Thursday, December 25, 2008
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Tuesday October 10, 2006
Two Seconds
From Oct. 13 last year
(Yom Kippur):
|
A Poem for Pinter
Oct. 13, 2005 The Guardian on Harold Pinter, winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature: "Earlier this year, he announced his decision to retire from playwriting in favour of poetry," Michael Muskal in today's Los Angeles Times: "Pinter, 75, is known for his sparse and thin style as well as his etched characters whose crystal patter cuts through the mood like diamond drill bits." Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise (See Jan. 25): "'That old Jew gave me this here.' Egan looked at the diamond…. 'It's worth a whole lot of money– you can tell that just by looking– but it means something, I think. It's got a meaning, like.'
'Let's see,' Egan said, 'what would it mean?' He took hold of Pablo's hand cupping the stone and held his own hand under it. '"The jewel is in the lotus," perhaps that's what it means. The eternal in the temporal….'"
"Modal logic was originally developed to investigate logic under the modes of necessary and possible truth. The words 'necessary' and 'possible' are called modal connectives, or modalities. A modality is a word that when applied to a statement indicates when, where, how, or under what circumstances the statement may be true. In terms of notation, it is common to use a box [] for the modality 'necessary' and a diamond <> for the modality 'possible.'"
Commentary:
"Waka" also means Japanese poem or Maori canoe. (For instance, this Japanese poem and this Maori canoe.)
For a meditation on "bang splat," see Sept. 25-29. For the meaning of "tick tick," see Emily Dickinson on "degreeless noon." "Hash," of course, signifies "checkmate." (See previous three entries.) |
For language more suited to
the year's most holy day, see
this year's Yom Kippur entry,
from October 2.
That was also the day of the
Amish school killings in
Pennsylvania and the day that
mathematician Paul Halmos died.
For more on the former, see
Death in Two Seconds.
For more on the latter, see
The Halmos Tombstone.
