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

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

A tangibly intangible journey: experiential learning via Zen philosophy & general semantics.
July 1, 2006... A Cup of Tea Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring. ...

An interview with Allen Flagg.(Interview)
July 1, 2006... ALLEN FLAGG, the president of the New York Society for General Semantics, is 83 years young. He grew up in Ord, Nebraska and went to college at NYU where he majored in math and minored in physics and English. After World War II, Allen worked as...

Using sociodrama to improve communication and understanding.
July 1, 2006... SOCIODRAMA WAS FOUNDED by a young doctor, Jacob Moreno, in response to the upheaval and horror of World War I. Moreno worked in a children's hospital and in refugee camps in Vienna. Drawing on each person's potential to be spontaneous and...

Introduction to two papers from students at Vermont Academy.
July 1, 2006... I WAS FIRST INTRODUCED to general semantics as a graduate student at St. Lawrence University in the 1970s. I was in the army teaching in the ROTC program there. I have been teaching at Vermont Academy since retiring from the army 20 years ago....

General semantics in To Kill a Mockingbird.(Critical essay)
July 1, 2006... THE WORD "polysemy" is defined as the state of having more than one meaning. It is a well-known phenomenon of perceptions and language that perceptions vary, and that words are multi-ordinal; these characteristics can lead to or permit...

Do you know who you are when you are?
July 1, 2006... IF I ASKED YOU who you are, how would you respond? Would you tell me your job or occupation, or that you are a student of education? Often times, one of these two answers seems to be the common response. For example, Tiger Woods is defined as a...

A general theory of psychological relativity and cognitive evolution.
July 1, 2006... Abstract This paper presents the first theory unifying brain, behavior, and psychology, utilizing a reference point of cognitive accuracy and rational bias. The theory integrates the tenets of rational emotive behavior theory and cognitive...

People in Quandaries: sixty years later.(Critical essay)
July 1, 2006... WENDELL JOHNSON worked tirelessly through his life to create understanding of the processes of language and speech production. He developed a university-level course on general semantics, and it became one of the most popular courses at the...

Excerpts from the new science of axiological psychology.(Excerpt)
July 1, 2006... A Personal Note "VALUE" is at once the most important, the most poorly understood, and the least studied concept in the field of psychology. About this, I am in agreement with the late Milton Rokeach (Rokeach, 1973). Looking back over the...

Excerpts from reading and writing for civic literacy.(Excerpt)
July 1, 2006... Preface to Teachers (and Curious Students) The humanities lead beyond "functional" literacy and basic skills to critical judgment and discrimination, enabling citizens to view political issues from an informed perspective.... ...

Together alone.(power of television)
July 1, 2006... TELEVISION seems simple. It seems so direct. Our experience of watching television is so easy. Yet many of us have realized the experience brought to us by television is very complex. For example, last night I watched a baseball game on...

Steve Inskeep interviews Harper's editor Lewis Lapham.(Interview)
July 1, 2006... December 26, 2005 from Morning Edition STEVE INSKEEP, host: During this final week of the year, here's how we're marking the passage of time. We have a series of conversations we call the Long View. People of long experience can help us...

Extensional orientation and the energy problem.
July 1, 2006... LANGUAGE HABITS can outlast the circumstances that produce them. This can impede adaptation to changed circumstances. When homo sapiens was a much less numerous species and when our ability to exploit the resources upon which our lives depend...

Bordering on the impossible.(illegal aliens)
July 1, 2006... WE HAVE an estimated 12 million illegal aliens here, seeking better opportunities than they could find in Mexico. They are pouring across our ill-defended border with Mexico, at some danger to themselves and some detriment to us, having got to...

The Art of Travel.(BOOKS)(Brief article)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Alain de Botton. The Art of Travel. New York: Vintage, 2004. Travel does not have to entail long distances. Alain De Botton notes that in 1790, Xavier de Maistre took a trip around his bedroom, an account of which he would later title...

Every Book Its Reader: The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Nicholas A. Basbanes. Every Book Its Reader: The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. Nicholas A. Basbanes, in this volume, presents an engaging portrait of the diverse ways in which books have shaped...

Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution.(BOOKS)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd. Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. The authors of this book believe that in discussing the traits that have helped humans become such...

The Legacy of McLuhan.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Lance Strate and Edward Wachtel (Eds.). The Legacy of McLuhan. Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2005. Marshall McLuhan, one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century, put the study of media on the academic map and made...

From the archives.(General Semantics and the Future of Education)(Reprint)
July 1, 2006... Thirty-Nine Years Ago in ETC, Volume 24, Number 4 RACHEL M. LAUER, "GENERAL SEMANTICS AND THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION" To what extent does our educational system's denial of the need to explore interpersonal relations actually defeat the...

Excerpts from a treatise on language.(Excerpt)
July 1, 2006... ... if theories are merely human contrivances, by which we artificially associate sensible realities, and artificially account by familiar processes for their production, what can we know more than the information which our sense and internal...

Mark your calendar--2006.
July 1, 2006... Check online for the latest details: www.time-binding.org/news.htm October 24-26 -- Fort Worth, TX. Pre-Conference Workshop on "Making Sense," Read House, Institute of General Semantics. See http://time-binding.org/2006-conf/workshop/ for...