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.tj
(Domain name extension for) Tajikistan.

T&J
Transfer and Join. The T&J approach is one method of making vertical electrical interconnections between wafers.

TJB
The Jerusalem Bible. Published in 1966. This was succeeded by the NJB. The NJB's main improvement over TJB is that its name has three words and yields an unproblematic TLA. An initialism like TJB inevitably gives rise to AAP pleonasm. For information that you couldn't have guessed on your own, about both TJB and the NJB, see the NJB entry.

TJC
Tandem Junction (solar) Cell.

TJI
This Just In. Precedes announcement of something completely precedented, totally expected, heretofore known, or in of the ordinary. Facetious use of common news-announcer's introduction to putative up-to-the-minute flash.

TJIF
Thank Jesus It's Friday. I've never seen or heard this acronym, except here. I've also never seen it used for Thank Jehovah It's Friday, Tell Jeremiah It's fubar.

Tk, TK
Tool Kit. Graphics resources for Tcl. Here's a bit from whatis.com.

TK
Thymidine Kinase.

.tk
(Domain name extension for) Tokelau.

TK
To Kum. Facetious misspelling of to come. The initialism is used in manuscripts to indicate where material is expected for future insertion. In writing newspaper articles before full facts were available, it used to be common for reporters to write 000 (q.v.) for numbers expected to become available before the story was filed. Occasionally, the numbers didn't come in on time and the reporter failed to repair the relevant passage. In that case, 000 would appear in print (as the number of confirmed casualties, say). (Of course, 000 confirmed casualties would be correct in that case, though likely not what the reporter had in mind to convey.)

Also used: XX and KOMING.

It happens that Kum is part of the transliteration of some East Asian names. ``Kum & Go'' is a chain of (about 300) convenience stores. There's one in Alliance NE. There's a Teekay Shipping Corp. headquartered in Nassau (in the Bahamas) that provides international crude oil and petroleum product transportation services through a fleet of medium-sized oil tankers. There's an alleged artist who calls himself or herself TK TK TK and who has exhibited a work entitled ``TK TK TK.'' You can't win.

In the October 6, 2000, New York Times (Friday, late Edition), in Section E (Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk), pg. 24, the movie guide states ``[a]n index of reviews of films opening today appears on Page TK.'' I think that's an error.

The previous September 10, in Section 3 (Money and Business/Financial Desk), pg. 8, the Times reported that ``In a sharp reversal, the Standard & Poor's 500 communications services index, which rose 18.2 percent last year, has dropped 26 percent from a mid-December high, to TKK.TK.'' At the time, apparently, SBC was trading at ``$ TK.TK, 23 percent off its 52-week high of $55.50'' and Verizon, ``which traded at $66 in April, [was by then] at $ TK.TK.'' 2000 was a bad year for tech stocks. It looks like a space or period may immediately precede this kind of TK, but not a dollar sign. ``WorldCom hit a 52-week low of $32.56 in August'' but was then trading ``at $ TK.TK,''

In the July 9, 2000, Los Angeles Times, the page-one book review (they read books there?) was of The Boomer, a novel by Marty Asher; ``Alfred A. Knopf: TK pp., $15.'' [In April 2010 a book fair in LA boasted that it was the world's largest. Some news reports mentioned that something like ``they read books there?'' was a common reaction.]

TK Theaters and theater tk is a common venue for reviewed movies. Somebody should start a chain.

TKA
Total Knee Arthroplasty.

I can only enter a few of these medical abbreviations at a time, or I get nightmares.

TKE
Turbulent Kinetic Energy. That is, the energy in fluid turbulence.

T. Kirk, James
James Tiberius Kirk. I'm not sure how official this is, but it's the consensus so far this century and the end of the last.

Here's some actual, factful informational data [from the July/August 1996 Lingua Franca, reported by R. J. Lambrose on p. 9]: William Shatner attended McGill University in Montreal, graduating in 1952 with a degree in Commerce. He was third-string quarterback. [If he'd been a real football player, he would have majored in Sociology.] The building at 3840 McTavish Street, on the Montreal campus, has been unofficially named the ``William Shatner University Centre.'' (Canadians have to use British spelling to prove that they're not yahoos like us southerners.) A sign out front proves this, but the university doesn't recognize this as official until Shatner satisfies one of two requirements:

  1. Donates half or more of the cost of the building.
  2. Dies.
Some would argue that he acted like a stiff, and that should be close enough. And consider this: in the Halloween series, the mask originally worn by the Michael Myers character was created by taking a William Shatner mask, painting it white and removing the eyebrows. Doesn't that count? I mean, if white mascara and shaved eyebrows were all that mattered, they could have saved trouble by starting with a David Bowie mask.

McGill should be careful, considering the fiasco at Stevens.

You can visit the First Church of Shatnerology (FCOS) to learn nothing else useful, but have a good laugh. For a while (around 2004) there was a Second National Church of Shatnerology. They communed at a geocities site, but it seems now that group has dissolved. Perhaps they were absorbed by Priceline.

