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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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Daily Blah for... Friday, September 17, 2004
A Monstrous Fraud
If you've spent the last week in a funk about Bush's growing poll lead -- as I have, judging by a quick re-read of yesterday's screed -- you ought to be mightily heartened by this Jimmy Breslin column, which calls the polls a "monstrous fraud" and pollsters "indolent salesman of falsehoods." Why? Because they do not and cannot call the nation's 169 million cellphones. These are disproportionately owned by the young, who disproportionately vote Democratic.
True, they also disproportionately don't vote -- but even 0.001% of 169 million could swing this election. And haven't you ever wondered why Bush was ahead by 2%-5% in the last polls of the 2000 race, but Al Gore ended up winning the popular vote by half a million? The difference could well be entirely due to cellphones. And an awful lot of young people have junked their land lines in the last four years. None of this is new information to those of us paying attention, but Breslin puts it across in such a forceful way it's impossible not to take heart. There's a newspaper columnist who knows how to campaign; who doesn't shirk when strong words are required.
The only problem comes if the "false" Bush-leads polls become reality because everyone believes them, and it infects the blue states with buyer's remorse about Kerry (blue states are really, really good at buyer's remorse), and cellphone-weilding Democrats, sensing all is lost, stay home on November 2. The snowball effect, in other words. Life imitating monstrous fraud. Kind of like the last four years.
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