Recently added articles from et Cetera:
FROM THE EDITOR
Oct 01, 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. For those of us in the U.S., this issue comes on the ...
ERRATA
Oct 01, 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 one omission rendered one sentence nonsensical. A ...
EXERCISES IN MENTAL CARTOGRAPHY: MAKING NEW MAPS
Oct 01, 2008; ... "You must unlearn what you have learned." -Yoda, Jedi master 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 ...
TIME BINDING: THAT SINKING FEELING
Oct 01, 2008; ... K-12-COMMUNICATION.COM IN 1 625 , 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 of fighting ships, including a massive super gun-boat, the Vasa. In 1628, when ...
THE WALK OF SHAME: A NORMATIVE DESCRIPTION
Oct 01, 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 the micro-mini skirt, the backless shirt, and the ...
YOUR MOST ENCHANTED LISTENER: GS WISDOM FROM WENDELL JOHNSON
Oct 01, 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 mat illustrate the practicality of general semantics to everyday ...
HOLES IN THE EARTH AND IN THE PHOTOS: OF SIGNS, SIGNIFIEDS, AND SIGNIFIERS
Oct 01, 2008; ... [we] grew so used to them often we didn't see them, and now, not seeing mem, we see them. Excerpt from the poem "When the Towers Fell" by Galway Kinnell IN THE EPIGRAPH OF THIS ESSAY, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Galway Kinnell, a resident of New York ...
A SIMPLE DEFINITION OF GENERAL SEMANTICS
Oct 01, 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 science, something to start from, to analyze, ponder ...
SEMBLANCE
Oct 01, 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 smoothing each ...
CLOCKWORK
Oct 01, 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 they can, with fingered ...
SILENT FILMS
Oct 01, 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 silent ...
THE THING IS NOT ITSELF: ARTEFACTUAL METONYMY AND THE WORLD OF ANTIQUES
Oct 01, 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," "The map is not the territory," "Symbols are not what ...
THE KEEPER OF SECRETS
Oct 01, 2008; ... He hadn't meant to fall in love wim the stame. She was very beautiful And he was very alone. He looked through the window At die reflected sadness Staring back at him And suddenly mere she was. She had appeared in the garden Of the ...
GOING BLUE
Oct 01, 2008; ... OKAY. SERIOUSLY. I HAVE A PROBLEM. It's a problem many writers and comedians have. Some who generally love language also deal witìi it. Fourteen year old boys have this problem, too. In my business it's called "going blue." Blue is my favorite color for sundry weighty reasons. Comedians ...
MY REVIEW OF THE NEW LANGUAGE
Oct 01, 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 and smooth with requisite ...
The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas
Oct 01, 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 Uni /ersity, has been asking his students to pose and answer questions like: * Why does a new car ...
THE CELL PHONE ZONE
Oct 01, 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. But they have entered their own reality. I call it ...
LOVE MOUTH (AI ZUCHI)
Oct 01, 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 is an installment of my long running culture series ...
Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and the Struggle for the Soul of Science
Oct 01, 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 vanquished. Then, in 1927, Werner Heisenberg, a ...
Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States
Oct 01, 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 ? as a tribute to the varied heritage of the American people, Names on the Land continues to be the authoritative ...