I love it when you don’t have to work to write a column. This is one of those times. It was basically handed to me and all I have to do is report to you.
On Thursday I went to a meeting of Groundwater Management Area 12 in the Milano Civic Center. As I went through the door I picked up a handout which mirrored the slide show being presented.
I turned to page 5 and found this information, titled “The GMA Process (condensed).
I reproduce it here exactly as written:
“GCDs in the GMAs set the DFCs and TWDB uses the GAM or other scientific data to determine the MAG. RWPGs use MAG for planning.”
I had two immediate reactions:
• Oh, no, I’m in the wrong place. I’ve blundered into a school board meeting.
• Thank God it was condensed.
There’s more. At the top of the page was a diagram which showed the process in action, a flow chart (well it had to do with water; of course it’s a flow chart) with lots of arrows and shaded boxes whizzing around every which way.
Title of the flow chart was “How it’s supposed to work.”
I don’t know which hydrologist, or which hydrologist’s techhie, titled that chart but I’d like to high-five them.
Get it? Not “How it works” but “How it’s supposed to work.”
In the newspaper biz we call that editorializing.
In all fairness there was a box on the previous page explaining what all those terms meant.
DFC means “desired future condition.” RWPG means “regional water planning groups.” IASRT means “is anyone still reading this?”
But nobody, I mean nobody, uses anagrams and royal sounding obtuse phrases like the education system.
There’s even a word for it, educationese. One critic defined that phrase as “the substitution of grandiose, important-sounding phrases for simple concepts” and the “pretentious secret handshake of the profession.”
A few examples with translations:
• Text to text connection—book report.
• Scored assessment—test.
• Time on task development—clean up your desk.
• Low-organized physical education—go outside and play.
• Uninterrupted silent, sustained reading—a book you like.
• Extended constructive response—essay.
• Movement in retrograde—retreat. (Okay, that wasn’t education. That was what Gen. Douglas MacArthur said once to avoid using the “r” word.)
Okay, it’s put up or shut up time.
If you can’t use an aquifer-full of acronyms, just how are you supposed to convey such a complex system as “GCDs in the GMAs set the DFCs....and so on.”
I guess you have me there. How else could it possibly have been presented? Hmmm.
“Water boards get all the information they can from experts, tell the state what they’d like to see happen and the state makes a plan and sends it back to the boards for them to implement.”
Wonder if I can get a special consulting fee (SCF)?
I work cheap (IWC).
