ETC.: A Review of General Semantics articles from December 1997

ETC.: A Review of General Semantics archives from December 1997

Selections from 'Mapping the Media: A Media Literacy Guidebook.
December 22, 1997... Introduction Media literacy has begun to blossom in American education. However, its development lags behind that in other countries. Critical thinking has become more established in mainstream education, yet it also continues to prompt some...

A fantasy in five parts. (semantics of the word 'pattern')
December 22, 1997... Giraffe and Snake are moving through trees and grass at the side of a large lake. The sun is setting and an orange-pink sky is reflected in the still water. Giraffe gazes out from the shore for a moment and then walks towards a tree with high...

E-prime, delay, and mindfulness.
December 22, 1997... I assume that those who encounter this report know the basic arguments for E-Prime, and have the two previous Anthologies available for reference. (1) Knowing that the first Anthology has gone into at least a third printing reassures me that we...

House seats. (the mathsemantic monitor)
December 22, 1997... You can run into mathsemantic difficulties almost anywhere. Even so, it may come as a surprise to find that you need read only five sentences of the Constitution of the United States to reach an enduring mathsemantic problem left us by the...

Mapping creativity with a capital "C."
December 22, 1997... Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and author of the best-selling book Flow, spent five years (between 1990 and 1995) interviewing a selected group of one hundred exceptional individuals in an effort to...

Understanding McLuhan: television and the creation of the global village.
December 22, 1997... A spectre haunts the infosphere. Marshall McLuhan, who died in 1980, still informs fast-forward-looking disc-course. Wired Magazine (and its on-line version, HotWired) list Marshall McLuhan on their mastheads as "patron saint." New editions of...

Procrustean bed. (use of prepositions and prepositional clauses)
December 22, 1997... In the issue of Fall 1997 appeared a delightful article by Robert Steiner concerning the preposition problem - not ending a sentence "with." The rule on never ending a sentence with a preposition arose, apparently, from late 17th-early 18th...

Metaphors converging on the Internet.
December 22, 1997... The internet is a strange and wonderful thing. It inspires fierce loyalty in some of its users, who see it as a forum of free expression and vow to defend it against all who would misuse it. It inspires visions of profit in other users, who are...

Some myths addressed by general semantics.
December 22, 1997... The Myth of: Identity that two things can be identical (similar in all respects)... that two things can be the same... that a thing is identical with itself... Allness that we can say, know, imagine, describe, understand, etc., all...

A general semantics glossary. (part 20)
December 22, 1997... types of questions. Many have observed that the structure of the questions you ask largely determines the structure of whatever answers you may give yourself. Admittedly, that insight has not usually been stated in just that way, but you know me....

Alfred Korzybski memorial lecture and colloquium.
December 22, 1997... We live in an ever-changing world of "maybes," therefore, a dynamic approach - like that of quantum mechanics and general semantics - offers more effective evaluative tools than many static Aristotelian systems. That seemed to sum up the...

Journalism Ethics: Philosophical Foundations for News Media.
December 22, 1997... John C. Merrill brings forty-five years experience as a college professor and journalist to this well-written, wide-ranging book that injects philosophic insights into the practice of journalism. The author believes that journalism students...

Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut.
December 22, 1997... Information, once rare and cherished like caviar, is now plentiful and taken for granted like potatoes. So says media scholar and cyber-pundit David Shenk, whose intriguing and well-written book assesses our culture's unquestioning devotion to...

Stuff: The Materials the World Is Made Of.
December 22, 1997... Each year 15 billion tons of raw materials are transformed by the efforts of material scientists into useful "stuff." Sand becomes silicon becomes microelectric chips. Drilled petroleum becomes chemical feedstock becomes synthetic rubber becomes...