ETC.: A Review of General Semantics articles from December 2003

ETC.: A Review of General Semantics archives from December 2003

Neil Postman, defender of the word.
December 22, 2003... NEIL POSTMAN(1931-2003) died on Sunday, October 5th, 2003, at the age of 72, after battling lung cancer for almost two years. His contributions, as a scholar, teacher, and public intellectual, enriched many different fields of study, including...

How Neil Postman changed my life.
December 22, 2003... MANY OF US have that one person in our lives who changed everything. For me it was Neil Postman, a professor and author who died in October, 2003. Here's how it happened for me with Neil. I was about three years into my college teaching career...

Alfred Korzybski.
December 22, 2003... In 1976, I was appointed editor of ETC: The Journal of General Semantics. For ten years, I served in that capacity, and with each passing year, my respect for Alfred Korzybski increased and my respect for those academics who kept themselves and...

ETC (volume I, number 1) revisited.
December 22, 2003... THE FIRST ISSUE of any publication interests us for a variety of reasons. It allows us a glimpse of the focus and direction of its originators, it sets the tone for ensuing issues, and if the publication survives for a while, it provides a...

Abstractions.
December 22, 2003... Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you had worked a love story or elopement...

But names can also hurt them.
December 22, 2003... FIVE MONTHS AGO my third baby was born and within days of our coming home from the hospital, everyone from my maiden aunt to the milkman had asked me: "Is he a good baby?" My standing retort, in each case, was a polite-as-possible, "Well, just...

What if dictionaries had sponsors?(Humor)
December 22, 2003... THE OWNERS of the Superlative Dictionary Company met to discuss impending bankruptcy. "We can't pay our loan," moaned founder Pop Aabab, who soon after coming to America had changed his name to appear first in the phone book. "People...

What we do with language--what it does with us.
December 22, 2003... APARTICULAR VIEW of language relates to the applied, evaluational approach of general semantics. Language is intertwined with behavior, consciousness, etc. It has a neurological base; that is, language doesn't exist entirely separately from...

Glimpse[.sup.winter 2003-2004].
December 22, 2003... "Facts as we see them are little more than quick glimpses of a ceaseless transformation..."--Wendell Johnson, People in Quandaries Breaking Down Elementalism Scientists have detected a neurological signal that occurs in the brain...

An organizational update.
December 22, 2003... IN THE FALL 2003 issue of ETC, we reported on the organizational situation concerning the Institute of General Semantics and the International Society for General Semantics, that "a formal plan for merger is before the boards of both...

The Twelfth International Conference on General Semantics.(Conference Report)
December 22, 2003... LAS VEGAS -- No world conflicts seemed to be resolved in Las Vegas, Oct. 31-Nov. 2, but presenters did raise some stimulating points in their papers at the Twelfth International Conference on General Semantics. "Confronting the Challenges...

Using the structural differential as a mnemonic to teach literary theory.(Education)
December 22, 2003... IN THE SUMMER 2003 ETC, I offered the case for metaphoric eclecticism when I suggested that we continue to look for new uses for classic theoretical constructs, including Alfred Korzybski's structural differential. As D. David Bourland, Jr.,...

The structural differential diagram: part V Sawin's elaboration.(General Semantics Basics)
December 22, 2003... The Time Factor ON APRIL 26, 1983, I created an elaboration of the structural differential that illustrates a "third dimension" for noticing differences--I call this dimension the "time factor." This elaboration changes the structural...

Is thalidomide "good" or "bad"?(Illustrating General Semantics)
December 22, 2003... IT WOULD BE CONVENIENT if all that stuff Out There could be classified simply as "good" or "bad." But reality doesn't work that way; people hold varied opinions on what's good or bad. Particularly difficult is an item which is good in some...

Social capital--metaphor or oxymoron?(Metaphors in Action)
December 22, 2003... I WAS STANDING in line for a church dinner a few years ago, and started talking to the gentleman next to me. He had just retired as an academic, but was continuing work on his research projects. And what was he researching? "Social capital," he...

General semantics at the National Council of Teachers of English annual convention.(News & Notes)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... Gregg Hoffmann, Andrea Johnson, Katherine Liepe-Levinson and Steve Stockdale represented general semantics at the annual convention for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) held in San Francisco November 21-23, 2003. They...

New York Society for GS.(News & Notes)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... Most NYSGS meetings are held at the Albert Ellis Institute, 45 East 65th St., New York City, free to members of NYSGS and IGS. Non-members pay $5. For details, including the NYSGS 2004 lecture schedule or for a copy of the Society's newsletter,...

Australian GS Society.(News & Notes)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... The Australian General Semantics Society holds Tuesday evening discussion meetings in the Western suburbs and fortnightly meetings on Monday evenings in the Eastern suburbs of the Sydney area, as well as monthly Saturday or Sunday Seminars. ...

Institute of General Semantics.(News & Notes)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... The Twelfth International Conference on General Semantics took place October 31st-November 2nd at The Orleans Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics, the International Society for General...

San Francisco Chapter.(News & Notes)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2003... The San Francisco Chapter of ISGS meets on the 2nd Friday of each month, starting at 7:15 p.m., at Kaiser French Campus, on Geary at 6th Ave., San Francisco, in Room F-3. Parking is free in the evening. Join members before-hand for dinner at...

Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives.(Books)(Book Review)
December 22, 2003... Todd Gitlin. Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives. New York: Metropolitan, 2002. This book explores a wide range of media, from video games to elevator music, action movies to reality shows, billboards...

The Art of On-The-Job Writing.(Books)(Book Review)
December 22, 2003... Philip Vassallo. The Art of On-The-Job Writing. Concord, CA: International Society for General Semantics, 2002. Philip Vassallo, an author with two decades of teaching and technical writing in corporate, government, and academic...

Uncle Tungsten: Memoirs of a Chemical Boyhood.(Books)(Book Review)
December 22, 2003... Oliver Sacks. Uncle Tungsten: Memoirs of a Chemical Boyhood. New York: Vintage, 2002. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and the author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, grew up among relatives who esteemed science. One of them, Uncle...

The Truth About Managing People ... and Nothing but the Truth.(Books)(Book Review)
December 22, 2003... Stephen P. Robbins. The Truth About Managing People... and Nothing but the Truth. New York: Prentice Hall, 2002. In The Truth About Managing People (how about that for an elementalistic title?), Stephen P. Robbins, said to be the world's...

Fifty years ago in ETC.(Retrospect)
December 22, 2003... The mainspring of creativity appears to be the same tendency which we discover so deeply as the curative force in psychotherapy--man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities. By this I mean the directional trend which is...