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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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My TIME articles
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Online column index
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Daily Blah for... Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Burning a Hole in Our Pockets
3Trillion.org is a nice idea for a website. It takes the premise that the Iraq war will end up costing the U.S. three trillion dollars -- a conservative estimate, if Mr. McCain keeps us there for 10,000 years -- and presents this startling fact in a way any web dweller will understand. To wit: if there were an Amazon-style site where you could spend $3 trillion in any way you choose, what would you put in your shopping cart? For example, I picked up the entire city of San Francisco for $100 billion. (That's the combined value of all its real estate, though I have to imagine I'd get some sort of bulk discount.)
It's almost impossible to max out your cart. I snapped up a private Carribean island, constructed a moon base, ended world hunger for a year, funded universal literacy, took over Google (a bargain at $20 billion), built infrastructure across the U.S. for solar power and hydrogen cars, and in a kind of impulse decision at the checkout stand, bought the world's most expensive book (a $20 million Benedictine Bible). And still, I hadn't even broken $2 trillion. I had to pay back all of Social Security's debt, fix the Katrina damage, replace all U.S. agriculture with sustainable organic farming, give one dollar to every human being on the planet. Even then, I only maxed out my cart when I tried to buy Yahoo as well.
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