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Ed.
Edited by.

ed
A primitive line EDitor in Unix that forms the basis of ex. It understands a limited regular expression syntax.

There's a restricted version of ed, called red (useful to allow editing capability to general or unknown users while protecting the server and its files), and a command-line version of ed, called sed.

Ed
Short for Edward. Allows Edwins to blend in inconspicuously.

Ed, ed
EDucation. Pronounced like the proper noun. Productive: `Board of Ed' (bored of Ed?), `Fizz Ed' (Physical Education), `Driver Ed,' (no relation to `Diver Dan,' the 60's children's program ... then again, maybe there is some), `Sex Ed.' If you were reading attentively, then you must have been surprised by the absence of a megaton-hilarious parenthetical comment following the last list item. Sorry, you'll have to buy the book.

ED
Emergency Department. Some physicians have a hangup about the term ``ER.'' I should have explained that in detail when I put this entry in, because now I can't remember what the hang-up is, or if it was not just some joke, but it just seems to be that the general public prefers to refer to the ED (or EW) by ``ER.'' No one wants to visit erectile dysfunction. So visit this A&E entry.

ED
Erectile Dysfunction. Difficulty getting it up. On Thursday, May 7, 1998, Bob Dole was interviewed on Larry King's radio program. Dole, then 74, had had prostate surgery in 1991. Larry King had also had the surgery. During a commercial break he asked Dole if he would be willing to answer a question on air about ED. Dole, the defeated 1996 Republican presidential candidate, ended up endorsing Viagra, a drug that had only been approved by the FDA the previous March 27.

ED is not the sort of medical problem for which one can find reliable statistics, so let's have a show of hands. Hmm, not a problem in this room apparently. Anyway, it is a problem for perhaps ten to twenty million men in the US. Since males are only about half of the population, and some of those are prepubescent boys, it's a problem for possibly as much as a fifth of the, um, at-risk population. Vide etiam saw palmetto.

Once upon a time, the medical profession generally held that in a majority of cases, ED was completely psychological. Viagra merely improves blood flow to the membrum virilis, so under that assumption it shouldn't be expected to help most men with ED. Pfizer Inc., the manufacturer of Viagra, reported that 70 percent of participants in clinical trials experienced improved erections. At the

  • Li entry, there is a mention of Kramer's Listening to Prozac. Viagra is an even stronger demonstration of the book's thesis -- generally stated, that a successful therapy can tell us what the problem to be solved was in the first place.

    After he resigned from the US Presidency in disgrace, Richard Nixon consented to be interviewed for television by David Frost. During a break, Dick asked ``Well, David, did you do any fornicating over the weekend?''

    ED
    Error-Detecting.

    EDA
    Electronic Design Automation. CFI gives you a place to start. Here's another.

    Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) has placed online a Glossary of Standards.

    EDA
    Equal Diffusivities Approximation.

    EDA
    Erbium-Doped fiber Amplifiers. More commonly EDFA.

    EDAC
    Electromechanical Digital Adapter Circuit.

    EDAC
    Electronic Design Automation Companies. An industry group.

    edad
    A Spanish noun, female, meaning `age' in most of the main English senses of that word. For example, la edad media means `the middle ages.' (Yeah, the grammatical number doesn't match. Tough.) De mediana edad is `middle-aged.'

    EDAD
    Estetik Dishekimligi Akademisi Dernegi. The g's are ``soft'' (somewhat similar to an intervocalic Spanish g; if it weren't trouble, I'd write the letters correctly with hacheks [inverted carets] on top). The letters s in the middle two words have cedillas underneath -- they have an esh sound. I suppose that if you need to be informed of these things, then you're probably becoming impatient to know what it means.

    Without further ado, then (don't complain; I went through a lot of grief for this entry), it means `Turkish Academy of Esthetic Dentistry.' That's the apparently universal translation, anyway. Or rather, it is the English name that is normally abbreviated EDAD in cosmetic-dentistry contexts. Some of the Turkish name -- the first and third words -- is pretty obvious. The second word in the Turkish name means `dental surgery.' So far, so good. The last word -- whose meaning is possibly not obvious to waggers of any Indo-European tongue -- does not mean `Turkish.' Despite the standard English version, it's pretty clear that there's no Turk or Turkish or national or patriotic or home or Turkey or even turkey in any literal translation.

    In fact, the last word seems redundant to me, but I don't happen to know Turkish. I do know that the Türk Akustik Dernegi is the `Turkish Acoustical Society' and that Bilimsel Arastιrmalar Dernegi is Turkey's `Association for Scientific Research,' and that there are a bunch of similarly named entities. Yet Akademisi Dernegi is a frequent collocation, to judge from ghits. It is frequently translated `Academy Society' or `Academic Association' (but never `Academic Society' or `Academic Association'). As this doesn't make sense in English, while I suspect the original makes sense in Turkish, I doubt it's an accurate translation. True bilinguals are avoiding the more fluent translations with Academic... I don't know what to think. In financial contexts, the word dernek means `corporation,' but it does not appear that our original means `Academy of Esthetic Dental Surgery, Incorporated.' I guess I'll try to track down someone who might know.

    Dr. Galip Gürel, the founder and current (2008) president of EDAD, is a noted auto racer. So I've read.

    EDAG
    Engineering and Design AG. (We explain AG.)

    EDAM
    Early Drama, Art, and Music. A series of volumes published by Medieval Institute Publications of the Medieval Institute at WMU.

    Edam
    A town in Holland, founded in late medieval times, and a more recent cheese named after it.

    EDAP
    Energy-Delay-Area Product.

    [column]

    EDAX
    Energy-Dispersive Analysis of X-rays. [Also Latin for `devourer,' as in Ovid's famous tempus edax rerum -- `time, devourer of things.']

    EDA2P, EDA2P
    Energy-Delay-Area2 Product.

    EDC
    Energy-Distribution Curve.

    EDC
    Error-Detecting Code. Formally the same code as error-correcting code (ECC), but as implemented in built-in self-test (BIST), it is used only for the detection rather than the correction of errors.

    EDC
    Exceptional Driver Championship. An annual power-golf competition open to amateur golfers, which rewarded ``accurate power.'' It had a three-year run; see the WLD Champion entry for details of its demise.

    EDC
    Export Development Canada.

    EDCT
    Expected Departure Clearance Time. Time when a flight can expect to receive departure clearance or a new EDCT. Issued formally as part of Traffic Management Programs such as a Ground Delay Program (GDP).

    Edd.
    Edited by (multiple editors).

    Ed.D.
    EDucation Doctorate. Also D.Ed.

