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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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Daily Blah for... Friday, December 24, 2004
Jingle Bell (Space) Rock
Over the last two days I took a leisurely drive down the California coast to spend Christmas Eve with friends here in Santa Monica (and on to Baja for Christmas and New Year). Over eight hours of negotiating the outrageously beautiful bends and bridges of Highway 1, bathed in the brightest blue weather, I listened to the unabridged audio book of Bill Bryson's A Short History Of Everything. Much of the book is devoted to making the average reader feel enormously lucky to be alive, here, now, on this planet and in this universe that are doing their damndest to wipe us out. Chapter 13, on the asteroid threat to Earth, made for particularly grim listening. I've read this stuff before, of course, but there was something about the clarity of Bryson's writing -- his forehead-slapping amazement that we often can't detect civilization-destroying space rocks until they've flown past us -- that really hit home.
And what should NASA announce on the same day I was listening to that? Only that there's yet another massive space rock set to make a disturbingly close rendezvous with our planet -- the most hazardous, in fact, yet detected. Okay, so it's not coming for 25 years, and it only has a 1 in 233 chance of actually hitting us. But that's not exactly so safe, is it? If you were told that there was a 1 in 233 chance of your plane crashing, would you get on board or wait for the next one? Isn't it about time we set up a human race insurance policy -- by establishing at least one colony somewhere else?
Oh, and merry Christmas, dear Blah reader.
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