Anybody for Bullshit Bingo?
How about "at this particular point in time. That’s really pinning it down, isn’t it?
A bunch of us Green Party people did something similar to buzzword bingo at a typical non-debate between Republicrat and Demublican candidates.
We kept track of how many times the candidates mentioned certain common mainstream political cliches such as “family values,” “think about the children.” and so on.
Something that really chaps my behind these days is the whole trend of lead and point, both of which are used to mean “in charge of”. I’m fine (in a defeated way) with saying:
Maria is going to take the lead or Maria is going to be the point person on this project.
… but I’m recently hearing this shortened even more, to “Maria is going to be lead or be point on this project.” To me, this would make sense if we were saying “For the love of God, we’re going to rescue those astronauts on the disabled space shuttle before their oxygen runs out in 38 minutes – Maria, YOU’RE POINT ON THIS PROJECT!!!” because to me, at least, it conveys a sort of anxious urgency designed to get your blood pumping.
But for gosh sakes, what we’re talking about here is “I think we’re very nearly out of post-it notes! Maria, YOU’RE POINT ON THIS PROJECT!!!” The day my blood pumps over POST-IT NOTES will be a sad day indeed.
Abbreviations … good grief. We’re at the point where we have SO MANY, they’re repeating themselves (this is in education, btw). We have two TEP centers, one is the “Technolgy in Education Project” and the other is “Teaching Excellence Program.” So now we have to say “TEP-Tech” or “TEP-Teach.”
And after THREE YEARS OF THIS NONSENSE, the people at the TEP-Teach office still open mis-directed mail to discover long reports about computer programs for the classroom, addressed simply to “TEP” and they have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA of whom the correct recipient might be. I have gotten calls, asking if the report is for my office, and I swear they’re just going through the phone directory in alphabetical order. It has yet to occur to anyone, despite this happening about once a week, that the odds are fairly darn high that the first phone call they should make is to TEP-Tech. And vice versa.
This, my friends, clearly indicates that the end of days is nigh.
Medicine is much more resistant to such bullshit-speak as this, but this one chaps me: “expired”. As in, “The patient expired.” (Passed up his sell-by date, I guess.) See also “succumbed”, which sounds like something someone would do in a bad romance novel. “Perished” is right out.
The patient died, OK? The patient fucking died.
We would also have accepted “went out through the wrong door”, “bought the farm”, or “got sent Home with a capital ‘H’.”
Dr. J
Eduspeak
stakeholders
formative evaluation
summative evaluation
IEP (individual education plan)
affective domain
cognitive domain
whole language approach
site based decision making BWA HAHA AHAHA HAHAH AHAH ahem
Authentic assessment
criterion-referenced assessment
faciliatator …facilitated learning
manipulative skills
multiple intelligences
pedagogy
portfolio
rubric
descriptors
high stakes assessment
EMH
TMH
Or play the eduspeak game…fun for ALL ages!!
Some nurses have a habit of describing their patients (or clients :mad: ) as ambulating freely around the ward.
They walk like everyone else surely.
Abbreviations are a bit rife 'round here really, though they usually make me laugh. Just last week, there’s two ambulance officers and two firemen talking over a cup of coffee in my tearoom, and one of the paramedics said “I thought you blokes could have used another BRT on that last job”. I’m racking my brains for an appropriately technical term, but when none comes to mind I ask.
Big Red Truck apparently laughs
DoctorJ, I remember once in handover, one of the staff described the patient in room three as BND. A quizzical look from me was enough for her to explain Bloody Near Dead. A useful abbreviation 
I am passing that link on to all my colleagues–oops, I mean co-facilitators of higher learning. (Bleccch!)
Oh, and I must add “talking points” as a noxious phrase; it tends to come up during meetings and negotiations. If it comes up one more time, I’m gonna smash it.
Working in the television industry, I hear a million of 'em every day.
First, you have the programming department that simply speaks in acronyms, to wit:
“Friends LTC’s on the 14th and then we’ve got MAS*H on OTO then we go over to The Simpsons FTC, then it runs TFN”
(Translation - “Friends has its Last Telecast on the 14th, an then we’ve got MAS*H on One Time Only, then we go over to The Simpsons First Telecast, then it runs Till Further Notice”)
Then over to the newsroom - you may hear something like this:
“We’ve got the mayor’s presser at 10:00, then we have to do three hits from the state house at noon. Jason’s got to get the noon OTS’s ready to go and the EP called in sick today. On top of that , Net wants a talking head VYVX’d at 12:15.”
So, we know that the mayor is having a press conference at 10:00 that we have to cover. We have to do three “live shots” (hits) from the state house and that the graphics artist, Jason, has to get the Over The Shoulder graphics ready for the noon show and that since the Executive Producer has called in sick, it’s going to be a tough day. Then, we find out that our affiliated network has requested a single person interview setup to be sent over the network fiber optic link at 12:15.
You get to sales and you start hearing about the “Demos” (demographics of our audience) and people are tossing around wierd sounding numbers like this - “Did you see Seinfeld last night, it did a 7.7 with a 15!!” This, of course, refers to the Neilsen overnight ratings sample of households and tells you that the show in question got a 7.7 rating (7.7% of all households in the market were tuned in) and a 15 share (15% of those households that actually had their TV’s turned on were watching that show.)
Engineering (my end of things) is just as bad - because we combine all the other jargon of TV with the standard electronics and computer jargon that every other industry uses. We get accused of not speaking english on a regular basis.
Microsoft loves this shit. If you ever go to one of their sites for a product seminar or “training” you’ll get to hear something like:
“We’ll take a bio-break now because we have a hard-stop at 2:30.”
bio-break n. Stupid
- A pause in a meeting so the participant can resolve any biological needs that may have arisen from listening to a fool drone on about SharePoint Portal Server.[sup]TM[/sup]
hard-stop n. Redundant
- The time when a meeting must end. Usually due to one of the participant having a prior commitment.
- When the meeting ends due to one of the participants slamming the face of the presenter into the nearest wall to avoid future exposure to coma-inducing industry buzz words.
I’d also like to add my vote to “at the end of the day.” There’s one guy at my office who has apparently just discovered this phrase and uses it constantly. Especially annoying because whenever I hear it I get the song from Les Miserables stuck in my head.
At the end of the day you’re another day older
And that’s all you can say for the life of the poor
It’s a struggle it’s a war
And there’s nothing that anyone’s giving
One more day standing about
What is it for?
What? No-one’s mentioned KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators)yet?
There may still be hope for us all.
Thanks for that. Now I know where how our teaching and lear… sorry learning and teaching executive and assistant find sufficient meaningless crap to generate quite so many emails and newsletters.