First Post

Well here's my first post folks. I feel a little awkward writing it for two reasons. First of all, I have no audience so I'm really just talking to a blank wall. Second of all, I can't be in the "groove" of pulling blog posts out of my ass since this is my first time.



Awkwardness acknowledged, I can move on to explaining the angle of this blog.

The main purpose of this blog is to expand minds by exploring a wide array of interesting, thought-provoking subjects. Interesting to who? Well, hopefully interesting to everyone, but admittedly the subjects will primarily interest me. I can only hope that enough people find the same things interesting to justify the time I sink into here.

In addition to exploring a wide array of subjects, I hope to explore and acknowledge an array of viewpoints within the subject. Too often our political and philosophical discourse is framed as black-and-white. This is just as true for Bill Kristol as it is for Daily Kos. Such a black-and-white view of the world is naive and damaging.

The expansive purpose of the blog ties into the name I chose for it: Auf Beat. Phonetically, the name sounds like "off-beat" which suggests that the blog will discuss unusual subjects or contain unusual ideas within familiar subjects. This is true.

By contrast, the word "auf" comes from German and is an inclusive preposition (similar meanings as: in, onto, until, on). This reflects my hope that while the posts are unusual, they are nonetheless illuminating and accurate.

Taken as a whole, the name "Auf Beat" suggests that there can be many reasonable interpretations of any fact, and many reasonable opinions of any issue.

To celebrate my first post, I performed a Google Images search for "post" and came up with this creepy picture. Enjoy the picture and enjoy the blog.