ETC.: A Review of General Semantics articles from March 1997

ETC.: A Review of General Semantics archives from March 1997

Presentation of self in scholarly life or when the blindfold comes off.
March 22, 1997... "Since all manuscripts are subject to blind review, references or other statements that identify authorship must be removed." Some version of the above statement is commonly found in the manuscript submission policy of the most prestigious...

What's in a place name? Romanticizing the map.
March 22, 1997... Before my first visit to England, I combed the map for a village where my friend had gone to visit relatives. Although I never reached that coastal hamlet, those wondrous English place names enchanted me and sent my imagination wild. They still...

Fatal words. (word interpretation leading to accidents)
March 22, 1997... Although a final determination by the National Transportation Safety Board of what caused the fatal crash of ValuJet flight 592 in the Florida Everglades has not been reached as this is written, investigation has focused on an onboard fire and...

Virtually text(ured) depictions of self. (e-mail system in the classroom)
March 22, 1997... But sometimes you have to wonder: Is all this manipulation and transmission of information really communication? Or its opposite? Information we don't need, people we can't see, jargon we can't understand, motives we can't assess, feelings we...

Developing a self-referencing system: the Matrix (Part II).
March 22, 1997... Introduction We've all experienced points of keen awareness, animal intuition, where thought seems fluid as water, time seems to disappear. Or those disconcerting moments, when we find we've driven miles and not seen the road, read paragraphs...

Is childhood disappearing out here in televisionland?
March 22, 1997... I recall as a child in the early 1950s watching a big black and white television. Announcers would occasionally seem to address me, as one of the "kids out there in televisionland." I thought I lived in New York State. But it was also becoming...

A general semantics glossary (Part XVII).(Lexicon)
March 22, 1997... It is clear that there is but one substance in the world, and that man is its ultimate expression. Julien Offray de la Mettrie Uni-substantialism. You won't find "uni-substantialism" in the publications of Alfred Korzybski, nor of other...

The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
March 22, 1997... Professor Carl Sagan, who has made a life's work conveying the wonder, excitement, and joy of science to the general public, worries that as the Millennium approaches a gullible populace may be susceptible to the fraudulent claims of the...

Media Virus! Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture.
March 22, 1997... According to the author, media events provoking social change (the O.J. Simpson trial, presidential campaigns, rap music, etc.) can become "media viruses" that enter the "datastream" and affect the way we perceive reality and interact with each...

Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences.
March 22, 1997... Contrary to futurist Alvin Toffler's prediction in The Third Wave that "making paper copies of anything is a primitive use of (electronic word processing) machines and violates their spirit," Edward Tenner noticed that, in his workplace, the use...

Clicking: 16 Trends to Future Fit Your Life, Your Work, and your Business.
March 22, 1997... Faith Popcorn heads an agency called BrainReserve which monitors the culture to predict trends which businesses and individuals may need to know about. She has previously authored The Popcorn Report which predicted trends during the eighties. In...

God: A Biography.
March 22, 1997... Jack Miles, a former Jesuit trained in religious studies and Near Eastern languages, has written a complex, original, Pulitzer Prize winning biography of the protagonist of a classic of world literature, namely the Hebrew Bible. He analogizes his...

Lost Prophets: An Insider's History of the Modern Economists.
March 22, 1997... In this book Alfred L. Malabre, Jr., who was the economics editor of the Wall Street Journal for twenty-five years, explores the important economic theories since the Depression. Keynesians (e.g., Paul Samuelson) believe the market occasionally...

A House Divided: Six Belief Systems Struggling for America's Soul.
March 22, 1997... In 1858, at the Republican Convention, Abraham Lincoln said, in regard to slavery, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." One hundred years later Mark Gerzon echoes Lincoln's sentiment. Gerzon, a former Sixties idealist, is co-founder of...