Interestingly, Shatner played the title role in an 80's cop show called ``T.J. Hooker.'' Unfortunately, the tee stood not for Tiberius but Thomas. I don't know what the jay stood for. The show also featured Heather Locklear. I guess she was always set to ``stun.''

TKK
Teknillinen Korkeakoulu. Helsinki University of Technology (HUT).

TKK
A variant of TK used to represent a number expected to be three digits long. See the TKK.TK example in the TK entry.

tkm
Tonne-KiloMetre. Unit of freight traffic, I've seen it in EU statistics (usually Mio tkm).

TKO, T.K.O.
Technical Knock-Out. Boxing match outcome when referee decides that one fighter, while not knocked out, is unable to continue the fight without sustaining injury. Usually based on referee's decision, assisted by attending physician and boxer's seconds. Traditionally, a boxer's seconds express their opinion in favor of ending the match by throwing a towel into the ring. This gave rise to ``throw in the towel'' as an expression for giving up before circumstances absolutely prevent continuing. If it were based on the epidemiological evidence, both boxers would be declared losers by TKO before the beginning of the bout.

An instance of TKO is described at the ion entry.

TKT
TicKeT. Airline fare abbreviation.

TKTG
TicKeTinG. Issuing an airline ticket. An abbreviation used in describing ticket fare terms.

TL
Target Language. The language into which a text is to be translated (from its SL).

Tl
Thallium. Atomic number 81. Heaviest naturally occurring metal in the group III [IIIA or IIIB depending on your nationality; the one with boron (B), aluminum (Al), gallium (Ga) and indium (In)].

Learn more at its entry in WebElements and its entry at Chemicool.

TL
Thermal Lensing.

TL
ThermoLuminescen{ce|t}.

TL, T/L
TimeLine.

TL
Truck Load. A sealed container or trailer. Cf. LTL.

TLA
Telemetry Link Adapter.

[Phone icon]

TLA
Telephone Line Adapter.

TLA
Theater Library Association.

t.l.a., t/l/a
Three-Letter Abbreviation. This isn't a very common abbreviation, in the lower-case and punctuated forms given; it's an SBF recommendation. See TLA.

TLA
Three-Letter { Abbreviation | Acronym }.

When the word acronym first appeared in the 1940's, it usually referred to a pronounceable sort of initialism like Nabisco that is ``pronounced as read,'' and unlike NRA in which the word is pronounced as the sequence of names of its letters (here ``en arr ay''). (Granted that in the case of vowels, the distinction not sharp.) Sometimes this condition of pronounceability was noted explicitly, more often implicitly in the choice of examples or by uncertain reference ``pronounced like a normal word.'' It may be objected that English is not very phonetic, so the pronunciation of a new ``normal word'' is not obvious. Even so, English words normally have at least as many vowel letters, counting wye, as syllables, and this is not true of initialisms pronounced as letter-name sequences (if they contain a consonant).

Eventually, the pronunciation stipulation came to define the ``strict sense'' of the word acronym, while the majority of people came to ignore the distinction between acronyms sensu strictu and other initialisms somehow pronounced as words.

TLA in particular, unless you pronounce it something like 't lah, is not, strictly, an acronym. Hence, if you understood TLA to be a three-letter acronym, then TLA was not itself a TLA. That's too bad (zu schade), because much of the appeal of TLA is in the fact that it is supposed to describe itself. Indeed, most three-letter initialisms are not acronyms in the strict sense, making the acronym TLA a not-very-widely applicable term.

This doesn't bother most people, but for those who prefer precision, SBF recommends t.l.a., in which a. obviously stands for abbreviation.

You know, this used to be a more fun entry before we got all precise. Here's what the entry used to look like:

Three-Letter Acronym. Not denotatively equivalent to TEA.

Nowadays art is about nothing but itself, so this acronym must be art.

Yet Another Acronym Server (YAAS), which had the goal of finding a meaning for every possible combination of three letters, has gone to URL heaven. The Great Three-Letter Acronym Hunt is online.

The story is told of President Calvin (``Silent Cal'') Coolidge, that a woman approached the taciturn president at a reception, saying she had made a bet that she could get three words out of him, and he replied ``You lose.''

Cal Coolidge's wife has been quoted as saying that Cal often first learned of his cleverest lines when he read them attributed to him in the morning papers.

Cf. ETLA or XTLA.

TLA
Thrust Lever Angle. (Aviation term.)

TLAM
Tomahawk Land-Attack Missile. Land-attack cruise missile, with a range of over 1000 miles. Pre-programmed flight path, so used against fixed targets. Cf. TASM.

TLB
Translation Lookaside Buffer. A part of the MMU that provides physical address translation and page access permissions.

TLC
T-Boz, Left Eye, and Chilli. The three members of a 90's girl group. (An ``R&B hip-hop'' group. I'm out of it, so I won't attempt an explanation. At least I know better than to pronounce boogie-woogie as ``boodgie-woodgie'' in a court. I understand that people listened to the music and enjoyed watching the shows. It's pretty hard to make it in the music industry, so I suppose that whatever the gimmicks, they were accomplished musicians too.)

