Word: gimmick
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Britain's trade-union bosses saw nothing but mischief in the Back Britain movement. "A pure gimmick," said Jim Conway, 53, general secretary of the 1,300,000-member Amalgamated Engineering Union to which most of the employees at the girls' company belong. "The problem in British industry," he added, "is outdated, outmoded factories, and outmoded and ill-equipped management." Nonetheless, the workers at the girls' firm defied a union order to stop the free work and even threatened to bolt the union...
...different celebrities for ideas on how to decorate a Christmas tree, and what do they send? Twenty-two different personal plugs, that's what. Hallmark thought up the gimmick for a seasonal display at its Manhattan Gallery, decorating the trees according to suggestion. Jeweler Harry Winston fancied diamond sparkles, Rex Harrison (Dr. Dolittle) spoke up for animal heads, Cartoonist Charles Schulz wanted a pine branch atop Snoopy's doghouse, Julia Child recommended pots and pans on a stainless-steel tree, and Leontyne Price wanted her tree covered in opera programs. Pop Sculptor Marisol...
...second is a novel in motion, sprawling over the whole Southwest and Mexico. But each of these divergent books works a similar splendid change on one of the shopworn tricks of the mystery trade, the revelation of guilt which confutes the reader's expectations. MacDonald transforms a mechanical gimmick into a genuinely horrifying reversal, in each case significant, completely unexpected, and carefully prepared. A reader finds such glimpses of horror throughout the Archer books, and just as often he feels the disturbing stab of empathy with a murderer which MacDonald evokes so well...
...possible agency for fraudulent thoughtography. Constructed from a cheap lense (or a dime store souvenir viewer) and a tiny, transparent photographic positive, this simple optical device could, they suggest, be concealed inside Serios's gismo, and would produce results similar to his under similar conditions. It is such a gimmick, they further suggest, that Ted Serios may have been using all along, until frightened off the game by the arrival of their inquiry team: "...pictures might have been made by him in a similar maner, if he had so wished." They do not deny that the use of such...
...conditions, described above, under which Eisenbud asserts that Serios has produced images (is it reasonable to assume, for example, that the miniature optical device secreted in the gismo would pass muster when an objective observer rather than Serios is holding the gismo, etc.). Neither does the posited gimmick explain certain notable examples of Serios's pictures described below. The moderate approach fails because the effect of Eisenbud's documentation is to polarize opinion about the Serios affair. There seems to me to be only two opinions possible: 1) Serios is honest and his abilities are genuine; 2) Serios and Eisenbud...