Thursday, November 29, 2007

What is "Free Time"?

Over the last ten years or so, friends of mine would occasionally find an email from me in their Inbox, with an attachment. The attachment was a carefully researched short essay on some random topic – Eli Manning’s passing stats, why the British tend to produce great bands and Americans great solo performers, a comparison of John Adams’ and Thomas Jefferson’s place in history.

One day a friend of mine, a frequent recipient of the sports essays, called me up.

“You know those emails you send, with the essays attached?” he asked.

“Yes?” I said, expecting some kind words about them.

“Can you stop doing that?”

So I did. But I didn’t stop writing them. Eventually I figured I might as well start a blog. And here it is.

Is there any theme to this blog? The primary topics are fairly mainstream things – sports, music, politics, literature, history. But the thing that tends to get me started on a topic is when everybody is thinking one way, and ignoring all of the evidence that they could be wrong. I then get interested in the contrarian view.

My mission statement is to provoke a "Huh". Not the interrogatory "Huh?", which roughly translates to "What the hell are you talking about?"; but the exclamatory "Huh", which means (and think Dana Carvey as Johnny Carson here), "I did not know that."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hello Free timer. This is excellent stuff. Even if we disagree, it keeps us thinking. Keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

Nice job!!...how about a little on the number 47?