We love acronyms. Whether it's the military or technology or bureaucracy, we just can't help ourselves.
This last week I was having a conversation about the windows machine we use on Sundays. It flakes out on us, it's cheaply made, rarely works correctly, crashes often, and even our experts seem to have only marginal control over it (kind of like dealing with a federal judge, now that I think of it). We currently have 2 macs in the office, one wintel in the library (which I don't have to use), and the one wintel in the sanctuary. Apparently this fragile, often crashing, Hindenburg of personal computing needs a PCMCIA, which sounds expensive.
Well, I got on the internet and looked up PCMCIA to see just what that means. I went to acronymfinder.com and discovered it means "Peripheral Component Microchannel Interconnect Architecture," which is exactly what I would have guessed. But some clever techie figures it also means "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms," which I think is more appropriate.
The military is the worst though, as they shamelessly build their acronyms backwards, finding a catchy word first and then finding a description that's within the ballpark. A fun party game: find a good militaristic word and check it at militarywords.com.
SHIELD = Silicon Hybrids with Infrared Extrinsic Long-wavelength Detectors
SPEAR = Selectable Precision Effects At Range
EAGLE = Executive Advisory Group for Logistics Excellence
MARS = Military Afloat Reach and Sustainability
MARS = Multi-Level Analysis and Reduction Suite
TIGER = Tactical Intelligence Gathering Exploitation Relay
Yeah, and that's what you would've called it anyway, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment