ETC.: A Review of General Semantics articles from July 2007

ETC.: A Review of General Semantics archives from July 2007

In this issue.
July 1, 2007... WE OPEN this issue with a farewell to Bob Wanderer, long-time ETC contributor, followed by a reprint of his article, General Semantics: a Compendium of Definitions. Bob demonstrated the best time-binding with this article, drawing on many...

Robert Wanderer (1924-2007).(Obituary)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... General semanticist, writer, editor, teacher, Bob Wanderer sustained multiple injuries when hit by a car on January 8, 2007. Complications from multiple sclerosis interfered with Bob's recovery efforts over the next three months. He died on...

General semantics: a compendium of definitions.
July 1, 2007... SOMEONE WHO has never heard the term "general semantics" is likely to pick up the "semantics" as the study of words and meanings, usually "tricky" meanings, and consider "general semantics" to be a kind of "general" study of words. We compound...

ISes Don't, and Nouns Are not.(Poem)
July 1, 2007... What does it DO? What makes it GO? That's all we're ever apt to know. Show me an IS that doesn't DO, I'll show you how it isn't, too. 'Cause something IS as something DOES. It isn't IS. It never was! It does a "do." It goes a "go." But...

A conversation on the semantic pedagogy of "whiteness".
July 1, 2007... MY WIFE Pamela and I recently saw The Good Shepherd at the theatre. In one scene Joe Pesci (playing a great Italian guy probably a mobster) converses with the American spy Mr. Wilson (who happens to be European American). Pesci's character...

Quandaries, Quarrels, Quagmires, and Questions.
July 1, 2007... Author's Note: This article was presented as a paper at the World in Quandaries Symposium, held at Fordham University, New York City, on September 8, 2006. The symposium marked the 60th Anniversary of the publication of Wendell Johnson's People...

Cultural relativity: my world, your world, our world.
July 1, 2007... IN VALHALLA, fallen heroes spend their days fighting and reliving their most glorious exploits, maiming and being maimed only to be restored each evening and feast together in the great hall. In a Buddhist hell realm, on the other hand,...

A fence sieve language.(GALLING OUT THE SYMBOL RULERS)(Viewpoint essay)
July 1, 2007... A culture cannot be discriminatingly accepted, much less be modified, except by persons who have seen through it--by persons who have cut holes in the confining stockade of verbalized symbols and so are able to look at the world and, by...

Abstractions.
July 1, 2007... I LIVE ON Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process an integral function of the universe." R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER, DESIGNER, AUTHOR,...

On the muse of history and the science of culture.(Student Paper)(The Muse of History and the Science of Culture)(Book review)
July 1, 2007... WHEN I FIRST BEGAN to learn about general semantics, the principle that most intrigued me was the idea that there could be way to apply a scientific method to human interactions and communications. The more I learned about this theory, the more...

General semantics and media ethics.
July 1, 2007... THIS TALK is based on a chapter in Journalism Ethics: Philosophical Foundations for News Media (1997), John C. Merrill's comprehensive and well-written book on journalism morality. The title of the chapter is "Korzybski to the Rescue." In...

That was by my other mother, chapter 3.
July 1, 2007... WHAT YOU SEE and conclude about another person at a distance can be quite different from your opinions after you speak with them a bit and get acquainted. Watching and listening to Korzybski in the summer seminar at Millbrook in 1948 was a...

The Wizard of is.(Excerpt)
July 1, 2007... [Ed. This chapter from Levinson's Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living tells how the word "is" can lead people to confuse opinions with facts.] IN A MAJOR metropolitan area there once lived a big-mouthed woman who was not an easy...

Searching for search engine metaphors.(METAPHORS IN ACTION)(Viewpoint essay)
July 1, 2007... The search engine is one of the most important pieces of the Internet system. There may be billions of web pages in existence, but if we can't find what we are looking for, these pages are useless. We can use many metaphors to describe and...

The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 1, 2007... Peter Dear. The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Despite recent controversies surrounding evolution and intelligent design, the ethics and utility of stem research,...

On Truth.(Book review)
July 1, 2007... Harry G. Frankfurt. On Truth. New York: Knopf, 2006. Harry G. Frankfurt, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University and the author of the bestselling extended essay On Bullshit (previously reviewed in ETC), in his latest...

Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living.(Book review)
July 1, 2007... Martin H. Levinson. Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living. Illustrations by Paul D. Johnston. New York: iUniverse, 2007. Marty Levinson, aka Martin H. Levinson, PhD, brings general semantics to life in 25 fresh and fast-paced tales that...

From the archives.(RETROSPECT)
July 1, 2007... 42 YEARS AGO IN ETC: VOLUME 22, NUMBER 1 RICHARD W. DETTERING, OUR SYMBOL-CENTERED UNIVERSE I. SYMBOLISM: OUR INESCAPABLE FREEDOM Today more of us are forced to regard the symbol not as just a mental lens, but as an integral part...

Dates and indexes.
July 1, 2007... Congratulations to IGS member and trustee, Marty Levinson, on the receipt of the Susan K. Langer Award for his book, Sensible Thinking for Turbulent Times: [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Media Ecology Association has chosen Martin H....