http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2012/12/17/the-monday-night-line Comments On: The Monday night line UPDATE by Max Brantley en-us Copyright 2013 Arkansas Times. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, Arkansas Times readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact Arkansas Times. robert@arktimes.com (Arkansas Times Webmaster) Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:01 -0500 Tue, 21 May 2013 22:15:00 -0500 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Posted by SkyPilot]]> Wed, 19 Dec 2012 05:15:38 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Olphart]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 23:11:37 -0600 Arkansas Times
P.S.: Try this little exercise.

Please give me THE meaning of each of these three words:
present
cloud
fire

And let's see if you can do it without syntax and context.
Posted by SkyPilot]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:14:43 -0600 Arkansas Times
Please give me THE meaning of each of these three words:
present
cloud
fire

And let's see if you can do it without syntax and context.
Posted by SkyPilot]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:07:00 -0600 Arkansas Times
My discussion of symbols and meanings has nothing to do with "the mind of God." It is not esoteric theological concepts. It is plain and simple communication theory 101. It's based on the work of Alfred Korzybski (see _Science and Sanity_) developed and expounded by David Berlo (see _The Process of Communication_) and S.I. Hayakawa (see _Language in Thought and Action_ and _Through the Communication Barrier: On Speaking, Listening, and Understanding_). The whole field of general semantics is based more or less on Korzybski's seminal work.

This wasn't news even in 1960. I taught this for 25 years before I retired. Where has everyone been?
Posted by SkyPilot]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:35:16 -0600 Arkansas Times
As to our argument, I cried Uncle last night about 8 p.m.
Posted by plainjim]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 20:38:31 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Perplexed]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 20:04:20 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by missedconnection]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 17:09:17 -0600 Arkansas Times
If it double-posts, please excuse.

Hi, Norma.

Well, I was a university professor of communication with multiple earned degrees while you were singing in nightclubs or treading the boards, or whatever you did to earn your rent. Show business was your life. And it shows. So I don't find your screed very enlightening.

Incidentally, dictionaries went from "prescriptive" to "descriptive" in the late '50s or early '60s. Sorry you missed it.

"You insult everybody who thinks, everybody who writes, everybody who reads by asserting that words mean whatever the sender wants them to mean and evoke whatever meanings the receiver wishes to hear."

And that's the "Alice in Wonderland" argument--which wasn't at all what I was saying; but I wouldn't really expect you fully to grasp that since I didn't transmit a post complimenting you on your stellar intellect and piercing insight and agreeing with your position.

I never asserted that words "mean whatever the sender wants them to mean" or "evoke whatever meanings the receiver wishes to hear." The gist of what I asserted is that the meaning for a given word used by a sender resides in his/her head. If communication is to work, his meaning has to be pretty close to whatever the receiver's meaning is.

But, as in the present case, there is not universal agreement upon "the meaning" of "senseless" and "evil," otherwise there wouldn't be any disagreement and this discussion wouldn't be going on.

Also incidentally, your _ad hominem_ proclamations aren't really very impressive.

But then, I forgot: Norma knows everything. Norma is always right. Anyone who disagrees with Norma is wrong. And Norma never discusses to clarify issues or advance understanding; Norma simply pontificates and the other posters are expected to acquiesce to her positions.

I'll try to remember.

Merry Christmas to you, too.
Posted by SkyPilot]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:48:57 -0600 Arkansas Times
Well, I was a university professor of communication with multiple earned degrees while you were singing in nightclubs or treading the boards, or whatever you did to earn your rent. Show business was your life. And it shows. So I don't find your screed very enlightening.

Incidentally, dictionaries went from "prescriptive" to "descriptive" in the late '50s or early '60s. Sorry you missed it.

"You insult everybody who thinks, everybody who writes, everybody who reads by asserting that words mean whatever the sender wants them to mean and evoke whatever meanings the receiver wishes to hear."

