When I ran a BBS (the local precursors of the Internet), one of the things my callers and I enjoyed doing was using a thesaurus to convert relatively simple text into the most obfuscated (murkily complicated) text we possibly could. For example:

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

...might become:

Tiny, leafy-stemmed flowerless plants such as acrocarp or sphagnum do not generally adhere to gyrating accumulations of mineral matter.

I'd love to see a computer program that could do this. In addition to the fun we normal, twisted people could have with it, imagine how much time it'd save people in business and government positions who must knock themselves out every day to write so convolutedly.
-- Ander, Aug 04 2007

I think some people on the 'bakery have already developed, and are actively using the software of which you speak.

Or:

I postulate that judging by the responses of a subset of the denizens who's habitual contextual node resides at this virtualised location, individuals (if indeed they qualify under that definition) may have realised such an algorithm and continue to employ it at varying coordinates in a Hilbertian representation of what we might describe as everything, the vectors of which, under closer scrutiny, suggest that it is probably time to go to the pub.
-- zen_tom, Aug 04 2007


My best *software* is a feather pillow.
-- xandram, Aug 04 2007


Good idea, [zen_tom]; mine's a small Scotch.
-- pertinax, Aug 04 2007


Guilty, zen_tom. In fact, my nerd-core pseudonym is "thaSesquipedalien", as I admittedly have a penchant for needlessly convoluted verbiage. [stop]
-- Unventor, Mar 07 2010


I wish i could do the opposite.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 07 2010


1. If were doing it, you would not be doing the opposite
2. so you'd need to stop and do the opposite.
3. go to 1.
-- pocmloc, Mar 07 2010


If this is ever baked, I have a practical use for it. Length of obfuscated text divided by length of original = concision index. Imagine if the halfbakery rejected ideas rated less than, say, 1.5
-- mouseposture, Mar 07 2010



random, halfbakery