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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... Monday, July 24, 2006
Art Kills
I was raised in a North-Eastern English town of roughly 50,000 souls with the decidedly odd name of Chester-le-Street. It doesn't make the national news much. Indeed, it rarely makes the local news. We have a storied history going back millennia in Chester-le-Street, but it involves a lot of use of the word "former" -- former Roman encampment, former burial place of Saint Cuthbert, former target of Viking raiders, former prosperous market town on the former Great North Road, former coal-mining hub, former location of one of the last remaining games of medieval-style street football, which was formally suppressed in 1920 out of concern for life and limb. Henceforth, the town council decreed, no officially-sanctioned display of fun would kill its participants. Not in Chester-le-Street.
 At least, not until yesterday, when a giant inflatable art project in the park broke loose from its moorings, reared up its colorful head like the Lambton Worm (a local dragon myth), and spat out the humans inside, throwing two women thirty feet to their deaths. I wish I were making this up, but it's all right here--captured, naturally, on mobile phone video.
Many questions remain about this bizarre incident. Did some idiot pranksters intentionally untie the sculpture? How could it possibly rear up thirty feet, with people inside acting as counterweights? How strong would the wind have to be? And perhaps most importantly, what on Earth was this installation, so redolent of Burning Man that its name was "Dreamscape", doing in bloody Riverside Park in bloody Chester-le-Street? Someone has been shuffling my life's locations like a deck of cards, and I would not be more surprised to see the Empire State Building suddenly sprout up in the middle of Oxford.
In any case, my hometown is once again on the map, as a place of artistic (if horrific) destruction, and I can't help but feel a surge of perverse pride. Clearly, the council needs to take this reputation and run with it. They could challenge extreme sportsmen and daredevils from around the world to come ride the infamous Lambton Worm Dreamscape. More urgently, they should reinstate the annual street football game. Think of the tourism! The licensing deals! The broadcast rights! I would happily offer my services as color commentator.
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