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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, October 28, 2005
The Cheneygate Paradox
The word "Cheneygate" is causing a fuss over at Wikipedia. Someone posted a definition of it, claiming it was a word "given by some commentators on United States politics" to the Plame, Miller and Rove fiascos. Now I've heard Plamegate, Millergate and Rovegate, but I haven't yet heard Cheneygate. I think we need more of a smoking gun for there to be a Cheneygate, as much as I oppose the current administration and as much as the Libby indictment gladdened my heart. We just haven't got enough dirt on Big Time yet. And "some commentators" is so generic a term as to be meaningless.
Wikipedia agreed with the semantic point. Posting a definition for a nonexistant term, the keepers of the encyclopedia said, was grounds for deletion. Unhappily, this was the right thing to do. But it didn't stop a huge debate erupting about whether deletion was merited.
And as news of the debate leaked out, an interesting thing happened -- interesting, at least, to people like me who rub their hands with glee whenever a brand new baby paradox is born in the world. Whereas one of the early debaters said Cheneygate was only getting 112 Google hits, the number increased today to 485. (I just checked again, a paragraph later, and it's up to 488. Well, whatever the number is, it'll be one more once I've published this.)
The word Cheneygate, in other words, is slowly being born.
It's becoming legitimate purely because of the debate about it being legitimate. (There's a parable here for the way some branches of the media treat subjects like Intelligent Design and global warming denial.) I would now argue that it deserves a place on Wikipedia.
The definition needs changing, however. How about "Cheneygate is a name given to the subject under debate in a discussion about whether there should be a definition of a term called 'Cheneygate' on Wikipedia."
Good idea. I think I'll go insert that now.
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