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

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

Grokdueling.(coined phrase meaning a contest where two or more parties vie to see who best understands the position of the other)
June 22, 1999... grokduel, n [grok deeply understand + duel]: a contest in which two or more parties vie to see who best understands (the position of) the other(s) What do we really know about cognitive development? Robert S. Siegler of Carnegie Mellon...

David Bourland's SigmaEOS and human information processing.(semanticist and author D. David Bourland, Jr)
June 22, 1999... By signs, Bourland apparently means the reactions, the sense data our nervous systems provide, from which we may infer that a worm and other people exist beyond ourselves... In the final two articles in the anthology E-Prime III!, D. David...

The word is not the sting, or is it?(use of language and rhetoric)
June 22, 1999... The word is not the thing. - Alfred Korzybski, semanticist, circa 1933 Oh death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling! - Brendan Behan, playwright, circa 1956 A good reporter gives just the facts, without bias, opinion, or...

Changing human behavior and institutions toward 21st century paradigms - a theoretical construct.
June 22, 1999... People often take prejudice or habit for truth and in that case feel no discomfort, but if they once realize that their truth is nonsense, the game is up. From then onwards it is only by force that a man can be compelled to do what he considers...

Media literacy study.
June 22, 1999... As I have become deeply involved in both, I have concluded that the media literacy and general semantics "movements" share many things. One similarity - unfortunately - is that they both struggle to become more widely accepted by the...

Semantics and the study of ways of life.
June 22, 1999... "Why do men make mistakes?" asks Walter Lippmann, and he answers: "Because an important part of human behavior is reaction to the pictures in their heads. Human behavior takes place in relation to a pseudo-environment - a representation, which...

Introduction to two essays on prayer.
June 22, 1999... Two landmarks in the study of consciousness - Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams and William James' Varieties of Religious Experience - appeared at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Freud understood dreams ("the language of the...

The wonder of prayer.
June 22, 1999... Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered. George Meredith More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of Tennyson Consider the familiar phrase, "the power of prayer." The term "prayer" can, of...

Problematic and pathogenic communication patterns in prayers.
June 22, 1999... Many have viewed prayer as a form of communication (e.g. Phillips, 1965, p.30: "When a believer prays, he talks to God"; see also Heschel, 1953, p. 170, regarding "the gift of addressing God"). In what follows I will point out several...

Mary Morain (1911-1999).(general semanticist)(Obituary)
June 22, 1999... A few days before this issue of ETC went to press, we received the sad news of the death of Mary Morain. She died at her home in Carmel, California, after contracting pneumonia. Lloyd Morain, her husband for 53 years, told a local newspaper: "I...

Membership pages.(general semantics students)
June 22, 1999... Remembering my informative past correspondence with Don Ranly, of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism, I suggested to him that I could put his best undergraduate papers on journalism and general semantics to good use in my...

The oxymetaphor - paradoxical superstar.
June 22, 1999... We live in a cultural era that is attracted and repulsed by paradox. Historically, as Suzanne K. Langer writes, paradoxes "... always mark the limit of what a generative idea, an intellectual vision, will do" (1951, p.21). The paradoxes of the...

The map.com is not the territory.com.(Internet companies with the dot com signifier)
June 22, 1999... Many investors in the stock market fascinated the are by internet, and eagerly purchase stock in companies with "dot corn" or other on-line signifiers in their names. They hope to "get in on the ground floor of the next Microsoft." Some...

April 24-25 Milwaukee seminar/workshop.(1999; weekend seminar on general semantics by the Institute of General Semantics)
June 22, 1999... The Institute of General Semantics has been looking for alternatives to the traditional summer seminar-workshop because of declining enrollments and rising expenses over the last couple years. Last year, the IGS board voted to offer a...

Linguistic science and the teaching of composition.(Fifty Years Ago in ETC)
June 22, 1999... The most common result of the teaching of English and composition is not the creation of good writers and speakers, but the creation, in most of the public, of a lifelong fear of grammatical errors. Grammar is, like logic, what Charles W....

The 'factual' film in a visual age.(Fifty Years Ago in ETC)
June 22, 1999... The social pattern behind the great appeal of news in pictorial form appears unmistakable. Sources of popular knowledge in the current era are becoming primarily visual rather than verbal. The development of rapid and inexpensive methods for...

Death of communication with Russia?(Fifty Years Ago in ETC)
June 22, 1999... It was hoped that following the end of the war [WWII] an extensive exchange of ideas and opinions could be established between the United States and the Soviet Union to the advantage of both. Instead, the tenuous line of communication...