Obscurity in Plain Sight Being curious about a recent joint venture between Monsanto and Dow Chemical, I visited the website of Dow AgroSiences to get some information directly from the horses mouth. Heres one of the things the horse said: Syngenta, Dow AgroSciences to Offer Reduced Structured Refuge Stacked Trait Options to Independent Seed Companies. Of course, I had absolutely no idea what reduced structured refuge stacked trait options might be. But as I examined the phrase trying to figure out which words modified which other words, I realized something remarkable--none of the individual words in the phrase was a technical term. The bewildering phrase is made up entirely of common English words, none of which is longer than 2 syllables: reduced structured refuge stacked trait options Yet, knowing the usual meanings of all the words does not provide any key to unlocking the meaning of the phrase. I fear we are entering a new age of techno- bureau-babble in which perfectly good, commonly used words are yoked with one another to create opacity that looks almost like transparency. Have you run across any similar phrases?
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 19:37:07 +0000
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