Acronyms and Abbreviations

                                                     The watcher outside my window

NASA is an acronym because you can pronounce it as a word, but NFL is not because it can’t be pronounced—it’s merely an abbreviation, like DNA, PBS, NBC, and on and on including AAA and KKK.  I suppose you could pronounce GOP or DOE or even POV, though nobody ever does.  But then there’s the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA, usually called “LackMa” and, of course, “moma”—MOMA—the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

                                              The morning after the night the rains came
             Anyway, I like cunning acronyms.  NASA has a satellite they named WISE.  Sounds smart, but actually stands for Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.  And if you want to swim upstream with this agency, there’s always SALMON—a Stand ALone Mission of Opportunity Notice.  In my novel Icy Moon I named one group of researchers CROSS, which is an acronym I made up for the Center for Research On the Solar System.  Other favorites include: BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (but the people in Fresno better be cautious about the Fresno Area Rapid Transit), and there’s the sportsmen’s WAGS, the Wives And Girlfriends.  We’ve all heard about ET, which gets extended into SETI, the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence.  And then, all environmentalists know about LUST — Leaking Underground Storage Tanks.  And, of course the radio stations have fun with their letters, like KRZY, KLAP, and KOOL.

            But be careful, in the tourist-frequented town I live in, Santa Fe, there are so many restaurants that CIA is more likely to refer to the Culinary Institute of America than the federal agency.  And then there’s the FBI, the Food and Beverage Institute.

 Quote:

“I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.”
                                                                        James Joyce commenting on his work

 This week’s trivia:

Every human being is born with the ability to wiggle their ears.  If they don’t figure this out early and practice, then the muscle atrophies.