    At the ed-school entry, I already typed in bibliographical information for a book by Koerner, so to save myself the effort of typing in any more, I'm going to use that as my only reference. According to information on pp. 180ff, for a long time the highest degree in Education was the customary Ph.D. ``But with the coming of progressivism and the `professionalizing' of school administration, pressures from the field against the rigor and alleged narrowness of the Ph.D. made themselves felt. What was needed, said the new educationist, was a `field-oriented' doctorate for educational administrators not concerned with original research but with practical school problems and with the application of research findings to concrete situations. With Harvard, California, and Temple University leading the way, a new doctorate to satisfy these demands was inaugurated, and by the end of the 1930's was solidly established in about 25 institutions.''

    The latest data available when Kroener was writing was from 1960-62. At the time, there were about a hundred US institutions awarding some kind of doctorate of education. A few of these still awarded only the Ph.D., and most of those awarding the Ed.D. also awarded the Ph.D. But by that time the Ed.D. had become the principal doctorate in Education: 1000 of 1500 doctorates awarded annually.

    Kramer argued that the theoretical distinction between Ed.D. and Ph.D. has evaporated in practice. He explained the role and the relative popularity of the Ed.D. in language you won't likely find on an ed-school's website. ``The reasons for the popularity of the Ed.D. are plain enough. It is an easier degree than the Ph.D. Course work for it is often entirely in Education (the Ph.D. used to be attacked as narrow!), it carries no foreign language requirements [that's not so distinctive any more], it usually carries no dissertation requirement, and control over it is usually vested entirely in the Education division of the university -- meaning that advisors from the academic departments are not invoved in the candidates' programs and that the doctoral standards of the arts and sciences division do not have to be met. At Teachers College, for example, the Ph.D. often requires, among other things, that academic faculty from Columbia University approve doctoral dissertations and participate in doctoral oral examinations. This creates onerous problems, for the University representatives often feel that they cannot in good conscience accept the low standards of either the dissertation or the oral exam, in contast to the Teachers College representatives[,] who are anxious to acccept both; on the other hand it is extremely awkward to flunk numerous doctoral candidates at that stage.... It did not take the Teachers College faculty or students long, however, to learn that it was much safer and easier to go the Ed.D. route, along which there were few encounters with the University faculty, with the result that Teachers College now gives 7 or 8 Ed.D.'s for every Ph.D.''

    I'm gonna put a link 'ere to MEng, but you unnerstan I'm not makin no commint or nuthin.

    Eddie Ate Dynamite
    Good-Bye Eddie. I mean, whaddaya expect? Mnemonic for the pitches of guitar strings -- EADGBE.

    A corresponding German mnemonic is Eine Alte Dumme Ganz Hat Eier (`an old dumb goose has eggs'). Observe the recurrence of the themes of stupidity, the GI tract, and the unexpected. Oh yeah, the aitch -- in German the tone B is represented by H, at least in part because the flat symbol not only resembles lower-case b (particular in the once-standard Fraktur-style fonts) too closely but is called by the name of the letter.

    Cf. Every Good Boy.

    From first string to sixth string of a guitar is two octaves, or twenty-four half-steps. If the pitch difference were exactly five half-tones between every pair of adjacent strings, then there'd be one half-tone in excess. Instead, there is only four half-tones separation between the fourth and fifth strings (G and B). (Thus, when the guitar is tuned to itself, the lower string at the fifth fret resonates with the higher string -- except when the B string is tuned to the G string: fourth fret.) One advantage of placing the deficient separation at the fourth string is that this way, every open string is part of the C-major scale and it is possible to step through the entire C-major scale without having to use any fret higher than the third.

    (For convenience above, I refer to the strings in order of increasing pitch -- the order in which they are named. Normal numbering for discussing guitar and probably all lute-family strings is in the opposite direction: upwards in position. So G and B strings are third and second. This information is repeated in slightly different words at the EBGDAE entry, so why don't you go there for a review?)

    E-DDP, EDDP
    Extended Datagram Delivery Protocol.

    Edexcel
    One of three UK college entrance exam boards implicated in a grading scandal in 2002, headed at the time by John Kerr. More at the QCA entry.

    This kind of scandal could never happen in the US, because Edexcel sounds so much like Edsel that no one would use it.

    EDF
    Environmental Defense Fund.

    EDF
    Er(3+)-Doped Fiber.

    EDF
    European Development Fund. This is not a fund for developing Europe. It's a European fund for developing countries. For now you can read something bland and informative about it at xrefer. Later, when I have more time, I'll write something cynical and true about it here. Charity? Maybe not completely.

    EDFA
    Erbium-Doped Fiber (EDF) Amplifier. (EDFA is also abbreviated EDA.) Since 1990, EDFA has been available commercially for operation ``at'' 1.55 µm (more precisely in the comventional or C band, 1530 nm to 1565 nm). They're usually pumped with 980 nm GaAs/AlGaAs lasers.

    EDG
    Edge-Defined film-fed Growth. A process used for crystalline silicon growth.

    EDG
    Electronic Dot Generation. Electronic control of spot size or intensity to produce halftones.

    EDGAR
    Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system of the SEC.

    EDGE
    Enhanced Data rate for GSM Evolution. To achieve the 384kbit/s minimum speed planned for the next stage after GSM, which is UMTS.

    EDHS
    Eastland Disaster Historical Society. The Eastland was a Lake Michigan sightseeing boat based in the port of Chicago. It capsized in 20 feet of water, right next to the pier, and more than 800 people died. The disaster took more lives than any other single Chicago disaster, including the famous Chicago Fire.

    The sinking of the Titanic three years earlier is sometimes described as a contributing factor in the Eastland disaster: after it was learned that there weren't enough lifeboats on the Titanic, laws were passed requiring enough lifeboats for all passengers. The Eastland added lifeboats, evidently raising the center of mass.

    EDI
    Electron Drift Instrument.

    EDI
    Electronic Data Interchange. Usually refers to business communications and transactions. A proof that acronyms are more fundamental and universal, and less confusing than other words: in French, EDI is expanded as th'échange de données informatisées, even though the individual words don't mean the same thing as the words in the English expansion of EDI.

    Standards for EDI are ASC X12 and UN/EDIFACT, which are in the process of harmonization.

    Harbinger markets TrustedLink Enterprise -- EDI translation and communications software. It seems to be Windows-NT-based, but runs on the major non-PC Unix dialects as well as godforsaken IBM MVS. There's now even EDI/400 for the AS/400.

    EDIA
    Electronic Data Interchange Association. Harbinger offers ``United Nations rules for Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce and Transport. They comprise a set of internationally agreed standards, directories and guidelines for the electronic interchange of structured data, and in particular that related to trade in goods and services between independent, computerized information systems.''

    EDIA
    European Display Industry Association. Under the aegis of EECA, so I guess this isn't about peacocks or storefronts.

    EDICA
    Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) Council of Australia (.au).

    EDICC
    Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) Council of Canada (.ca).

    EDIF
    Electronic Data Interchange Format.

