J

SI-approved standard symbol and abbreviation for the SI-approved energy unit -- joule. A joule is 8.86 inch-pounds, in universal American units.

In the boring system, a joule is a newton meter. In terms of the earlier boring system, a joule would have been 10⁷ erg. Because metric units ignored Thomas Jefferson's (and others') wise suggestion and were not selected to make the acceleration of gravity at the earth's surface unity, one joule is 0.10972 kg-f × m, to reflect the conventional value of 9.80665 m/s² for the acceleration of gravity (that's g_n -- the standard acceleration of free fall). [kg-f is the weight of one kilogram of mass.]

One joule is also 1 Wh/3600, but that's the fault of Sumerians, who beqeathed us (they're all dead now, perhaps that's significant) a time-system that uses base 60.

If you believe in a calorie that is 4.1868 J, then 1 J = 0.238846 cal. You could have figured that out, I'm sure, but who could figure out the real calorie?

All my life, I've pronounced joule with an initial zh. Eventually I noticed that the eponym was James Prescott Joule, an Englishman, and that dictionaries give pronunciations of his name only with an ordinary j. I guess my pronunciation is an error due to phonetic bleed-through from the French name Jules, but I decided to stay with my solecism. If I have to keep hearing ``rih-JEEM'' (for regime) from newsfaces, I figure I've earned the right.

J

Jahwist. German spelling of Yahwist. Refers to a component of the Pentateuch, and its supposed author. The three other major components, to the extent that agreement exists, are E (Elohist), D (Deuteronomist) and P (Psalmist). E and J texts are concentrated in the early books, particularly Genesis, and distinguished by the use of JHWH (His name) and Elohim. The Deuteronomist uses both names. Stories with two tellings in the bible are typically attributed to two different authors.

In The Book of J, Harold Bloom speculated that the Jahwist was a woman in King Solomon's court.

J

Joint

• noun: a marijuana cigarette. Abbreviation pronounced and spelled `jay.'
• adjective: involving coordination of distinct military services. (E.g.: JAAP, JAN, JANUS, JAOC, JCCC, JCMEC, JCS, JDA, JDAL, JDEC, JDISS, JEZ, JFAST, JIEO, JLOTS, JOPES, JSF, JTA, and a different JTA.)
  It's more than just a word; it's a philosophy of cooperation at all levels, rather than just coordination at the top (the Joint Chiefs of Staff). Under the Goldwater-Nichols Reorganization Act of 1986, the JCS is an advisory body and the chain of command runs from the President through the Secretary of Defense directly to the commander of the combatant command. (The Secretaries of the Military Departments assign all fighting forces to joint combatant commands.)

J

Juliette. Not an abbreviation here, just the FCC-recommended ``phonetic alphabet.'' I.e., a set of words chosen to represent alphabetic characters by their initials. You know, ``Alpha Bravo Charlie ... .'' The idea behind the choice is to have words that the listener will be able to guess at or reconstruct accurately even through noise (or narrow bandwidth, like a telephone). Even though there are not as many words beginning in jay as there are beginning in some more popular alphabetic characters (like you-know-who and we-can-keep-a-secret), there are nevertheless quite enough thank you.

The recommendation for R is ``Romeo.''

J

A Scrabble tile worth eight points (or more, on a double- or triple- letter or word space, or if it's used in multiple words) (or negative eight, to the holder, if someone else uses up his or her tiles first). Therefore, it behooves you to study this important resource (words in the OSPD that contain the letter J).

In every Scrabble set, exactly one of the 100 tiles is a J. The other high-value letters (one tile each) are X (also 8 pts.), and Q and Z (ten points each).

JA

Job Approval.

JA

Junior Achievement.

JAA

Japanese Archaeological Association. Being a Japanese archaeologist must be a little bit like being the cherished daughter of a dictator. The Japanese government spends over a billion dollars annually on archaeological digs. (Why -- do you realize that's over a tenth of a trillion yen!?!) However, the most interesting archaeological sites, and the most controversial, are some 250 grave sites of the imperial family. These are guarded and regularly inspected by personnel of the Imperial Household Agency, and mostly off limits to everyone else.

It gives one a different perspective on the dog in the manger. Who knows what's hidden under that hay?

And in case you're wondering: after a number of marriages and countries, Svetlana Alliluyeva settled in England in the 1990's.

JAA

Japanese Association of Anatomists. From the inclusion of this entry, you can see just how hard up we were for entries in J.

JAAC

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. A JAAC subscription is free with membership in the American Society for Aesthetics (ASA).

JAAD

Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

JAAGL

Journal of the American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists.

Jaap

Dutch form of the name Jacob.

JAAP

Joint Airborne Advance Party. A joint (J) ground party that prepares for an airlift operation at the objective area.

Jabba

A Hutt.

Back in the 1980's and 1990's, there was a fad among Toyota light truck owners of personalizing their trucks by painting over one or some letters of the logo on the tailgate, so they would read

T O Y

or

  O Y     A

or any of the 60 other possibilities.

In April 2001, some Hooters restaurants owned by Gulf Coast Wings Inc. in Florida held a motivational contest for their employees. The names of the ten waitresses who sold the most beer in April at each of the area Hooters were entered in a drawing for a Toyota. The drawing was won by Jodee Berry, 26, a top-selling waitress at the Panama City Beach Hooters. Her boss, restaurant manager Jared Blair, had told his waitresses that he didn't know what kind of Toyota it would be -- a car, truck or van -- but the winner would be responsible for the tax on the vehicle.

