I'm somewhat of a newbie myself (using Perl for a year or so). You can make it print Gore easily. I don't know what he's talking about (and neither does he). Check this out:

###His code
$GlobalName = "Clinton";

sub getGlobalName
    {
    return($GlobalName);
    }

print "Before: " . &getGlobalName() . "\n";
$ref = \&getGlobalName();
$$ref = "Gore";
print "After: " . &getGlobalName() . "\n";
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#All print statements printed "Clinton"

###His code improved

$GlobalName = "Clinton";

sub getGlobalName
    {
    return($GlobalName);
    }

print "Before: " . &getGlobalName() . "\n";
$GlobalName = "Gore";
print "After: " . &getGlobalName() . "\n";
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#Prints "Clinton" then "Gore" What he did was way off. He created a reference hard reference with:

$ref = \&getGlobalName();
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If you were to:

print "$ref \n";
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It would look something like:

CODE(0x1a45934)
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What he said was the same as:

${CODE(0x1a45934)} = "Gore"
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or creating a soft reference.