ETC.: A Review of General Semantics articles from October 2008

ETC.: A Review of General Semantics archives from October 2008

From the editor.
October 1, 2008... WITH THIS ISSUE, THE EDITORSHIP changes hands with grateful acknowledgment to the editors who have come before. It seems to us that our mission is as important as ever as we do what we can to address the problems of the semantic environment....

Errata.(Correction notice)
October 1, 2008... Through no fault of his own, there were some errors in Ben Hauck's essay "Developing the Experience of Group Mind" in the last issue. A number of quotation marks were omitted. Many of the omissions do not make for confusing reading, but...

Exercises in mental cartography: making new maps.
October 1, 2008... IN 1698, an Italian named Bartolomeo Cristofori built the world's first piano. This happened more than two millennia after Pythagoras invented Western music by discovering that the relationships between musical notes could be expressed as...

The walk of shame: a normative description.(Critical essay)
October 1, 2008... ON A GIVEN SUNDAY MORNING IN CITIES ACROSS AMERICA, women and men will perform the "walk of shame." Although both sexes exhibit the behavior, the women seem particularly stigmatized and obvious. Look for her--she is the one who is still wearing...

Become an active time-binder. Learn.. ..from the experience ... and mistakes ... of your ancestors.(Vasa)
October 1, 2008... TIME BINDING: THAT SINKING FEELING K-12-COMMUNICATION.COM IN 1625, Sweden's king, Gustavus Adolphus, decided that his country needed a strong navy if Sweden was to be considered a major world power. He ordered construction of a number...

Your most enchanted listener: GS Wisdom from Wendell Johnson.(Book review)
October 1, 2008... WENDELL JOHNSON HAD A GREAT GIFT for making general semantics clear and compelling. That gift is particularly evident in his book Your Most Enchanted Listener. Between its covers one finds elegant writing and excellent examples that illustrate...

A simple definition of general semantics.(Definition)
October 1, 2008... [A] number of isolated facts does not produce a science any more than a heap of bricks produces a house. The isolated facts must be put in order and brought into mutual structural relations in the form of some theory. Then, only, do we have a...

Going blue.
October 1, 2008... OKAY. SERIOUSLY. I HAVE A PROBLEM. It's a problem many writers and comedians have. Some who generally love language also deal with it. Fourteen year old boys have this problem, too. In my business it's called "going blue." Blue is my...

The thing is not itself: artefactual metonymy and the world of antiques.(Critical essay)
October 1, 2008... GENERAL SEMANTICISTS routinely draw attention to the non-identification between the symbolic realm and first-order processes of reality. This distinction underlies many different expressions within GS: "Whatever I say a thing is, it is not,"...

Poetry ring.
October 1, 2008... GENERAL SEMANTICISTS emphasize the role that the languages of science, logic, and mathematics play in the process of abstracting. We also acknowledge that the arts constitute a means of abstracting from reality, albeit in a different manner....

Semblance.(Poem)
October 1, 2008... The arm of man, the head of woman; undisclosed aspects curve to the cleavage veined as time itself. This silent dance, frozen stain; a marked moment cut grain to grain; the attitude of the earth ...

Clockwork.(Poem)
October 1, 2008... Not orange, but pale rainbows near light.... Where the heart forgets to fight. It is an observant state of mind Where the details rhyme, we find. The past is all shadows Transparent, can't smell, touch or lick Yet...

The keeper of secrets.(Poem)
October 1, 2008... He hadn't meant to fall in love with the statue. She was very beautiful And he was very alone. He looked through the window At the reflected sadness Staring back at him And suddenly there she was. She had appeared in...

Silent films.(Poem)
October 1, 2008... Time may perish in each moment... Blackberry tangles, tall oaks, pavements in the morning twists of warming air and sun light, smeared cirrus above, slow stepping below diligently compose the music for the...

My review of the new language.(Poem)
October 1, 2008... the new language is a breeze it just makes such perfect sense every utterance has its own smooth algorithm custom made from the widest sampling of human palates the median tongue, sonically adapted for the maximized mouth ...

Love mouth (Ai Zuchi).(Brief article)
October 1, 2008... SO, HAVE YOU EVER ENGAGED in syncopated hammering with another? The in and out of innuendo'ed speech, perhaps? Or the give and take of two minds pumping in unison? Alas, if you came here for illicit sexual content I apologize in advance. This...

The cell phone zone.(METAPHORS IN ACTION)
October 1, 2008... I first noticed this in the mall. A person would stop walking, and peer intensely at the screen of their cell phone. They would stop paying attention to anyone or anything around them. They might tap something onto the keys of the cell phone....

The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2008... Robert H. Frank. The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas. New York: Basic, 2007. For decades, Robert H. Frank, an economics professor at Cornell University, has been asking his students to pose and answer...

Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and the Struggle for the Soul of Science.(Book review)
October 1, 2008... David Lindley. Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and the Struggle for the Soul of Science. New York: Doubleday, 2007. Starting with Copernicus and Galileo, with Kepler and Newton, uncertainty had always seemed a foe that could be...

Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States.(Book review)
October 1, 2008... George R. Stewart. Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States. New York: New York Review of Books Classics, 2008. Written during World War II as a tribute to the varied heritage of the American people,...