Things seem always the same

Deleted beginnings are never a good way to start writing. Although I suppose that's a misleading statement, since they can't start writing at all once they've been deleted. At least not the part of it you read. Semantics II has made me very aware of these sorts of things, much more so than Semantics I which was kind of like a fun thought experiment about language using very basic things I learned a long time about in Algebra (I wonder where motorcycle riding, police calling Jeff Brock is these days... I wonder at all the things I have forgotten about rings and fields and sets). Semantics II is nothing like that: full of things from formal logic and philosophy. We interpret things like "John believes that Mary eats cheese" to be true in the set of all possible worlds that are compatible with John's beliefs in the actual world and in which Mary eats cheese in the possible world. Sets of worlds and individuals and all sorts of relations. Or something like that. An hour of class three days a week and I'm mentally done for the day. (This is not good for my other studies, I should mention, since class ends at 11am). But it is sort of fun to sort out the possible worlds where Sherlock Holmes has an even number of hairs on his head, from those in which the number is odd. Linguists at least manage to come up with nice example sentences, often funny. I would write one of them out here, but of course I can't think of any at the moment. Must be the lingering H1N1. In any case, I wish John and Mary well - and anyone else who wondered if I would ever write again in this space (aside from myself) - I think of it often, but laziness gets the best of me.