Chronicle of a Quest

There's a new newspaper in the UAE called 7 Days. I like it because it's free! Well, it's also small and has a bit of local news as well as international stories, and it's ad-free!--unlike the newspapers you have to pay for. Who needs a big ole newspaper everyday when there are other sources of news-- like the Net, TV and radio--and one hardly has time to read much anyway. I had subscriptions in the past and often let newspapers pile up for days or weeks, hardly even opening them--and then feeling guilty about it! Who needs to spend money on a subscription just to make himself feel guilty? (That's something best taken care of with a health club membership!)

Well, this is all beside the point, except for the article in 7-Days today that caught my attention and gave me the idea to embark on a quest of sorts. Part of the quest will be to chronicle my progress at the new endeavor in a blog. I hate to say that it isn't my own idea. It's funny when one reads about someone else's good idea it seems like something so logical and simple that you think, "I should have thought of that!" Then I wonder what new and simple idea can I come up with. There have got to be many more out there. Then a little time passes and I just go on with life, forgetting about the already past moment of "almost inspiration."

This time I won't let the inspiration slip away. The newspaper article was about an Arnold Stephen Jacobs who spent 18 months reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica and who also wrote a book about the endeavor, now a best-seller and potential movie project. What a dumb or nerdy idea some might think, but I think it's a wonderful idea. For me it's not a question of collecting trivia. I could care less about trivia, which IS nerdy as far as I'm concerned. What interests me is the intellectual stimulation that might come from such an endeavor.

So, here I shall embark on my own Arnold Stephen Jacobs' type quest. My initial reaction on reading the article was that an encyclopedia seems kind of old fashioned as well as writing a book about the event. Come on Arnold Stephen, this is the 21st century! My quest is thus:

I shall read the entire catalog of About.com posts. Like an encyclopedia the scope of information covered is immensely broad. However, unlike an encyclopedia I believe there is less trivia and more in depth treatment of topics, not to mention being more up to date. Furthermore, being an Internet project About.com is likely to provide links and include contributions from a much wider scope of thinkers, writers and scholars, as well as from ordinary folk who have meaningful things to say.

So, without further ado, I shall embark on my quest to read all of About.com and chronicle the endeavor in a blog. Perhaps I can invite others to join me. This would add another twist to Arnold Stephen Jacobs' project. I shall have to work out along the way how many links I will pursue. My initial thought is that I should limit myself to About.com content, but exactly what that is, I don't know, and it might be essential to follow links off-site to attain the goal of intellectual stimulation I seek.

This then concludes the prologue to my chronicle, upon which I shall start with the index page of About.com