If you have curiosity you are learning. (If you have no curiosity you're dead.) If you're learning you're doing something noteworthy. If you're doing something noteworthy you can certainly submit something to us -- a formal, footnoted essay, a few paragraphs, a diagram, anything.
But wait, you don't even have to tell us what you're doing. You could tell us what you've thought of doing. I have a billion times as many ideas as I could possibly handle; so do most of the other people I know. The Journal makes possible a special sort of existence for these ideas: Virtual Reality. Just as in a novel a car might be described and then within the novel exists and works perfectly, your ideas, when written down and sent in, will exist within the Virtual Reality pages of the Journal. Say you have an idea for a book that ought to be written; perhaps you'd like to write it or research it but aren't going to. You sketch an outline and send it to us. We archive it and publish it in the Virtual Reality section. Someone reads it and wonders "what would I learn from that book about this particular related question?" So they get in touch with you. Now you actually research that question and get back to them. This is a system of total efficiency! It's as though you were to go to a vacant lot and call out "I'd like a bottle of aspirin and some pancake mix" and then a small building is constructed in front of you and a market opens there which carries two items: aspirin and pancake mix. And you buy them! Or you have an idea for a program or project that you imagine could do some good but you haven't the resources to implement. Into the Virtual Reality section it goes. Someone else reads it and is spurred to have a similar idea which they can implement -- or they and you together have the resources to implement -- or perhaps your idea contains the missing piece of something they've been trying to get off the ground -- or perhaps they simply like the idea and think of something ten times as impossible and grandiose. Send it in. The more the merrier. Ideas breed ideas.
Finally, let's hear some dialogue. An essay is a dead, static thing and should be regarded only as a point of departure for part of someone's life (see "The January Statement" for details). Letters to the Editor will benefit everyone.
-- Tom Price