    EDIF
    Electronic Design Interchange Format.

    EDIFACT
    Vide UN/EDIFACT.

    Edison, Thomas Alva
    I think his parents gave him the moniker ``Alva'' in honor of some ferryman who did them a kindness. The Franklin Institute is more certain of its information.

    Edith, EDITH
    Estates Duties Investment Trust changed its name to Edith following the passing of a special resolution of the annual general meeting, June 23, 1982.

    Edith (let's use that name) was originally established to give shareholders in private companies a way to sell a part of their stake in more easily traded (UK) equity. Shareholders would exchange their shares for those of Edith. The trust held these shares as long-term investments. The Edith shares could then be sold to meet death duties and other liabilities. The trust limited itself to minority stakes and did not disturb control of the companies in which it invested.

    The trust was originally created by ICFC in 1952. (It was not on the London Exchange until 1962, but that wouldn't have prevented OTC sales of Edith stock.) ICFC held the largest minority share and continued to provide management for Edith. In 1984, 3i (which ICFC had become a part of) (re)absorbed it. (In 1999, 3i itself was taken public.)

    edition
    Edition is the noun corresponding to the verb edit. On this basis, one could expect edition to mean
    1. The act of editing.
    2. The result of editing.
    The former of these meanings is, rather obviously, covered by the gerund editing. The latter is essentially the technical one preferred by bibliographers (see this explanation), for whom an edition comprises
    1. ' All the books printed from a single setting of type.
    This usage is consistent with publishers' way of numbering reference works (see, for example, 11th entry), but it is not the usage familiar from the copyright pages of most books. In general, publishers use the term edition to mean
    1. An individual press run.
    This is what bibliographers call an issue. What a bibliographer would call the first issue of a new edition, a publisher would call a revised edition.

    The problem with all of this is that it's being overtaken by events. I set type in junior high school, and it's a messy chore. Things have been cleaned up and computerized quite a bit, but for the most part, one still somehow sets blocks of what will be printed, so the notion is still valid. The problems come when small changes become easy. In desktop publishing, the traditional notion of a bibliographic edition more or less evaporates. Books are still published using technology that resists incremental changes, but new technologies are chipping away at this (no, I can't name one off the top of my head, I read it somewhere), and of course, the capacity of desk-top publishing advances with (non-press) printer technology.

    editors at publishing houses
    Until I learn enough to generalize, this entry will be a collection of excerpts.

    From an interview conducted in 1975 or perhaps a bit earlier and published in Conversations with Elie Wiesel, p. 92. ``HJC'' is Harry James Cargas, the interviewer.

    HJC: It seems impossible that you could work with an editor.
    EW: I don't work with an editor. When I give a book to a publisher they don't change a word. To work with an editor is only an American institution. This is not so in Europe. There a writer must give the full book to the publisher. If he's not capable of doing that, he's not a writer--at least that was so in my time. Now it may be changed. America has influenced Europe, not the other way around. Here, when my book comes to the American publisher, it's already a finished product, simply to be translated [from French].

    [Wiesel's first work, the nonfiction Night, was written in Yiddish (the title, in transliteration, was Un di Velt Hot Geshvign, `And the World Kept Silent') and published in Buenos Aires in 1956 by Tsentral-Farband fun Poylishe Yidn in Argentine. The versions published in other languages are based on a French condensation that he wrote afterwards. As far as I know, all his novels and other extended writing has been done in French.

    Traditionally, at least in the US, you or your agent could sell a nonfiction book to a publisher on the basis of a more or less detailed proposal and either a chapter or your established reputation. Some nonfiction projects are suggested by editors to authors they'd like to have do them. Fiction is generally sold (and more usually not sold) on the basis of the completed work. Editors may request changes. The changes may be extensive.]


    From ``Forging a Bilingual Identity: A Writer's Testimony, by Ketaki Kushari Dyson [ch. 11 of Bilingual Women (1994), pp. 170-183], p. 177:
      A consequence of being well known in Bengal has meant [sic] that it has been easier for me to publish most of my English-language books from India also. Two books of poetry have been published from Calcutta and two academic books from Delhi. In India there are still no middlemen between authors and publishers, everything being done through informal personal contacts. As a result, I have never acquired the experience of dealing with an agent. Here [in Britain] even agents seem to have their agents, a situation that scares me. I have never registered with an agent. The case-history of the publication of A Various Universe, the book based on my doctoral work, may be of interest here. I sent it first to OUP here. Their reader was very enthusiastic and recommended some changes. I made the changes according to his suggestions and submitted the MS again. This time OUP sent the MS out to a new reader, who proposed some radical changes in the arrangement of material. The book would have to be totally restructured. I took the MS and gave it to Vikas at Delhi. OUP Delhi's general manager at the time, whom I knew slightly from my undergraduate days at Oxford, came to know of this, retrieved the MS from Vikas and decided, over a weekend, that he would publish it. In the end OUP Oxford took 500 copies of the first imprint for sale in Britain, but because my contract was with OUP Delhi my royalty on all copies sold was on the Indian price only.

    [The author was born in 1940; it seems this book, subtitled ``a study of the journals and memoirs of British men and women in the Indian subcontinent, 1765-1856,'' was published in 1978. Vikas Publishing House was founded in 1969.]

    EDL
    English as a Daily Language. EDL ``is an out-of-classroom session with [BOSTON Life's] experienced bilingual and bicultural advisors who are proficient in teaching conversational English, US culture, and methods of communication.''

    EDL
    English for Deaf Learners.

    EDM
    Electronic Distance Measurement.

    EDMO
    (Workshop on High-Performance) Electron Devices for Microwave and Opto-electronic applications.

    Ed, Mr.
    The name of a famous talking horse. A descendent of Clever Hans, no doubt. But how soon people forget! Clever Hans was a horse who seemed capable of doing arithmetic. Asked a question like `what is four plus three?' Hans would respond by clomping a front hoof seven times on the ground. Hans could only perform this trick for his own master. It was a great sensation for a while. It was eventually discovered that Hans could do any computation that his master could do, and get exactly the same answer that his master would have gotten -- right or wrong. Hans was simply clomping until his master visibly relaxed. In 1996 an English police horse made international news with the same behavior (but it was reported credulously, as if the horse could do arithmetic).

    EDMS
    Engineering Data Management System[s].

    EdNA
    EDucation Network of Australia.

    edo, Edo
    There is a Japanese common noun edo, now obsolete, that meant `place facing an estuary.' The word is written with two kanji: the first, with a reading e, means `estuary,' and the second, with a reading do, means `door.' (So there's some alliterative coincidence. Go ahead, write a dissertation about it.) The word was applied as a proper noun to a village which eventually grew to become Japan's capital, Tokyo. That's Tôkyô in a more careful transliteration, from , meaning `east, eastern,' and kyô, `capital.' The official name is Tôkyôto, meaning `Eastern Capital City.' In this case, as indicated, the three syllables happen (it doesn't always work out that way) to correspond to the three kanji that make up the name. If you take just the last two kanji, you have Kyôto, meaning `Capital City.' Kyoto was the capital city before Tokyo.

