Computer Sifts Through BS

The Daily Telegraph ^ | June 24, 2003 | Robert Uhlig

[bruinbirdman]

Empty jargon is put to the sword by new program

Political speeches and corporate reports may never be the same again. A computer program that sifts the bull from business jargon and exposes politicians' empty rhetoric has been developed by management consultants.

Called Bullfighter, the jargon buster was developed by Deloitte Consulting after it noticed that Enron's documents became more indecipherable as it slid further towards bankruptcy.

Brian Fugere, a partner at Deloitte Consulting, said the firm came up with Bullfighter because "we've had it with repurposable, value-added knowledge capital and robust, leveragable mindshare".

In testing Bullfighter, Mr Fugere said, Deloitte found a link between the financial performance of America's 30 largest companies and the clarity of their communications.

The three-year growth of straight-talking companies was better than those of companies that obscured their communications with baffling verbal fog.

Deloitte has made Bullfighter freely available for any business executive or politican who - to coin a phrase Bullfighter would abhor - is keen to leverage a value-based paradigm-shift in their knowledge repository.

So far, more than 50,000 people have downloaded the software or applied for a free CD, which, if Bullfighter was not around, they might explain as seamlessly empowering their mission critical enterprise communications in a truly holistic and synergistic way.

The program works like a spell-checker, scanning Microsoft Word documents and Powerpoint presentations for pointless jargon such as envisioneer, transparent, expunge, graveolent and best of breed.

It then produces a bull composite index, based on the number of bull words used, sentence lengths and the ease of reading.

The Telegraph tested the program on speeches by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. Neither scored better than average, but Tony Blair clearly outshone Gordon Brown, who was advised to "seek help" for his "impossibly labyrinthine prose".

A speech by Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman, was castigated for using superfluous terms such as 'best in class' - "appropriate for the kennel club," Bullfighter said - and value-add, which the program dismissed as: "A good word to forget, unless you enjoy sounding like a used car salesman talking about floor mats."

A speech issued yesterday by Franz Fischler, the EU Agriculture Commissioner, was more than the system could bear. It crashed the computer.

10 June 2003: What Gordon's jargon really means
18 March 2003: Solicitors agree to cut legal jargon

[cavtrooper21]

The Demosocialists will just hate this, 'reckon they'll try to "ban" it??

[Lil'freeper]

I can't wait for an Educrat edition of that software.

[cryptical]

I should download this so I can catch up on my memo-speak.

It's been a few years since I got to sling the bull around, and I'm sure there's new lingo to learn. :)

[Rennes Templar]

This program seems like it will facilitate the retrieval of inherent meaning attributed to linguistically augmented forms of inter-enterprise communication.

[longjack]

4 mb download, for Office XP or 2000. Apparently it works like a spell checker.

Deloitte Consulting..Bullfighter Download Page

longjack

[Sloth]

Hmm... I just used it to check Clinton's 1999 & Bush's 2002 State of the Union speeches. They came back almost identical 7.7 & 7.8 respectively (both good, Bush with a tiny edge).

[martin_fierro]

Bullfighter won't run on Win 98? Sheesh.

[Rocky]

I believe I saw in Business Week that this program was used to test one of Deloitte's own ads, and the ad got a bad score. Hoist on their own petard.

[Sloth]

Bwahahahaha... I tried it on an Al Gore speech to some international group and he got a 2.6! The analysis in the Bullfighter program states:

Diagnosis: You overwhelmingly embrace obfuscation and don't want the reader to understand anything you have to say. Your writing lavishes a preponderance of dependent clauses and compound negatives upon the reader, whose cognitive load not infrequently exceeds the purported benefit of the substance of the article. Syntax incorporates numerous collections of items juxtaposed or in series that demand persistence and not a little unqualified expertise on the part of all intended recipients of the author's communications. In fact, such machinations inevitably prove detrimental to comprehension and sabotage the imparting of any and all knowledge. Your condition is irreversible.

[gcruse]

Let me guess. That means the language was constructed to be intelligible by bright seventh graders, but no higher.

[onedoug]

I've been on FR long enough to know I don't need this thing.

[warmath]

Hey, I like that.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[strela]

Yeah, nice and all that. But is it updateable? There are new buzzwords coming down the pike all the time. Can this program look for them too?

[Rennes Templar]

I've got 98 and everything else works on it. But this could be a business collusion between new program writers and Microsoft to eventually make Win 98 and even 2000 obsolete with new programs that aren't compatible, thus forcing the consumer to upgrade to newer Windows.

[Richard Kimball]

I think we ought to run it up the flagpole and see if it makes a splash, you know, throw it down the well and see if anyone salutes it. Tell you what, let's shift paradigms and focus group this, then we'll do lunch and put our heads together.

This could be something that really sells to the metrosexuals.

[cavtrooper21]

Stop Oh please stop! That sounds like the senior managment at the company I worked for before my plant was sold off.
The new management is better.

[Freakazoid]

At my company we used to play "bullshit bingo". We'd make up bingo cards with words and phrases such as "synergistic" and "think outside the box". At a meeting as we heard these words we'd mark them out and when one of us had a bingo we'd quietly say "bullshit!".

Broke up quite a few meetings with that game.

LOL!

[Freakazoid]

This could be something that really sells to the metrosexuals.

You're right! There gonna be on this like wasabi on sashimi.