IT

Information Technology. UB held an IT Fair in March 1997.

Seven years later, I see this entry hasn't aged well.

In German, IT is expanded Informationstechnologie.

Nowadays people naturally association information technology with computers, but even before computers there was digital information technology more sophisticated than fingers. Data could be represented by holes punched in cards, and those cards sorted mechanically. You could even do computational data processing by mechanical means. For more on this, in connection with the Manhattan Project, see the calculator entry.

IT

InfraRed Transmitter. I am one, and my friends aren't surprised that I'm an incoherent transmitter.

IT

Integrated Telecommunications.

IT

Intravenous Tabasco. Won't wake the dead, but might make'em sweat a little. Why did I think of this?

it

It is the neuter third-person singular personal pronoun. It is the form of it in both subject and oblique cases, but its's genitive. Okay, enough of that. If this glossary were too sensible, we'd be using the precious disk space allocated to this entry to tell you about nominal uses of it. However, for your convenience, this information is located at the id entry.

Therefore, we'll talk here about nominal uses of she, and finding them. If you search a convenient literature database for instances of ``the she,'' mostly what you come up with is ``the she-wolf'' and runner-up ``the she-bear.'' There's even ``the she-snake'' and ``the she-tatterdemalion'' (the latter in chapter 12 of George Douglas Brown's 1901 The House with the Green Shutters -- it's actually a very affecting scene).

Fortunately, I have an example ready to hand. In a letter to her sister Cassandra (May 12, 1801), Jane Austen wrote this:

I am proud to say that I have a very good eye at an Adultress, for tho' repeatedly assured that another in the same party was the She, I fixed upon the right one from the first.

.it

(Domain code for) ITaly. A list of Italian WWW servers is available. Nikos.com offers a (US-based) page of Italian resources. E.S. Burioni Ricerche Bibliografiche sells books and information resources. LIBRI & Co. - Bologna is an antiquarian/first-editions bookstore. Here's an on-line Italian-English dictionary from Savergen.

Country code for international calls is 39.

In Vergil's name, there's an Italian search engine powered by Infoseek.

The soc.culture.italian newsgroup has an extensive FAQ.

Here's the Italian page of an X.500 directory.

ITA

Indiana Telecommunications Association.

ITA

Industrial Truck Association. ``Industrial truck'' here is technical term for a different sort of off-(the-public)-road vehicle: ``established in 1951 to further the interests of the industry through cooperative efforts involving issues of common interest to manufacturers of forklifts, tow tractors, rough terrain vehicles, hand-pallet trucks, automated guided vehicles and their suppliers.''

i.t.a.

Initial Teaching Alphabet. Please don't ask me yet why I've only seen it in lower case like that. Let's just take it one step at a time, okay?

ITA

Intercollegiate Tennis Association.

ITA

International Track Association.

ITA

International Trade Administration of the US Department of Commerce.

ITAA

Information Technology Association of America.

ITAC

Information Technology Association of Canada.

ITAC

ISDN Terminal Adapter Circuit.

itaglow

Is This A Great List Or What? Abbreviation common on MEDTEXT-L.

ITAL

Information Technology And Libraries. A refereed journal (ISSN 0730-9295) published quarterly by the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA).

Italian

There's an awful lot to say about Italian, without prejudice to any other language, so I'm not going to try. I'm only using this entry to collect Italian words that end in a consonant, as I happen across them:

il, con, un, per, ex, brum [English brougham], budget, pallet, computer, (and computer graphics, computer musics, ecc.), smoking, sidecar, smog.

(It's interesting that the plural of this masculine noun is pallets; most foreign loans are not inflected for number in Italian. In fact, in 2007 I saw an announcement of a Master in Studi Americani offered by the Università di Torino. Here you could argue that they prophylactically circumcised the formal plural. I just don't get ``musics.'')

Most of the final-consonant words are foreign loans, of course, and most of these are English nouns. English loans are pronounced approximately as in Britain. I was intrigued by how the words beginning in sm were treated, so I checked the pronunciations given for all 291 such words in Nuovo Vocabolario Illustrato della Lingua Italiana, by Giacomo Devoto and Gian Carlo Oli (Milan, 1988). With four exceptions, the initial s in these sm- words is voiced. Thus smithite, smithsonite, smock, smog, and smoking all begin with /zm/, to say nothing of the less obvious loans. (I think that smèctico, a variant form of smettico, probably counts among these non-obvious loans, or among foreign-influenced words.)

The four exceptions (initial /sm/) were all obvious loans: smart set, smash, smerdy, and smrti. Smrti is a Sanskrit term meaning `memory' or `tradition'; it is used in a technical sense in Sanskrit literature to refer to works or groups of works that have a sacred value even though they are not regarded as being of divine authority or revelation. Smerdy is a plural noun from Russian, dating back to the times before the tartar yolk, no wait, I mean the Tatar yoke. It designates field workers who constituted the lowest free social class of the time. The term is akin to the Lithuanian smirdas, `that stinks, is fetid.' This must be an evocative term in Italian, since, for example, the native word smerdato means `covered in shit.' Devoto and Oli don't mention it, but the word is also akin to the name of Smerdyakov, the servant of Karamazov père (what, you want the Russian word?) in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. He is the son of a retarded girl called Stinking Lizaveta, who dies giving birth to him. I feel sure that something is lost in the translation ``Stinking Lizaveta,'' but I'm not personally going to sniff it out.