    Historically, the name Edo has been transliterated as Yedo or the equivalent by some foreign visitors. For a bit more on that, see the yen entry.

    EDO
    Extended Data Out/Extra Data Output (DRAM). Also called Hyperpage technology. Explanation here.

    EDP
    Electronic Data Processing. Can you imagine doing it any other way now?

    EDP
    Emotionally Disturbed Person.

    EDP
    Energy-Delay Product.

    EDP
    Ethylene Diamine Pyrocatechol.

    ED pathway
    Entner-Doudoroff pathway. From glucose to pyruvate and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate.

    EDRAM
    Enhanced DRAM. It's faster.

    EDRC
    The Engineering Design Research Center. An NSF Engineering Research Center. They have chosen a homepage design in shades of blue.

    EDRM
    European Digital Road Map. Task Force EDRM was a project of the EU's DRIVE. (It was benchmark test task number 12, if that means anything to you.)

    EDRS
    ERIC Document Reproduction Service.

    EDS
    The Electron Devices Society has a homepage. It's a member society of the IEEE.

    EDS
    Electronic Data Services. Founded by H. Ross Perot, a big-eared person, in 1962.

    EDS
    Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy. An imaging mode for TEM that relies on analysis of X-rays emitted by the relaxation cascade of electrons ionized by the primary beam. By contrast, in EELS one examines the effects on the primary beam of the same inelastic events.

    Here's a description from Charles Evans & Associates.

    EDS
    Enterprise Directory Service.

    EDSA
    Epifanio de los Santos Avenue. February 1986 mass demonstrations on Los Santos Ave. into Manila. The military was presented with the choice of disobeying president, kleptocrat and dictator Ferdinand Marcos or moving military tanks through a few hundred thousand civilians. Marcos fled and died in Hawaii in 1989. His refrigerated body was later brought back to the Philippines by Imelda.

    EDSAC
    Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer. Sounds like what Ed brought for lunch, but would probably have given him heartburn. EDSAC I, commissioned 1949, was a general-purpose computer with 4500 vacuum tubes and a blazing half-a-megahertz reported clock frequency. With a 12-foot-by-12-foot, uh, footprint, it wasn't very portable either. Laptops had to wait a few years.

    ed-school
    SCHOOL of EDucation. A school that offers largely meaningless certification of the ability to teach secondary and lower-level students.

    Every few years, a fitful effort is made to improve the quality of US teachers. Just as a little reminder that this has been going on a while, here are details of a book I dug up during the excavation of a closet:

    The Miseducation of American Teachers, by James D. Koerner. With an introduction by Sterling M. McMurrin, former United States Commissioner of Education.

    I could tell you when it was published, but it wouldn't have the impact of the dust jacket. The author picture is a black-and-white passport picture of the squinting author in a 1962 haircut, the kind that causes your head to repel your ears. The price is $6.95. Okay, I'll tell you: copyright 1963. Mick Jagger turned twenty on July 26 of that year -- that's how long ago it was.

    Ah, but wait: here's a more recent title... Ed School Follies: The Miseducation of America's Teachers (New York: The Free Press, 1991), by Rita Kramer. Time, at least, marches on.

    EDSFA
    Silica-based EDFA. That is, Erbium-Doped Silica-Fiber Amplifier. This is just the usual EDFA -- the usual fiber is silica-based.

    EDSR
    Electric-Dipole-induced Spin Resonance.

    EDSX
    Electronic Digital Signal Cross-Connect.

    EDT
    Eastern Daylight Saving Time. GMT - 4 hrs. Vide Daylight Saving Time (DST).

    EDTA
    Ethylene Diamine Tetraacetic Acid. A ``sequestering'' (i.e. chelating) agent in foods that prevents the metals it chelates from catalyzing fat oxidation (and dye breakdown). The metal is mostly erosion from food processing equipment. EDTA is also called Edathamil, Havidote, Edetic acid, and Versene Acid.

    EDTV
    Extended Definition TeleVision. Old term superseded by HDTV. See also ATV.

    .edu
    (Top-level domain code for) EDUcational institution. (Also used as a second-level domain -- see .edu. entry.) With a few old exceptions, and no new ones, only US educational or ``educational'' institutions own .edu domain names. Exceptions are always more interesting than rules, so here are some exceptions: the Bangladesh (.bd) universities BUET and IUBAT, and UNC in Argentina (.ar). I seem to recall that the University of Toronto once used both toronto.edu and utoronto.ca domains, but only the latter is still in use. Sure enough, when I want to write the glossary entry, all their systems are down.

    Not just anyone can buy an .edu domain. You have to satisfy criteria set by EDUCAUSE, the sole registrar for the the domain. The US Department of Commerce awarded management of the domain to EDUCAUSE, or Educause, a ``university technology consortium'' in October 2001. Management is subject to a cooperative agreement with the DoC.

    Eligibility conditions are described at this page. Before Educause took over management, the domain was available almost exclusively to four-year colleges and universities in the US. By agreement with the DoC, all institutions that had an .edu domain as of October 29, 2001 were grandfathered in, and keep their domain names regardless of eligibility. In addition to the non-US institutions mentioned above, there were other exceptions such as the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academy Press. A major expansion in eligibility, implemented shortly after Educause took over, was to community colleges, which are accredited by the same regional groups as the four-year institutions. By early 2003, about 7500 were assigned to about 6000 schools.

    A dreadful new expansion was announced February 11, 2003, to take effect April 15, 2003 (rather than the more appropriate April 1). After a period of public comment in which 95% of response was favorable (can you say ``parti pris''? sure you can!), Educause decided to extend eligibility to all schools approved by specialty accreditation organizations recognized by the US Department of Education. Bible Colleges, Beauty Colleges, Hair Design Institutes, the American Film Institute... all the riff-raff is welcome.

    Here's a list of riff, raff, and some other ``national institutional and specialized accrediting bodies that accredit institutions'' that will be eligible for .edu domains:

    • Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine.
    If you don't mind, I think I'll take a rest now.

    .edu.
    The .edu. sequence is used under the ccTLD's of many countries (e.g., Australia, Hong Kong, Poland, Taiwan, and various Latin American countries), that have adopted a hierarchical system of domain names. Generally it is the penultimate domain name element (i.e., as a second level domain): ufubar.edu.au, ...edu.hk, ...edu.pl, ...edu.tw, ...edu.ar, ...edu.co, ...edu.gt, ... .) Cf. .ac., .edu (the TLD).

