- W/O, w/o
- WithOut. (With is W/.)
- WOA
- Washington Office on Africa.
``The Washington Office on Africa (WOA) is a church-sponsored not-for-profit
advocacy organization seeking to articulate and promote a just American
policy toward Africa. We monitor Congressional legislation and executive
policies and actions and issue action alerts to advance progressive
legislation and policy. We seek to work in partnership with colleagues in
Africa, the Africa advocacy community in the United States, and grassroots
organizations concerned with various aspects of African affairs.
WOA was founded in 1972 to support the movement for freedom from white-minority
rule in southern Africa. Today, we have an expanded mission which seeks to
address issues affecting grassroots African interests throughout the
continent. A key focus of our energies presently are economic justices issues
in Africa, including questions of aid, trade, and debt.''
- WOB
- Wom{a|e}n-Owned Business[es].
- WOCE
- World Ocean
Circulation Experiment.
- WOCN
- Wound, Ostomy, and Continence Nurses
Society. (We define ostomy here.)
- WOFAT
- Waste Of Film And Time.
- Wo Fat
- Commander of Red Chinese Intelligence in the Pacific Theater, on the
long-running TV series Hawaii Five-O,
Moriarty to Steve McGarrett's
Sherlock. McGarrett clashed with Wo Fat many times (``Cocoon,''
``Forty Feet High and It Kills,'' and other episodes), finally triumphing
in the final episode of the final (twelfth) season, 1979, when he posed as
theoretical physicist Dr. Elton Raintree to get close to Wo Fat. The
episode (#278) was entitled ``Woe to Wo Fat.'' Patricia Crowley guested
in that episode; she later went on to fame in the TV series ``Don't Eat the Daisies,'' based
on a book by Jean Kerr (see pancreas).
This is actually just a longer version of the
WOFAT definition, as befits WOFAT.
- WOM
- Write-Only Memory. Almost as useful as a one-terminal resistor.
There's a spec sheet
around, but it's easy to burn-in your own customized implementation.
- wombat
- A family of Australian marsupials that resemble the koala but have a more varied diet.
- WOMBAT
- Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time.
In Saturnalia 2.4.29-30, Macrobius tells the story of some birds. Here
is
Michael Hendry's summary of the story (posted to the Classics List):
A man trains a raven to greet Augustus after Actium with "Hail Caesar,
victorious general!" The emperor gives him 20,000 sesterces. His partner, who
got no share in the money, then comes forward to tell Augustus about his
other raven, trained to say "Hail Antony, victorious general." Augustus
makes them split the money. Augustus then buys a parrot and a magpie trained
by others to say the same. A poor tailor is inspired to try the same with a
raven, but his bird is too stupid or stubborn to learn its lines, and the
trainer keeps muttering "Wasted trouble and expense" (opera et impensa
periit). When Augustus is passing in the street, the raven manages to say
the proper "Hail Caesar," the emperor says "I get enough of that kind of stuff
at home," and then the raven says "Wasted trouble and expense." The emperor is
so charmed he pays more for it than for any of the other birds.
- WOME
- EC abbreviation for Committee on Women's
Rights.
- WON
- West Old Norse.
- wonder
The relation of the new to the old, before the
assimilation is performed, is wonder.
-- William James
- wonderful book
- What do you mean you don't like it?
- wonderful children
- Ah -- so they're your little monsters, then?
- wonk
- An expert with an unnatural enthusiasm for subject of expertise.
An obsessive maven.
It has taken literally years (about three, actually) for the Stammtisch
to achieve this definition.
Common use: ``Clinton administration policy wonk.''
Etymology: Antonomasia with elision of unstressed syllable, based on ``Willy
Wonka,'' owner of the factory in Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory, a moral parable in the form of food science fiction (1964) by
Roald Dahl. A movie was
made. [This etymology was discovered by a process of careful imagination.]
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was read to one of my classes in
grade school. Many years later, two of my former classmates were arrested
on weapons charges. In fact, I just heard that one of them is in trouble
again. And of course, there's me. I remember when my college roommate
Dennis, who's from the same hometown but went to a different grade school,
looked at my fourth grade school class picture. He said: ``What a bunch of
losers''!
Another datum respecting the etymology of wonk is that the term is
widely believed to have originated at Harvard
at least as long ago as The Sixties ®. Then, it was a synonym
of nerd: a bright, hardworking, socially maladroit student. It's not clear
what could have made Dahl's book such an underground hit at Harvard.