And that's the "Alice in Wonderland" argument--which wasn't at all what I was saying; but I wouldn't really expect you fully to grasp that since I didn't transmit a post complimenting you on your stellar intellect and piercing insight and agreeing with your position.

I never asserted that words "mean whatever the sender wants them to mean" or "evoke whatever meanings the receiver wishes to hear." The gist of what I asserted is that the meaning for a given word used by a sender resides in his/her head. If communication is to work, his meaning has to be pretty close to whatever the receiver's meaning is.

But, as in the present case, there is not universal agreement upon "the meaning" of "senseless" and "evil," otherwise there wouldn't be any disagreement and this discussion wouldn't be going on.

Also incidentally, your _ad hominem_ proclamations aren't really very impressive.

But then, I forgot: Norma knows everything. Norma is always right. Anyone who disagrees with Norma is wrong. And Norma never discusses to clarify issues or advance understanding; Norma simply pontificates and the other posters are expected to acquiesce to her positions.

I'll try to remember.

Merry Christmas to you, too.
Posted by SkyPilot]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:43:03 -0600 Arkansas Times
The more I’ve thought about it, the more unwilling I am to give this a pass.

We on this thread have been trying our best to deal with our shock, horror and revulsion at Adam Lanza’s massacre of schoolchildren at Sandy Hook, and what it means and how we cope with it.

Some of us, Plainjim and me, for example, have argued over the words used to describe the atrocity. I’ve tried to explain why I not only think “senseless” and “evil” don’t help, but why they’re hurtful because they let us off the hook of having to look at larger pictures and society’s own complicity in these things, for specific reasons I enumerated.

But not you. Rather than add anything valuable to the thread’s search for meaning or understanding of the Sandy Hook tragedy, and the words people do or don’t use to come to grips with it, and why those words and not others . . .

This is the moment, instead, when you decide to grab some attention by trying to pick a petty digression over your straw man about words don’t “have” meanings: people “have” meanings. (Ironically reminiscent of the NRA’s mantra, “Guns don’t kill people, people do.”)

Doubtless you will chime in with another of your patented, “That’s not what I said,” “That’s not what I meant,” walkbacks as you’ve consistently done once you’ve attracted attention for all the wrong reasons and are called on it, for as long as I’ve been on this blog.

Ask Sister-. She’s got a good memory too.

Maybe you will one day learn to communicate maturely enough to say what you mean, clearly, precisely, the first time.

But I have a word for you now. I want it to be absolutely clear. Look it up in a dictionary so you don’t misinterpret my meaning.

“Disgust.”

In closing, Sky, a tiny word game.

I’ve two MORE words for you: one’s a verb, the other a pronoun.

See if you can guess what they are.
Posted by Norma Bates]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:29:08 -0600 Arkansas Times
Communication rides on words and their meanings. Of COURSE words are symbols, you remind us, stating the obvious as if it were a revelation.

Words are symbols for Meanings. Which is why mankind invented symbols, hieroglyphs, alphabets, words, languages, parts of speech, and dictionaries of their meanings: so that human beings have a commonality of understanding in communications.

Yet for some reason you find it necessary to say:
____

"Words don't 'have' meanings.

"Words are symbols--either written or oral.

"People have meanings.

"Words simply represent the meanings of the sender and evoke the meanings of the receiver.

"If words 'had meanings,' we wouldn't need dictionaries, definitions, or explanations. We wouldn't have to ask, 'What do you mean?'"
____

Unbelievable.

Another of your Say-Anything-to-Pretend-You're-Saying-Something posts.

I'd call it hair-splitting in the attempt to seem profound or knowledgeable or contributory, but it's not even that.

Your straw man I-Want-to-Argue posts like the above are, literally, idiotic. They dismiss education, academia, history and purpose of language, rationality and all else in your compulsive need to prove . . . who knows what?

You insult everybody who thinks, everybody who writes, everybody who reads by asserting that words mean whatever the sender wants them to mean and evoke whatever meanings the receiver wishes to hear.