    In the Canadian province of Ontario, .edu. is a third-level domain. For example, the Halton Catholic District has <haltonrc.edu.on.ca>.

    educate people
    Convince people against their better judgment. A favored activity of PIRGes and NGOes. To educate students is to convince people who have no better judgment yet. It's a favored activity of people paid to teach, and the students don't complain as much as when they're forced to learn geometry, chemistry, and similar reactionary political tripe that is of no utility in the real world anyway.

    education
    Education in the US is a permanent disaster. It is notoriously in decline, and always has been. Extrapolating into the future, American education will explore negative or more negative territory. That should be interesting, and someday we may be able to include some interesting quotes about it from the future. For the time being, however, we'll stick to the past, slowly collecting unrepresentative quotes. Here's a relatively recent one -- the first lines of Bernard Iddings Bell's foreword to Mortimer Smith's And Madly Teach: A Layman Looks at Public School Education (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1949):
    American Education is so defective in theory and practice as seriously to threaten the long continuance of the way of life to further which this nation was founded.

    educator
    A term that may certainly include kindergarten teachers and college professors, and which is conveniently taken to include vacuum cleaner salesmen and others who believe themselves to have some information to impart.

    EDUFI, EDUfi, EDUFIN
    EDUcation FInland. Web pages maintained by Finland's National Board of Education.

    EDUG
    European DMIS User Group. DMIS (q.v.) is the Dimensional Measuring Interface Standard.

    EDV
    German elektronische Datenverarbeitung, `Electronic Data Processing' (EDP).

    EDVAC
    Electronic Discrete (i.e. digital) Variable Automatic Computer. Built by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert in 1951, with some input from John von Neumann. The fundamental qualitative difference between this machine and ENIAC, q.v., which Mauchly and Eckert had finished in 1945, was the incorporation of von Neumann's ``stored program'' concept. The program executed by the computer was stored as data, rather than existing as wire connections (as in the ENIAC) or in an external read-only memory (punched movie film for Zuse's machines, punched paper tape for the Harvard [ASCC] Mark I).

    Edward Kennedy
    Better known as ``Duke.'' Edward Kennedy ``Duke'' Ellington. Some Kennedys really are royalty.

    EDX
    Electronic Data eXchange.

    EDX
    Energy-Dispersive X-ray analysis. Visit this description served by Christopher Walker.

    EDXA
    Energy-Dispersive X-ray Analysis (EDX supra).

    EDXRF
    Electron-Diffraction X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF).

    EDXS
    Energy-Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy.

    e.e.
    e. e. cummings (1894-1962) had a thing about the upper case. His poetry was known as the nightmare of typesetters. `e. e.' stood for `Edward Estlin.'

    EE
    Electric Editors.

    EE
    {Electrical | Electronic[s]} Engineer[ing].

    The WWW Virtual Library has an EE index. LookSmart has a small page of EE links that does not include the SBF glossary.

    EE
    Environmental Education. It's easy: you can find pleny of ``facts'' on the web.

    .ee
    (Domain code for) Estonia (Eesti). There's an English <--> Estonian Dictionary online. Here's an online network resource map.

    The Home Page of the Chair of Classical Philology, Tartu University, maintained by the electrifyingly named Ivo Volt.

    EE
    Men's shoe width greater than E and narrower than EEE. Cf. AA

    EEA
    Employment Equity Act. The Canadian EEA defines ``members of visible minorities'' as ``persons, other than aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.''

    EEA
    European Economic Area. The EEA Agreement is a mechanism for coordination between the EU and the EFTA states (except Switzerland). Given the relative sizes, it amounts to a way of extending the sway of EU laws to a few non-EU countries.

    EEA
    European Environment Agency.

    EE/AA
    Employment Equity/Affirmative Action. As in ``the University is an EE/AA employer.'' Canadian and South African form of EO/AA. If I were some kind of troublemaker, I would note that if this expression is not redundant, then it suggests that ``Affirmative Action'' (AA, q.v.) represents something other than equity in employment. See also one of the EEA entries.

    eEBES
    Varian Corporation's EBES.

    EEC
    European Economic Community. An obsolete name superseded by EC in late Spring or early Summer 1987. Already in 1985, however, the term ``European Union'' (EU) was being used not as a proper noun but as a economic and political goal. The German for EEC was EWG.

    EEC
    Eurocontrol Experimental Centre. Air traffic control research.

    EECA
    European Electronic Component Manufacturers Association.

    EED
    Emitter (E) Edge Dislocations.

    EEE
    Also written ``triple-E'' (pronounced ``triple ee''). Eastern Equine Encephalitis. People can get this viral disease too; the frequency is low but the consequences are potentially fatal. As with most viral diseases, treatment consists of treating the symptoms and trying to keep the patient alive to fight off the illness on his own. There's a vaccine against EEE, for horses, effective for a year. There's no EEE vaccine for humans.

    Outcomes vary greatly -- roughly a third of people contracting the disease recover with no or minimal long-term consequences, a third survive with severe neurological damage, and a third die. Severity is said to vary between different outbreaks, however, and fatality rates as high as 70% have been reported. (It seems to me, though, that this apparent variation would be expected just from the small-number statistics and sampling bias.) Early symptoms are highly nonspecific (they include high fever, chills, stiff neck, headache, and fatigue); during the 2005 outbreak described below, roughly 250 people had been tested for EEE virus before there were three positives.

    Rates of infection tend to peak for a few years and then subside for a couple of decades. There was an outbreak in New England in 2004, following no cases in 2002 and 2003. In Massachusetts alone it infected four people and killed two in 2004 (there were also seven equine cases). It has killed two so far (I write on September 8) in 2005.

    It's transmitted by mosquitoes. The fraction of mosquitoes that carry the virus grows over the Summer, so infection rates tend to peak in September. The specific mosquito of concern is Culiseta melanura, which primarily gets the virus by biting birds.

    EEE
    Also written ``triple-E'' (pronounced ``triple ee''). One size larger than double-E.

    EEF
    Exchange Equalization Fund.

    EEF
    Egyptologist's Electronic Forum. An electronic mailing list.

    EEG
    ElectroEncephaloGram. A graph of various potentials (i.e. voltages) measured by probes attached to the skin on the surface of the head. Provides some general indication of brain function. [Less frequently `Electroencephalography.']

    EEI
    External Environment Interface.

    EEK
    IATA code for the airport at Eek, Alaska. It's almost 3500 miles from EEK to YOW!

    EEK!
    Onomatopaeia for a vocalization of alarmed surprise.

    In many cases, the sound represented by the ``K'' is an unvoiced glottal stop (the ``EE'' is choked off sharply). That's why ``EEP!'' may be virtually equivalent. The Semitic languages (at least Hebrew and Arabic) have alphabetic symbols for glottal stops; European languages generally manage without. Japanese uses a small version of a kana for tsu to represent the glottal stop at the end of eh or ah. Normally, the small tsu (called sukuon) is used to indicate a geminate consonant. For example, the kana sequence (ni, small tsu, po, n) would be transliterated as ``Nippon.''