TLC formed in 1991. The group was developed and first managed by Perri ``Pebbles'' Reid, an R&B star (known for her hits ``Girlfriend'' and ``Mercedes Boy'') then married to L.A. Reid. Lisa ``Left Eye'' Lopes was the group's rapper; Tionne ``T-Boz'' Watkin and Rozonda ``Chilli'' Thomas handled the vocals. So I'm told.

TLC's name was possibly the only word associating them with tenderness.

The ``Left Eye'' nickname referred to Lopes's trademark glasses, featuring a condom in the left-eye lens (but publicity photographs didn't often show them, you know?). You can see the condom in the video for ``Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg,'' mostly in the last half minute or so. The condom is in the standard square packet, propped in place.

On April 25, 2002, shortly before 6 pm, Left-Eye died after a roll-over accident -- she drove her SUV off the edge of a two-lane country road outside La Ceiba, a town on the Atlantic coast of Honduras. None of her many passengers was killed. (First reports described the accident as a head-on collision; possibly it was -- head on into a tree.)

TLC
Tender Loving Care.

TLC
The Learning Channel. A cable TV channel. Learn about psychic witnesses twice during prime time.

TLC
Thin-Layer Chromatography. Get a tutorial from Virginia Tech.

TLC
Tratado de Libre Comercio. Spanish, `Free Trade Treaty.' This used to be a general term, referring to no particular treaty. As of 2005, however, the FTAA was being referred to in Spanish-speaking parts of Latin America (i.e., excluding Brazil) without regional qualifier as ``el TLC.'' But movement towards an FTAA also came to a stop around that time.

TLCAN
Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte. Spanish for `North American Free Trade Treaty,' which is referred to in English by its acronym NAFTA.

It's amusing to (me to) note that nafta, in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, means `gasoline.' (In Chile it's bencina, and from Bolivia northward, it seems all other Spanish-speaking countries use gasolina. Of course, neighbors tend to understand each other, even if they prefer different words.)

TLCAN es un convenio [`agreement'] entre Méjico, Canadá, y los EEUU. (You don't need me to translate all of that.)

TLCB
Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood. A group for those who served in Southeast Asia; offers reunion news, a photo gallery, chat room, etc. ``Vietnam veterans, Allies, and CIA/NSA are welcome.''

TLD
ThermoLuminescent Detector.

TLE
Treaty-Limited Equipment. International arms `treaty.'

TLEV
Transitional Low-Emissions Vehicle (LEV).

TLF
Trésor de la Langue Française. A dictionary that is the closest French counterpart of the Oxford English Dictionary. The TLF is not directly descended from Jean Nicot's Thresor de la langue françoyse, tant ancienne que moderne (1606), though that work was an important landmark in French lexicography.

Since everyone can read French -- even people like me who don't actually know the language -- the TLF is a very useful reference work. The 1992 edition is copyrighted by the C.N.R.S. (published by Gallimard). It troubles me that they keep the subtitle Dictionnaire de la langue du XIXe et du XXe siècle (1789-1960), but usage examples and citations date to at least as late as 1989. I relied on this 16-volume paper version until June 14, 2007, when I realized that I could access the electronic edition (TLFi) through my university connection. From now on I'll do my weight-lifting at the gym. (After just one more year, I also realized that the TLFi was available free to everyone, and not just through my university connection.)

TLF
Two-Level Fluctuations (usually measured in a conductance property).

See, for example, K. R. Farmer and R. A. Buhrman, ``Defect dynamics and wear-out in thin silicon oxides,'' Semiconductor Science and Technology, 4, #12, pp. 1084-1105 (December 1989).

TLFi, TLFi
Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé. The electronic version of the TLF. As electronic dictionaries go, one of its more unusual features is a customization option that lets users color-code up to six categories of text (Auteur d'exemple, Code grammatical, etc.). During the preparation of the electronic edition in the 1980's, the editors took the opportunity to digitize a great deal of the supporting corpus, and some of the ARTFL databases piggybacked on the dictionary project. See the article ``L'Informatique et la mise en oeuvre du Trésor de la Langue Française: Dictionnaire de la langue du 19e et du 20e siècle (1789-1960)'' by G. Gorcy, in The Possibilities and Limits of the Computer in Producing and Publishing Dictionaries, Linguistica Computazionale III, eds. A. Zampolli and A. Cappelli (Pisa: Giardini, 1984), pp. 119-44.

Note before you click on the Entrez button, that it is optimized for a slow connection by default; if you don't select the fast-connection radio button, you will see only short versions of some of the longer entries.

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TLG
Thesaurus Linguae Graecae.

The TLG's CD-ROM #D (ancient Greek texts) contains 838 authors and collections from the 8th century BC to the 6th century AD.

TLG
Official name of what was the Thorn Lighting Group.

TLI
Thin-Layer Imaging.

TLI
TransLunar Injection. Injection into an orbit headed toward the moon. Cf. TEI, TMI.

T-line
Transmission LINE. Pronounced ``Tee line.''

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TLL
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae.

TLM
Tape-Laying Machine. For Tape Automated Bonding (TAB).

