It Bears Repeating

I've submitted my share of research proposals over the years, and while I took every one of them very seriously, I don't think it criminalizes anyone to acknowledge that despite every effort, the quality was not always the same. Some ended up better developed, or more innovative, or benefitted from a better technical grounding. And some of the basic ideas were just more compelling than others. Nor, I think, does it damn anyone to note that when one of the turkeys tried to pass itself off as a duck, it compensated for a lack of sound reasoning and good science with a whole lot of extra-bouyant marketing-style weaselspeak.  "This innovative concept will revolutionalize the paradigm..."

Sure, talking your concepts up is a necessary evil, but you can also tell that an idea is fundamentally hollow when it reaches a critical level of bullshit self-praise. There's a point where you need to show, not tell, as the writers say. Sales is a lot more natural when you understand and believe in the advantages of your product, as marketing people know. And all I'm saying is that if you have to put on your cover page, in gigantic letters, "A Responsible, Balanced Budget," there couldn't be a bigger tell that it is neither of those things.

And look, it's actually a lot worse when you believe writing it and parading your smirky "professionalism" makes it reality.  That's delusional.  It's cargo-cult territory.  Putting on a suit and jumping around with that dynamic-but-serious clown act doesn't make you business savvy any more than rolling around in your big 5.0 makes you enormously endowed.  Word to your mother, fucktard.