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Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
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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.
If it's called Daily Blah, how come you don't always write every day?
I am trying harder. I promise. Please don't hurt me.
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... Friday, February 13, 2004
What Did I Tell You? (Part 2)
I remember how it felt to be alive in those last few glorious months of 1989, when walls real and imagined were tumbling like dominoes. It all happened so fast, we were all caught off-guard in the most gleeful way. You'd open the paper every morning and say something like "what, Bulgaria too?" I'm getting the same feeling now with the onward rush of the gay marriage express; events are moving faster than I can blog about them. A week ago I was going to suggest a cross-country convoy from Castro Street to Massachusetts. Then earlier this week Gavin Newsom said he wanted the city to look into issuing marriage licenses to any couple who asked for one -- because he read the state Constitution he just swore to uphold, and it says all citizens have to be treated equally. And I wanted to say, see? Didn't I tell you he seemed to me a good guy; not at all the kind of fascist he'd been portrayed as in some quarters? Didn't I post my interview with him in which he talked about his support for gay marriage? Then I came back from assignment last night -- more on that later -- and discovered over dinner that the city had married 118 gay couples earlier that day.
Reading about it in the Chronicle this morning was delightful, a moment of sheer 1989-ness. The couples and well-wishers looked as dazed, surprised, happy and tearful as east Berliners crossing through the wall for the first time -- which was, in effect, what they were doing. I found this passage especially moving:
[Andrew] Nance's hands shook as he showed a small crowd the rings [he and his partner] exchanged during the ceremony. The bands bore images from their lives together: a cup of coffee to honor their meeting place, the American Sign Language symbol for "I love you," and another symbol for "growth and forever."
Who would want to take those rings away from their shaking hands? Who can be so hard of heart to scowl at such a tender and genuine emotion? If the Christian God is love, then there can be little doubt the Christian God is moving in these couples. Some idiot from the Family Research Council trotted out the tired old line about "their agenda of normalizing homosexuality." Normalizing? For crying out loud, isn't it normal yet? They're still here, they're still queer, and you still haven't got used to it? What are you afraid of? It's not like anyone is going to force Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia to march down the aisle at shotgun-point. This is about the right of everyone to pursue their own happiness -- in San Francisco, in Massachusetts, and anywhere they damn well please. There will be legal battles ahead, but for now homophobic conservatives seem like gray-faced East German apparatchiks in November 1989 -- suddenly powerless, and about to fall victim to the spread of infectious liberty.
Alien Arrival
Update: I just officially became an extraordinary alien!
Therefore, puny humans, since you have shown me the proper respect, I have decided to postpone the annihilation of your pitiful planet.
[Insert evil cackle here]
What Did I Tell You?
Last November I wrote this blog about a story of mine in which an editor had made a subtle change to my use of the word "Google". I had it in the proper noun sense: The Google of Books. He changed it to the generic sense: Google your books. Google, I pointed out, has been known to send out lawyer's letters about this kind of thing. Some of my friends thought I was being paranoid. And now look what dropped into my inbox this morning:
Dear Mr. Taylor:
Your article in the November 10, 2003 issue of Time, entitled "'Google' Your Books" has come to our attention. In that article, you use "google" to mean search generally. Our brand is very important to us, and as I'm sure you'll understand, we want to make sure that when people use "Google," they are referring to the services our company provides and not to Internet searching in general. I attach a copy of a short, informative piece regarding the proper use of "Google" for your reference. We hope that this is helpful.
Sincerely,
Rose Hagan
Senior Trademark Counsel
Google Inc.
The attachment includes, among other things, this patronizingly helpful table:
Inappropriate
I googled that hottie.
We were googling MP3s.
He googles himself.
They google lemurs.
Appropriate
I used Google to check out that guy I met at the party.
We were looking for new MP3s with Google.
He ego-surfs on Google to see if he's listed in the results.
They use Google to research the latest on lemurs.
How the mighty have fallen. Or rather, how full of themselves the once-humble are. I remember sitting around with Larry and Sergey in 2000, when they were on the cusp of fame and Google was a company of less than 150 people (the magic company size, according to The Tipping Point). I remember thinking:This place is so cool. It'll never turn into a faceless, corporate mass like Yahoo. It'll never be run by MBAs and lawyers. But even as I was thinking it, I knew in my heart I was wrong. That's just the kind of dreck that tends to attend corporate growth. Yahoo itself was a small, cool company once. All I can do is await the day when Google sees the error of its ways, splits itself up into lots of 150-person sized divisions -- and fires the trademark lawyers.
Who, in the meantime, can go google themselves.