TLM
Transmission Line Method. Of determining contact resistance. A transmission line is fabricated with multiple contacts. In a plot of resistance between contact pairs as a function of distance between contacts, the slope is a T-line characteristic, and the intercept is twice the contact resistance.

TLM
Transmission Line Model. Cross-bridge Kelvin Resistor (CBKR) and Contact End Resistor (CER) are examples.

TLM
Transmission Length Model.

tLotF&tHotB
The Land of The Free And The Home Of The Brave.

I didn't just not make up the lyric. I also didn't make up the abbreviation. A shorter one, though with a different inflection, would be US. That might explain the rarity of this one.

TLP
Thread-Level Parallelism.

TLP
Transient Lunar Phenomen{ a | on }. Isolated flashes, colored glows or obscurations of small areas of the Moon's surface. Reported.

TLP
Transmission Level Point.

TLS
Times Literary Supplement.

TLS
Transport-Layer Security.

TLSC
The Llama Steering Committee. How hard could this be? They're not mules, for crying out loud.

TLTP
(UK) Teaching and Learning Technology Programme.

TLU
Table Look-Up.

TLV
Threshold Limit Value. The concentration of a substance (in air) to which a normal person may be exposed 8 hours a day, 5 days a week without needing to retire early as a result. The ACGIH establishes some TLV's. They don't have the force of law, but they might carry some weight as evidence in a civil suit...

TLV/TWA
Threshold Limit Value/Time-Weighted Average.

TL1
Transaction Language 1.

Tl-1223
Thalium Barium Calcium Copper Oxide. TlBa2Ca2Cu3O9, a high-Tc superconductor (HTSC).

TM
Test Mode (designation on chip pins).

Tm
Thulium. Atomic number 69. A rare earth (RE) element.

Learn more at its entry in WebElements and its entry at Chemicool.

tm
Too Much. Productive abbreviation prefix in Chatese. E.g., tmd.

TM, tm
TradeMark. You can't copyright the title of a work, but you can register it as a trademark. (Please don't ask me to explain this; my imagination is too limited.)

A trademark identifies a good or service. Intellectual property people always distinguish this from a trade name (or business name), which identifies a particular company or corporation. A trade name may or may not be trademarked. The latter is the case if all you do is register the trade name with the state's registration office for corporate names or fictitious business names. You can't always do this at your local county courthouse. At least, I think that in most states you can register an individual enterprise ``doing business as'' (DBA) with the county, but once we had to trek through Amish country clear to Harrisburg just to register a corporation in Pennsylvania. As long as we were there, we visited Gettysburg. What the hell.

A lot of big corporations are registered in Delaware, because they like the laws there. Sort of like ships flagged by Liberia.

The US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) offers a Trademarks FAQ.

There's an online Trademark Directory, but during the preview period the database is about empty. On the other hand ``No charges will be made during this preview period.'' Also, it looks like they've been in the preview stage for over two years. Oh boy! It pretty much takes the laurel for well-designed useless site.

If you want something considerably more useful, visit the Trademark Database of the US PTO.

TM
Traffic Management.

TM
Transcendental Meditation. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and other transcendentalists did not practice this, but someone gave Mohandas Gandhi a copy of Walden to read and it influenced his concept of Satyagraha. Maybe this is the hidden meaning of ``My karma just ran over your dogma.'' Supporting this violent interpretation is the fact that nineteenth-century transcendentalists, like political assassins and ladies who endow poetry awards, are known by three names.

TM
Transition Metal.

TM
Transmission Mode. This term is used frequently by scientists who study the transport of energetic electrons in semiconductors, to indicate whether their conference abstracts will be arriving by FedEx or DHL. Cf. RM.

TM
Transverse Magnetic. (Typically refers to nature of waveguide-confined microwave mode.) Cf. TE, TEM.

TM
Transverse Myelitis. It is a neurologic syndrome, the main symptoms being loss of feeling and strength (including bladder and bowel control) in parts of the body below some height. Feet and legs are usually involved. Symptoms vary, and there are often various kinds of pain, but for many patients, pain is a welcome sign of progress, an indication that feeling and strength may return. TM is caused by inflammation of the myelin layer of nerves in the spinal cord.

Onset is rapid (hours to weeks), with about half of all patients suffering the worst severity of symptoms within the first day. Most begin to recover within one to three months, but those who don't have a poor prognosis for recovery. As of 2004, there are treatments that benefit some TM patients, but no cures. Suffice it to say that new experimental treatments are being pursued. The incidence of TM is estimated to be roughly a few cases per year per million of population.

TM
Travaux et Mémoires. Sounds a bit like Transcendental Meditation (TM), at that. At least karma yoga (partly explained here). The head-term expansion is French for `works and recollections.' The Sanskrit word karma (also karman) can be translated as `action' or `fate.' The way of action is karma yoga (or karmayoga, if they're charging you by the word). Someone who follows the path of action is a karma yogi. Someone who has followed the path of action for a very great distance and is in need of spiritual refreshment should have a karma yogurt.

TM
TriMethyl. Common prefix in organometallic sources for MOCVD: TMAl, TMGa and TMIn.

.tm
(Domain name extension for) Turkmenistan.