    Of course, some people actually pronounce ``EEK!'' or ``EEP!'' with a /k/ or /p/. Killjoys.

    EEK
    Standard designation of the Estonian (.ee) currency, the Kroon; its exchange rate was fixed at one eighth of a Deutsch Mark (DEM) when I first wrote this entry. When Germany adopted the euro, with an exchange rate of 1.95583 DEM = 1 EUR, the EEK became pegged at 0.06391 EUR, or thereabouts. I know approximately nothing about how forex works or how the peg is maintained or anything, but according to this site, the EEK has had many brief excursions from the 0.6391 target, as far down as 0.0620751 EUR and as far up as 0.6476409 EUR. (I'm writing in January 2010; it's around 0.063912 right now.) Check the currency converter entry.

    Just taking a wild guess, I suspect that ``kroon'' does not refer to human mating calls, but is a cognate of crown.

    EEL
    Effective Early Learning.

    EEL
    Entomology Environmental Laboratory. A building at Purdue's West Lafayette campus. They doubtless chose this acronym because calling a building by the name of a slithery bloodsucker with a ring of prehensile teeth is so much more appealing than any insect name. Also, ENTM was taken (for Entomology Hall).

    EELS
    Early Entry Lethality and Survivability. [Battle Lab (BL).]

    EELS
    Electron Energy-Loss Spectroscopy. In a TEM configuration, the energy spectrum of transmitted electrons is analyzed. Because the samples are so thin, the number of (deep) inelastic scattering events is small (on the order of one). The pattern of peaks can then be analyzed to obtain chemical composition data for the sample (vide electron beam interactions). (Also called PEELS.) Cf. EDS.

    Visit this description served by Christopher Walker.

    EEMA
    European Electronic Messaging Association.

    EENT
    End of Evening Nautical Twilight. The time when the sun has sunk 12 degrees below the horizon. For any latitude further north than twelve degrees below the Arctic circle, or further south than twelve degrees from the Antarctic circle, there will be nights that consist entirely of twilight, q.v.

    EEO
    Equal Employment Opportunity. This concept is considered at the EE/AA entry.

    EEOC
    (US) Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

    EEOE
    Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. Kinda redundant, wooncha say? How about EOE?

    EEPLD, E²PLD
    CMOS PLD's programmed with E²PROM switching arrays.

    EEPROM, EePROM, E²PROM
    Electrically Erasable PROM's. Like EPROM's, but erasable electrically. Also, while ``EEPROM's'' can in principle include EAROM's, the latter are obsolete and EEPROM refers to memories based on devices with geometries similar to the FAMOS structure: with a thinner thinox (100Å instead of 1000Å), F-N tunneling is used to charge a floating gate to store a bit.

    EER
    European Economic Review. A journal.

    EERE
    Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

    EESOP
    Electronegativity Equalization with S-Orbital Participation.

    EET-i
    EE Times - interactive.

    EEUU, EE.UU.
    Estados Unidos, Spanish for `United States.' (Note that the punctuation E.E.U.U. is incorrect; cf. E.U.) The adjective (and gentilicial noun) is estadounidense. Some Latin American countries have or once had Estados Unidos as part of their official names (see R.U.), but it would be a pedantic joke to call someone from one of those countries, such as a Mexican, an estadounidense. (For something completely unrelated, see the U.E. entry.)

    EEVIP
    Early Extended Validation Integration Program. An FAA program, first implemented for the Boeing 777, to give ``out-of-the-box'' ETOPS clearance to a new plane, rather than waiting for a couple of years of domestic service experience.

    EEVL
    Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library. At least in Knievel's case, there was a point.

    EF
    Engineering Foundation.

    EF
    Enhanced Fujita (Scale). An improved version of the Fujita Scale for categorizing tornado severity. Read about it in this document served by the NOAA.

    EF
    Equalization Fund.

    EFA
    Essential Fatty Acid[s].

    EFAS
    Evanescent-Field Absorbance Sensor.

    EFC
    Expected Family Contribution. To the cost of a child's university education. Back in 1975, my high school classmate Charles explained that this is based on a simple formula: value of family home divided by four equals EFC per year. Shortly after that time, college tuitions started to increase dramatically.

    Gerard tells me that there was an uproar in England back when the Thatcher government announced that the cost of room and board for university students would no longer be borne by the government (though of course tuition would continue to be `free').

    EFCI
    Explicit Forward Congestion Indication.

    EFD
    Event Forwarding Discriminator.

    EFE
    The news-source code for the principal Spanish-language news agency, used similarly to the AFP, AP, and UPI. EFE is not an acronym. In Spanish, the letter F is called efe. In 1939, EFE or Agencia EFE was founded as the successor of a news organization called Agencia Fabra. This, founded in 1919, was in turn a descendant of el Centro de Corresponsales (`Correspondents' Center') [or maybe Centro de Correspondencias (`Correspondence Center') -- my sources disagree], the first news agency in Spain. That first agency was founded in 1865 by Nilo Marí Fabra y Deas (1843-1903), a journalist and man of letters.

    Fabra.

    efectivo
    A Spanish adjective meaning `effective,' also used as a noun meaning `cash.'

    That fact is so poetic that I should probably leave the entry at that, but I have to say that this reminds me of the English word practical. In India, the word is used primarily in the restricted sense of `financially pragmatic.' (I guess I already mentioned this at the ALARP entry. What, did you forget already?)

    Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but payment in full is even more sincerely appreciated.

    In Polish, forsa is slang for money, dough, bread, you dig? Various cognates of English force begin with forso-. This is certainly suggestive, but I have some more investigating to do.

    EFF
    Electronic Frontier Foundation. Inter alia, they offer a ``Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet'' (ftp here), also known as EFF's (Extended) Guide to the Internet (http version here).

    EFF is at the forefront of the battle against net censorship.

    EFF
    Evergreen Freedom Foundation. ``[A] public policy organization in Olympia, Washington, dedicated to the advancement of individual liberty.'' Seems to be concerned mostly with education and labor issues.

    efficiency
    Let's talk about efficiency, shall we? Good! Now that we've got that out of the way, I'd like to introduce a quote from Roman Jakobson's Science of Language. Please understand that ``Roman Jakobson's'' is part of the title, not an indication of direct authorship. Rather, the author of this book (with yellow matte paper covers) is Linda R. Waugh. On the eighteenth page of that book she introduces the topic of ``relative efficiency.'' I will skip the first sentence of that introduction, since it is clear that it conveys no useful information (clear, that is, once one has supplied the punctuation that makes it clear, clearly). She continues (on the same page, and into the next one -- page nineteen)
    To say that language is efficient is to say that in general its patterning is such that communication may take place -- but while the linguistic system is in general an efficient one (else how could human beings learn and use such a complex pattern?) it is also clear from the study of language itself as well as from language change, that the system is in certain respects not maximally efficient (or maximally simple or [maximally] economical). Language is efficient -- or else it would not survive and would be replaced by other, more efficient systems.