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, February 10, 2004
The Bangalore Syndrome
So there we were, in our safe little media world, writing stories about how everyone and his aunt was getting their jobs outsourced to India, how practically all call centers on the planet are now being run on the cheap in Bangalore, how Indian workers are being taught baseball scores and midwestern accents so you'll never know the difference, and we never thought for a moment it's going to happen to us. How could you outsource journalism? Aren't you always going to need troops on the ground, footsoldiers, shoe-leather correspondents?
Not according to Reuters. The wire service just announced it is outsourcing -- I can't believe I'm writing this -- outsourcing its financial reporting on 3,000 small to mid-sized American companies. Guess where? To Bangalore, India. Specifically, to six -- all of six! -- Bangalore reporters. Now apparently this set-up is pretty low-level stuff. The six reporters will be trawling financial records for the most basic of details; any actual interviewing will still be done in the U.S. But you know how these things go. Meet your thin end, Mr. Wedge.
Indeed, why stop there? Copy editors will be the next to go. Ship out a couple of dozen dictionaries to Bangalore, where they speak better English than most Americans, and you're done. Editors? Hell, they can mess up my prose for thirty cents an hour just as easily as they can for thirty dollars (just kidding, dear editors). Once most of the chain of command has moved over -- well, I'm sure any Administration and its plutocratic paymasters would be overjoyed to remove most reporters, writers and other assorted nattering nabobs as far away from the action as possible. They'll happily accomodate a few embedded journos, of course. As long as you keep them from talking to each other. Assign one pool reporter to each company and wait for Stockholm Syndrome to set in. That is, if anyone still calls it Stockholm Syndrome by then. I hear Swedish syndromes charge astronomical wages. Why not outsource?
Daily Blah for... Monday, February 09, 2004
Geek Eye for the Straight Guy
Y O U R T I M E / T E C H N O L O G Y
Dial G for Geek
The tech support the stars use is now available to mere mortals — for a price
By CHRIS TAYLOR
Monday, Feb. 16, 2004
Fixing computers is not normally considered the most glamorous of jobs. But try telling that to employees of two top-tier tech-support firms — Geek Squad, a house-call service based in Minneapolis, Minn., and DriveSavers, a Novato, Calif., company that fixes fried hard drives around the country. Geek Squad boasts that its clients include U2, Ice Cube, Ozzy Osbourne and the Rolling Stones. DriveSavers touts its techno-healing work for Sean Connery, Sting, Adam Sandler and the Stones again (someone should tell Keith Richards to stop trashing his laptops).
As just about every computer maker cuts back on its tech-support staff, the stars — like the rest of us — are not inclined, when their machines malfunction, to spend hours on hold waiting for someone to answer. And neither should you, if you can afford the solution. Here's the skinny on those two companies, plus a cut-rate option for the frugal:
GEEKSQUAD.COM Bought by Best Buy in 2002, Geek Squad patrols Minneapolis, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Ariz., Columbus, Ohio, and Washington, and is scheduled to hit 34 other cities by the end of the year. Its agents are the epitome of geek chic in clip-on ties and badly fitting pants. I made an anonymous call, claiming a PC emergency, and was told it would take half an hour to get someone to my door. He arrived in seven minutes. Such service costs: crisis support starts at a $298 flat rate. It's $149 for house calls within 48 hours and $49 for a Best Buy — based assessment.
DRIVESAVERS.COM When your hard disc dies, what do you do? Well, there's a 90% chance that DriveSavers can retrieve your precious files within 48 hours, the fastest turnaround time in the data-recovery business. (When one of my Macs decided to delete all my old diaries, DriveSavers sent me a CD containing every lost file the next day.) The average price: $900. No wonder the company grossed $10 million last year, and is still growing.
SPEAKWITHAGEEK.COM Want something cheaper? How about free? Speak With A Geek is one of a burgeoning number of phone-based support firms (like Askdrtech.com and 888Geek.com), but its ace in the hole is a five-day trial period, during which you get one free phone call. You have to sign up for the $34.95 monthly service, but canceling before you have to start paying is pretty easy. If your malfunction might be minor enough to be solved over the phone, it's worth trying this site before moving on to pricier options. The best thing about all these services? Absolutely no hold time. Now that's star treatment.
Damn Statistics
Some eye-opening numbers from a forthcoming book called Priceless, from a couple of economists seeking to debunk the cost-benefit analysis industry. Hard as it is to credit, these are the kinds of prices tossed around the table by government regulators and lobbyists. Anyone feel like grabbing a pitchfork and marching on Washington?
Value of one human life: $6.1 million under Clinton, $3.7 million under Bush
Value of a non-fatal case of chronic bronchitis: $260,000
Value of the preservation of humpback whales: $18 billion
Value of an I.Q. point: $8,346
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