TMA
Technology Modeling Associates. Puts out Pisces and Suprem simulation codes.

TMA
Terminal Maneuvering Area or TerMinal Area. Aviation acronym.

TMA
Thermal Mechanical Analyzer.

TMA
Toy Manufacturers of America.

TMA
Transverse Myelitis Association. (See TM entry.)

TMA
TriMethyl Aluminum. TMAl.

TMA
TriMethylAmine.

TMAA
TriMethylAmine Alane. [(CH3)3N]AlH3. Common precursor for aluminum (Al) MOCVD.

TMAH
TetraMethylAmmonium Hydroxide. N(CH3)4OH.

TMAl
TriMethyl ALuminum. Common metalorganic source for aluminum (Al) in MOMBE and MOCVD. Also ``TMA.''

T-man
Treasury (Department) MAN. The T-men entry is longer, but it doesn't have much useful information either.

TMA-N
TriMethylAmine Nitrogen.

TMB
TriMethyBorate.

TMBG
They Might Be Giants. A rock group. Discography and karaoke clip here.

TMC
Technology and Maintenance Council (of the ATA). When it was known as ``The Maintenance Council,'' the tee of the was presciently included in the acronym.

TMC
The Movie Channel. By subscription only.

TMC
Time-slot Management Channel.

TMD
Theater Missile Defense. Short for TBMD.

tmd
Too Much Detail. Chatese.

TMdC
Transition Metal DiChalcogenide[s].

TME
Transmissible Mink Encephalopathy. A spongiform encephalopathy of mink (surprise!), suspected of being caused or transmitted by prions, q.v.

T-men
Treasury-MEN. Not men like Mr. T, necessarily. Law officers from the US Department of the Treasury (DOT) -- Secret Servicemen. Or maybe that should be Secret-Service men. Whatever. T-men is easier. It's probably also obsolete. Cf. G-men.

If the Department of Commerce (DOC) had its own law officers, would they be ``C-men.'' Would that bother the Navy? Anyone else?

Singular form is T-man.

tmesis
Separation of a compound word by interposition of another word. Rare in English, and nonstandard. AdvThanksance is not an example, if only because advance is not a compound word. I'm not sure if the present-tense instances of the V2 structure of German (separable prefix exiled to the end of the predicate) count. Most common examples in English involve the interposition of a profane intensifier. Some nonprofane examples:

TMF
ThermoMechanical Fatigue.

TMG, TMGa
Trimethyl Gallium. Common metalorganic source for gallium (Ga) in MOMBE and MOCVD.

TMI
Three Mile Island. Name and location of a Pennsylvania nuclear reactor that gave folks a scare some years ago. TMI is used metonymically to refer to that 1979 event.

TMI, tmi
Too Much Information. Chatese expression. To be honest, I've only ever seen it used by a couple of chatters, but maybe that's tmi. But then, as the National Enquirer ads used to go, more or less,
Nosy minds want to know.

I should probably let you in on a little secret about chat rooms, which may help you understand better the context of ``TMI.'' To be blunt, chat rooms are not seminar rooms. They're more like bathrooms, or the walls of toilet stalls. ``TMI' does not just encapsulate three little words. It doesn't even encapsulate two little words and one long word. It encapsulates an entire philosophy. How's that for compression? The philosophy is sometimes expressed ``how bout a topic we cn ALL talk about?''

Okay, I just saw ``TMI'' used as the name of a TV feature. Of course, Newton Minow was right when he said that it is a vast wasteland, but he had the consolation of believing that this was the fault of TV executives, rather than a reflection of what people would watch when given a choice.

TMI
Trans-Mars Injection. Transfer from Earth Orbit into a trajectory that will send a spacecraft to Mars. Cf. TEI, MOI.

TMI
TRMM Microwave Imager.

TMI, TMIn
TriMethyl Indium. Metalorganic source for indium (In) in MOMBE and MOCVD.

TMJ
TemporoMandibular Joint. The one connecting the skull to the jaw. ``TMJ'' also refers to pain in the TMJ muscles, and associated headaches, often caused by stress. (Living with your teeth clenched.)

TMM
Thermoset Microwave Material.

TMM
Total Materials Management. (There's a TCIE TMM page.)

TMM
Transfer Matrix Method.

TMMW
The Man-Made World. A curriculum project and textbooks developed by the ECCP, which see.

TMN
Telecommunication Management Network. A framework for achieving interconnectivity and communication across heterogeneous operating systems and telecommunications networks. Developed by the ITU.

TMN
The Movie Network. A group of Canadian cable channels (TMN1, TMN2, TMN3, TMN4, and Moviepix).

Tmob
2,4,6-TriMethOxyBenzyl.

TMP
Test Management Protocol.

TMP
Texts and Monographs in Physics. A series from Springer-Verlag.

TMR
Triple Modular Redundancy. Belt, suspenders, and duct tape.

TMR
The Medieval Review. Formerly the Bryn Mawr Medieval Review (BMMR). You can still subscribe to TMR and the Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR) together as the Bryn Mawr Reviews (BMR).