No, they don't. That's why there are dictionaries, to counter idiotic "communications" by wannabe "intellects."

Look up "pretension" sometime.

But keep spewing straw men and splitting hairs. It obviously serves some neurotic inner purpose for you.
Posted by Norma Bates]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 14:32:29 -0600 Arkansas Times
Which pretty well demonstrates that words don't "have" meanings.

Words are symbols--either written or oral.

People have meanings.

Words simply represent the meanings of the sender and evoke the meanings of the receiver.

If words "had meanings," we wouldn't need dictionaries, definitions, or explanations. We wouldn't have to ask, "What do you mean?"

If words had meanings, I could say, "frigerifick," "flexanimous," or "pervicacious," and you would "have" the meaning (and I didn't just make up those words). But I doubt seriously that any reader here will have any meaning for a single one of those words. But I do. For I have encountered them, been exposed to their definitions, generated my meanings for them--in keeping with their definitions--and have used them in conversation.

Few, if any, words ever have a single definition. In fact, the general truism in my academic field was this: All words are ambiguous! And few, if any, words evoke precisely the same meaning (intellectual response) within different receivers. Usually users can get pretty close together on denotative meanings (responses); connotative meanings (responses), not so much.

And I'm not sure but what in this present context, "senseless" and "evil" are evoking more connotative responses than denotative ones.

My suggestion: When a disagreement arises over a word, the question is not, "What does that word mean," the question is, "What do YOU mean when you use that word?" Or, "What response did you intend to evoke by the use of that word?"

IMHO
Posted by SkyPilot]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:04:37 -0600 Arkansas Times
Words ARE important. And the constant usage of "senseless" and "evil" in these contexts is incredibly damaging.

"Senseless" makes it easy for people to subliminally say, "Oh well, it doesn't make any sense, so it's pointless trying to understand it any further."

"Evil" makes it easy to dismiss such tragedies to some external supernatural power beyond our comprehension, evade humanity's responsibility and say again, "Why bother trying to understand it any further? The Devil made him do it."

Both words are innacurate, imprecise, misleading, destructive and cheapen the truth.

Namely, that there are many, many elements that converge in these painful-to-face and largely man-made human tragedies:

1) Mental illness, its stigmatization, the lack of national and local health care funding and treatment for the mentally ill (especially since Regan's notorious cave to the right-wing) . . .

2) Gun violence in America, a collective cultural / social / psychological / religious topic that has received world-wide attention and reaped volumes of research and writings for decades from myriad scientific disciplines . . .

3) The military / industrial complex of which weapons manufacturers and the NRA are subsets and profits the only motive (see phony wars from Vietnam to Iraq's non-existent WMDs) . . .

4) The promotion of fear, subservience, paranoia and obedience to authority propagandized to the uncritical and unthinking by Fox News, the corporate-owned mass media, et al., and by "god-fearing" fundamentalist religious "authorities" like Huckabee, Robertson, Osteen, Warren and the rest . . .

5) The relentless dumbing-down of education in general and reproductive and family-planning education in particular, and the resulting lack of well-paying jobs and surplus of unwanted children with nowhere to go and nothing to do . . .

All these compelling collective threads and more converged in this wrenching bloodbath to create a paranoid mother who believed some kind of terrifying "end" was near and so stockpiled assault weapons, among other kinds . . . who knew this particular son was ill and prone to sudden violent tantrums from an early age and who, apparently, sought "treatment" for him (though we don't know what kind or to what extent) . . . who told his babysitters and teachers to watch him at all times and "never turn your back on him" . . . yet still took him to shooting ranges and familiarized him with her beloved household collection of weapons . . .

On and on go the underlying threads that "make sense" in retrospect and may, if addressed consciously and deliberately by those in mental health, sociological, political and religious fields, to name a few, and by society as a whole, someday help prevent or lessen the frequency of these increasingly common American tragedies.

