et Cetera back issues from July 2007:
ISES DON'T, AND NOUNS ARE NOT
Jul 01, 2007; ... What does it DO? What makes it GO? That's all we're ever apt to know. Show me an IS that doesn't DO, I'll show you how it isn't, too. 'Cause something IS as something DOES. It isn't IS. It never was! It does a "do." It goes a "go." But what it IS we'll never ...
ROBERT WANDERER (1924-2007)
Jul 01, 2007; ... General semanticist, writer, editor, teacher, Bob Wanderer sustained multiple injuries when hit by a car on January 8, 2007. Complications from multiple sclerosis interfered with Bob s recovery efforts over the next three months. He died on April 11 at 83. Bob was two when his family ...
GENERAL SEMANTICS: A COMPENDIUM OF DEFINITIONS
Jul 01, 2007; ... SOMEONE WHO has never heard the term "general semantics" is likely to pick up the "semantics" as the study of words and meanings, usually "tricky" meanings, and consider "general semantics" to be a kind of "general" study of words. We compound the confusion further by sometimes using the term ...
QUANDARIES, QUARRELS, QUAGMIRES, AND QUESTIONS
Jul 01, 2007; ... Author's Note: This article was presented as a paper at the World in Quandaries Symposium, held at Fordham University, New York City, on September 8, 2006. The symposium marked the 60th Anniversary of the publication of Wendell Johnson's People in Quandaries, along with the 60th Anniversary of ...
CULTURAL RELATIVITY: MY WORLD, YOUR WORLD, OUR WORLD
Jul 01, 2007; ... IN VALHALLA, fallen heroes spend their days fighting and reliving their most glorious exploits, maiming and being maimed only to be restored each evening and feast together in the great hall. In a Buddhist hell realm, on the other hand, miserable hell beings spend countless eons hacking each ...
ABSTRACTIONS
Jul 01, 2007; ... I LIVE ON Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process an integral function of the universe." R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER, DESIGNER, AUTHOR, ARCHITECT, INVENTOR (1895-1983) Not being ...
A FENCE SIEVE LANGUAGE
Jul 01, 2007; ... A culture cannot be discriminatingly accepted, much less be modified, except by persons who have seen through it-by persons who have cut holes in the confining stockade of verbalized symbols and so are able to look at the world and, by reflection, at themselves, in a new and relatively ...
ON THE MUSE OF HISTORY AND THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
Jul 01, 2007; ... WHEN I FIRST BEGAN to learn about general semantics, the principle that most intrigued me was the idea that there could be way to apply a scientific method to human interactions and communications. The more I learned about this theory, the more practical and even obvious it became to me. If ...
THE WIZARD OF IS
Jul 01, 2007; ... [Ed. This chapter from Levinson s Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living tells how the word "is " can lead people to confuse opinions with facts.] IN A MAJOR metropolitan area there once lived a big-mouthed woman who was not an easy person to talk to. You think I'm exaggerating that ...
SAYING THE WORD BY SENSING THE PERSON
Jul 01, 2007; ... DETERMINING how much information to include in a document challenges most writers. When communicating to audiences with contrasting knowledge about the topic of discussion, writers rightfully wonder whether their messages sufficiently address their readers' concerns. The truth is that we ...
On Truth
Jul 01, 2007; ... Harry G. Frankfurt. On Truth. New York: Knopf, 2006. Harry G. Frankfurt, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University and the author of the bestselling extended essay On Bullshit (previously reviewed in ETC), in his latest book is not interested in discussing the process of ...
GENERAL SEMANTICS AND MEDIA ETHICS
Jul 01, 2007; ... THIS TALK is based on a chapter in Journalism Ethics: Philosophical Foundations for News Media (1997), John C. Merrill's comprehensive and well-written book on journalism morality. The title of the chapter is "Korzybski to the Rescue." In the early part of the twentieth century, Alfred ...
Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living
Jul 01, 2007; ... Martin H. Levinson. Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living. Illustrations by Paul D. Johnston. New York: iUniverse, 2007. Marry Levinson, aka Martin H. Levinson, PhD, brings general semantics to life in 25 fresh and fast-paced tales that blend the mundane and the bizarre into serious ...
THAT WAS BY MY OTHER MOTHER: CHAPTER 3
Jul 01, 2007; ... WHAT YOU SEE and conclude about another person at a distance can be quite different from your opinions after you speak with them a bit and get acquainted. Watching and listening to Korzybski in the summer seminar at Millbrook in 1948 was a turning point in my education. After the seminar, ...
A CONVERSATION ON THE SEMANTIC PEDAGOGY OF "WHITENESS"
Jul 01, 2007; ... MY WIFE Pamela and I recently saw The Good Shepherd at the theatre. In one scene Joe Pesci (playing a great Italian guy probably a mobster) converses with the American spy Mr. Wilson (who happens to be European American). Pesci's character says, "we Italians have the church, the Jews have ...
The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World
Jul 01, 2007; ... Peter Dear. The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Despite recent controversies surrounding evolution and intelligent design, the ethics and utility of stem research, and the integrity of clinical trials in ...
SEARCHING FOR SEARCH ENGINE METAPHORS
Jul 01, 2007; ... The search engine is one of the most important pieces of the Internet system. There may be billions of web pages in existence, but if we can't find what we are looking for, these pages are useless. We can use many metaphors to describe and understand search engines. The search engine is a ...
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Jul 01, 2007; ... 42 YEARS AGO IN ETC: VOLUME 22, NUMBER 1 RICHARD W. DETTERING, OUR SYMBOL-CENTERED UNIVERSE I. SYMBOLISM: OUR INESCAPABLE FREEDOM Today more of us are forced to regard the symbol not as just a mental lens, but as an integral part of the very phenomena which are studied by ...