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.
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
Friends, Bloggers, Countrymen ... lend your ears to these people. I come not to bury them, but praise them.
A very worthy-looking site that's just sprouted in the middle of the industry's doom and gloom about advances in media technology: NewsTechZilla. Not sure about the name.
The Rock-toman
The hit Christmas pressie in the Taylor household: the Rock Band Ottoman, containing everything you need to play the game in a comfy leather shell.
Smells Like Self-Love
To attract women, a man's scent must first attract himself -- so sayeth the Economist. And there goes my attempt to get my wife to do my aftershave shopping for me.
Just Give
Tired of getting stuff for Christmas? Forgetting the spirit of the season? Then create a charity registry on JustGive.org, and tell all your relatives. Your soul will thank you.
Bears in Space
Time was when Britain's space program couldn't get a man in a tracksuit up a ladder. Oh, how times have changed! Now my homeland has launched the first teddy bears into space. Next up: a reenactment of Brideshead Revisited on the International Space Station.
Get the Economy Sizzling
Stop press. The LA Times recommends using bacon as a form of currency, citing Burning Man. All well and good, except it wouldn't help our tottering banks -- who wants to save bacon for tomorrow? On the plus side, it would kick our addiction to foreign oil: no Middle East country is going to accept payment in pork products.
Half Empty vs. Half Full, Round One
Economic pessimists -- right now, that includes most of us -- will be drawn to the morbid fascination of It Died. It's the Fuc*edCompany of Web 2.0. For those most fascinated by the Titanic that is Old Media, this Twitter feed is like watching the iceberg hit in slow motion: The Media Is Dying.
A great article from Dan on our friend and newly-minted iPhone developer Dennis Hescox. I can vouch for how much fun Maze Wars Revisited is, having been one of the group playing it at the opening of the story.
Bike Manners
I love the concept behind Critical Mass, but some of the hardcore bicyclist element can be a bit too militant for my tastes -- and for the tastes of passing motorists. (After all, aren't we supposed to be converting them, rather than banging on their car doors?) So I was interested to hear about Critical Manners -- a similar kind of ride, only traffic laws are obeyed and politeness to motorists is the order of the day. I've yet to try it out -- the next ride is on Friday, and who knows what kind of turnout it gets -- but it has the potential to be the MLK to Critical Mass' Malcolm X.
Score one for the environment
More than 5,000 acres of prime real estate on the Sonoma coast, a few hours north of here, have been bought for the public. Note to self: go hiking there when it opens in the spring.
Swinging Subway
This extremely useful backpack, as demonstrated by a New York commuter, has my San Francisco friends eager to do the same thing on BART and MUNI.
In today's NYT, James Gleick has a smart, sensible op-ed on the future of the publishing industry in a Google world. Some books like encyclopedias and dictionaries are dying, he argues, but the paper and glue model will always be with us:
There’s reading and then there’s reading. There is the gleaning or browsing or cherry-picking of information, and then there is the deep immersion in constructed textual worlds: novels and biographies and the various forms of narrative nonfiction — genres that could not be born until someone invented the codex, the book as we know it, pages inscribed on both sides and bound together. These are the books that possess one and the books one wants to possess.
January's Vanity Fair cover, written by the supremely snarky Maureen Dowd, is on Tina Fey -- described as "the sex symbol for every man who reads without moving his lips." After she helped destroy Sarah Palin with spot-on satire, I'm inclined to agree. No one is hotter than the court jester, and finally we have a female in the role. (To say nothing of the Secretary of State.)
San Francisco is starting a green Christmas tree scheme. For $90, you get a tree in a pot that will be picked up after the holidays and planted somewhere in the city. The plants are all selected to grow wonderfully in SF's environment, so the selection isn't your traditional evergreen, and the branches look a little sparse -- but I'm intrigued by the New Zealand Christmas tree.
I just got a review unit of the new Flip Mino HD camcorder. Pretty nice results. A possible rival I'm also thinking of reviewing: The $149 Aiptek Action.
To fix what ails journalism, the Knight Fellowship -- a midcareer one-year program at Stanford -- is changing the focus of the fellowship. Out: Nonspecific descriptions of a year of auditing random classes. In: proposals with an entrepreneurial, and a new media focus. The Fellowship has launched a blog, called Knightline, to track reactions to the changes.
Meanwhile, some stats that hit very close to home on the decline of Time magazine staff and correspondents in recent years. (The argument: not only is the whole industry clearly in decline, but Time can no longer claim to have more "boots on the ground" than Newsweek.) How strange to see charts in which I play a role. I'm one of the Time numbers in all of those graphs for the years 2003-5. Thereafter, I quit the mag.