To label them "senseless" and "evil" provides false comfort and relieves people of the pain of confronting their own beliefs, votes and contributions to the very elements that contribute to Sandy Hooks and Adam Lanzas.

Those two words enable people to avoid informing themselves or taking constructive actions to enlighten their local, state and national societies and leaders about them.

Those words cheapen the lives lost and denigrate the hard work and long efforts of educated professionals to understand and address all the contributing factors.

Those words perpetuate ignorance of the facts that naturally lead to these human, not supernatural, horrors.

So yes, words ARE worth arguing. They either tell the truth and create understanding, or lie and fuel destruction.
Posted by Norma Bates]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 11:41:52 -0600 Arkansas Times
Geez all the commentary over the usage or ill-usage of one word. I'll accept the definition of evil as being something that has a religious connotation pertaining to an action.

Norma, thank you for the definition, it was enlightening.
Posted by Arkhobbit]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 09:22:43 -0600 Arkansas Times *! program accepting your posts or showing your posts in a timely manner. It's getting tiresome!
Posted by eLwood]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:28:28 -0600 Arkansas Times
I think you've discovered the path. Good old American responsibility. Keep those weapons in a secure place or face responsibility for what's done with them. Loan your car to an irresponsible, wreckless person and ensuing damages are equally shared.
Posted by eLwood]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:27:25 -0600 Arkansas Times
http://gawker.com/5968818/i-am-adam-lanzas…

Let me try to show what led up to the Sandy Hook Massacre.

Adam Lanza wasn't born a perfect child. His brilliant brain was abnormal and it got worse as time went by.

As often happens when a child is born with terrible problems, the parents divorce and the weight of caring for the damaged child falls on the mother's shoulders.

Since Reagan flushed out the mentally ill from government hospitals back in the 1980s there's very little care for the seriously mentally ill except for their families, rescue missions, or prisons. Mrs. Lanza was going it alone and losing the 20 year war to keep her damaged child from hurting himself or others.

Unfortunately Mrs. Lanza's little gun hobby cost her her life along with 26 others, 20 of the dead being 1st graders. If she had taken up golf instead of guns this tragedy wouldn't have happened thought Adam was going to hurt someone somewhere, sometime. He wasn't evil, he was insane.

This mass murder wasn't senseless, senseless implies to me an event that can't be explained. I've just explained why it happened and it will happen again when a country that is a sea of high powered weapons meets an insane person who can get his hands on them. It will happen again because the US by all indications has no system of long term care and treatment and housing of people who are insane and won't ever get better.

We are awash in guns because sheer greed for profit has met up with politicians who'll do anything for a buck including making us unsafe no matter where we are. And con-men like Huckabee tell the sheeple God is Love & to arm themselves to the teeth because "they" are coming after them, all in the same breath.

Now add to this toxic mix paranoid short-dick men so cowardly they must fill their homes, cars and jackets with the most dangerous weapons this side of nukes. One finally addition.....idiots who have watched too much TV violence, too many Terminator-Bruce Willis movies and become erect at the thought of being the hero, killing all the dark-skinned robbers at the 7-11 or in the WHITE HOUSE.

The Sandy Hook Massacre isn't a mystery at all, the arithmetic is perfect, what's a mystery is that these kinds of mass shootings don't happen every single day. When Congress does nothing, we'll see the day when mass shootings are just a part of everyday life.

...and since this is the Christmas Season let us remember an Arkansas pioneer, Ronald Eugene Simmons who 25 years ago on December 22, 1987 started to systematically kill 14 family members in the most hideous fashion. He finished up on December 28th by killing 2 non-family members and shooting but not killing 4 other people, then like God on the 7th day....he rested.
Posted by DeathbyInches]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:24:50 -0600 Arkansas Times http://thegirlwhowasthursday.wordpress.com…


3) The article complains about mental illness stigma while reinforcing it by explicitly tying it to violence, and in particular, mass killings. The reality is that there is no such observed link: “after analysing a number of killers, Mullen concludes, ‘they had personality problems and were, to put it mildly, deeply troubled people.’ But he goes on to add: ‘Most perpetrators of autogenic massacres do not, however, appear to have active psychotic symptoms at the time and very few even have histories of prior contact with mental health services.’” And most people with mental illness are not violent, although they are ***far more likely to be victims of crime ***(see here, for instance).
Posted by Eureka Springs]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:10:00 -0600 Arkansas Times
"Your statement about mental illness being marked by senseless behavior "by definition" is wrong. The entire purpose of studying mental diseases is to understand and "make sense" of them and their causes in hopes of treating or curing them."