Jodee learned in May that she had won the drawing. She was blindfolded and led to the restaurant parking lot, where the blindfold was removed and she saw that she had won a toy Yoda doll worth $40. The manager was inside laughing.

She quit the next week.

The above information was provided to the AP by Jodee Berry and her lawyer Stephen West. If I had been the source, you can be sure I would have called the waitresses ``waitpersons.'' I mean, just because you serve drinks at a place whose name and promotional campaigns imply that its servers are sexy ``girls'' (I used scare quotes!) doesn't give people the right to make assumptions about you. After all, the advertising might not be accurate.

As of April 2002, the case was on its way to trial, and a local newspaper published an update with a demoralizing overview of the course of the typical lawsuit. The next month a settlement was announced. According to David Noll, an attorney for Berry, she could go to a local car dealership and ``pick out whatever type of Toyota she wants.'' Full details were not released, which is not unusual. What is unusual is that any details were released; a sweeping confidentiality agreement is a standard part of out-of-court settlements. Noll said he thought it was ``a recognition of the fact that there's been such an amazing amount of attention focused on this case.... There's not a whole lot of reason to try to hide its existence.'' Here's a legal analysis of the case by Keith A. Rowley, published in the NLJ.

Yeah, yeah -- a Yoda is not a Hutt.

This webpage has a review by ``Yoda'' of some aftermarket products for Toyotas. The Toyota Company was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda. Akio Toyoda, his grandson, became the youngest member of Toyota's board of directors in Summer 2000 (age 43 or so). The Sakichi Toyoda Memorial House is a part of the Toyota Automobile Museum. The Toyoda Model AA was Toyota's first vehicle. It was a stylish vehicle, but it was designed for city driving and didn't have a bra. Anyway, AA is a small bra size, certainly not appropriate for hooters.

If you want more (alleged) instances of someone named J. Blair who commits a fraud and then laughs over the discovery of his triumph, here's something from the Jayson Blair interview mentioned at the CSPI entry. Blair had described the home of rescued POW Pvt. Jessica Lynch as overlooking ``tobacco fields and cattle pastures.'' As a New York Times self-investigation reported, though he filed with a Palestine, W.Va. dateline, Blair never visited. Blair is quoted in the Observer interview:

``That's my favorite, just because the description was so far off from the reality. And the way they described it in The Times story -- someone read a portion of it to me -- I couldn't stop laughing.'

JAC

Japan Assessment Center.

JAC

Journal of Ancient Civilizations. Published annually since about 1985 by the Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations (Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin province, The People's Republic of China). JAC is the only academic journal in the People's Republic which specializes in the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean area and the Near East.

jacana

A bird that can be found wading in the shallow waters along the shores of the Scrabble tablelands.

JACC

Joyce ACC.

jackeroo

Just an inexperienced ranch hand, learning his trade in some rural corner of the Scrabble tablelands. Sounds like he might be named after the jackalope. Cf. jackleg.

jackhammer

One of the more effective tools for removing soapy build-up on shower stalls. Also effective in removing shower stalls. Visit the hard water entry.

Jackie O.

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. See this Ari entry.

jack-knife

A semi tractor-trailer rig is said to jack-knife when the tractor rig turns too sharply, and the inertia of the forward-moving trailer turns the trailer around so the tractor and trailer make an acute angle. This is not a good thing to have happen.

jackleg

An unskilled worker, earning the minimum wage as a day laborer, or maybe collecting firewood in the Scrabble forest.

This fellow Jack has a pretty bad rep -- master of none and all that. Cf. jackeroo.

Jackson

J. D. Jackson's classic Classical Electrodynamics.

JACM

Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ``[P]rovides coverage of the most significant work going on in computer science, broadly construed. It is a peer-reviewed journal, published six times a year by ACM.''

JACMP

Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics. Published by the American College of Medical Physics (ACMP).

JACS

Journal of The American Chemical Society (ACS). LC call number QD1.J826.

JACT

Joint Association of Classical Teachers (of the UK). Publishes classics textbooks. Their Greek primer, at least, is weak on grammar. JACT offices keep a file of Latin and Greek tutors available by region.

jaculate

A synonym of the verb throw. For reasons that I can only guess at, this word is not at all common outside the dialects of the Scrabble tablelands.

JADR

Japanese Association of Dental Research.

JAFER

Java Access For Electronic Resources. Intended to be an easy-to-use ``visual toolkit to protect those building portals and information sources from the intricate technical details of the protocols involved [especially Z39.50], and allow them to concentrate on the actual content.'' An Oxford University LAS project funded under the DNER development program of JISC.

JAG

Judge Advocate General. Part of the US military justice system and a popular television series. It stars a Canadian, David James Elliott, born in Toronto. I don't think this qualifies as Canadian content, though.

JAH

Journal of American History. Published quarterly (June, September, December, March) by the Organization of American Historians. Most of the contributions and roughly half of the pages are book reviews.

The journal was formerly originally published as The Mississippi Valley Historical Review [Vol. 1, no. 1 (June 1914)-v. 50, no. 4 (March 1964)]. The volume numbering was continued (not restarted) through the name change.

Jahrestag

German: `anniversary.'

Jahrestagung

German: `annual meeting, annual convention.'

Jahrh.

Abbreviation of German Jahrhundert, `century.'

JAIPCC

Joint Applications in Instrumentation Process and Computer Control.

ja ja

Spanish onomatopoeia with the same sense and about the same pronunciation as English `ha ha.' Cf. jua jua.

