Category: Philosophy
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26. A Farewell via WhatsApp
Most text messages are as disposable as recorded chatter. Yet I do not set a default timer on all of mine. I am particularly grateful that my recent text message exchange with an old friend was not automatically deleted. S. (otherwise anonymous herein) and I first met at university in Atlantic Canada in 1971. He…
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L. Snippets of Striving (con’d)
Although not the least interested in home renovation, I paid close attention to last night’s episode of “This old house” on PBS. It featured remedies for upgrading the energy efficacy of heritage homes. In the American can-do spirit, craftsmen breezily showed options for converting drafty old places into modern homes, cozy through the most bitter…
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L. Snippets of Striving (intro.)
Introduction: In ‘The Happy Isles of Oceania’, Paul Theroux comments on the published diaries of the cultural anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski: “…They were harmless enough–– just trivia, ranting, loneliness, insecurity and self-pity…” That comment is surely cautionary advice for anyone who keeps a diary. Even if the only potential reader of one’s words is some great-grandchild…
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M. A Few Clearings (intro.)
It felt strangely intimate this morning to be lying in a chilly darkened room with a young female technician standing beside me. Her wrists protruding from the long sleeves of a wool jacket looked delicate. With one hand, she tapped a computer keyboard while her other briefly tugged her brown ponytail. On the monitor screen…
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M. A Few Clearings (con’d)
It was only when we moved from the table to the sofa that the conversation turned to the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life (SETI). I asked my old classmate in his capacity as the acting president of the western chapter of the Canadian UFO Research Centre, if he really believed any claims of direct contacts…
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Z. Endspec #2:
In the breadth of history, how many humanoids have glimpsed the world from coral reef to mountaintop, dabbled in arts and crafts, gorged on a host of sweetmeats––not to mention having gasped in the fireworks of innumerable orgasms? How many have had second, third, fourth and fifth helpings of such delights? If a person can…
Coprolites in Amber (etc.) 