It has been observed that ``wonk'' is ``know''
spelled backwards. Similar observations
about ``dog'' and ``knurd'' (a variant spelling [ftnt. 25] of ``nerd'')
have proven to be irrelevant to the etymologies of those words. Come think of
it, the word nerd occurs in the work of Dr. Seuss.
- WoO
- Werk[e] ohne Opusnummer. German for `Work[s] without Opus
number.' The work of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) is referred to by
number to an unusual degree (e.g., ``Beethoven's Fifth,'' ``the Ninth
Symphony''), but many of his works were unnumbered. Numbers were assigned to
them in Das Werk Beethovens; thematisch-bibliographisches Verzeichnis
seiner sämtlichen vollendeten Kompositionen. (`The Work of Beethoven:
complete thematic-bibliographic catalog of his completed compositions'). This
standard work was completed after Kinsky's death by Hans Halm and published in
1955; it is cited both as Kinsky and as Kinsky-Halm. WoO is used as a prefix
when giving the Kinsky numbers, as in ``WoO 1: Ritterballett.'' Since
opus means `work,' the Kinsky numbers are being referred to in this way
as the works-without-work-number [work] numbers.
Kinsky based himself on the ``Complete Edition'' of Beethoven's works published
in 1888, which was in fact incomplete. (At this point, you could hardly be
surprised.) In 1957, Willy Hess published
Verzeichnis der nicht in der Gesamtausgabe veröffentlichten Werke
Ludwig van Beethovens (`Catalog of works of Ludwig van Beethoven not
published [i.e., included] in the Complete Edition'). This listing
included some lost works, unfinished pieces, and alternate arrangements of
previous works. Many of the works listed by Hess and not in the original
Kinsky compilation were eventually assigned WoO numbers; those which were not
are referred to by their Hess numbers. (In 1959, Hess also published the
scores in a fourteen-volume Supplemente to the Gesamtausgabe.)
Hess also published an appendix (Anhang) to Kinsky's catalog, listing
``Beethoven works'' of questionable authorship. Works listed there are
referred to by AnH numbers. Numbers make everything
systematic and straightforward.
- woof
- Canine syllable, American dialect. Ruff is also used, especially
by the pet of Dennis (`the Menace') Mitchell. There's more information on
this topic at the subwoofer entry (SW).
``Bow-wow'' is not used. It can hardly be considered an onomatopoeia at all.
It's like trying to imitate a New Jersey accent by
saying ``Noo JOYsee,'' when in fact the only people who speak like that live
on Lawn Guyland.
- wool
- Sheep hair, usually. Mom knit me some socks, and in reply to my question
about washing writes
> If your machine does not have a "delicate" cycle, I would throw them
> in 5 minutes before the rinse. Warm water should be OK. BTW wool is very
> absorbent and you don't have to wash the socks after each use (if your
> American upbringing allows you to conceive of this possibility).
- wooly-backs
- Liverpudlian name for Mancunians. I
have it on Liverpudlian authority that this is not pejorative but affectionate
(so I originally arranged the alphabetization to place it here after a pet
entry).
- WOR
- { World | Wonders } Of Radio. Original expansion for the call letters of
a New York City broadcaster.
- Worcestershire sauce
- Contents listed
here.
- Work-Anon
- An organization like Al-Anon but for the
families of workaholics.
- Work Area
- A five-mile stretch of reduced speed limits, doubled fines, and traffic
cones blocking off at least one lane of highway, ending in a hundred-yard
stretch of idle equipment.
- world
- A PC adjective meaning ``non-Western.''
- WorldArch
- World Archaeology. A journal catalogued in
TOCS-IN.
- World Bank
- It's a big secret, so don't tell anybody -- don't even admit it to
yourself: the World Bank is part of
a worldwide conspiracy to take over the world by making nonproducing loans.
It's so secret, it's not even called the World Bank. It's actually the
IBRD. It's based in Washington, D.C. [Sober aside:
the World Bank name might be official by now, and IBRD was joined by the IDA in
1960, and later by some other international financial institutions. See the WB entry.]
By tradition, the World Bank president is nominated by the US. The appointment
is then voted on by the Bank's executive directors, who represent shareholder
countries. Also by tradition, the nominee is an American.
In 1995, Bank President Lewis Preston became ill and the
White House began a round of interviews.
There was wide agreement among both Clinton administration officials and World
Bank insiders that his successor should be selected with a view to serving 10
years, regarded as the kind of time necessary to have a meaningful impact on
such a complex organization.
The person selected and accepted to replace Preston was James D.
Wolfensohn, and the rest of the content
resources that ought to have gone here were retasked and deposited under
his name.
- World Bank Group
- The IBRD, IDA, and
IFC. Lately, all conspiracies are trilateral.
