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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... Thursday, August 03, 2006
Future Boy Goes On Vacation
No, not literally -- sad to say for any of you who are getting sick of these interminable "Future Boy" plugs. No, this column takes on the shocking fact that the average American gets no more than 12.4 days of holiday a year -- less, according to this nonprofit group with no less grand an aim than taking back time, than the holidays of the average medieval peasant. (It must be like the Moscow State Circus inside Karl Marx's grave right now. Poor guy never guessed about American-style voluntary enslavement.)
Now, maybe I'm just, you know, British. But this seems ludicrous to me, the very definition of insanity. When our time on Earth is so short, why do we give so much of it to our employers? Our employers might be the kind of people who get a kick out of working long hours -- by definition, they pretty much have to be. But that doesn't mean they get to make everyone else play the same game. Or am I just, you know, a believer in representative democracy?
No, I don't think I'm alone, and that's why I chose to predict that this is the nadir of time-off, that the leisure economy is just waiting to muscle in on worktime, especially once employers realize that job burnout is costing them $300 billion a year. Admittedly, I have no more sound basis for this than my own optimistic, if persuasive argument. But that, my friend, is the prerogative of the columnist.
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