ETC.: A Review of General Semantics articles from March 1995

ETC.: A Review of General Semantics archives from March 1995

Understanding propaganda from a general semantics perspective.
March 22, 1995... Although the editors of Propaganda Analysis, the journal of the Institute of Propaganda Analysis, Inc., didn't cite Korzybski's work in their 1937 article that includes a list of "the seven common propaganda devices," (1) Korzybski and the...

The iconography of propaganda analysis.
March 22, 1995... Some of the devices now so subtly and effectively used by good and bad propagandists are as old as language. All have been used in one form or another by all of us in our daily dealings with each other. Propagandists have seized upon these...

Why digital clocks fail.
March 22, 1995... Anyone confronting a digital timepiece reckons with the oddly subtle way it restructures time. The concept "ten minutes from now," for example, becomes difficult if not paradoxical to measure. The statement "it's approximately" gives way to an...

Nothing at all. (zero)
March 22, 1995... Mr. Jeffrey A. Mordkowitz of Brooklyn, N.Y. - who happens also to be president now of the Institute of General Semantics and one of a small band of mathsemantic monitor irregulars - has informed me of a go-round he's had with Sears over nothing,...

Shocking secrets revealed! The language of tabloid headlines.
March 22, 1995... Otto Friedrich has observed that "the average newspaper is simply a business enterprise that sells news and uses that lure to sell advertising space"(194). Whether one would accept this assessment for true hard-news publications, it does seem to...

Confessions of a metaphoraholic.
March 22, 1995... In the spring of 1993, I was sitting on a bench in a hotel lobby in Lexington, Kentucky, waiting for a van which would give me a ride to the airport after an academic conference. Next to me on the bench was a man I had never met, but who, like...

Primal general semantics.
March 22, 1995... The map can't ever give you a hint of how a pine forest smalls in spring, or how much effort or time it takes to climb up and down the mountains...Maps limit the imagination to fiat surfaces and dry streams. What I Find most interesting about...

A general semantics glossary (part 10).
March 22, 1995... extensional devices revisited; over/under-defined terms. In our last entry (1) I emphasized indexing and dating, with what seemed to me telling applications. Here I will touch on other tools of extensionalization, concluding with the too-little...

"Like."
March 22, 1995... Have you noticed how the word "like" has insidiously developed new roots, particularly in colloquial language? I don't mean "like" in the sense "She is wondrously like the immortal goddesses to look upon." Nor do I mean "like" as in "How I like...

Managing your weight through general semantics.
March 22, 1995... In an affluent society, eating has little to do with survival. We eat to symbolize. Well, perhaps we eat for diverse reasons. However, like fish in water, we humans live so immersed in symbolism we can hardly tell where symbolism stops and...

The language of criminal justice: an essay in clarification.
March 22, 1995... INTRODUCTION When it comes to crime, both the discourse about criminals and the ensuing policy are confused. This essay attempts to show what is happening and to clarify some of the issues. I shall show that there is an inconsistency between...

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language.
March 22, 1995... "An extremely valuable book, very informative, and very well written as well," said Noam Chomsky. "Steven Pinker is, I think, engagingly wrong in some of his conclusions," said William F. Buckley, Jr. I agree with both opinions. Several years...

How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species.
March 22, 1995... Although monkeys are acutely sensitive to how other monkeys act, they do not know what they know, and are "unable to attribute mental states to others or to recognize that others' behavior is also caused by motives, beliefs and desires....[This...

Cultural Misunderstanding: The French-American Experience.
March 22, 1995... No wonder I was confused! I had an American father and a French mother. As a child I thought their differences merely reflected their particular roles and personalities. I never imagined there was a cultural gulf that allows French and Americans...