Italian, like English, is fairly easy-going about the adoption of foreign words. (French would be at the opposite extreme. German has been like French at certain times. Nowadays a lot of Germans complain that German has so much English it doesn't look like German; I think most of the loans will fall out of use without much fuss.) I'm trying to find a smooth transition here, but I can't, so I'll just say that I ran across a scholarly monograph in the series Materiali di Marketing dell'Arte. This one has a double-colon title; the second subtitle is La Nona sinfonia di Ludwig van Beethoven (capitalization sic). This is the platform for L'Economia dell'Arte: Una verifica empirica del modello teorico. It's edited and has substantial content by Aldo Spranzi, but all I'm interested in are the delicious barbarisms, like la customer satisfaction dell'economia dell'arte and cosa sono le teaching notes e a che cosa servono. [The italicization -- inapt word there -- implies that the phrase ``customer satisfaction'' is not yet considered to be naturalized, but ``teaching notes'' is. Wonders never cease.] BTW, it's focused on the modern Rezeptionsgeschichte, so there's nothing -- leastwise nothing substantial -- on Wagner's promotional efforts. (We mention a bit about this at the New Class entry.) One thing to keep in mind about the ninth is that it's an unusually expensive symphony to produce.

Hmmm. It looks like I was trying to say something about Italian after all. In that case, I should probably have started out by noting that Italian is not exactly a spoken language in the usual sense. Italian is song. It's possible to speak the words of the language, just as it's possible to speak the lyrics of a song, but in ordinary usage one simply sings. It was recently reported to me that there are three people in the world who actually dislike this song (I mean Italian). Well, it's a big world.

Incidentally, it's very difficult to shout Italian; what you find is that you're simply singing at the top of your lungs. (Now, perhaps, you can understand why I was so shocked about Berlioz.)

The melodies of Italian vary by region. The first time I was in a loud dining room in Rome, I realized where the rhythm of Argentine Spanish comes from. I mean bonaerense Spanish, of course. The characterustic (sic Spanish of Cordoba, Argentina, like the Spanish of some Mexicans, is sing-songy. This is something very different, involving the almost arbitrary imposition of a song on speech.

italiese, Italiese

Italian with a heavy admixture of English. The uncapitalized form is used in Italian (pronounced with stress on the first e). The word is derived from italiano and inglese. The word is capitalized in English. Rather parallel with franglais, Franglais.

ITANZ

Information Technology Association of New Zealand. FWIW, der Tanz is German for `the dance.' If you think in Germlish, the acronym looks a bit like `I dance.'

ITAS

Institut fü Technikfolgenabschätzung und Systemanalyse. `Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis.'

ITB

Internationale Tourismus Börse. `International Travel and Tourism Fair' in Berlin.

ITBS

Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. Unofficially, or ignorantly, or reasonably, called by the singular version (``Test''). A norm-referenced test. Harder than the California Achievement Test (CAT), another popular K-12 assessment tool.

ITC

International Trade Center, somehow related to UNCTAD and to GATT/WTO.

ITC

In The City.

ITC

Investment and Trust Companies.

ITCA

International TeleConferencing Association.

ITCH

Information Technology in Community Health.

ITE

Institute of Transportation Engineers.

ITE

Internal Terminal Emulator.

ITEA

International Technology Education Association. Annual Conference and exhibits in March.

ITEA

ISTEA.

ited

Iowa Tests of Educational Development. If you agree that there is a meaningful difference between written tests that attempt to measure aptitude and written tests that attempt to measure achievement (like CogAT), then ited is a typical achievement test.

ITER, Iter

International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. That was the original expansion, now deprecated in favor of the idea that Iter is simply Latin for `the way.' (I've occasionally seen ITER expanded as ``International Thermonuclear Energy Research'' (or ``... Energy Reactor'') but those apparently were never official expansions.) ITER was originally set up in a series of meetings in the 1980's as a collaboration of the US, the Soviet Union, the EC, and Japan. The goal was to pool efforts and resources to develop fusion as an energy source.

Other countries have also participated and have been described as members, but their precise status is confusing. The initial agreement among the ``big four'' signatories in April 1988 contained what was known as the ``Canada clause.'' It said that ''[a]fter consultation with the other parties, each party may involve in its contribution to the conceptual design activities other countries which possess specific fusion capabilities.'' Canada's ``special capability'' is its tritium technology, obtained through the operation of the CANDU reactors used in nuclear power plants. (Visit ITERCanada.) Canada's participation became official in July 1988.

The next major ITER agreement (I am tempted to call it the next ITERation, but I've got too much class), concluded by about the same four partners (the USSR having been succeeded by Russia), was signed in Washington, DC, on July 21, 1992. (Also, in 1993 the EC became the EU.)

