ETC.: A Review of General Semantics articles from April 2006

ETC.: A Review of General Semantics archives from April 2006

Using general semantics to manage 'emotions'.(Essay)
April 1, 2006... AS KORZYBSKI SUGGESTED we do when analyzing a term, my first step in addressing the title topic was to consult a dictionary for definitions of "emotion." (1) From Webster's 9th Collegiate (1987): "Emotion: 1 a: obs: DISTURBANCE b:...

A balance between nature and nurture.(Essay)
April 1, 2006... All Things Considered, August 22, 2005 IS IT NATURE or is it nurture, heredity, or society? In that great debate of our time, conservatives lean toward the former and liberals toward the latter. I believe both are asking the wrong...

Kinesthetic feedback and dyslexic students learning to read and write.
April 1, 2006... CAN TRAINING to improve kinesthetic feedback help dyslexic students who have difficulties learning to read and write? I suggest that such training can help, and that the general semantics formulation of silent levels will assist us in...

Neil Postman's advice on how to live the rest of your life.(Janet Sternberg)(Lecture)
April 1, 2006... GOOD EVENING, ladies and gentlemen. When I first met Neil Postman in 1988, we both realized almost immediately that we shared a profound interest in the study of language. Before meeting Postman, during my graduate training in linguistics, I...

The cousin that wasn't.(Short story)
April 1, 2006... THE GS DETECTIVE had been depressed for days. His case was going nowhere, he said. His friend Aram brought over a basket of Armenian food. In the kitchen, they stood by the window. In the bay, an oil tanker had passed Alcatraz Island and a...

Safeguarding against "neuro-semantic pollution".
April 1, 2006... MY FAMILY RECENTLY VISITED Knott's Berry Farm at Buena Park, California. Since my visit over a decade ago, the park has added more thrill rides, perhaps to compete with Disneyland and Six Flags, catering more and more to new generations of...

Using E-Prime and English Minus Absolutisms to provide self-empathy.
April 1, 2006... "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."--Leo Tolstoy "First, be at peace with yourself. Then at least there will be some peace in the world."--Thomas Merton OUR SELF TALK,...

Anger management and violence prevention: a holistic solution.
April 1, 2006... ANGER IN THE CLASSROOM is usually destructive. Whether from student or teacher, anger undermines the learning environment. It may lead to disturbing threats of emotional or physical harm or to actual violence. It can interfere with...

Anger management using the actor's skills and general semantics.
April 1, 2006... THE ACT COOL TO STAY COOL curriculum was devised by this author and taught to third to fifth graders in New York City Public Schools in the fall of 2005. When this curriculum was presented to teachers and counselors in the form of model...

Metaphors "everywhere"?(METAPHORS IN ACTION)
April 1, 2006... SOME WRITERS CLAIM that all language is metaphoric. It is built on metaphors, it revolves around metaphors: metaphors are "everywhere." Of course, Korzybski warned against such "all-or-nothing" thinking. And some linguists claim that language...

The challenge of a fundamental dichotomy.(CALLING OUT THE SYMBOL RULERS)
April 1, 2006... "Why should I give them my mind as well?" --The Dalai Lama (1935-), when asked if he was angry at the Chinese for taking over his country. FEW THINGS so challenge the successful application of general semantics principles as a...

Democracy here is not necessarily democracy there.(CALLING OUT THE SYMBOL RULERS)
April 1, 2006... THE WORD "DEMOCRACY" is frequently in the news these days. But that word is not so easily defined. Historically, the term "democracy" has a checkered past going back to the Greek city-states. The Greeks defined democracy differently than...

Mining tragedy raises questions about instant info.(CALLING OUT THE SYMBOL RULERS)
April 1, 2006... THE WEST VIRGINIA mining tragedy of January 3 of this year should make us all step back and raise some questions about this age of instant information. First, a brief refresher on the story is needed since it happened several months ago....

William Dean Howells: A Writer's Life.(Book review)
April 1, 2006... Susan Goodman and Carl Dawson. William Dean Howells: A Writer's Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005. Possibly the most influential figure in the history of American letters, William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was, among...

Do You Speak American?(Book review)
April 1, 2006... Robert MacNeil and William Cran. Do You Speak American? New York: Doubleday, 2005. Is American English in decline? Are regional dialects dying out? Is there a difference in how men and women adapt to linguistic variations? These and other...

Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 1, 2006... Lynne Truss. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. New York: Gotham, 2004. "A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air. 'Why?' asks the...

Searching for UnMediated Truth.(Book review)
April 1, 2006... Gregg Hoffmann. Searching for UnMediated Truth. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2005. Judging by its title, one might mistake Searching for UnMediated Truth for a philosophical dissertation or a spiritual memoir. Instead, the reader will...

From the archives.(RETROSPECT)
April 1, 2006... WILLIAM H. PEMBERTON, "A SEMANTIC APPROACH TO COUNSELING" People react more to thoughts about things than to the things themselves. One aim of semantic therapy is to help to differentiate between events and thoughts about them. The...