JAL

Japan Air Lines. Pronounced `Jal' to rhyme with `Hal.'

JALN

Journal of the Asynchronous Learning Networks. A publication of the Sloan Consortium (``Sloan-C''). I have a hunch that it's about ALN, but all the articles seem to be about online learning.

JALT

Japanese Association for Language Teaching. Mostly teaching English.

JAM

Jamaat al Muslimeen.

JAM

US Army slang acronym for Jaysh al Mahdi, the Iraqi Shi'ite militia of Moqtada al Sadr, which is typically described in news reports as the Mahdi Army. The words radical, Shia, and militia may be sprinkled in as well.

JAMA

Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association. See also JAMA's Tokyo website (in English).

Pointless detail:
A column by George F. Will in the Washington Post (``What Ails GM,'' May 1, 2005) ends with the following:

Full, and pointless, disclosure: Mrs. Will is a consultant to the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association. She drives a Cadillac.

JAMA

Journal of the American Medical Association (AMA). The official name of journal is now just JAMA, pronounced ``JAM-uh.'' Try the old URL if the new one doesn't work.

jama

The second part of that timeless phrase, ``rama-jama.''

jamás

Spanish, `never.' Sounds like ``Hamas'' in English.

JAMIE

Joint Analogue Microelectronics Initiative of Europe. Cf. jammie.

JAMIT

JApanese Society of Medical Imaging Technology. Really, why didn't they just translate it as Japanese Association...?

jammie

Cutsy-ese for pyjama or pajama, a word of Hindi origin.

jammy

Having to do with jam or jams.

JAMP

Joint Automated Mapping Project.

jam sandwich

Mnemonics for the order of planets (in order of average distance to the sun [Ftnt. 28]) are typically sentences about jam sandwiches (Jupiter Saturn). E.g.:

Mother very thoughtfully made a jam sandwich under no protest.

``[T]houghtfully'' here stands for Terrarium, the Latin name for the Earth. Another example of the use of this word is in the famous encyclical letter issued by Pope John XXIII, entitled Pacem In Terrarium, which urged all animals living in a confined space with limited resources to please calm down. Something like that, anyway.

I was going to mention that the pope issued a papal encyclical, but it seems that's the only kind he issues, and he seems to have a monopoly on the practice, at least for the last few centuries (c.).

Another:

Most volcanoes erupt mouldy jam sandwich under normal pressure.

There is a certain balancing act in this glossary -- in order to create a certain level of amusement, I find it useful, even necessary, to introduce certain ... inaccuracies ... into the definitions. On the other hand, in order to preserve the fiction of utility of this ``resource'' (hah!) it is somewhat desirable that the inaccuracies so introduced be of a blatant, easily identified sort. This entry contains an inaccuracy that does not satisfy this last criterion. For the benefit of some (idiots) I must note explicitly that the Latin for Earth is Terra (nominative case) and that the Pope's encyclical letter, of April 11, 1963, was entitled Pacem in Terris. It is available in English as publication No. 342-6 (ISBN 1-55586-342-6) from the Office for Publishing and Promotion Services, United States Catholic Conference, Washington, DC. I was going to write ``Washington, DC, zip code unknown,'' but I thought better of it. Someone would probably write out ``zip code unknown'' as part of the address.

JAMSTEC

JApanese Marine Science and TEchnology Center.

Jan

A given name or two or three.

As a man's given name, Jan is common in Holland. That name is pronounced roughly like the English word yon, but with a vowel of shorter duration (say half that of the ah sound in the English word).

Jan has been a common nickname for Janice, pronounced like the first syllable of the longer name. I imagine you knew that, so I'm not going to do a long song and dance explaining the pronunciation, etc., blah, blah, blah, and so forth. That would just be wasting your time.

William Jan Berry was half of the surfer-rock duo Jan and Dean. You can learn a lot about them on the web, much of it true, and much more than I care to repeat. I will mention that Jan Berry graduated UCLA in 1964 and enrolled in California Medical College, because that gives me a chance to link to two (2) other moderately meaty entries in the glossary, see?

There's an official Jan-and-Dean site; as I write this in May 2004, it doesn't yet mention that Jan died late last March, age 62. My condolences to his life-long musical collaborator Dean O. Torrence. Their official site was evidently designed by Dean, who got a BFA (1964) from USC. It is one of the most asinine sites on the web. From the slow-loading start page, you click to a kiosk window of fixed dimensions and no normal controls. Most of the text content is served as heavy graphics (which are also hard to keep up to date). The British Library won awards for doing this in its Turning the Pages project. But sometimes what works for the Diamond Sutra or the Luttrell Psalter does not work so well for Immortal Mispellings of And Dean. To save yourself some grief, click to index2 instead. Better yet, just read the excerpt below, which contains all you need to know. The biography section on the site (written by Dean) begins

Jan Berry and I both attended University High School in West Los Angeles, California. We met while playing for the University High School Football Team "The Warriors". Jan played tight end and I played wide receiver on offense and free safety on defense. Did you ever read that before?........ didn't think so. Our coach, Milton "Uncle Milty" Anisman who later when asked about what it was like to have Jan and Dean on his football team, he said who? gee I don't remember having a girl on any of my football teams.

After practice, a bunch of us teammates would all get together and harmonize some of the hit platters of the day while taking a shower. ...

