Word: gibberish
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...National Weather Service to meteorologic centers all over the world. When the atmospheric pressure on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands is reported to be 1,029 millibars, the trap is sprung and all the Soviet computers connected to the Craig 1 suddenly begin churning out gibberish. After an initial panic, two Soviet programmers uncover the first softbomb and manage to disarm it. But they know that there are other software traps hidden in the machine, and the search for them leads to a series of electronic cliffhangers...
...cameras starting in 1888. Today, however, the owner of a new video cassette recorder or some other electronic wonder must turn to an instruction manual to get his machine working. But that is often when the trouble begins: the consumer opens a booklet to find a compilation of jargon, gibberish and just plain confusion. "There is a major disease in this country called wall-stare," says Sanford Rosen, president of Communication Sciences, a Minneapolis consulting firm. "When people read a computer manual, they just want to put it down and stare at the wall for as long as possible...
...suite at 4 a.m. with the bad taste of last night in the mouth and the feeling that tomorrow will not be a better day. Spinal Tap has as many laughs as any rock burlesque but underneath that rock it plays like Scenes from a Marriage translated from the Gibberish. -By Richard Corliss
Back from a lengthy concert tour, Claude meets his agent Norman Robbins (Albert Brooks) and listens to some gibberish about a private detective's report on his wife. Confused about the detective. Claude denies any jealous tendencies. His manservant, Giuseppe (Richard Libertini), misunderstood Claude's request "Keep an eye on her" for the Italian equivalent of "Get a private eye to follow her." With the requisite veneer of trust, Claude poo-poos the report and falls back into the arms of Daniella...
...first and best defense against such totalitarian gibberish, Orwell argued, is common sense. A person with a basic understanding of what the words freedom and slavery actually mean must reject a sentence that equates them. He wrote: "In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit." The alternative method promises treachery: "When you think of something abstract...