Are we waiting for the right moment in the 2004 campaign, perchance? Or worse, are these guys being deliberately let alone -- emasculated, but still able to look and sound threatening on the evening news -- to scare the bejesus out of the home front?
I'm not asking you to believe it. I don't necessarily believe it myself. But I do like to keep an open mind, and think we do freedom no service if we refuse to consider who gains from the current situation. When international evildoers remain at large, defense budgets increase. Whether it is conscious of this or not, the fact is that the defense establishment -- contractors and the Pentagon both -- stand to benefit financially from some form of continuous, low-level war. Nothing so gauche as another Vietnam; nobody wants to see that number of body bags on the evening news. Elections get lost that way. But half a dozen GIs being killed every week or so -- well, nobody seems to be taking to the streets to protest that. After all, we're supposed to be supporting our troops, right?
But perhaps supporting them means wanting to bring them home as soon as possible. Perhaps living in a free society obliges you to be skeptical of what authority, any authority, tells you. Perhaps, just perhaps, the lure of unimaginable wealth -- trillions of dollars, in this case -- continues to have the same corrupting influence that it has had throughout all of human history. Perhaps we need to start asking the difficult questions that arise in our gut, even though they sound outrageous out loud, even though we have no answers yet.
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