Jan and Dean had their first hit as a duo in 1959. The surfer thing came a little later. They were very successful and bought cool new cars. On April 12, 1966, Jan drove his new Stingray into the back of a parked truck (at a high rate of speed). When he regained consciousness a few weeks later, he couldn't walk or talk. Dean put his degree to use, founding Kittyhawk Graphics. Jan presumably put some of his medical training to use over a decade of rehab. After CBS aired the television movie ``Deadman's Curve'' (1978) based on their story, they started touring and recording again. As everyone used to say, Jan could sing again pretty well ``considering.'' It's inspiring and very interesting for, uh, die-hard fans, I'm sure. Oh yeah -- Jan got into drugs and derailed the comeback, and Dean teamed up with Mike Love of the Beach Boys for some commercial gigs as Mike and Dean. Dennis Wilson had a fatal diving accident before he could get himself cleaned up, but Jan graduated from rehab, and Jan and Dean spent the next couple of decades on the nostalgia circuit.

JAN

Japanese Adopted Name. Official Japanese generic drug name.

JAN

Joint (J) Army-Navy (military standard).

Jane E.

Women whose first name is Jane seem to have about a fifty percent chance of having a middle name beginning in E. Often the E stands for Emily or Elizabeth, but more research is needed.

Janean

Read on.

Janeite

A Jane Austen enthusiast. The word Janean is also used, though primarily as an adjective. Austenian, now much rarer, seems to have been more common in the past. FWIW, in 1927 the TLS recommended a new edition of JEAL's Memoir (for editor Robert Chapman's enumeration of JA's letters and manuscripts) as ``mak[ing] it necessary to the complete Austenian....''

JANES

Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society.

Jane's Fighting Ships

Nowadays it's Jane's Information Group, Ltd., and it comprises

• a Defense Weekly (JDW),
• a Foreign Report (JFR),
• an Intelligence Digest (JID),
• an Intelligence Review (JIR -- they can't use that: it belongs to JIR!),
• a Navy International (JNI -- oh, they do ships?),
• a Strategic Weapons Systems [...report, I believe] (JSWS),
• a Terrorism and Insurgency Center (JTIC),
• a Terrorism and Security Monitor (JTSM -- milkin' it eh?), and
• a World Railways (JWR),

that I am aware of, anyway.

JANET

Joint Academic NETwork (U.K.). (An alternative/equivalent address: <http://www.ja.net/>. See also <http://www.ukerna.ac.uk/>) You might have this confused with JUNET.

JAnthArch

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. Catalogued by TOCS-IN.

Janus

An ancient-mythical Roman god with two faces (also for that reason known as Bifrons). The god of beginnings, or gates or other entries, and the fellow after whom the month of January is named. Janus was unusual among the gods venerated by the Romans: an old Italic god, he had no counterpart in the Greek pantheon.

I knew that, but for some reason a Greek restaurant opened in Buffalo and took Janus as its name, and that threw me off. In order to avoid making a similar mistake, you want to review this information at the Bijani subentry.

JANUS

Joint (J) Army-Navy Uniform Simulation.

JAOC

Joint (J) Air Operations Center. DOD term.

JAOS

Journal of the American Oriental Society. Catalogued by TOCS-IN. I have a hunch it's related to the American Oriental Society (AOS).

JAP

Journal of Applied Physics. The associated letters journal is APL.

JAPA

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

JARCE

Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt. Catalogued by TOCS-IN.

JArchSc

Journal of Archaeological Science. Catalogued by TOCS-IN.

jarrah

An evergreen tree that grows in the Scrabble forest.

Jarritos

A Mexican brand of sodas, and the only such widely available in the US. The word jarritos means `little jars' where I come from (Argentina), and little bottles are ``botellitas.'' I'll have to check with my Mexican ``informants,'' as we linguistic anthropologists call them, to find out how jarritos is construed in Mexico.

Okay, back from research. It turns out that yes, it has the same meaning in Mexican Spanish, and there are even some other people who have noticed the oddity of the name and are bothered by it.

I've only ever seen Jarritos in fruit flavors, but one informant informs me that they sell a nonalcoholic sangría-flavored soda. That's one of the exciting things about field work: the unexpected insights! I neglected to ask if he's ever seen any diet sodas from Jarritos.

JARS

Java Applet Rating Service.

Jas.

James.

JAS

Jane Austen Society. See also the Australian and North American Societies.

JASA

Jane Austen Society of Australia. See also the North American and British Societies.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled glossary entry.

JASIS

Journal of the American Society for Information Science. Published by ASIS.

JASNA

Jane Austen Society of North America. See also the British and Australian Societies.

If you want some real resources, however, instead of club dues information, try the Jane Austen Info Page.

JAST

Journal of American Studies of Turkey. ISSN 1300-6606. ``A print and on-line publication of the American Studies Association of Turkey (ASAT), the Journal of American Studies of Turkey publishes work in English by scholars of any nationality on American literature, history, art, music, film, popular culture, institutions, politics, economics, geography and related subjects.''

JATO

Jet-Assisted Take-Off. More at the RATO entry.

JATR

Not a journal. The initials of J.A.T. Robinson, an HJ researcher who wanted to believe that the gospels were all written before the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE. He argued that an event of that magnitude would surely have gotten bigger play in the gospels, at a time when Christianity and Judaism were not completely resolved as distinct religions, if it had occurred before these were written. It's hard to credit this, since some, at least, of the Christian scriptures were written after the destruction and none mention it explicitly.

Usually, GMark 13 is taken as referring to the second Temple destruction; this is taken as one of the most important among the few guides, none very reliable, for dating the Christian scriptures.