In October 1998, the US Congress refused to continue the US share of ITER funding, and the U.S. discontinued its membership. Canada stayed involved at some level. Next thing I knew, it was December 2003. The US was back in, but Canada's federal government found being a full participant or bidding to be the construction site too expensive, and officially pulled out Dec. 5, 2003. Also, South Korea and China were now members, on what terms I don't know. The six members met in Reston, Virginia, to decide whether to site in France or Japan. Commenting on condition of anonymity, a member of one of the delegations (not the EU delegation) explained that the US, Japan, and Korea favored the Japanese site, while China, Russia, and the EU favored the French site. South Korea was the most flexible, and may have abstained in some sort of vote, but the decision is apparently intended to be made by consensus, so some were quite pessimistic that an agreement could be reached, either by the next meeting in January or February, or at all. Reading a bit between the lines, it seemed that there would be some serious log-rolling negotiations (outsourcing some tasks in return for support, etc.).

iter

Latin, `road.' It was and is used in transferred senses such as `route, way,' etc.

ITF

International Transport Workers' Federation.

ITF

Internet Task Force.

ITI

Indian Telephone Industries.

ITI

Information Technology Industry Council. Formerly CBEMA.

ITIN

Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. Here's an explanation from the 2004 edition of IRS publication 17 (Your Federal Income Tax: For Individuals), p. 15:

The IRS will issue you an ITIN if you are a nonresident or resident alien and you do not have and are not eligible to get an SSN.

Use form W-7. See also ATIN.

It is felt that

I think that.

ITL

Institute for the Transformation of Learning. Promotes ``school choice'' (``vouchers'').

ITLA

Iowa Trial Lawyers Association.

it'll

Contraction of it will or, rather less commonly, it shall.

One day I was tapping at the terminal talking with Joshi when he went ``wow!''

It was easy to guess that I hadn't done any sudden impressive feat of coding, and he quickly assured me that I would never guess what had amazed him. It turned out that in response to a request from him I had replied ``I shall.''

ITM

Istituto per la Tecnologia dei Materiali. In Milan.

ITMA

International Twelve Metre Association. The whole nine yards, and more, once the page is constructed.

ITMA

It's That Man Again. A popular WWII BBC radio comedy feature (ran from 1939 until 1949, when creator comedian Tommy Handley died). Written by Ted Kavanagh. Characters included Mrs. Mopp and Funf.

Ito

The judge who presided over the murder trial of O. J. Simpson.

ITO

Indium Tin Oxide. Material used in LCD's, because a thin layer of it is fairly transparent yet reasonably conductive.

ITP

Institute for Theoretical Physics. Wherever. There's a famous one in Trieste.

ITP

International Thompson Publishing co.

ITPA

Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities.

ITR

Internet Traffic Report. Monitors ping delays and packet loss. Something nonintuitive: the ``index'' for a region measures its current speed compared to its own speed over the past seven days, so it can't be used to compare different regions. To compare different regions, use response time.

ITRA

International Tenant Representative Alliance.

ITRS

International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors.

Moore's Law times a couple of hundred. (I.e., broken out into component technologies and capabilities.) Looking ahead 15 years or so. No, it's not as mechanical as simply applying an exponential scaling law. One reason is that on a close-up view, technology evolves in discrete steps, transitioning as new capabilities become available or economical.

The ITRS is an assessment of semiconductor technology ``requirements.'' ``Requirements'' is an interesting word. Different technologies are required to advance in a loose coordination, in order to produce integrated-circuit performance improvements. But in principle and in fact, slack from any lagging technology is taken up by one or more alternatives. The Roadmap trieds to predict how the technology competitions will play out, and includes predictions about transitions between qualitatively different technologies as well quantitative changes. You can think of ``requirements'' as being what you as a supplier can expect to be required to supply if you want to stay in the business.

Research advances are almost a commodity: you want faster advances, you buy more research manpower.

The ITRS, updated annually, ``is a cooperative effort of the global industry manufacturers and suppliers, government organizations, consortia, and universities. ... It is sponsored by the European Semiconductor Industry Association (ESIA), the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA), the Korean Semiconductor Industry Association (KSIA), the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), and Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (TSIA). nternational SEMATECH is the global communication center for this activity. The ITRS team at International SEMATECH also coordinates the USA region events.''

its

A possessive pronoun, like ``her'' and ``his.'' Possessive pronouns do not get apostrophes (thus: ``ours,'' ``hers,'' ``theirs''). A pretty recent one, in fact. Back when all nouns had grammatical gender in English, hit and his were genitives. In Middle English, hit lost its initial aitch, but remained a possessive form. It is not until the around 1620 that it appears as a neuter personal pronoun and its (or it's, in that time) appeared as the corresponding possessive form. We may be seeing a similar transition now, with their frequently being used as a gender-neutral personal pronoun for people, and agreeing, albeit grumpily, with verbs in singular conjugation. Problems still occur however, due for example to the absence of a reasonable reflexive form.

it's

A contraction for ``it is.''

ITS

Intelligent Transportation Systems. Called RTI in Europe. Called IVHS in the past.

ITSA

Intelligent Transportation Society of America.

Its all over.

What is its ``all'' and what is it over?

It's a long story.

It would take a long time to drag the story out of me.

It's an honor to be appointed associate vice--

Stop right there. No it's not.

It's complicated.

It's simple [;|:] I don't want to talk about it.

