GUEST APPEARANCE: Thinking for yourself |
Race tracks (the horse racing kind) serve as great places to do more than lighten one’s wallet. The generous amount of time between races allows for welcome socializing, which is often the genesis of profound philosophical insights and novel suggestions. It was on a warm July day at Finger Lakes Race Track that my buddy Big Al once informed me that Shakespeare had written a famous play about the hamlet of Dundee. Needless to say, Al was a little short on the details.
One afternoon, my friend Charley B. and I were free-wheeling between races. Among other things, we were lamenting the cheap partisanship that infects the federal government. Charley opined that it would be great if Congressional bills were submitted anonymously and the members voted without knowing which party had proposed the bill. This led us to making the analogy to football fans being asked to assess the accuracy of a pass interference call without the players’ teams being identified. Neither profound speculation led us to pick the winner of the fourth race, but years later they paved the way for something considerably greater: this column.
Try to come at the following........