Word: gadget
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...fatal accidents have alcohol in their blood. But the device−which is designed to screen drunks by testing judgment, visual acuity, short-term memory and coordinated motor response−will also weed out drug users and those who are mentally or physically deficient. To satisfy the demanding gadget, a driver must be able to read the relatively small lighted numbers, memorize them, recall them, and punch them into the keyboard in a coordinated response within a few seconds. If he can perform these functions he is fit for the road. If he cannot−in three tries...
...says its tactics are based on the non-exclusionary martialling of anti-war sentiment from every segment of American society. They have used the credo "Unity of Action" as an amorphous, all purpose gadget to resolve any contradiction, not unlike Nixon's Silent Majority...
...Boffers"-$11 foam-rubber swords that the catalogue calls "the first significant advance in weaponry since the encounter group." The Ashley Thermostatic Wood Burning Circulator is an $80 Franklin stove, equipped with a thermostat, that will go up to twelve hours without refueling. The Inquiry Box is a $19.96 gadget designed to teach theory building and theory testing: "By pulling and pushing the things that stick out and by poking around inside with a stick, you're supposed to figure out what arrangement of pulleys, pegs, springs and strings is inside." The Moog Synthesizer is an electronic music maker...
That kind of McLuhanesque gadget might seem to be the ultimate in efficiency, but its acceptance by the military epitomizes the failure of briefings. Even without benefit of computer, the armed-services style of communication has become a ritual recitation of memorized details, a reduction of experience to a set of quantifiable data. The supposedly hard fact has been glorified; the untidy, elusive concept has been smudged into a supposedly measurable statistic...
...conversation, DeCavalcante and two other men discussed the various types of devices available. One suggested, in the manner of Ian Fleming's Goldfinger, a machine that smashes up old automobiles. DeCavalcante said that he was looking for one that pulverized garbage. Also mentioned was a gadget capable of turning° a human body into a "meatball...