Oh, here's a nice sample for study. On June 18, 2001, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke for three hours with US reporters. He was able to make very clear his opposition to a US missile defense. That's really quite simple, because the burden of argument is clearly upon those who want to deploy it. Obviously, defensive weapons are dangerous and evil, and may provoke another arms race, whereas offensive weapons of mass destruction are recognized as ethical and politically stabilizing. It is really quite gracious of Putin to recognize these facts, and to come out for political stability and international arms balance, when so many of his countrymen have recognized that the old USSR's inability to keep pace in the arms race motivated the actions that eventuated in Putin's presidency. In any case, this is all very simple and Putin had no trouble, even though he communicated through an interpreter. All he had to do was to point to various moves available to his pieces in the chess game.

US reporters wanted to know if Putin and US President Bush, in earlier talks in Slovenia, had talked in detail about ``Iran and Russia's growing arms relationship with its leaders.'' The answer was yes, but Russia has a ``complex relationship'' with Iran. See, now if he had been translated as saying ``it's complicated,'' then that would have been a completely different story. Then one might be justified in suspecting that the entire complexity of the relationship consisted in Iran having cash and Russia having arms, and each wanting some of what the other has. Obviously it's not like that at all. It's a ``complex relationship.'' It's rocket science. I certainly can't figure it out. Probably the reporters have a clue, but they're not saying.

Chechnya was very simple: it was someone else's fault.

ITS/CVO

Intelligent Transportation Systems for Commercial Vehicle Operations.

It's easy; all you have to do is...

I saw someone do it once; the final step is...

It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.

In his last movie, Divine played Ricki Lake's mother.

It's no secret that

Let us assume without proof that.

It's not really about...

It really is about...

It's not the money.

It's the money.

ITSO

International Technical Support Organization. Izzatso?

ITSP

Internet Telephony Service Provider.

It's so important.

It's so important that what?

It's very quiet.

Either that or I've gone deaf!

ITT

InterTandem Trunk. Telephone line connecting different tandem offices. Long-distance toll calls involve different tandem offices connected by one or more ITT's. (Pre-divestiture, ``tandem'' was ``toll.'') Cf. TCT.

ITT

Part of official name of the company that used to be International Telephone and Telegraph.

ITTA

Information Technology Training Association, Inc.

It takes all kinds.

It takes blithering idiots.

It takes all kinds.

Sure, but must they all live next door?

ITTI

(UK Higher Education Funding Councils') Information Technology Training Initiative.

ITU

Institute for TransUranium Elements. ``The mission of ITU is to provide the scientific foundation for the protection of the European citizen against risks associated with the handling and storage of highly radioactive material. ITU's prime objectives are to serve as a reference centre for basic actinide research, to contribute to an effective safety and safeguards system for the nuclear fuel cycle, and to study technological and medical applications of radionuclides/actinides.''

ITU

International Telecommunications Union. Founded in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union. Now a specialized agency of the United Nations, apparently within the UNDP. (Here's an alternate ITU URL.)

ITU-R

International Telecommunications Union - Radiocommunication.

ITU-T, ITU-TS, ITU-TSS

International Telecommunications Union, Technical Standards Section.

ITV

Independent TeleVision. The largest commercial television network in the UK, by viewership, number of regional licenses held (12 of 15), and various other measures. The biggest-budget commercial TV network in Europe.

ITV

Interactive TeleVision.

ITV

In-Transit Visibility.

ITVA

International TeleVision Association. ``The Association for Accomplished Visual Communicators.'' No comment.

ITVS

Independent TeleVision Service. Creates programming for public television (PTV) stations.

It was a dark and stormy night

When Snoopy (the renowned WWI flying ace in Peanuts) retired from his dogfights and turned his paw to pursuits of a literary nature, his efforts always began with these words. He was unconsciously plagiarizing this original:

It was a dark and stormy night and the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

This is the first sentence of Paul Clifford (1830), a novel by Edward George Bulwer (1803-1873). (He added his mother's family name at age 40, on inheriting Knebworth, ancestral home of the Lytton family. In 1866, he was elevated to the peerage in recognition of his depredations on literature, and became known as Lord Lytton. He is remembered as Bulwer-Lytton.)

That sentence has come to be regarded as a paradigmatic example of writing that is correct grammatically, in terms of spelling and syntax, but otherwise quite poor -- overwrought I would say, and perhaps a bit windy, possibly even with occasional violent gusts of excessive verbiage running down the page (for it is texts that are our context). It excites an uncontrollable urge to parody. An annual bad-writing contest is named in Bulwer-Lytton's honor or whatever (BLFC). I believe that academic writing is excluded from the contest, nominally on the grounds that it is nonfiction, and really to keep the number of entries to a manageable number and give regular people a shot at being the worst.

A note to our younger readers (those born since 1870): ``dark ... night'' is not a pleonasm. It is true that today, or better said tonight, the night (we exclude the twilight hours) is always dark relative to the day, and one night is as dark as another; in 1830, however, even in the great metropolis of London, street lighting was not so widespread or so bright (``the lamps that struggled against the darkness,'' were few and of ``scanty flame'') that one could not tell, as one can still do today (yeah, yeah, tonight) in many rural areas, the difference between a dark, new-moon night, and a night illumined by a full moon, bright enough to read bad novels by.

(People who resent being able to read bad novels out on moonless nights have clubs where they can complain about it to other people who feel the same way and are not sick to death of hearing them bellyache. The IDA is one such.)

It was never my intention to give offense.

I merely wanted to say things that are outrageous.