    Et, as the saying goes, cetera. I hope that Dr. Waugh found the study of efficiency in language rewarding as well as interesting (and how can one help but be interested in something so rewarding?). (And how else can one be rewarded except through interest?) But I doubt it.

    EFFST
    European Federation for Food Science and Technology.

    EFG
    Edge-defined Film-fed Growth.

    EFG
    Electric Field Gradient.

    EFI
    Electronic Fuel Injection. Sexier than mere FI.

    EFL
    English as a Foreign Language. This implicitly excludes those for whom it is also the mother tongue. If you want to exclude the illiterates, try ESL or ESOL (q.v.).

    EFL is pronounced `EE-ful.' Voice that and it's ``evil.'' Either way it may be awful.

    The acronym EFL is currently somewhat more common than ESL, but both terms are well known. If you make no semantic distinction between the two, and have no particular preference, then here is one reason to avoid EFL and use ESL or even ESOL. The initialism ENL stands for both English as a Native Language and English as a New Language. EFL is subject to a similar confusion: it is also used in the sense of ``English as a First Language.'' It's quite rare, but not rare enough. I've even seen joking (I think) instances of EFL expanded with fourth and fifth. Same problem with FLA: it's a dangerous world out there for acronyms.

    Many people do make a technical distinction between EFL and ESL, but it is not always the same distinction. A relatively common one is as follows: EFL tends to involve homogeneous classes, with students having a common language that the instructor may know and use to a (very) variable degree. ESL, in contrast, tends to refer to more heterogeneous student group, probably of foreigners taught in an English-speaking country. In this case, the instruction must evidently be more of an immersion.

    The terms EFL and ESL emerged in the aftermath of WWII, and the distinction between EFL and ESL arose out of the observation that English-language study in some situations was differed significantly from the familiar situation of school-study of foreign language in school. ``Foreign language,'' FL, and EFL referred to the familiar school situation. ``Second Language,'' SL, and ESL referred to situations in which the language being learned was somehow not foreign. The two main cases were of those learning English (a) as students in former British colonies and in the Philippines and Puerto Rico, and (b) as non-native speakers resident in English-speaking countries. Because the general situations of (a) and (b) were initially more relevant in Britain and North America, respectively, there arose a difference in usage on opposite sides of the Atlantic. This probably contributed to some of the confusion and ambiguity in the use of these terms.

    Lying behind the distinction between ESL and EFL are theories, well-articulated or not, regarding how familiar English is, and how it is used, when it is not an entirely foreign language. This is a subject of research, some of it good and empirical, and a very little bit of which will eventually be described at the entry for taxonomies of English language use. Both EFL and ESL are part of the taxonomies of Moag and Judd, to be discussed there.

    EFM
    Electronic Fetal Monitor.

    EFR
    Efficient Foodservice Response. ``[A]n industry-wide effort to improve efficiencies in the foodservice supply chain that links manufacturing plants to distributions warehouses to operators tables.''

    EFRA
    Electronic Forms Routing and Approval.

    EFS
    Education For Sustainability. ``[A] lifelong learning process that leads to an informed and involved citizenry having the creative problem-solving skills, scientific and social literacy, and commitment to engage in responsible individual and cooperative actions'' according to Second Nature.

    The earliest mention of tree hugging that I am aware of -- the locus classicus, perhaps -- is the sixties song ``Draggin' The Line.'' In context, it appears to have a double meaning: simultaneously a celebration of nature (``diggin' the rain and the snow and the bright sunshine'') and a technique for aerial power- or communication-cable hanging that might be regarded as cable sustained by a sustainable problem-solving technique.

    Don't you hate these recursive extended metaphors? You don't?! Okay buddy, you asked for it: visit XARA.

    EFS
    Effective Financing Statement.

    EFS
    Electronic Frontier Society.

    EFS
    Error-Free Seconds.

    EFS
    Extended Feature Supplements. Software upgrades for SCO products, such as new device drivers or additional features.

    EFSF
    European Financial Stability Facility. It's a ``facility,'' see? The name demonstrates that it facilitates things in a regular way and that it's a reassuringly stable, solid thing, like a cement latrine. In fact, the inspiration of the EFSF is your solid, stable, non-tip-over-able bill changer. In an ordinary bill changer, you insert paper currency and coins come out. In other words, you put in something soft, fragile, and possibly quite ratty-looking, and you get something solid and hefty out. Except that with the EFSF you put in the government bonds of the least solvent Eurozone member countries, and you get out bonds guaranteed, sort of, by Germany and others of the currently more solvent Eurozone members.

    EFSM
    Extended Finite State Machine (FSM).

    EFT
    Electronic Funds Transfer.

    EFT
    Engineering Field Test.

    EFTA
    Electronic Funds Transfer Act.

    EFTA
    Electronic Funds Transfer Association. The conspiracy among ATM owners.

    EFTA
    European Free Trade Association. A smaller, less suffocating EEC-type organization founded at the end of 1959. I thought it disbanded when Sweden and Austria opted into the EU. But no: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland still belong. It is possible to travel through four different language zones without ever leaving EFTA: just start in Liechtenstein and head west (making a few judicious detours) all the way to Geneva in Switzerland. You won't even have to stop anywhere for customs at an international border. EFTA continues under the terms of the Stockholm Convention which set up EFTA (but Sweden of course does not).

    EFTA has also frequently been expanded European Free Trade Area. The German translation that I have seen is Europäische Freihandelszone, meaning `European free trade zone.'

    EFTA has various joint declarations on cooperation (JDC's) and bilateral free trade agreements FTA's. See also EEA.

    EFTEM
    Energy-Filtering Transmission Electron Microscopy.

    EFTS
    Electronic Funds Transfer System.

    eftsoon, eftsoons
    Newt, newts that settled Oklahoma, now moved on to the Scrabble tablelands. Oh wait -- I just made that up out of whole cloth with 40% post-consumer recycled waste. It's actually one adverb with an optional final ess. Among the meanings it has evolved through, the one that occurred most recently (in purposely archaic writing of 1871 or later) is ``soon afterwards.'' (The ``soon'' part of the meaning was evidently inferred from the spelling of the word. While the word was in common use that had not been part of the meaning.)

    efuemu
    Japanese for FM (frequency modulation).

    EFV
    EFaVirenz. An NNRTI used in the treatment of AIDS.

    EFW
    Electric Fields and Waves.

