>From: martin@edify.com (Martin Lane-Smith)
>Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 17:32:54 -0700
>Subject: Ego disclosure

It takes a request for a bio to cause me to contribute to the list. 
Presumably, my ego and desire for self-publicity outweigh my reticence and 
nervousness about shooting my mouth off on subjects about which I know little.

I spent the first 40 years of my life in England. I attended Cambridge 
University and obtained a degree in Physics. Since then I have written 
software. I came to California five years ago and I now hold the position of 
Vice President of Engineering for a Silicon Valley software start-up. I 
married 20 years ago and have two teen-aged sons.

I became interested in gs via E-prime. (I note that several bio authors have 
appeared to use E-prime in their submissions. Something about the language, 
and the presence of only one or two occurences of the dastardly verb, 
suggests this.) 

I read A E Van Vogt's Null-A books many years ago. The concepts facinated me 
but I only recently made the connection.

One morning I heard an interview, on National Public Radio, with one E W 
Kellog; an individual who speaks, lives, breathes, and I dare say, goes to 
the bathroom, in E-prime. The interview fascinated me, so I tracked him 
down. I wrote to him, bought his book, and my wife gave me membership in 
ISGS for Christmas. The certificate hangs on my office wall, but luckily no 
one asks me what it means!

It took me so long to make progress with the library's copy of Science and 
Sanity that I had to buy my own - I still have not finished. I bought K's 
Selected Writings but I have not finished that yet either. However, I have a 
deep and abiding love for E-prime! I try always to write in it, but I cannot 
yet speak it.

Over the past year, for reasons I shall not discuss this time, I have had 
cause to attend counselling sessions and to read works on interpersonal 
relationship issues. I have found it remarkable to see parallels between how 
these books advise one to think, and gs. They seem to follow a similar path 
to E-prime in encouraging one to recognise the difference between opinions, 
feelings, interpretations, and facts.

I find that my readings on gs and E-prime help me every day. I often 
mentally rephrase what people say and this helps me realize that they only 
speak their own feelings and perspectives. I can then deal with them much 
better because instead of contradictory 'facts' I now only have different 
points of view from different people.

Much of the material posted to this list feels very esoteric to me. I find 
it hard to impossible to describe gs to my friends. The very attempt leaves 
them thinking that I have a screw loose. I think that gs has not 'taken off' 
primarily because many people find it inaccessable. Not to mention of course 
that one daily hears the most appalling Aristotlean nonsense coming out of 
people's mouths everywhere, on television news particularly. How could us gs 
fans ever be more than a fringe group of pedantic crazies in the face of that?
------------------------------------------
Martin Lane-Smith
VP Engineering,
Edify Corporation, Santa Clara, California