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]](images/column.gif)
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
- The act of editing.
- 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
- ' 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
- 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 tô, 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).
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.
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.