TMS
The Metallurgical Society. Founded in 1957; a Member Society of AIME. Now ``The Minerals, Metals, & Materials Society.''

TMS
Time-Multiplexed Switch[ing].

TMS
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. An experimental (as of 2002) treatment for the tremors of Parkinson's disease.

Cf. DBS.

TMSC
Tape Mass Storage Control. DEC acronym.

TMTOWTDI
There's More Than One Way To Do It. The Perl slogan. Typically pronounced, but not written ``Tim Toady.'' OTOH, Tim Toady.

TMTSF
TetraMethylTetraSelenaFulvalene. The basis of a family of quasi-one-dimensional conductors.

TMV
The Mars Volta. A rock group mentioned at the Volta entry.

TMV
Thermostatic Mixing Valve.

TMZ
TriMethyl Zinc. There's also a dimethyl zinc (DMZ).

TN
Telephone Number.

TN
Tennessee. USPS abbreviation. A topological octagon, I guess: Tennessee and Missouri (MO) each border eight states (including each other), more than any other state of the US.

Pennsylvania and Massachusetts both have many towns named for places in the Jewish and Christian holy land. Tennessee has Memphis, a religious center of Pharaonic and Ptolemaic Egypt, and Nashville is known as the country music Mecca.

The Villanova Center for Information Law and Policy serves a page of Tennessee state government links. TNNet has a Tennessee links page. USACityLink.com has a page with some city and town links for the state.

TN
Terminal Node.

TN
Trigeminal Neuralgia.

.tn
(Domain name extension for) Tunisia. A good site for it is Tunisia Online, ``your digital gateway to news and information on Tunisia.'' The capital, Tunis, is near the site of Carthage.

Back in the 1980's, a graduate school friend of mine wanted to do research in North African communities. She would have gone to Libya, but she couldn't travel there alone -- she'd have had to have been chaperoned by a near male relative. So she ended up doing her research in Tunisia. Of course, first she had to have a new passport issued her; the stamps from Israeli customs would have disqualified her from entry into either country.

TN
Twisted Nematic (LCD).

TNB
TriNaphthylBenzene.

TNB
TriNitroBenzene. TNT minus the methyl group.

TNBS
TriNitroBenzene (TNB) Sulfonic acid.

TNC
The Nature Conservancy.

TNC
The New Criterion.

TNC
Threaded Navy Connector. A common connector for coaxial microwave cable. Cf. BNC. VSWR below 1.3 for frequencies below 11 GHz.

One inch long, 0.571 inches at the mouth. Crimps 1/8 inch cable at the neck (50 ohm cable; 75 ohm cable is 0.15 inches in diameter).

TNE
Transient Nematic Effect.

TNEF
Transportation-Neutral Encapsulation Format. Most frequently encountered as the MIME type line

Content-Type: application/ms-tnef

It's a characteristic bit of Microsoft arrogance. It contains font style and size, color and other format information (some version of RTF, Rich Text Format) processed by MS Exchange and MS Mail, and it was already present in Windows 95. If you send it to an email list, or send mail to yourself (in Cc: or Bc: -- ``Carbon copy'' or ``Blind copy'') it, you don't notice anything amiss when you read your own mail because you're reading through your own mail user agent (MUA), which is TNEF-savvy. Evidently it's supposed to, or used to, create a file called WINMAIL.DAT. An old file at URL http://www.annoyances.org/win95/win95ann5.html#13 explains how to fix it (if the ``#13'' isn't heeded, scroll down or search for WINMAIL.DAT; they don't mention ``TNEF''). I think that addresses the problem.

If the online Win95 annoyances guide doesn't enable you to fix the problem, you can buy the O'Reilly & Assoc. Office97 Annoyances_ book (seems to have some kind of turkey or dodo on the cover). According to Annoyances.org, the corresponding web version isn't up yet -- hey, they're not a charity. Alternatively, switch to Eudora Pro or Eudora Lite or something else. I know switching software is a big pain, and it really shouldn't be necessary if you can find a Win95 guru around. My experience with Eudora on Mac and Windows95 is pretty good, although it's too easy to send mail that's too wide. Using Netscape as a mailreader has problems similar to those with MS products: arrogant proprietary choices. In particular, it tends to attach an html version of your message, and angle-bracketed text like ``<grin>'' can disappear.

TNF
Theater Nuclear Forces. Hey, brinksmanship is showmanship.

TNF
Tumor Necrosis Factor. Also called Cachectin. A cytokine normally produced by activated macrophages to destroy tumors.

TNG
The Next Generation (of Star Trek). Also ST:TNG and STTNG and STNG.

TNN
The Nashville Network. A cable network begun by the National Life and Accident Insurance Company in 1983, parent company of AM, FM and TV stations with the call letters WSM, and owner of the Grand Old Opry and Opryland theme park. When National Life was absorbed by a larger insurer, the entertainment properties started to be spun off, first as a group to Gaylord Broadcasting, then piecemeal. Bob Lochte serves a page of unofficial information and opinion that brings the story up to early 2000. He commented, i.a., that ``TNN probably draws a bigger crowd [more eyeballs] in Canada.''