JATS

Japanese Association for Toothfriendly Sweets. See also the heavy in the good-cop/bad-cop routine: JADR (Dental Research). There's an international umbrella organization for tooth-friendly sweets: TSI.

JAVA

Japanese Anti-Vivisection Association.

Java

Object-oriented (OO) programming language and environment. Originally called Oak. Omar Patiño maintained a Virtual Library (W3VL) page for Java that appears to have expired. This page allows you to suffer Java in French.

Try the Digital Cats' Java Resource Center. They probably already have something like this animation utility.

The following paragraph is what I thought back in 1996 or so, after writing my first long Java program. These thoughts are now more than a decade out of date, but I don't have any new ones. (Either that or I'm older, and less disposed to credit my own opinions.)

On the whole, although all its compilers are pre-beta-level buggy, and it displays security-inspired obstacles at every turn, handles strings obscenely clumsily, handles complex numbers not at all, makes most easy things strenuous, is not at all platform-independent as advertised, and though its design incorporates more really bone-headed choices than there is space in this vast glossary to describe, and even though object-orientedness is mostly hype, and even though C++ sucks but is much better, after all Java cannot be said, in the strictest sense of the word, to be utterly evil, probably. It should find utility as the ultimate punishment in countries that permit torture. In a country whose main export commodity was once coffee, but is now white, how appropriate to make Java fit the crime. Traffickers will beg for extradition to the US, where the highest punishment is merely capital.

For a taste of Java, try Michael Neumann's extensive list of sample short programs in different programming languages. As of now, it has five Java programs.

JavaScript

You can find out a lot about JavaScript on the web. Locally, we serve a short page about JavaScript comments and browser compatibility.

Michael Neumann's extensive list of sample short programs in different programming languages includes three JavaScript programs.

jaw-dropping

Awesome.

Here's something from Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business (from the 54th printing, 1957) by the influential Dale Carnegie (author of How to Win Friends and Influence People). On page 227, Review Exercise.

1. Surrender your jaw, let it fall like a dead weight from your head. Take in a deep breath, feel as if you were sucking the air down into your stomach, and chant ``ah'' with ease, without one tiny trace of effort.

Why didn't he do any books on yoga? He was a natural!

JAWS

Journal of Ancient War Studies. Earlier proposal for a new journal. Now AMW (Ancient and Medieval Warfare) is being considered.

JAXA

Japan Aerospace EXploration Agency.

Jaycees

Name derived from original initialism: JC for Junior Chamber (of Commerce).

Jazz

Buffalo was a big Jazz venue once, but few if any of the greats are from here. Even New York City was not the birthplace of too many. A Stammtisch investigation lends strong statistical support to the hypothesis that Pittsburgh and other Pennsylvania cities have been the birthplaces of Jazz greats. The Chicago era was nourished by local talent, Detroit, etc. John Coltrane was from Philadelphia.

I couldn't think of anything less relevant to write about Jazz. What did you expect, I should explain soul and tell you where to get some?

Oh, I thought of something else: if you want to be simultaneously pretentious and multi-culti, Jazz is the ticket.

J.-B.

Jean-Baptiste. French name meaning `John the Baptist' (Jo. Bapt.). I was going to write that it's a common name in French, but I remember when I told Sabine about a woman I met named Bernadette (I think that was it) and she laughed because it was such an old-fashioned name. Of course, I thought it was pretty remarkable that someone could be named Sabine and survive childhood without major psychological scars, but if this glossary ever becomes popular reading I'm probably going to catch hell for that remark, so I really should edit this bit out, instead of repeating it in the Jennifer Jones entry.

Being beautiful has psychic benefits. Sabine suffered no apparent psychological trauma on account of her name.

JB

Jurum Baccalaureus. `Bachelor of Laws.'

JBap

John the BAPtist. This is the guy who lost his mind, isn't it?

JbbPrBrG

Jahrbücher für preußisch-brandenburgische Geschichte. A German journal that might have been named `Yearbooks of Prussian-Brandenburg History' in English. Notice the letter-doubling (bb) to indicate plural (Bücher, `books,' instead of Buch, `book'). See Stuart Jenks's page of Tables of Contents of Historical Journals and Monographic Series in German for a partial table of contents (deutsche Seite: Zeitschriftenfreihandmagazin Inhaltsverzeichnisse geschichtswissenschaftlicher Zeitschriften in deutscher Sprache).

JBC

Journal of Biological Chemistry.

JBL

Journal of Biblical Literature. Catalogued by TOCS-IN.

JBS

Jamaica Bureau of Standards. The JBS has a range of laboratories for standards development and testing in textiles, paints, microbiology, chemicals, food, metallurgy, paper, furniture and packaging.

You call this ganja, mon? Weak! We put you in jail fa dis.

JBS

Journal of Biblical Studies. ``[A]n electronic journal dedicated to the field of Biblical Studies in general. Articles on any aspect of Biblical Studies (including: archaeology, linguistics, exegesis, history, and textual issues) are welcome, and contributions that challenge the traditional boundaries of Biblical Studies are encouraged. We would also like to see articles that discuss the relationship between Biblical Studies and other disciplines.''

JBSP

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology. And existentialism. Throw some onions in the soup too -- that usually improves the flavor. From the ``NOTES FOR CONTRIBUTORS'':

The JBSP publishes papers on phenomenology and existential philosophy as well as contributions from other fields of philosophy. Papers from workers in the humanities and the human sciences interested in the philosophy of their subject will be welcome too. Space will be given to research in progress, to book reviews, and to bibliographies of use to students. The journal will also provide a forum for interdisciplinary discussion.