    EF2000
    EuroFighter 2000. An aircraft proposal, not an animated action hero.

    Eg
    Energy of the band Gap. (Normally the ``bandgap energy'' or just ``band gap.'') This is really a symbol rather than an abbreviation, but I have a few of those (symbols) in the glossary, and this is an important one. Quantitatively, Eg = Ec - Ev .

    Cf. Ec, Ev.

    .eg
    (Domain code for) Egypt. Take a virtual trip to the pages of Egypt's Ministry of Tourism. ARCE/NC serves a page of links to select Egypt websites.

    EG
    German, Europäische Gemeinschaft. `European Community' (EC). Usage gradually superseded in the late 1990's by EU (Europäische Union).

    [column]

    e.g.
    Exempli Gratia. Latin, `for example,' though `free sample' would not be a less faithful translation. Cf. f.i. and viz.

    EGA
    Extended Graphics Adapter. A color-resolution available on IBM PC's and compatibles: any 16 out of 64 colors. Successor of CGA; now obsolete (at least in the sense of being unavailable on new machines); succeeded by VGA.

    EGD
    ElectroGasDynamics.

    EGE
    ``Electricity-Generated Emissions.''

    EGE
    Ethylene Glycol Ethers.

    EGG
    ElectroGastroGram. A measure of peripheral nervous-system activity. Proposed as a way to increase the number represented by poly in polygraph. The idea is essentially that if you get a knot in your stomach when you realize that you are suspected of lying, then an EGG might detect your nervousness about being suspected of lying electronically and noninvasively almost as effectively as common sense can. The device will be most popular among people with no sense.

    The polygraph is an extremely effective technology. When administered on a person who is lying, a polygraph finding that the person is lying is correct over 90% of the time.

    EGG
    ElectroGlottoGraphy. Say Aiiiii!

    eggs
    The weight classes are:
    Class Minimum Net
    Weight per dozen
    Jumbo 30 oz.
    Extra Large 27 oz.
    Large 24 oz.
    Medium 21 oz.
    Small 18 oz.
    Peewee 15 oz.

    For all weight classes except Peewee, individual eggs are subject to a weight minimum: no egg must be so light that a dozen of the lightest would weigh less than one ounce below the minimum. Thus, for example, since a dozen of large eggs must weigh at least 24 ounces, the average weight of the eggs must be at least 2 ounces. Even the smallest eggs in the dozen, however, must weigh 24 -1 = 23 oz. per dozen, or 23/12 oz. apiece.

    When you think about this, it's an interesting situation. Suppose that you are a chicken farmer (not a ``chicken rancher''!) and your chickens lay eggs with a mass distribution that is smooth on the scale of twelfths of an ounce. In fact, for simplicity, assume that the distribution is constant. That is, loosely speaking, assume your hens lay as many 23/12 ounce eggs as 24/12 oz. eggs and 25/12 oz eggs, etc. It's a reasonable assumption. Consider now how you would try to meet market demand for large eggs. You start with all the eggs that weigh anything under 26/12 oz., because you can't put any of those in any higher grade, and you certainly don't want to put them in a lower grade and make less money. In order to make more dozens, you continue to use all eggs that weigh less, right down to 23/12 ounces, the legal minimum for an individual egg in that grade.

    By going down to the legal limit, are you being a greedy, conniving weasel (note the appropriateness of the metaphor)? Well, consider this: by using all of the eggs in the 26/12 to 23/12 range, and making the reasonable constant-distribution assumption, you can expect that the dozen carton of large eggs will have a total egg mass of 24.5 oz. Of course, the eggs are randomly distributed, and some of the cartons are going to end up with more than their fair share of lighter eggs. How often? Well the standard deviation about 24.5/12 or 50/24 oz., for a uniform distribution of width 3/12 = 1/4 ounce (from 23/12 to 26/12 oz.) is 1/sqrt(12) times the width, or about 0.0240 oz. Thus, the average exceeds the dozen minimum by 1.732 standard deviations (yes, in fact, by exactly sqrt(3) oz. if you take this kind of number seriously). This isn't really that much. Twelve is close enough to infinity for government work, so we can approximate the binomial probability distribution by a normal one, and we find that a few percent (you look it up in the tables!) are underweight. There are a bunch of things you can do about this, but you're on your own now because I'm bored.

    If you want to know all about breakfast, then you ought to visit the salt entry too. For more on eggs, see the Abe entry.

    It appears from the evidence of his diaries available here that Jean-Paul Sartre's earliest experiments in existential food involved the Denver omelet.

    If you're still hungry for more information about eggs, see the .hu (for Hungary) entry. See also the France-related egg-content-positive entries on French toast and love. You can probably tell a lot about a person from the way they like their eggs. I'll have 'em over hard.

    EGL
    English as a Global Language.

    [column]

    EGP
    Einleitung in die griechische Philologie. [German, `Introduction to Greek Philology.'] (Stuttgart and Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1997). Pp. xvi, 773. DM 86. ISBN is 3-519-07435-4. BMCR review by James Holoka: 1999-04-01.

    Together with Einleitung in die lateinische Philologie (1996), edited by Fritz Graf, EGP replaces Teubner's Einleitung in die Altertumswissenschaft.

    EGP
    Exterior Gateway Protocol.

    EGR
    Exhaust Gas Recirculation. This is what used to happen, unfortunately, in aircraft with a smoking section. It gave a different meaning to the term pressurized cabin.

    Nowadays, afaik, tobacco smoking only occurs on private planes, and EGR is only used in its engineering sense. That refers to exhaust gas from an engine. This exhaust gas is hotter than the ambient air taken in. The elevated temperature of the exhaust gas represents a waste of fuel. One way to recover some of the loss is to run the exhaust gas through a heat exchanger (that's EGR) to preheat the fuel. In the case of gas turbines, EGR is used to heat the air after the combustion chamber has been filled. In either of these uses of EGR, compression of the fuel-air mixture is increased, hence increasing the work done by the engine.

    Come to think of it, the mechanical engineering sense was the only one that was ever common.

    egrep
    Extended grep.

    egret
    Various kinds of (usually white) heron. Some of these live in symbiosis with hippopotami. I have no idea what good egrets are to hippos. Maybe they keep other, heavier potential riders off? Taxi-meter symbiosis?

    EGRET
    Energetic Gamma Ray ExperimenT. Energetic qualifies the gamma rays, not the exeriment, as far as I know.

    EGS
    Electronics-Grade Silicon.

    EGS
    Endovascular Grafting System. Polyester tube goes inside blood vessel, bridges section with aneurysm.

    EGTA
    Ethylene Glycol-bis(beta-aminoethyl-ether)-N,N,N',N'-TetraAcetate. Equivalently, (ethylenedioxy)diethylene nitrilotetraacetate.

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