As the newspaper industry lurches towards the end of a very bad year, journalists like nothing more than publishing pre-emptive post-mortems on their own industry. Don't blame the quality of the journalism, says the AJR.
A mysterious job that seems like it was designed for me -- editor in chief of a new small business publication, based in San Francisco -- is posted to Craigslist. It's backed by "some legendary billionaires." Yes, I know who, but I'm not telling.
Signs of the McCain Apocalypse, Part 3
Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the GOP's last best hope: Sarah Palin's supposed command of the Alaskan National Guard.
Palin '08 = Eagleton '72?
Anyone else starting to see parallels between George McGovern's VP pick in 1972 and McCain's last Friday?
Both candidates made their choice at the last minute, with almost no vetting, to please their base. And both VP picks -- surprise! -- turned out to have some serious skeletons in their closets. (I'm not just talking about Palin's pregnant teenage daughter, her ethics investigation, or the fact that she was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it. Her membership of the Alaskan Independence Party, a secessionist group, seems to pose a more serious political problem. If she was a Dem, the GOP would be calling her a traitor right about now.)
According to Tuesday's NYT, McCain's pick was less of a Hail Mary and more of a hijacking. If he had his way -- and what does it say about McCain that he doesn't? -- we'd be looking at a McCain-Lieberman or a McCain-Ridge ticket:
"Up until midweek last week, some 48 to 72 hours before Mr. McCain introduced Ms. Palin at a Friday rally in Dayton, Ohio, Mr. McCain was still holding out the hope that he could choose a good friend, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, a Republican close to the campaign said. Mr. McCain had also been interested in another favorite, former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania. But both men favor abortion rights, anathema to the Christian conservatives who make up a crucial base of the Republican Party. As word leaked out that Mr. McCain was seriously considering the men, the campaign was bombarded by outrage from influential conservatives who predicted an explosive floor fight at the convention and vowed rejection of Mr. Ridge or Mr. Lieberman by the delegates."
Imperial Fleet Week
Once a year, the U.S. Navy in all its might descends on San Francisco for Fleet Week. Anyone who has ever worked downtown knows what that means: giant ships under the bridge, drunks in white uniforms, and noisy jets that fly ostentatiously between buildings and interrupt thousands of phone calls.
That's why this video from Current TV is so hilarious (of course, you get extra geek points for knowing that SF is also home to George Lucas' operations, and that the Academy in Star Trek was also supposed to be based here). It is of particular interest this year, because Fleet Week starts the weekend before our wedding. Note here the Imperial Shuttle that takes off from Angel Island, the location of said nuptials. Being deep into the planning, my first thought was: how much would it cost to hire one?
Summer of the Supervillain
First it was Iron Man, Marvel's best movie yet, made all the more watchable by a thoroughly ambiguous bad-guy-turned-nice-guy, Robert Downey Jr. Then Heath Ledger posthumously steals the show as the Joker in The Dark Knight. And now the day of the supervillain has truly arrived in Joss Whedon's latest venture, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
Dr. Horrible's first two acts (of three) are up on the site now, and well worth half an hour of your time (unless, of course, you have no sense of humor and hated Moulin Rouge). Neal Patrick Harris' character is the most sympathetic anti-hero of our times, and Nathan Filion -- Mal from Firefly/Serenity -- is a joy as the noxious narcissist Captain Hammer. No wonder that Craigslist guy was looking for a nemesis.
Monkeys With Typewriters
One Million Monkeys is a fascinating idea for a website -- sort of a variation on "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories, a genre I have an abiding love for, and one which I always thought would work well on the web. It still might. With One Million Monkeys, stories are written in 200- or 300-word snippets, then branch off in multiple directions as multiple writers try their hand at penning the next bit. Readers get to vote up or down on whether any given branch of the story works. In theory, the strongest branches should thrive, and a strong tall story will sprout up organically.
For now, however, the stories are spotty, uneven, and have the kind of written-by-committee feel you might expect from such an environment. There seems to be little connection between the number of votes a story branch has received and its quality -- perhaps you need a critical mass of readers on the site to drown out the multiple votes of the writer, his friends and his mother.
Given the potential to run into weak branches, therefore, One Million Monkeys is not yet a compelling reading experience. Perhaps if it were more of a game, with two teams of monkeys racing to reach a separate conclusion within a set number of words, but were forced to swap branches every turn. Now that I'd read.
