| Author |
Message |
William C. Pegues, FCSI, CCS
Senior Member
Username: wpegues
Post Number: 905
Registered: 10-2002
| | Posted on Saturday, March 01, 2014 - 03:07 pm: |    |
This is humorous, but, its also serious. I mean, one of the groups with the largest number of bogus papers is the IEEE !!
http://m.cnet.com.au/publishers-remove-gibberish-computer-generated-research-papers-339346727.htm?redir=1
William C. Pegues, FCSI, CCS, SCIP Affiliate
WDG Architecture, Washington, DC | Dallas, TX |
Dave Metzger
Senior Member
Username: davemetzger
Post Number: 500
Registered: 07-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, March 01, 2014 - 03:47 pm: | |
It is not only computers that put out gibberish.
In the October 2001 issue of Architectural Record, Robert Campbell FAIA (who is currently the architecture critic for the Boston Globe), wrote a scathing article on the human-generated gibberish known as ArchiSpeak. One example, from an architecture professor: "These distortions elicit decipherment in terms of several virtual constructs that allow the house to analogize discourse and call for further elucidation."
One of my favorite quotes is from a little book titled "101 Things I learned in Architecture School". It is, “If you can’t explain your ideas to your grandmother in terms that she understands, you don’t know your subject well enough.”
As specifiers, we're not writing great literature, but at least we usually achieve our goal of producing a document that's understandable. Usually. |
John Regener, AIA, CCS, CCCA, CSI, SCIP
Senior Member
Username: john_regener
Post Number: 688
Registered: 04-2002
| | Posted on Saturday, March 01, 2014 - 06:46 pm: | |
When I was in high school (c. 1962), "New Math" was introduced. We didn't even have real text books for it; it was still experimental. The publisher was the "School Mathematics Study Group" or SMSG. We said it meant "Some Mathematician Sure Goofed." I "enjoyed" two summers of Summer School for remedial study.
That's why I say, there are three types of people: those who are good with numbers and those who aren't.
My favorite computer acronym is PCMCIA or "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms". |
J. Peter Jordan
Senior Member
Username: jpjordan
Post Number: 691
Registered: 05-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, March 02, 2014 - 11:28 am: | |
When I was teaching, one of my colleagues used the term "talkitecture" for the gibberish that many programs encouraged their students to use when making presentations. |
John Bunzick, CCS, CCCA, LEED AP
Senior Member
Username: bunzick
Post Number: 1562
Registered: 03-2002
| | Posted on Sunday, March 02, 2014 - 07:21 pm: | |
Art and architecture share the same problem. Think about some of those explanatory panels found in museums; often incomprehensible. I'm reading "What Are You Looking At" by Will Gompertz, which is a history of modern art. He points out that often this material, even though putatively written for the ordinary museum attendee, is really intended for "a handful of world experts in a language only art insiders would understand." |
David J. Wyatt, CDT
Senior Member
Username: david_j_wyatt_cdt
Post Number: 65
Registered: 03-2011
| | Posted on Monday, March 03, 2014 - 12:02 pm: | |
A similar problem is occurring in the "Study Guides" industry. There is a company called Cram 101 that boils down textbooks to bullet points and sells them students. They are a total waste of money and rife with errors.
One of their offerings is "E-Study Guide for Construction Specifications: Principles and Applications." One of the many mistakes made is their definition of a joint. They define it as a place where two bones meet. True if the student is interested in anatomy, but in the context of construction, of course, it means something else.
It is especially bothersome in that they are making lots of money selling a bad product at the expense of the original writers. |
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