JBSP was founded in 1970 by the late Wolfe Mays. A subscription to JBSP is included in the price of membership in the BSP. JBSP is published in three issues per year -- January, May, and October. [Unlike some such journals, they really seem to mean it: I received announcements of the January and May 2006 issues (vol. 37, Nos. 1 and 2) in January and May, respectively, of 2006.]

JBY

Jewish believers in Yeshua. Christian proselytizers among Jews like this term, evidently because it emphasizes the Jewish origin of Jesus. Yeshua is the original Hebrew or Aramic name that we translate Jesus. (For more on this, see the His entry.)

JBY

Just Be Yourself.

JC

Jakob-Creutzfeldt. A nasty virus which infects oligodendrocytes in the brain. Oligodendrocytes wrap around nerve processes and produce myelin, a fatty substance that provides electrical insulation. As this tissue is destroyed, neurological dysfunction follows. Kidneys harbor inactive JC virus in healthy individuals. When immune response is suppressed by HIV, JC virus migrates in some way to the bone marrow, from which it makes its way to the brain within B lymphocytes. This virus does not cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD, q.v.).

JC

See Jaycees.

JC

Jean Chrétien. An answer to a trivia question in the US: name a recent PM of Canada.

If you can't remember, you might get away with ``Jay Cee -- uhh....'' It's been a popular pair of initials for Canadian PM's. An interesting borderline case is John Turner. After serving in a few Liberal governments, in 1975 he resigned in protest from a Pierre Trudeau government and went to work in the private sector. He returned to full-time politics in 1984 when Pierre Trudeau retired. That June he defeated Jean Chrétien (remember him?) to be elected leader of the Liberal Party, and so became PM. How did he defeat Jean Chrétien? Well, a number of unsatisfactory theories have been proposed, but I think the name is key. Even though he was apparently born John Napier Turner (in Sussex, England), he was also known as John Christopher Turner. That doubtless provided the margin of victory.

You could hardly believe it, but in just a few short months, Turner was engulfed in scandal, and the next September he was replaced as PM by Progressive Conservative Party leader Brian Mulroney. (So Turner was PM ``1984-1984.'' Parliamentary systems have their lighter side.) It should have been obvious that Mulroney's successor in June 1993, Kim Campbell, had to use the nickname Jane when she faced Jean Chrétien the following November. She was PM ``1993-1993.''

What we see here is that a partial JC is able to defeat a full JC, and a BM can defeat a partial JC. Probably a BM wouldn't stand a chance against a full JC. (Oh of course, Trudeau defeated Joe Clark. Get real.) With Paul Martin, it seems the Grits are experimenting with PM for PM (it might explain BM). Hmmm. After less than a year, it doesn't seem to be working out very well.

JC, J.C.

Jesus Christ. In the same way that (okay not really in the same way that) J.R. have been popular initials in the US lately, it seems that around the first century BCE (if only you knew it), if you wanted to be an important personage J.C. were the initials to have.

Jesus is essentially the Latin transliteration of the Greek name Iêsoûs. (The circumflex on the e is to indicate that it's a Greek letter eta; the second circumflex is just a circumflex accent. Sorry. For what it's worth, accents weren't indicated graphically in Greek until centuries later.) The Greek name, in turn, comes from the Aramaic name Yeshua used among Jews (and which therefore may be regarded as a Hebrew name of that time). That name, in turn, is a version of the older Hebrew name, in use to this day, Y'hoshua. This is normally rendered as Joshua in English. Interestingly, coincidentally, suspiciously, providentially, or significantly, depending on your POV, Joshua means something along the lines of `[the Lord] saves.' The first famous Joshua, of course, was the son of Nun, and that makes a good pun (pone?) in English, when you consider that Mary was a virgin when she was inseminated or whatever by a holy ghost, so she was as celibate as a nun. Nancy Freedman had some fun with Joshua, Son of None, which she used as the title of a 1973 novel. In her book, some cells are saved from the dying JFK and cloned. The resulting child is named Joshua. The idolatry surrounding that guy is astounding.

From Hellenistic times, Greek (more precisely Koine) had been the widely used lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean from Egypt to Greece. The Greek name Iesus (the borrowed version of Joshua, remember?) was adopted into Latin (as a fourth-declension noun, I'm sure you wanted to know). In the usual way, consonantal I came to be written J after that letter was invented, and pronounced as a voiced fricative in English. While there are many versions of Latin pronunciation, Church Latin coincides with (our reconstruction of) Classical Latin for this name, pronounced YEH-soos (the oo is the oo of Sue; for vowel quantities you're on your own).

Christ means messiah. The English word messiah is derived from the Hebrew word meshiah (or maybe the Aramaic, I'll check details later). The Semitic word means `annointed [person],' a term with an interesting Biblical history. The word was readily translated into the Greek christos, etymon of the English word Christ.

JC

Gaius Julius Caesar. This and other Classical Latin names explained at the tria nomina entry.

JCAHO

Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.

JCANT

Journal of CANnabis Therapeutics. Published by Haworth Press starting in 2001, it went up in smoke at the beginning of 2004.

These days, when you publish an article in a Haworth Press journal, along with your offprints they send you a little packet of chochkes to help you promote their journals. These include a notepad and a ballpoint pen with their URL on it and ... a foil-wrapped chocolate medallion imprinted with their logo. The chocolate is something new; maybe if they'd started providing munchies earlier, JCANT jmightve.