ITZN

International Trust for Zoological Nomenclature (ITZN), a charity (not-for-profit company) registered in the UK that handles financial and management affairs for the International Commission on Zoölogical Nomenclature (ICZN).

IU

Indiana University. There are eight main campuses, whatever ``main'' means

• IU Bloomington -- IUB, the main main campus, the only residential campus, and a smaller one of the ``Big Ten.''
• IU East -- IUE.
• IU Fort Wayne -- see IUFW.
• IU Kokomo -- IUK.

IU

International Unit[s]. A measure of the quantity of various nutrients, including vitamins A, D, and E.

IUB

Indiana University at Bloomington. Flagship of the IU system, q.v.

IUBAC

Indiana University Bloomington Advisor's Council. Normally just ``BAC.'' When I saw ``THANKS FOR 7 GREAT YEARS / WELCOME IUBAC'' on the marquee at the local Hampton Inn & Suites in early August 2003, I thought: sure, time to prepare for the new students at IU. (I didn't think ``oh cute -- Welcome yoo back.'') I didn't know what ``IUBAC'' stood for, but I figured it must have something to do with Indiana University. Read on.

IUBAC

International Union of Bricklayers & Allied Craftsmen. Normally just ``BAC'' too. Before they let you view their home page, they want you to read a disclaimer, just so you don't get the idea that you could learn everything you need to know about laying brick and doing allied crafts by just reading. Hey -- it's a skilled profession!

Early August 2003: BAC Local Leadership Conference in Notre Dame, Indiana.

Long ago, Gary's in-laws (``the L's'' will be specific enough for this entry) hired a contractor to build a new stone fireplace in their home. Two guys were working at it, and as the L's watched they realized that the fireplace was turning out to look asymmetric: the two guys had different styles, and even though they were using stones from the same stock, the sides were different. So Mr. L said ``stop,'' but they didn't. Then Mrs. L said ``stop!'' The skilled craftsmen continued their work. Then together in unison Mr. and Mrs. L said ``stop!!'' I'm not sure when exactly the stonemasons deigned to pause, but it turned out that their deafness was principled: they worked for the contractor and took their orders from him (and not from a couple of clowns who happened to be paying for the work, apparently, and in whose house they were working -- maybe the L's should have said ``leave'').

The contractor did not charge for having the work redone. When two masons work together in parallel, they have to work together. In particular, they're supposed to trade places occasionally so their different styles do not produce different patches that are large enough to notice. Potentially, all work is skilled work. The trouble is workers with skills incommensurate to the work.

By the way, if you've been reading on since the previous IUBAC entry, the following may make sense. In late August, the marquee was changed to read ``THANKS FOR 7 GREAT YEARS / WELCOME BACK STUDENTS.'' Oh.

IUBAT

International University of Business Agriculture and Technology.

IUBS

International Union of Biological Sciences. I would pronounce this ``yubs.'' Then again, I wouldn't design an acronym that would be pronounced yubs. Cf. yob.

Not to be confused with IUSB. Another initialism not to be confused with IUSB is UCSB.

IUC

Information Unit for Conventions ``provides public information and media services to a number of environmental conventions.''

IUCB

Industry/University Center for Biosurfaces at UB.

IUCC

Information Unit on Climate Change. Original name of IUC.

IUCN

International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Now prefers to style itself ``IUCN -- The World Conservation Union.'' See also WWF.

IUCr

International Union of CRystallography. A member society of ICSU.

iud, i.u.d.

Independent, uniformly distributed (random variable). More information at the entry for uid, which is the more common abbreviation, for some reason...

IUD

IntraUterine Device. A contraceptive device that functions by discouraging fertilized eggs from attaching to the uterine wall. Not real popular these days. In the US, as in many third-world nations, the most commonly used birth control method, apart from hoping, is sterilization. The Pill trails that, although it is the most popular method for the young.

Invented in 1909 by R. Richter.

IUE

Indiana University East. A/k/a IU East or East. Part of the IU system, q.v. It's not located anywhere in particular, so if you're in Indiana and not located near any particular place, then there's a fair chance it's nearby. By ``particular place,'' I mean a place described by a proper noun (other than, like, IUE or Springwood Hall) rather than by latitude and longitude. By ``near'' I mean driving distance in a snow storm. YMMV.

Oh, alright, IUE is at Richmond, Indiana, near Ohio.

IUE

International Ultraviolet Explorer (satellite).

IUE

International Union of Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers.

IUFW

Indiana University at Fort Wayne. Part of the IU system.

IUGS

International Union of Geological Sciences.

IUHPS

International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science. One of twenty-six scientific unions belonging to the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). One that, as of early 2002, finds itself technically challenged in maintaining a web presence. The of-of name probably reflects the earlier dominance of French, in which language the name is Union internationale d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences. Cf. ICHS. Divided both organizationally and temperamentally into two divisions:

IUHPS/DHS

Division of History of Science of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS).

IUHPS/DLMPS

Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS).

IUI

Intelligent User Interfaces. A shell -- what more do you need? Oh, I get it: an intelligent interface for users. Users who are not necessarily intelligent themselves. Burden-sharing. Gottcha. Sure. I get it. (I was just acting confused.) Another international conference, cosponsored by ACM SIGART and ACM SIGCHI.