TNN was purchased in 1999 by Viacom, which has scrambled to get it away from its unprofitable roots in Country. A Canadian informant reports that by autumn 2001 the station was expanding TNN as ``The National Network.'' At least they preserved the stressed ``nash'' phonemes. And national has a nice international ambiguity. Come to think of it, if they ever want to come home, they can claim that National actually meant Country. (It appears that, for a little while at least, they avoided expanding TNN altogether, possibly in hopes that people might forget the original expansion and hence not be jarred by the new one.)

Okay, now it's Summer 2003, Viacom is a division of MTV, and ``The New TNN'' bills itself as ``the first network for men.'' They've apparently either given up trying to come up with an appropriate expansion for the T - N - N , or -- I see: it's in the fine print (see this page). Still ``National.'' They need a new expansion; the tee should stand for Trashy.

Specifically what happened is that they wanted to leave the TNN expansions behind and call it ``Spike TV,'' but that was spiked at the last minute. On the last day before the launch of the new programming, they had to change all the logos because Spike Lee sued over the name. They settled out of court in July 2003, and since August 11 of that year TNN has been called ``Spike TV.''

Spike was already a common nickname when Shelton J. Lee's mother gave it to him, and like Biff or Candy it carries certain connotations owing little to anyone currently bearing the name. This is so obvious as to invite suspicion of cynical opportunism in Mr. Lee's pretense that an entertainment product with the name Spike infringes his own rights. But it's perfectly possible to believe that he is genuinely convinced of his own talent, importance, and general entitlement. What's his is his and what's yours is his too. This gives him an authentic empathy with the solipsism and possessiveness of a child, so it's very appropriate that he's done a children's book.

The TNN flap wasn't the first instance of Spike Lee's entertainment-product avariciousness. In 1989, it became known that Norman Jewison, who had directed a number of films that dealt with racism in America, was planning to do a film biography of Malcolm X. Lee protested that the biography of such an important figure in American history should not be done by a Canadian like Jewison. Wait-- I think I got that wrong. It had to do with the color of his skin. Jewison worked a year on the project and had hired Denzel Washington to play the lead, but he was eventually forced out (the film rights to ''The Autobiography of Malcolm X'' were owned by producer Marvin Worth). When he bowed out at the end of January 1991, Jewison denied he was stepping down because of pressure to have a black director handle the picture. (His autobiography, This Terrible Business Has Been Good To Me, published late in 2004, does not maintain this fiction.) At the time he also said that he didn't know how to make the movie (it would have been his 27th directorial project). Spike Lee, who was eight when Malcolm X was murdered, ``inherited'' the project; he made the movie with Denzel Washington, and he shared screenwriting credit with Arnold Perl, who had made a Malcolm X documentary that was released in 1972. Now mind: I'm not arguing whether Jewison would have made a better or worse film than Lee, I'm only observing that Lee's general objections to a white director had as a specific beneficiary himself.

TNO
The Network Observer.

TNO
Trans-Neptunian Object.

TNP
Traité de non-prolifération. French for `Nonproliferation Treaty' (NPT).

TNPAL
w-TriNitroPhenylAminoLauric acid.

TNR
The New Republic magazine. A Weekly Journal of Opinion, founded 1914. Not quite communist at the time. Its political trajectory since has been generally rightward, and it reached a point in the 1990's when for a while its antipathy to the GOP seemed almost a matter of sentimentality. People who call themselves progressive would say things like ``I don't get the New Republic.'' It has pulled left since Andrew Sullivan left, and while it's still clearly to the right of The Nation, it is also, since about 2005, clearly on the left.

It's also worth noting, quite apart from its politics, that this rag has been for a number of years an illiterate assault on the English language. For example, in a January 16, 2006, back page article, a threnody for the late Senator Eugene McCarthy, Editor-in-Chief Martin Peretz wrote this: ``We knew we were working with folk whom you knew might defect the moment the assassinated president's brother decided that his time had come.'' Never mind whether ``his time had come'' is not unfortunate wording; most people are either smart enough to know how to use ``whom'' or smart enough not to use it. TNR is stupid enough to not know and use it, as here, rather consistently incorrectly. Some of the less trite errors are more amusing. For example, elsewhere in the issue Alan Wolfe writes ``As benefits a work of apologetics....'')

Here's the beginning of an article that appeared in June 1917 in the short-lived publication The Seven Arts (pp. 133-146). Entitled ``The War and the Intellectuals,'' it was contributed by Randolph S. Bourne:

To those of us who still retain an irreconcilable animus against war, it has been a bitter experience to see the unanimity with which the American intellectuals have thrown their support to the use of war-technique in the crisis in which America found herself. Socialists, college professors, publicists, new-republicans, practitioners of literature, have vied with each other in confirming with their intellectual faith the collapse of neutrality and the riveting of the war-mind on a hundred million more of the world's people. ...