JCB

``Joseph Cyril Bamford launched the construction and agricultural equipment manufacturing company that bears his initials, in 1945.'' The company is also in materials handling equipment these days, but in the UK the initialism has come to be used as an antonomasia for backhoe-equipped digger, which the company pioneered.

On page 10 of Harm Done, an Inspector Wexford Mystery by Ruth Rendell, the inspector is driving his grandsons to school. One of them expresses his pleasure about some road-building work. ``I liked the diggers. I'm going to drive a JCB when I'm grown up and then I'll dig up the whole world.''

Boys, as Ruth Rendell has observed through Wexford's thoughts, take longer to reach an age where they are able to appreciate pretty landscapes. (Wexford is a wuss.) Incidentally, this novel is not recommended. At various points the writing is confusing, possibly for effect, but the immediate effects are confusion and irritation. Also, it is drearily obsessed with what bad people men are to women. (Only some men! Don't want to appear insensitively sensitive. And not any more often than once every page or so.) As you can imagine, correctly, the book is almost excruciatingly politically correct. Of course, for the sort of people who like to read that sort of book, this is the sort of book they would like to read. To help you decide if that's you, here is some of Inspector Wexford's thought from page 4:

    If she had been, well, a different sort of girl, Wexford wouldn't have paid so much attention. If she had been more like her friends. He hesitated about the phrase he used even in his own mind, for he liked to keep to his personal brand of political correctness in his thoughts as well as his speech. Not to be absurd about it, not to use ridiculous expressions like intellectually challenged, but not to be insensitive either and call a girl such as Lizzie Cromwell mentally handicapped or retarded. ...

Stupid. That will do.

JCC

Jewish Community Center.

JCC

Job Control Command.

JCCC

Joint (J) Communications Control Center. DOD term.

JCCD

Junction Charge-Coupled Devices. Whereas ordinary charge-coupled devices (CCD) use MOS capacitors (MOS-C), JCCD's use the capacitance of a reverse-biased pn junction.

JCE

Journal of Chemical Education. LC number QD1.J825.

JCG

Journal of Crystal Growth. LC number QD921.J6.

JcG

Just Classical Guitar. An old site that now forwards immediately to a ``Classical Guitar Internet Resource Site!'' with a focus on the greater (I don't know how much greater) Savannah area. We also have a bare-bones CG (classical guitar) entry.

JCIC

Japan Center for Intercultural Communications.

JCL

Job Control Language. Probably IBM JCL, operating system for a mainframe.

JCL

Junior Classical League. A conspiracy to promote Latin, classical Greek, and other dusty classical learning among impressionable youth (US and Canadian high school students). A membership organization for unwitting US and Canadian high school students, manipulated (``sponsored'') behind the scenes (as we reveal here on your computer screen for the first time) by the American Classical League (ACL). Longer alternate name is National Junior Classical League (NJCL). If a distinction is made between the terms JCL and NJCL, it seems to be that students belong to the NJCL and student chapters in a high school belong to the JCL. Five students who've studied a classical subject with a teacher suffice to form a chapter.

The JCL cosponsors competitive national exams with the ACL -- in Latin (NLE), Classical Greek (NGE) and mythology -- but they still don't get to look at the answers beforehand.

JCLers who experience separation anxiety when they graduate high school can join the SCL.

JCMEC

Joint (J) Captured Materiel Exploitation Center.

JCMOS

Joint Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) logic. Another name for JMOS (q.v.).

JCMS

Journal of Crystal and Molecular Structure. LC number QD901.J62 . Volume 1 in 1971, volume 11 in 1981; continued as JCSR.

JCN

Japan Corporate News. See JCNN. Newswire.

JCN

Jewish Communication Network.

JCNN

Japan Corporate News Network. In principle, JCN Newswire (as opposed to JCN Network) carries company press releases and JCNN carries business news, but it's hard to see the distinction in practice.

JCO

Journal of Clinical Oncology. ASCO's peer reviewed journal.

JCP

Japanese Communist Party. In a new platform adopted at the end of a party convention on January 17, 2004, the JCP toned down its revolution rhetoric and accepted the emperor system as something temporarily acceptable. I thought that was worth a chuckle.

JCPC

Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. We don't explain ``Privy Council'' at its abbreviation PC either. Who knows what we might find if we looked?

JCS

Job Control Statement.

JCS

Joint Chiefs of Staff. At one time this was the body through which the separate activities of the four US military services were coordinated. Since the Goldwater-Nichols DOD Reorganization Act of 1986, its role is firmly advisory. This law resolved an ambiguous situation that had been evolving since WWII, when the the JCS exercised direct executive authority. The National Security Act of 1947 treated the JCS as a planning and advisory group, but its members had continued to exercise executive power in their separate roles as chiefs of military services. Since 1986, their status as military advisors -- i.e., as members of the JCS, takes precedence over their other duties to the exclusion of an executive role specifically in the direction of combatant forces (though not in other management tasks).

You can read some relevant history, oddly enough, at the LSJ entry. What, I don't mention Napoleon or the Prussian innovations? This is pretty incomplete.

JCS

Journal of Cuneiform Studies. An annual publication of the American Schools of Oriental Research. See AASOR for other publications.

