Originally posted by LordOfTheChessboardI can't argue those good points.
Well if you want to attack you will have to develope your pieces first and c3 just is the perfect place for the knight. And if you put it there on move 2 you will be preventing black for playing his strongest defence.
A real waste of tempo would be to play e5 after e4 c5 f4 d5 since black will now take over white's role and be the first to dev ...[text shortened]... move like e5 is played in these openings it will chase away a knight on f6 and not lose a tempo.
check this:
http://info.ex.ac.uk/~dregis/DR/Openings/sic8.html
better explaination that I can give.