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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.
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Daily Blah for... Sunday, November 07, 2004
Dieboldgate
I would like nothing more than for discrepancies about this election to go away. They make my head hurt and my gut churn. I'd rather let Bush have his second term and be done with it. The thought that the United States might once again have an illegitimate president, due this time to massive electronic voting machine fraud, is too much to even contemplate.
And yet we have to try. Because it appears that the discrepancies between exit polling and final result are far greater in states that had EVMs with no paper trail. Check out this disturbing graph comparing the two. (Note that CNN and the AP changed their exit polls retroactively to conform with the result. I can't imagine anything more Orwellian).
Blackboxvoting.org has blanketed the country with the largest Freedom of Information Act request in history -- for modem transmission logs, computer trouble slips, etc. From just one such pre-election primary audit in Washington state last month, the site turned up a ton of stuff -- three crucial hours missing from primary day on the internal log, and lots of suspicious modem activity.
Then there are the old stories that won't go away. Max Cleland losing all-electronic Georgia in 02 by eight points when no pre-election poll or exit poll had shown him anywhere near defeat. Chuck Hagel's landslides in Nebraska in 96 and 02, even apparently winning all-Democratic black neighborhoods, on EVMs that he had sold the state as head of ES&S. Hagel's opponent cried fraud and said the story was "bigger than Watergate." Maybe it's time we listened.
In elections in developing countries, large differences between exit polling and the final result is the first sign of fraud that independent observers watch for. I hate to treat the US like a developing country. But what choice do I have? I must follow my curiosity, and my reasonable doubts, as far as they lead me into gut-churn territory.
UPDATE: After posting this message to my journalism school class list, it stirred a great deal of interest in that graph. One alum who now works for Air America passed it on to the talk show host Randi Rhodes, who promptly talked about it on air. There's a lesson for us all here: one email, one blog can help make a difference.
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