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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
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"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... Wednesday, April 19, 2006
The Cow on California
"Don't we all have jobs to go to?" That was my first thought on arriving at the intersection of Market and Kearney at ten to five yesterday morning and finding that oh, at least ten thousand people had arrived ahead of me. I had pictured a handful of hardcore historians; instead, we had police helicopters, a vast crowd-control operation, giant TV screens, and thousands of tourists. The relative few in 19th century garb were surrounded by amateur photographers, eager to make something memorable of this early-morning event. Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, the fire chief, the police chief, all made speeches that went unheard by most of us. Homeland security officials went through the crowd handing out whistles and disaster planning kits. The whistles were a big hit, and the minute's silence, under the circumstances, was a dead loss.
What would the survivors of 1906 have thought? Well, some of them were there, and they seemed to think very little. One wasn't even sure, when Newsom interviewed them for the cameras, how old he was. You got a very palpable sense of history slipping away; the death of living memory. Of those that could remember, the eldest had been five years old at the time of the quake, and their most prominent memory was of a cow running scared up California Street. As a result of the quake? Or a foreshadowing, an example of animals going crazy ahead of a seismic event? Our link to the past wasn't sure. Personally, I was fascinated by the idea of cows in the city, especially on the street I drive every day. This is all we get of the living past: guesses, glimpses, snapshots, vague memories of cows amidst the crowds and police helicopters and skyscrapers.
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