Speed Gibson

If you're my age, you remember something called Word Processing. It was the beginning of the end for the electric typewriter. A local company, CPT, was one of the pioneers, with high, narrow, black on white reverse video displays that looked just like the paper it eventually produced when done.

I remember laughing when I first heard it called Word Processing. I, you see, was a Data Processor. I had no time for high tech typing. It was beneath me.

Still, the idea quickly caught on, with steno pools giving way to Word Processing departments. My IBM rep soon had another term for it - Word Storage. Words go in, he said, and aren't seen again for days. He had to beg to get his proposals typed .

I think it was on Mark Levin's show this week that I heard some Democrat's speech described as little more than "Word Salad." It seems the term is already in Wikipedia, but there seem to be two meanings, one a synonym for blather, the other a curious concept of mixing letters within words. As long as you leave the first and last letters the same, you can still read it.

Try it yourself, with this quote from U.S. Senator Barack Obama:

We konw taht as porgsereviss we belviee in arfofabdle htleah crae for all Aericmans, and taht we're giong to mkae srue taht Amanerics dno't hvae to coshoe bteeewn a htlaeh crae paln taht bupknatrs the grovennmet and one taht bktpranus fliameis, the ptary taht wno't jsut torhw a few tax bkreas at fiiamles who cna't aofrfd tiher irannsuce, but wlil mrnizodee our haleth crae stesym and gvie eevry falmiy a cahcne to buy iuransnce at a pcrie tehy can aorffd.

It reads just like the original!