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“BUT I DIGRESS“ consists of “HEAD TREKS” that represent the conversion of random thoughts, sometimes in the form of “QUICK TREKS”, observations, philosophies and rants into a form of modern cursive expression better known as computer keyboarding. From time to time these thoughts are also summarized under the heading “IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN: QUESTIONS I CANNOT PRESENTLY ANSWER.”

IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN: QUESTIONS I CANNOT PRESENTLY ANSWER

-Whether today’s celebrity worship is an ongoing mental illness or merely a fad that will at some point, if not suffer a deserved demise, then at least, be blessed with the curative medicine of a society of higher intelligence?

-Whether in temperate climates the normal passage from spring to summer to autumn to winter and back to spring again will be viewed as an historical pattern of climate change or alternatively, a barrier to the ideologies of many climate “scientists”?

-Whether I will ever be able to comprehend how a judicially imposed sentence of life imprisonment for first degree murder has a minimum term and/or a parole provision attached to it. Where does the concept of life imprisonment come into play?

-Whether the “Peace For Our Time” approach of Neville Chamberlain by a number of current western world leaders will lead to North Korean appeasement or world conflict as in World War ll?

-Whether “free” speech is forever no longer free but has now a price tag attached to it, and particularly within academia?

-Whether the concept of “bromance”, apparently the invention of Millennials, will survive the fatuity of that generation, and would the parallel notion of “sismance” evolve to further endanger the concept of common sense?

-Whether the sick bed of hypocrisy that infects the narcissism of Hollywood and equivalent dens of self-adoring (alleged) entertainers ever succumb to even basic standards of morality and civil behaviour?

-Whether it will require an actual war of death and destruction to wean the mainly Milleninnial/GenX/Z component of present society’s seemingly insatiable appetite for wanton violence as the main component of entertainment and many sports?

-Whether the use of “privacy laws” will graduate from being mainly an abusive cover-up for government and government-related institutional faux pas, misdeeds, and other incompetencies that sometimes result in death, to something that will be properly employed for what the law was meant to enact?

-Whether the current unraveling of misogyny, the latter thinly disguised as sexual misconduct, will ever be dissociated from the abusive power of leading figures in society?

Copyright © 2017 Ian de W. Semple


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A Reflection On Addition & Subtraction It is October 23, 2017 and today a couple became first time parents and with that some friends of ours grandparents. Today also however, a friend of ours became a widow. Today a child is born and a friend lost. Today at birth, a new life is created on the same day that death extinguishes a full other one. Today there is joy on the one hand and grief on the other. Today a new heart beats while a mature one is silenced. Such are the competing factions of happiness and sorrow. Such are the emotional struggles when they must be simultaneous. Such are the components of addition and subtraction that define the realities of life cycles. Such are the ingredients of reflection. Copyright © 2017 Ian de W. Semple
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