ETC.: A Review of General Semantics articles from December 1999

ETC.: A Review of General Semantics archives from December 1999

THE POWER OF METAPHOR: In the Age of Electronic Media [+].
December 22, 1999... RAYMOND GOZZI, JR. [*] Theories of Metaphor A METAPHOR IS A TRANSFERENCE, naming one thing in terms of another, according to Aristotle's ancient definition (Poetics, 1954 ed., Ch. 20). It sounds so simple -- and is simple enough for...

SEMANTIC SABOTAGE AT THE SMITHSONIAN: A Head Test.
December 22, 1999... MARK A. RAIMER [*] WHEN ASKED how he had accomplished so much in the sciences, Sir Isaac Newton replied, "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." [1] Newton recognized that science...

DOUBLEWANT.
December 22, 1999... PAUL DENNITHORNE JOHNSTON [*] The Story So Far: Aboard the Baseball Planet where clones were preprogrammed during their manufacture with what knowledge they needed to serve humans, a disaffected technician "Jane" secretly created a...

SATIR FOR BEGINNERS: Incongruent Communication Patterns in Romantic Fiction.
December 22, 1999... DANIELA KRAMER [*] THOUGH OVER 30 YEARS have passed since family therapist Virginia Satir first published her ideas regarding interpersonal communication, the significance of her contribution has not lessened. A brief summary of her theory...

ESCAPING FROM THE SELF-ESTEEM TRAP.
December 22, 1999... GARDNER GATELEY [*] ONE CONTEMPORARY VIEW of our relationships with ourselves holds that we require self-esteem. Advocates of this perspective believe that lack of this trait underlies just about every category of human failings: school...

FROM THE PRESIDENT.
December 22, 1999... The Directors of the International Society for General Semantics have done me the honor of reelecting me to the position of President. During the past two years the Executive Committee has spent a majority of its time working on a new...

THE NINETIES -- The Downsizing Decade.
December 22, 1999... RAYMOND GOZZI, JR. [*] WITH ALL THE EXCITEMENT and apprehension over the Millennium change, the decade of the 1990s has received little attention. There are no generally agreed-upon themes, icons, or nicknames for the decade. This is...

DO ABORTIONS REDUCE CRIME?(Brief Article)
December 22, 1999... ROBERT WANDERER [*] WE LEARN AS SMALL CHILDREN that if you put your hand on hot stove, you're going to get burned. We learn a large number of these cause-and-effect relationships. And we understand more complex relationships: there are...

Robert Wanderer on GS Then and Now.
December 22, 1999... IN OCTOBER, 1999, Robert Wanderer received the J. Talbot Winchell Award, presented annually to "Someone who has significantly advanced the spread of general semantics." A founder of the San Francisco chapter of the International Society...

ON CONSCIOUS ABSTRACTING AND A CONSCIOUSNESS OF ABSTRACTING: Some Abstractions.
December 22, 1999... MILTON DAWES [*] PART TWO Paradigm Shift in Thinking IF WE WANT TO CHANGE OUR LIVES, we have to change the way we 'think' about things. Since most of our behavior is habitual and automatic, we have to work at developing...

THE 46th ANNUAL ALFRED KORZYBSKI MEMORIAL LECTURE.
December 22, 1999... STEVE STOCKDALE [*] IF YOU'VE PARTICIPATED in social discussions regarding general semantics -- among folks who would admit to having actually read Korzybski, you've probably heard the inevitable sigh, "(sigh) Somebody needs to rewrite...

THE 1999 DOUBLESPEAK AWARDS.(Brief Article)
December 22, 1999... SOURCE: NATIONAL COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF ENGLISH BILL CLINTON wins unwanted fame for his language skills at misleading the public by fudging, fibbing, and dodging. Bill Clinton, said to be deeply concerned with his legacy, has joined his...

Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future.(Review)
December 22, 1999... Neil Postman. Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future. New York: Knopf, 1999. In Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century, Neil Postman, one of America's most distinguished observers of...

The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media: Decoding Spins and Lies in Mainstream News.(Review)
December 22, 1999... Norman Solomon. The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media: Decoding Spins and Lies in Mainstream News. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999. This book contains seventy-five articles by Norman Solomon who, in the muckraking tradition of...

The Power of Metaphor in the Age of Electronic Media.(Review)
December 22, 1999... Raymond Gozzi, Jr., The Power of Metaphor in the Age of Electronic Media. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, 1999. In his new book Raymond Gozzi, Jr., an associate professor of communications at Ithaca College and the editor of the...

Fictions of Business: Insights on Management from Great Literature.(Review)
December 22, 1999... Robert A. Brawer. Fictions of Business: Insights on Management from Great Literature. New York: Wiley, 1998. Looking for business insights? Forget the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and even the bestseller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective...

FIFTY YEARS AGO IN ETC.
December 22, 1999... What human beings do, they do as responses to stimuli, and these stimuli come from two directions. They come from outside the skin by way of the receptors and constitute for us the dynamic, fluid, extensional world; and they come from inside...