IUI

IntraUterine Insemination. One kind of ART: sperm get a free ride past cervical mucosa to a place in the uterine suggestively close to the fallopian tubes. After all that, absent special drugs half the stupid sperm will go up the wrong tube. See Woody Allen's ``Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask'' for a sad illustration of sperm intelligence and neurosis.

IUK

Indiana University at Kokomo. Part of the IU system. Yuk-yuk. (I mean, ``way down... in Kokomo.'')

IUMS

International Union of Microbiological Societies. Yummms! ``Microbes in a Changing World.'' Yucks!

IUP

Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The name is a ruse to trick Pennsylvania students who are eager to go to school in exciting, exotic Indiana into staying in-state instead. Yup. (That's IUP with a consonantal I.) It's all explained at the SU entry.

IUPAC

International Union (for) Pure (and) Applied Chemistry. ``You pack.'' Also here. Pure and Applied Chemistry is the official journal of IUPAC.

IUPAP

International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.

IUPUI

Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis. Surely a contender for most redundant university name honors. Has 180 academic programs, too. There are easier ways to make the university acronym palindromic.

Gary tells me that he's never heard anyone pronounce ``IUPUI'' in any other way than as an initialism (``aye you pea you aye''). He claims that after a bit of practice, it rolls easily off the lips.

IURC

Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission. It ought to be pronounced ``I irk.''

IUS

Inertial Upper Stage. NASA acronym. The capsule. It keeps moving by inertia; it has limited thrust, mostly for orientation (or for escape in the event of lower-stage failure).

IUSB

Indiana University South Bend. Part of Indiana University.

Not to be confused with IUBS.

IUSS

Institute of United States Studies. Part of the School of Advanced Study of the University of London from its founding in 1965 until 2004, when it was merged with ILAS to form the ISA (q.v.). US studies or American studies is a hot field in Europe. It got a Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) article in 2001 or 2002. This academic field answers the crying need for authoritative academic rationalizations for European elites' visceral resentment of America.

IUT

Implementation Under Test.

IV

Intelligent Vehicle. Face it: the last thirty years have demonstrated that the vehicle is easier to improve than the driver.

IV

IntraVenous. IV injections are what druggies used to call ``main-lining.'' In 1987, uphill from and in view of the Roman Colosseum, I found myself walking up the steps of a shooting gallery; the discarded syringes were thick on the steps, and if you tripped there you had to worry what you landed on. Occasionally, tourism becomes travel. (Cf. IA.)

IV

Impuesto a la Venta. Spanish, `sales tax.'

IVA

Impuesto al Valor Agregado. Spanish, `value-added tax' (VAT).

IVA

InterValence-band Absorption. Light absorption by the excitation of a hole from one valence band into a lower one. In a bulk semiconductor with a typical (i.e., non-inverted) band structure, IVA can occur in one of two ways: conversion of a heavy hole into a light hole, or excitation of an ordinary hole into the split-off band. This can be a significant effect in p-doped semiconductors radiated with sub-bandgap light. In heterostructures, the lh/hh degeneracy at k = 0 is broken and zone folding produces a number of additional transitions. In generally p-type material, quantum wells for holes can (with appropriate bias voltages) produce 1DHG's -- regions where the Fermi energy lies below the top of the local VBE. All of these effects can be used to increase IVA dramatically.

IVA

IntraVehicular Activity. E.g.: spilling coffee on the driver's lap.

I value honesty.

A personals-ad expression. Take a good close look at that picture. Hey -- that's Diana Rigg, circa 1966! I guess it's an approximation. Look, I said ``value honesty,'' not ``am honest.'' It means I value your honesty. In this world in which we live, it can't be all take-take-take. Somebody's got to be the sucker, and I nominate you.

You may think that people lie about things that are hard to check, like their precise income, or their juvenile delinquency. That's true, but my cousin Victoria discovered something else about personals ads: people tell obvious lies. That is, they don't just tell lies that might not be discovered (according to the rules of dating, this is allowed). Rather, they tell lies that their mere presence betrays, and which the liars must realize will be discovered. She made this discovery using the experimental method. She ran personals ads that mentioned her height (6 feet, and not one barleycorn more). Guys would reply to this ad, or she would reply to guys' ads (it was all very complicated -- this was in the days of newspapers), and one way or another she would be led to understand that her prospective dates were taller than she was. Then she would meet them, and standing in low-heel shoes, she would be looking down at them. See also recent photograph.

IVC

Inferior Vena Cava. The lower of the two blood vessels returning blood to the right atrium of the heart.

IVC

International Verilog HDL Conference.

IVCF

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Link here to the branch at UB.

I-V characteristic

A mathematical relation (usually a function) of current to voltage, or the plot of that relation. Also CVC.

IVD

Immobilienverband Deutschland. `Real Estate Federation of Germany.'

IVD

Internal Vapor Deposition.

IVDU

IntraVenous Drug [ab]User.

IVF

Institutet för Verkstadsteknisk Forskning. Swedish: `Institute of Production Engineering Research.'

IVF

In Vitro Fertilization. The Latin phrase in vitro means `in glass.' The idea in IVF is that sperm and egg are likelier to meet and get together in a test tube than in the usual chancy environs. The fertilized egg is implanted in the womb.

Many customers are bothered by the conceptual aesthetics of this process. GIFT and ZIFT are a little better in that category, and also have slightly higher success rates.