JCSR

Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice. Published by CSCSR, it ``is a scholarly refereed quarterly journal. The volume year publication date is October (1), January (2), April (3), July (4). Subscription is for a volume year.'' Quoting from the same informative page (text harvested September 2004):

NEED FOR THIS JOURNAL

Current U.S. retention figures have not improved over time, even with large amounts of money expended by colleges and universities on programs and services to retain students. In spite of these programs and services, retention figures have not improved. [Why does the content of this sentence sound familiar?] In fact, only about 66% of high school graduates attend college and about 50% of those who attend college earn a bachelor degrees. [Sic. I just cut and paste, okay?] Put in real numbers [is that with the natural topology?], about 2,800,000 students will graduate from high school this year, 1,850,000 will attend college and only 925,000 of these students will earn a bachelor [sic; it's not some funny font glitch, afaik] degree. Colleges are looking for ways to keep the students that they recruit. The Journal will provide the educational community with current theoretical foundations, research and practice results, which will help educators and institutions to retain students.

Let me add a note here, since there is something not mentioned that needs to be explained. The fact that ``retention figures have not improved over time'' despite ``large amounts of money expended'' on ``programs and services'' does not reflect poorly on the trained professionals who run the programs and provide the services.

Based on Department of Education statistics, I think ``college'' in the quoted text excludes junior colleges. Roughly half as many associate's degrees are granted per year as bachelor's degrees. Most AA's are awarded by junior colleges, and about one third of these are university-parallel or general humanities degrees, designed to allow immediate transfer into the junior year of a four-year college. The remaining two thirds are business, technical, professional associate degrees and the like, for students planning to work immediately afterwards.

The abbreviation JCSR isn't all that common, which might be just as well. An alternative short form is Retention Journal.

JCSR

Journal of Crystallographic and Spectroscopic Research. LC number QD901.J62 . Volume 12 in 1982; continues JCMS, which reached vol. 11 in 1981.

JCSR

JISC Committee for the Support of Research. (That's the UK

JISC.)

Jct.

JunCTion. In place names, it typically refers to rail spurs. Like Princeton Jct. (See NJT entry.)

JCV

JC Virus.

JCW

Juggalo Championship Wrestling. Misspelled here. The correct spelling makes the hilarious substitution of a letter t in place of the p. We realized that you couldn't stand so much intense and bloody cleverness. A product of ICP.

JD

Jack Daniels. This guy advertises in Scientific American (SciAm). Too hoity-toity. That must be the reason why George Thorogood [unofficial page of rated links; excellent page from Finland, including lyrics; weak official page] doesn't drink with him when he drinks alone, with nobody else.

(His web site seems to have passed out of existence.)

JD

Julian Day. A chronological system apparently invented by the astronomer John F. Herschel, and based on counting days and fractions of days from the first day of the Julian period.

In Herschel's original scheme, dating begins at noon (at the Greenwich meridian) in order that an entire night of observing (at least for Herschel and his European colleagues) occurred on a Julian day.

For Western historians, counting the beginning of a day from noon is inconvenient. Hence historians came to define Julian days that began at midnight. Historians also use the abbreviation JD, but the scheme is distinguished by calling its days ``chronological Julian days,'' as opposed to ``astronomical Julian days.'' As you can imagine, in practice one rarely sees these terms except in explanations of the difference.

To be precise, I should say that chronological Julian days begin at midnight twelve hours before the start of the corresponding astronomical Julian day. Most discussions of Julian days are phrased with the implicit understanding that the twelve hours before the first (astronomical) day of the Julian period are already in the first Julian day. That is, people implicitly think in terms of a day that begins before noon. Surprise.

In the neverending search for convenience and saving two keystrokes, historians have also defined an MJD.

Peter Meyer has a clear exposition of the various Julian Day numbers.

J.D.

Juris Doctor. Latin, `Doctor of Law[s].' This is a rebranding of what used to be known in the US as the LL.B., the basic law degree. I suppose the name change was justified as reflecting the progressive professionalization of legal practice. People who have been awarded the J.D. traditionally are considered entitled to append ``Esq.'' after their names, but using ``Dr.'' as a title is too brazen for most. On personals websites lawyers generally select ``doctorate'' as their highest level of education completed, but this is perfectly acceptable because personals are supposed to be deceptive.

JDA

Joint Duty Assignment. Can be multi-Service, joint or multinational. I'm not going to speculate on the distinction between multi-Service and joint. Maybe this means ``multiservice -- joint or multinational --.''

JDAL

Joint Duty Assignment List.

JDAM

Joint (services) Direct-Attack Munitions.

Marshall McLuhan is credited with this prediction (and rather a lot of others): ``World War III will be a guerrilla information war, with no division between military and civilian participation.''

JDBC

Java DataBase Connection.

JDC

Joint Declaration on Cooperation.

JDC

Joint Distribution Committee. A Jewish Relief organization.

JDEC

Joint Document Exploitation Center. Just like JCMEC.

JDF

Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International. See the main diabetes entry DM.

JDISS

Joint (J) Deployable Intelligence Support System. ``A transportable workstation and communications suite that electronically extends a joint intelligence center to a joint task force or other tactical user.'' In DOD usage, as far as I know, information about the enemy is the only meaning of the word intelligence.

JDK

Java Development Kit.

JDL

Jewish Defense League.

J. D. Salinger

Jerome David Salinger. Known as Jerry. But really, you shouldn't ask. He doesn't like personal questions like that.

JDW

Jane's Defense Weekly. They've really leveraged the name recognition. Now JDW is part of Jane's Information Group. For a list, see our entry for Jane's Fighting Ships.

Next section: JEA (top) to JNTO (bottom)

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