I'm pretty sure ``new-republicans'' refers to those associated with TNR. Bourne was a regular contributor to TNR on a variety of subjects, though particularly on education; he was a popular advocate of John Dewey's educational theories. (John Dewey, incidentally, supported US entry into the war.) If you haven't heard of Randolph Bourne, one reason may be that he died at age 32, during the flu pandemic of 1918. Regarding Bourne's ``publicists'' and ``practitioners of literature,'' don't fret it much: Bourne was usually vague on what he meant by ``intellectual.'' For that matter, even in his own day few college professors could burnish the matte luster of that word.

There's a monthly that was launched around 1960 and published by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) called Commentary. (More at the link; it's now independent of the AJC.) Commentary also drifted (but much further) to the right. (I mean, every few years they publish an article arguing against evolution!) Frank Manciewicz is usually credited with the observation that The New Republic is like a Jewish Commentary. (The point presumably being that the subject matter and authors of Commentary are not particularly Jewish, and that the politics of TNR is much closer to that of American Jews. I think what this must all mean is that Commentary is the Canadian TNR.) Somewhere to the right of Commentary, politically, is JWR.

Frankly, the TNR-Commentary comparison has aged poorly, especially since TNR seems to have dispensed with copy-editors. A better comparison is provided by newish (since 1992?) First Things and Commonweal, each of which is something like a Catholic Commentary. There doesn't seem to be a Protestant version yet, or I'm not aware of it. There are, of course, generally Protestant journals that are more focused on religion. Approximations of FT/Commentary/Commonweal: Christianity Today (a monthly of Protestant evangelicals, founded in 1955) and the Christian Century (not very denominational, as the name implies; so leftist it holds out hope of salvation for Democrats).

I think that 2002 was the big shake-out year for journals, though many of the survivors have been shaky. TNR's circulation shrank from about 101,000 in 2000 to about 60,000 at the beginning of 2007. TNR's specific problem, however, may be political polarization. Between 2004 and 2007, the circulations of such liberal magazines as The Nation and The Progressive have increased. I think the conservative journals have just held their own -- Commentary, at least, has held steady at about 25 thousand. More centrist TNR has lost readership, consistent with the political-polarization storyline. In late February 2007, TNR announced a major overhaul, selling controlling interest to CanWest Global Communications and switching to fortnightly publication. (There, see? TNR is the Canadian TNR!)

TNRCC
Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission.

TNSTAAFL
There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Acronym of a saying attributed to Milton Friedman. But that ain't the 'proved form of the acronym, which be tanstaafl (q.v.), popularized by Robert Heinlein.

My grandfather resided in the US for a while in the days after Prohibition was lifted. At the time, local jurisdictions had more stringent laws restricting the sale of alcohol. One such law in New York City allowed on-site consumption of alcohol only to accompany food. One way around this was simply to offer a ``free lunch'' to anyone buying a drink. My father says that this is the origin of the phrase -- lunch wasn't really free, you had to pay for the drink.

Still, market mechanisms intrude. My grandfather wasn't much of a drinker; he would resell his drink to someone who wasn't hungry, so lunch came out pretty cheap.

Hmm. It says here in You Might As Well Live (John Keats's book about Dorothy Parker) that in the gay nineties (that's the 1890's, son), a man could have a free lunch with a five-cent beer. Page 16.

TNT
Télévision numérique terrestre.

TNT
2,4,6-TriNitroToluene:
     H C         NO
      3 \       /  ²
         \_____/
         / ___ \
O N_____/ /   \ \
 ²      \ \___/ /
         \_____/
               \
                \
                 NO
                   ²

Created in 1863 by J. Wilbrand. (At the time, in Germany, the name ended in the now no-longer-standard toluol, q.v.)

The 2,4,6- (for the positions of the nitro groups) is usually implicit, since a straightforward synthesis puts the groups preferentially at para and ortho positions.

TNT
Turner Network Television. ``[They] Know Drama.'' Sure. Bring back Shannen Doherty. I don't care if she was a director's nightmare -- that's someone else's problem. I was charmed. One day I'll have to watch. Oops, too late -- missed it! Doherty lasted from 1998 (first season) to 2001 on TNT's Charmed (executive producer Aaron Spelling). She played the spectacularly misnamed Prudence. (See the BMW entry for another thought on the casting, however.) The twisted good sisters are named Halliwell.

In May 1998, Geri Halliwell achieved solo fame by leaving the phenomenally successful Spice Girls in mid-tour. That year, Aaron Spelling was casting for a new Charlie's Angels series and considered her for a part. She was rejected as too chunky, although in July it was reported that actor Randy Spelling, Aaron's son, had pleaded with dad to reconsider. In a few of the many stories about the Spice break, it was even rumored that the possibility of a role in the show contributed to Geri's decision to leave. In any event, an Angels remake didn't materialize that year. A big-screen version was filmed in 1999 (released 2000).

Since 2001, along with the other former Turner properties (TCM, TBS, Cartoon Network, the various CNN's), TNT has organizationally been a part of the WB network, which in turn is part of Time Warner.

TnVMA
TeNnessee Veterinary Medical Association. See also AVMA.

TN3270
An extension of the Telnet protocol that allows communication with IBM host machines; a code implementing that protocol. Basically, it emulates a 3278 Model 2 terminal instead of a VT100.

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