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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... Friday, July 08, 2005
For A Few Pennies More
A loyal Daily Blah reader asks: this political laundry listmaking is all very well, but where are my emotions? How do I, an Englishman abroad, truly feel about the London bombings?
Well, naturally, I was peturbed when this same reader woke me up yesterday morning with the shocking news. There followed a couple of hours of phone calls and emails, making sure family and friends were all accounted for. They are -- the last reply came today -- and I was never too concerned that they wouldn't be. 700 injuries and 50 deaths may sound like a lot, but in a city of ten million it's a drop in the bucket.
I don't want to sound insensitive. Yet this was, on the scale of tragedies, not an enormous one. More people died, by far, in each of the three football stadium disasters that remain terribly fresh in British minds (96 people at Hillsborough in 1989, 54 people at Bradford in 1985, 66 at Ibrox in 1971). Yes, yesterday did see the country's worst terrorist attack, but that's only because the IRA never went in for Al Qaeda-style synchronization.
You have to remember that Britons of my generation, especially Londoners, grew up under the shadow of terrorism. Every year brought a fresh atrocity: eleven soldiers killed and 50 civillians injured in Hyde Park in 1982. Six shoppers killed and 90 injured at Harrods in 1983. The IRA blew up politicians at Brighton, mourners at Eniskillen and children -- children, for Christ's sake -- at Warrington. No target was too innocent for those cowards.
As strange as it may sound to American ears, we got used to it. We got used to false alarms that cleared train stations and motorway service stations and generally hampered commuting. We got used to sniffing dogs and a dearth of rubbish bins on the Underground. It was a hassle, and like most hassles, it was part of life. Just background static. Treating it that way, I've always thought, is the best response civilians can have to terrorists. They love attention to their cause and it annoys the hell out of them to be ignored.
So how do I feel? I don't feel fearful. I don't feel threatened. I've had a lot of practice at not feeling fearful or threatened. I do feel sad that the clock seems to have gone back twenty years in London, if only for one day. I feel angry that no warning was given, that this synchronized bombing business appears to be designed to cause maximum ruckus in the media, and I feel extremely angry that the media, especially on this side of the pond, is lapping it up -- and thus allowing the perpetrators to chalk this up as a success. The city's commuters went about their business in a defiantly normal way today. So did traders on the London Stock Exchange. Why can't the 24-hour news networks? Why must my profession play right into the terrorist's hands by spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt?
But most of my ire I'm holding in reserve for any American who still harbors a false romantic image of the IRA, who would dare to tell me that there's a difference between then and now, who came over all sympathetic yesterday when in 1982 they might have dropped coins in dubious collecting tins in Irish pubs. Every Briton remembers that the US was a Johnny-come-lately to World Wars I & II; the same holds true for the War on Terror. We've been fighting it for a long time, mate. Where were you?
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