The reason we study them is because they don't make sense, they are therefore "senseless." We wish to "treat" or "cure" them because they don't make sense. The fact that we need to "make sense of them makes them senseless. Being able to explain a behavior doesn't make it sensible.

I'm not parsing your words any more than you are parsing plainjim's. Words mean things, to quote you. The events in Newtown are, by definition "senseless." They are senseless to rational-thinking people, irrespective of whether a person is atheist, agnostic, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc. The reason is that there are commonly accepted standards of behavior that are required for us to live in societies. When those are violated, the equilibrium of the entire community is disrupted. Those common assumptions that are required for us to live as "civilized" creatures are what make behaviors "sensible" or not. Whether or not a mental health professional can explain why a mentally ill person behaves the way they do, doesn't change whether the act itself is senseless.

BTW, I would claim that the Huckster's self-serving public pronouncements are also "senseless," by the definitions I listed above, repeated here:

1. Lacking sense or meaning; meaningless.
2. Deficient in sense; foolish or stupid.

But then feeding trolls is also senseless....
Posted by Perplexed]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:47:19 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by gumby]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:41:25 -0600 Arkansas Times Solutions? It ain't a matter of rewriting the laws of physics.
Step one: sue the shot out of gunmakers, especially those making cool/slaughter I was never in the army but I'm a badass porn weapons. Step 2, make it really hard to retail those porn-guns. Step 3, make it really hard to exchange those guns privately, as in re-sell to fellow gunophiles.
If you've got your AR-15s and 9mm pistols, fine: you're responsible for every shot from here on out. The gubmint ain't out to take 'em, but some sumbitch lawyer's going to sue your ass and generations yet unborn if a bullet goes awry.
And if and when only the criminals have those guns, arrest the criminals and destroy their guns (and please don't send the home as private weapons for law enforcement...)
QfuggingED.
It's late. I may have to cut and paste and rant fresh again later.
Posted by Bulkington]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:29:12 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by radical centrist]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:28:16 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Eureka Springs]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:19:20 -0600 Arkansas Times
Katherine Newman's (Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University) is but one of many such articles explaining the "sense" underlying these tragedies over the years.

You say, Perplexed: "If a person behaves in a way that violates basic humanity as well as their own self-interest, isn't that by definition 'senseless?'"

No, it is not.

Adam Lanza's "self-interest," as Newman explains makes perfect sense given his illness, history and circumstances. Your statement that his actions were senseless "by definition" is wrong.

You continue: "In addition, isn't mental illness, by definition, marked by senseless' behavior? Wouldn't 'senseless' be the opposite of 'rational?'"

Again, no.

Your statement about mental illness being marked by senseless behavior "by definition" is wrong. The entire purpose of studying mental diseases is to understand and "make sense" of them and their causes in hopes of treating or curing them.

Just because they don't make sense to YOU or because they are irrational to one of sound mind and body does not mean they are without sense or understandable cause-and-effect and meaning in the context of the disease.

To me, Scientologists who believe in Xenu behave like idiots. (See Tom Cruise's infamous YouTube rant that was never meant to be leaked.) So do Mormons who believe in the imaginary planet, Kolub. Both groups are irrational in certain prejudices and actions. But in the context of their beliefs (false but devoutly held) their behavior makes perfect sense.

Same for Mike Huckabee's.
Posted by Norma Bates]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:15:36 -0600 Arkansas Times