ETC.: A Review of General Semantics articles from April 2005

ETC.: A Review of General Semantics archives from April 2005

Integrating psychology and mathematics via art: the "Impressionism Project".
April 1, 2005... STUDENTS LEARN BETTER when they relate their lessons to their own experiences. According to the Ohio Department of Education's recently adopted Academic Content Standards for Social Studies: Learning is enhanced when students make...

From a general semantics perspective.
April 1, 2005... Joseph Hutchinson's excellent article demonstrates that people can accomplish important goals by a thoughtful examination of the way they present information. Several of the features of his Impressionism Project happen to line up nicely with...

Social Darwinism and the language of racial oppression: Australia's stolen generations.
April 1, 2005... Introduction THE LONG HISTORY of racial oppression in Australia has until recently been ignored almost entirely by historians and the public alike inside Australia as well as around the world. The history of the 19th and 20th centuries...

Response from Australia.(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... We sent a copy of "Social Darwinism and the Language of Racial Oppression" to the Australian Society for General Semantics. Below is a response from AGS member Gavan Callaghan. I am not in favor of collectivisms such as 'white society'--we...

Beyond the rectangle.
April 1, 2005... I'VE BEEN PAINTING for over seventeen years. I started studying art after receiving a business and communications degree and while working professionally. I'm very committed to creating and have always made the time for and done artwork while...

Mapping the causes of World War I to avoid Armageddon today.
April 1, 2005... Most Americans did not experience the tremendous upset that World War I caused in Europe. Korzybski had experienced the debacle of the Eastern Front, with its devastation of Poland and parts of Russia. He brought this memory with...

God (or not), physics and, of course, love: scientists take a leap.(Panel Discussion)
April 1, 2005... "WHAT DO YOU believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" This was the question posed to scientists, futurists and other creative thinkers by John Brockman, a literary agent and publisher of The Edge, a Web site devoted to science....

The deleterious effects of negative time-binding.
April 1, 2005... WHEN DISCUSSING Alfred Korzybski's assertion that time-binding is the unique characteristic that differentiates humans from other living organisms, Robert Pula often cautioned his students about the deleterious effects of negative...

Language for the living.
April 1, 2005... WORDS CAN BE STUDIED in many different ways. How does a language develop? How does English differ from Aramaic or Sanskrit? What are the peculiar features of the structure of our language? Why bother with grammar? How can words be put together...

Abstractions.
April 1, 2005... They can print statistics and count the populations in hundreds of thousands, but to each man a city consists of no more than a few streets, a few houses, a few people. Remove those few and a city exists no longer except as a pain in the...

Correspondence.(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... [Mark Federman, who was quoted in "The Medium is the Moblog" by Gary Mielo in the January 2005 ETC, sent the following e-mail response to the author.] Dear Gary, A nice article. Thanks for sending it. However, you (and/or the editor)...

A word by any other name.(CALLING OUT THE SYMBOL RULERS)
April 1, 2005... WORDS HAVE BEEN in the news a lot lately. Of course, one could make the argument that what we call "the news" is nothing but words. We hear and read about "the news" in the words that are handed to us by others. Even when we view...

Rhetoric of Bush speeches: purr words and snarl words.(CALLING OUT THE SYMBOL RULERS)
April 1, 2005... PRESIDENT George W. Bush has, to put it in terms used by S.I. Hayakawa, learned to purr when some of his policies might make opponents snarl. Hayakawa wrote about the use of purr words, terms that make people feel good about the subject...

Thinking inside the frame.(CALLING OUT THE SYMBOL RULERS)
April 1, 2005... ONE OF THE few bright spots for me in the recent presidential election ordeal came when I first read about framing in a UC Berkeley News interview with George Lakoff. (Powell, 2003) The information didn't change the outcome of any race, as far...

Communication as making music.(METAPHORS IN ACTION)
April 1, 2005... PEOPLE ARE in communication when they are in each other's perceptual field. I have argued that communication is ongoing, the normal state of affairs, when people are in each others' presence. This communication may be shallow, if people are not...

Pensandolo Bien.(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... Ramiro J. Alvarez. Pensandolo Bien. Bilbao, Spain: Desclee De Brouwer, 1999. Little known to ETC readers because his writings have not been translated from the original Spanish, Ramiro J. Alvarez presents Korzybski's general semantics with...

America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction.(Brief Article)(Excerpt)
April 1, 2005... The writers of the Daily Show and Jon Stewart. America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction. New York: Warner, 2004. This book, which mimics the form of a high school civics text, offers a satiric send-up of American...

The Paradox of Choice.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... Barry Schwartz. The Paradox of Choice. New York: Ecco, 2004. Barry Schwartz, the author of this well-researched and well-reasoned book, maintains that whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance...

Dictionary of Languages: The Definitive Reference Guide to More Than 400 Languages.(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... Andrew Dalby. Dictionary of Languages: The Definitive Reference Guide to More Than 400 Languages. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Andrew Dalby, the Honorary Librarian of the Institute of Linguistics in London and the author of...

Correspondence: to be or not to be.(FIFTY YEARS AGO IN ETC)(language and grammar)
April 1, 2005... Sirs: In Korzybski's Science and Sanity it is pointed out that the verb "to be" is at the root of much of our neurosemantic psychopathology. The "is" of predication is peculiar to almost all major European languages. It does not, however, exist...

On language structure.(RETROSPECT)(Brief Article)(Excerpt)
April 1, 2005... The great languages of the world were not planned affairs. Yet lurking in the interstices of syntax, the philosophy of a whole culture is to be found. Neither the structure of languages nor their growth is planned, and neither can be...

Mark your calendar--2005.(Calendar)
April 1, 2005... April 22-23 -- New York City: the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture and Program featuring Robert L. Carneiro, Adjunct Professor, American Museum of Natural History, author of Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology and The Muse of History and the...