Word: hocus-pocus
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This is not, of course, simply a story of business combinations. The Internet plays a leading role as well, providing the technology that makes competition possible. The relevant hocus-pocus is the "Internet protocol," which is not the title of a Robert Ludlum novel but is rather a geeky delight that sits at the heart of the Web and e-mail revolution. Internet protocol (generally called IP) is a language computers use to talk to one another: a hyperefficient chatter that lets phone-company machines banter by sending digital data "packets" back and forth. These packages can contain anything...
...roles. Yet by this time, near the very end of the book, these topics on longer seem appropriate with the mood set from the beginning, a navel in high relief. Overall, the book does not fulfill its original stated mission, but reduces itself to an entertaining article on sexual hocus-pocus...
Skeptics say such conclusions are hocus-pocus, claiming and that it's easy to boast predictive success after the fact. But Shea and others stand behind such astrological predictions and say the stars' arrangement during a person's birth has a lifelong impact on the person...
HYPNOSIS. The original hocus-pocus has moved off the magician's stage and into the doctor's office. According to the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, 15,000 health professionals now practice the technique. While not a cure, making healthy suggestions to hypnotized patients, studies show, can help them heal faster, give up smoking and other bad habits, and feel less pain -- long after a session ends. One remarkable study showed that burn patients heal faster, with less pain and fewer complications, if they are put in a trance shortly after they are injured...
...made its way into several newspapers, was the work of Iben Browning, a New Mexico climate consultant, who based his forecast on an analysis of the gravitational pull of the sun and moon. Many seismologists, worried that public concern could degenerate into panic, have denounced it as unscientific hocus-pocus. At the same time, they agree that the New Madrid fault, which stretches over 225 km (140 miles), poses serious long-term risks, especially to the nearby cities of Memphis and St. Louis...