The famous first human baby conceived by IVF was Louise Brown, born in Britain in 1978. In 1999, she was working in a daycare center. Asked if she would use IVF herself, she said she'd pass it up. That's very interesting, and she's the oldest woman you could ask the question of who has the experience of being an IVF baby, but she was a healthy twenty-one-year-old when asked. IVF is most famously, now, used by older couples that have difficulty conceiving. It's also used by younger couples who have difficulty conceiving, but that hasn't generated the same volume of politically pointed literature.

IVF was first introduced in the US in 1981. It is the most common ART (q.v.), accounting for about 70% of procedures.

Oh, good: here's a clarification of the politically fraught thoughts of Shulamith Firestone on reproductive technology.

IVG

Interruption voluntaire de grossesse. French, `voluntary termination of pregnancy.' Voluntary on the woman's part. A euphemism for avortement (`abortion'). Grossesse turns out to be the standard word for pregnancy in French, sort of reminiscent of the old euphemism ``big [or great] with child.'' Cf. comments on embarazo near the end of the TP entry.

IVHS

Intelligent Vehicle-Highway System[s]. Now called ITS.

IVHS America

IVHS America? Noooo! It's the Intelligent Vehicle Highway Society of America. An NGO (``a public/private scientific and educational corporation'') working for safer, more economical, energy efficient, and environmentally sound highway travel in the US.

IVIS

InterVehicle Information System. [Military.]

I-V line

IntraVenous (IV) tube.

IVMC

International Vacuum Microelectronics Conference.

IVP

IntraVenous (IV) Pyelogram.

IVR

Interactive Voice Response. You may have noticed that you no longer need a touchtone to deal with some PBX's.

IVR

Intramolecular Vibrational Redistribution (of energy).

IVS

Interactive Voice Services. Fancy public-address system. Generally less frustrating than, though possibly as irritating as, IVR.

IVS

InterValley Scattering. Transition of an electron or hole between different satellite valleys. (In common usage, this usually excludes generation and recombination processes.)

IVS

International VLBI Satellite. A joint USSR-ESA project.

IVT

I-V (versus) Temperature. Measurement of temperature-dependent I-V characteristics.

IW

Information Warfare.

IW

Information Window.

IW

International Workshop. Lexically productive.

IWAIF

Intensity-Weighted Average of Instantaneous Frequency.

IWALC

International Water-related Associations' Liaison Committee.

I want to halve your baby.

Oh, that King Solomon -- such a kidder!

I want to tell you

I want you to suspend your critical faculties completely.

I wasn't talking to you

But you were listening to me.

IWBNI

It Would Be Nice If.

IWC

Illinois Watch Company. A watch manufacturer of the early twentieth century. Cf. IWC Co.

IWC

Implementation Working Group.

IWC

International Whaling Commission.

IWC

International Wildlife Coalition. Dedicated to serious partying! Then again, maybe not.

IWCC

International Workshop on Critical Currrents (in superconductors).

IWC Co.

Illinois Watch Case COmpany. A company distinct from and independent of the Illinois Watch Company (IWC), though they often did business. If you opened an IWC watch and saw ``IWC Co.'' inscribed on the inside of the case, that was not an AAP pleonasm. Instead, it was an indication that you had one of IWC's cheaper watches. For their better watches they used other cases not from IWC Co.

IWCE

International Workshop on Computational Electronics.

The fifth (IWCE-5) was at Notre Dame in 1997. IWCE-7 was at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. My, how the time goes by. IWCE-10 was back in Indiana (Purdue University, in West Lafayette).

IWE

Internet World Exhibition.

IWF

Independent Women's Forum. ``... provides a voice for American women who believe in individual freedom and personal responsibility. We have made that voice heard in the U.S. Supreme Court, among decision makers in Washington, and across America's airwaves.

It is the voice of reasonable women with important ideas who embrace common sense over divisive ideology.

We don't pretend to speak for all women - but perhaps we speak for you.''

IWF

Internationaler Währungsfonds. German for `International Monetary Fund' (IMF).

IWF

InterWorking Function.

IWKB

Inverse Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB). Used to extract a depth-dependent index of refraction. See P. K. Tien, R. Ulrich, and R. J. Martin, ``Modes of propagating light waves in thin deposited semiconductor films,'' Appl. Phys. Lett., 14 291 (1969); and J. M. White and P. F. Heidrich, ``Optical waveguide refractive index profiles determined from measurement of mode indices: a simple analysis,'' Appl. Opt., 15, 151-5 (1976).

IWMA

San Luis Obispo County Integrated Waste Management Authority.

IWMA

International Water Mist Association.

IWMA

The International WorkingMen's Association. The First International. As an early document served by marxists.org indicates, the group was also called the ``Working Men's International Association.''

IWMA

International Workshop on Max-Algebra.

IWMI

International Water Management Institute. ``IWMI is a non-profit scientific organization funded by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). IWMI's research agenda is organized around four priority themes covering key issues relating to land, water, livelihoods, health and environment. The Institute concentrates on water and related land management challenges faced by poor rural communities. ...''

IWR

Internet Weather Report. Really a traffic report: regular maps of internet packet latencies, as measured from MIDS offices in Austin, Tx.

