Acronyms are important communicational shortcuts which allow us to save breath and column space by reducing long names to strings of letters and numbers. In many cases, particularly in the naming of laws by Congress, the acronyms are made to be clever, designed to spell out something that relates to the meaning of the law, such as the somewhat ill-named USA PATRIOT Act passed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks - "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism."
Fevered acronyms aren't just limited to government, though. I found this cool database while perusing Miss Cellania's website a few days ago: Dumb Or Overly Forced Astronomical Acronyms Site (DOOFAAS). It contains gems like:
ARMPIT - ASKAP Rotation Measure and Polarisation InvestigaTion
BIGASS - Bright Infrared Galaxy All Sky Survey
CASA-BLANCA - Chicago Air Shower Array - Broad LAteral Non-imaging Cerenkov Array
COCOA-PUFS - COordinated Campaign of Observations and Analysis, Photosphere to Upper atmosphere, of a Fast-rotating Star
GADZOOKS! - Gadolinium Antineutrino Detector Zealously Outperforming Old Kamiokande, Super!
HO-BAGS - Hubble Observatory BAckground Galaxy Survey
and,
POOPSY - Phase One Observing Proposal SYstem
Check it out ... and if you have a good acronym for anything (not necessarily astronomy-related), leave a comment!
Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow, when we examine the latest Great Moments in Editing and Signage. See you then!
Bilbo
2 comments:
I like apronyms -- acronyms that are now words.
Laser, scuba, snafu, and many others.
I recently learned that a CARE package isn't just a package of goodies sent to somebody but was originally sent to American troops in Europe during WW2 via the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe.
Somebody sent me this list but it DISAPPEARED! I'm going to try and do a post on Recuva tomorrow. You may get your menu file back after all.
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