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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 always write every day?
I am trying harder. I promise. Please don't hurt me.
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, March 27, 2003
The Progress Index
So I wanted to tell you about an idea I had. An idea that could transform Daily Blah from a bog-standard blog about random events, thoughts and feelings in my life to something a little more substantial.
Remember my post the other day? The one about this war dragging the civilized world down, back into the Stone Age? Well, that's the kind of thing I find myself considering all the time: whether we’re making progress as a species, becoming more enlightened, more self-aware, more peaceful, more respectful, more civilized, more cerebral; or slipping backwards, becoming more violent, more greedy, less tolerant, more self-destructive. In short: are we focused more on the long-term than the short term?
Unfashionable as this may be in the age of irony, I'm a fan of progress. I feel I'm standing on the sidelines of human history cheering my lungs out for the greater, long-term good; booing every war, every lawmaker who gives in to the urges of corporate greed. But it’s a complex game we’re watching here. The players keep changing sides. The moves across the pitch, and often under it, are extraordinarily subtle. The goals are rarely obvious, and nobody can say with any certainty what the score is.
Nevertheless, I keep score. I can’t help it. Either a news story makes my heart leap, or it gives me a queasy feeling in my stomach (or it leaves me unmoved, in which case it probably isn’t news and most likely has something to do with a celebrity). So if this is happening every time I pick up the paper, why not try to quantify it?
Call it the Progress Index. Every Daily Blah entry concerned with the wider world will be followed by a positive or a negative score, determined by how much impact I think it has on our collective future. The looming battle on the road to Baghdad, for example, might rate a minus 50; the Senate’s principled stand against drilling for oil in the Alaskan wildlife refuge would make for a plus 10. No story is too small to be considered: the fact that New York just banned smoking in restaurants, bars and workplaces could save enough lives in the long term to be worth a plus two. Each score would be applied to an ongoing total, posted at the top of the page. And if that total ever breaks into positive numbers – well, at least I won’t feel quite so worried about where the world is going.
This is, of course, a completely arbitrary exercise: just a bit of fun, as BBC presenter Peter Snow used to say. You may well disagree with my numbers. In fact, I'd be very surprised if you agreed with them all. But I'll always explain my thinking, and you are welcome to argue with me, or send in stories I might not have considered. If you change my mind – and I do try to stay open minded – I’ll change my score. My only proviso: you must source the stories. Rumors and conspiracy theories don’t make the grade, I’m afraid.
I’m just about to move house and head off to Europe for a three-week long vacation, so the Progress Index won’t go online until I return in May. In the meantime, I want to hear your thoughts. Should I change the layout of the site, dividing it into positive and negative, or would that look needlessly complex? How about icons – up arrows and down arrows? And can you think of a more exciting name? (I also liked "Karma Index", but that sounds a little too Slashdot-ish.)
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, March 26, 2003
Stupidity By the Numbers
World deaths from smallpox in the last 30 years: 0
Terrorist groups known to have the smallpox virus: 0
U.S. deaths from the smallpox vaccination program: 3
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, March 25, 2003
War Fatigue
This always seems to happen several days into one of these one-sided modern wars. It happened with Afghanistan; it happened with Kosovo. I find my desire to watch the 24-hour news channels waning, and my longing for escapist fiction and movies increasing. I think it takes a certain kind of immature, Tom Clancy-esque, toy soldier warlust to stay engaged. How many genuinely thoughtful people can absorb accounts of tank battles and enemy deaths without knowing what it really means, without feeling the crushing weight of human loss? You have to be the kind of armchair soldier who wears combat fatigues to the mall. Your heart has to be as rigid as a rock in a Baghdad sandstorm.
The whole concept of conflict is too horrifically primitive to stomach. We're slipping backwards as a species. We're bombing ourselves back to the Stone Age.
Death to Spammers
To Saeid and Daniel Yomtobian, creators of the Xupiter toolbar: You are the worst kind of bottom-feeding scum imaginable. I hope you both die horrible, slow deaths. I hope little poisonous spikes are hammered into your fingernails and large earthworms worms feast on your eyelids.
Pardon my uncharacteristically violent outburst, but I've just spent the best part of an hour removing the Yombtobian's nasty little piece of spyware from my PC. I didn't ask for it. Xupiter just installs itself. When you visit a client website, it worms its way into your browser, changes your homepage, stops you from searching for anything else, and causes a zillion pop-ups to appear whenever you launch a new window. Sadly, it is thus far immune to the Internet's best spyware remover, Ad-Aware. You have to go in and delete it manually: here's how. It's a long, complicated process involving going into the registry and using the DOS command prompt. I shudder when I think of the thousands of innocent, techno-challenged PC users out in the heartland who are going to have to deal with this.
Do the Yomtobians really think this is clever? Do they actually make money this way? How do they sleep at night? According to Wired News, the father and son team are infamous spammers and porn site merchants from Sherman Oaks with several dozen lawsuits pending against them. Generally I'm against the death penalty, but I'd be willing to consider it in this case.
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