IWRA

International Water Resources Association.

IWSF

International Water Ski Federation. It seems awfully generous of water skiers to have created a federation just for their equipment. On the other hand, the IWSF is based in Unteraegeri, Switzerland, so they probably have some spare time on their hands there for part of the year.

IWT

Institut für Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung. `Institute of Science and Technology Studies' located at Universität Bielefeld. They don't do scientific or technical studies; they study science and technology as social and intellectual phenomena, viewed from philosophical, historical, linguistic, sociological, and ethical perspectives. In principle, it's not entirely impossible that such studies could stumble on something that was nontrivial and true, but a more effective approach would simply be to pay scientists to not do scientific research.

IWTV

Interview With The Vampire, a novel by Anne Rice.

IWU

Illinois Wesleyan University.

IWU

InterWorking Unit.

IWW

Industrial Workers of the World. A US labor organization. It and its members were known as the Wobblies.

Preamble to the IWW Constitution (1905):

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production and abolish the wage system.

We find that the centering of management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping to defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the workers have interest in common with their employers.

These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.

Instead of the conservative motto, ``A fair day's wage for a fair day's work,'' we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, ``Abolition of the wage system.'' It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the every-day struggle with capitalists, but to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.

All I want to know is, where does that leave us symbolic manipulators, eh?

The IWW never formally disbanded, but when the US entered World War I, most of its leaders were jailed under terms of the Espionage Act of 1917. History in a palindrome:

IWW ... WWI.

Still, the IWW never formally disbanded. In fact it still exists! You can visit their website.

IXAS

Indian X-ray Astronomy Satellite.

IXC

IntereXchange Carrier. A company that provides long-distance (inter-LATA) telephone service.

IXS

Nominally the International XAFS Society, but ``open to all those working on the fine structure associated with inner shell excitation (near edge and extended) by various probes (e.g. x-rays and electrons), and related techniques for which the data is interpreted on the same physical basis.''

IYKWIM

If You Know What I Mean.

IYKWIMAITYD

If You Know What I Mean, And I Think You Do. To be perfectly honest, the expansion is just my guess. I might be wrong, but I think I'm not.

IYKWISAITYD

If You Know What I'm Saying, And I Think You Do.

IYRU

International Yacht Racing Union. What's this classy acronym doing here among the nerdy email abbreviations? Oh -- alphabetic order.

IYSWIM

If You See What I Mean. Email abbreviation.

Izvestia

Russian, `News.' A leading newspaper of the Soviet Union (USSR) with Pravda, which means `Truth.' The saying used to go

There is no news in Pravda, and no truth in Izvestia.

I don't understand why it didn't go the other way around. Unlike Pravda, Izvestia has changed with the times and remains in business as Russia's leading liberal newspaper.

i18n

	I nternationalizatio N
	 |<-- 18 letters -->|

Cf. E13n, j10n, L10n.

There's a Unicode and Internationalization Glossary online. [I.e., a glossary having to do with written-language internationalization.]

Oh! Look at this: it also works in British spelling:

        i nternationalisatio n
         |<-- 18 letters -->|

A truly i15d abbreviation. How touching. I think this magic also happens with e13n and L10n, but I don't have time to count letters.

We could do this more generally: L2e t2s. C4r, h1h?

For a very early (16 c. or so) application of this principle, see las onces entry.

The British thing reminds me: I have a lot of old British books, and for a long time they apparently thought it was fine to represent a 1 with a small upper-case I. It wasn't. And I don't recommend writing i18n with a capital i or L10n with a lower-case l.

I2

Internet2.

I²

Ion Implantation.

I²L

Integrated Injection Logic. ``Aye-squared El.'' Same as CHIL, q.v., and MTL.

I-80

Interstate route 80. Designated ``Ohio Turnpike'' in Ohio. I use it too much. How well do I know I-80? Last time I was at Vermillion service area, I thought: ``who moved that pinball machine''?

I-90

Interstate route 90. Designated ``Amvets highway'' along some of its length by various states. In New York, it's also known as the New York State Thruway, designed by Robert Moses, a man who never learned to drive a car. One trip, I hauled my car on a tow dolly behind my truck, and I got separate do-not-spindle cards for the two vehicles. At least they didn't give me a third one for the tow dolly -- all three made road contact.

Almost all of the New York section of I-90 is part of the New York State Thruway system, and most of the ``mainline'' section of the NYST is I-90. (Look, I'm trying to make this as complicated as possible, okay? And I'm getting help from the NYST, which also favors complexity and unclearly-defined names.) However, a quarter or a third of the system is designated by other interstate numbers or no interstate number.

A helpful ASCII map from Mark explains what happens around Albany:

                   | I-87
                   |
                   |
     I-90 = NYST   |(24)
    ---------------#----
                   |    \           state line
                   |     |               :
              I-87 |     | I-90          :
            = NYST |     |               :
                   |     |               :
                   |     |(B1)           :
              (21A)#-----#---------------:-----------------
                   |  BS     I-90 = BS   :  I-90 = MA Turnpike
                   |                     :
                   |                     :
              I-87 |                     :
            = NYST |

Numbers in parentheses are exit numbers; BS is the Thruway's Berkshire Spur. You can get a more metrically accurate color map from mapquest, but it won't be as clear what happens to I-90.

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