Oops: as of 2006, this one is already pentagonal. Perhaps the principles are
earning interest. See the WB entry; I can't keep
these redundant glossary entries all up-to-date at the same time.
- Western Civ
- WESTERN CIVilization[s]. A common informal and sometimes official name for
an overview course in the history of Europe and of the modern history of some
places colonized by Europeans. Western Civ courses are able to stir
controversy both by their presence and by their absence. (More usually by
their impending appearance or disappearance, or changes in associated
curriculum requirements). In all cases, the controversy is predicated on the
false assumption that students will remember the material or, failing that
(pardon the expression), be affected in the long term by having been exposed to
it (something like strontium-90, I guess).
- World Class
- Able to compete in the world. For example, the corner store at Walnut and
Jefferson is world class because it provides a unique service (newspapers and
chewing gum at walking distance from and along the way to school, respectively)
to local customers that not even the store at Wilson and Elm can match.
The following showed up in my email; I thought you'd enjoy it:
MANAGEMENT EDUCATION AND DEVLEOPMENT IN THE DEVELOPING NATIONS
A conference co-sponsored by the Academy of Management's Management
Education and Development Division and the United Arab Emirates University,
College of Business and Economics
to be held in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates, April 2-3, 2000.
Personally, I think that avoiding typographical errors and awkward
constructions, at least in official announcements, is part of being world
class. But then, I'm not a manager's manager or a developer's developer; I'm
just literate. If I were illiterate, I would be qualified to write some of the
stuff in the management self-help/inspiration genre. The announcement
continues
Proposals should be 200 words describing a presentation, symposium (panel
discussion), or workshop (demonstration) of research or theory relevant to
World Class Management Education and/or Management Development in the 21st
Century in its relevance to the developing nations. ...
See? The term ``world class'' is not just for unsophisticated folk and
the ironic. It is also used by those with a weak grip on the language.
... Presentations and proposals may be in English or
Arabic. Though, English is generally recommended to provide wider access to
sessions by all international attendees. ...
- World Class Quality
- The title of a book published by AMACOM, a publishing arm of the American
Management Association. Just so you don't confuse it with other books with the
same title from the same publisher, this is the one subtitled Using Design
of Experiments to Make it Happen. I saw it on the dollar table and riffled
through it.
If I were defining world class quality, I would make it the quality of being a
global class, but I'd make it nonheritable.
- Worldcon
- WORLD Science Fiction CONvention. Worldcons bear an interesting relation
to WSFS, q.v. In years when Worldcon is
held outside North America, a NASFiC is held as
well.
- World Unclaimed, The
- Subtilted ``A Challenge to Heidegger's Critique of Husserl.''
CRITIQUE! CHALLENGE! A world as prize!
Fight! Fight!
You think I'm going to spoil the excitement by reading the book? Get real.
(Yes, sure I mean ``subtilted.'' It's not a typo. You've heard of tilting at
windmills and other worthy opponents -- that's violent too.)
Okay, I'll tell you something about the book. The dust jacket (dj) is done in earth tones, basically -- dark brown and purplish grays,
some orange. The name ``Lilian Alweiss'' appears on the front, below the aitch
names.
This book grabbed my attention because it reminded me of a very bad movie I
liked -- ``Bridget Jones's Diary.'' That also
featured two men in conflict over a woman, and at one point they come to actual
blows. It's never made clear why these two characters are so hot for Bridget
Jones, a character that is a fat, chain-smoking, stupid sot. Then again,
incredible casting may have made the script credible. You could believe that
they're crazy about her because she's hotter than
Renée
Zellweger. (I mean, hotter than Renée Zellweger is when she's
skinny. Tastes vary, you pervert. More discussion of this important
psychosocial landmark event can be discovered at the entry for
Car Door Slam Method.)
Anyway at the start of the fight, Bridget's ahem, slightly effeminate male
friend (he calls himself a ``hag fag'' in the book -- moderately clever, but
pretty uncomplimentary all around) runs across the street and alerts the
waiters in the ethnic restaurant. So they all rush out and enthusiastically
begin to handicap the contest in some distant foreign language. It's one of
the rare genuinely funny moments in the movie, so I figured I'd spoil it for
you. Of course, if you get your jollies from watching people be genuinely
embarrassed, then this will have you rolling on the
street.
I hope The World Unclaimed is funny like that, and not about lost
luggage as the cover illustration seems to imply. You know, there's a company
in Alabama that buys all ultimately unclaimed
luggage in the US and auctions it off.
What the heck, let's crack it open at random and see if there's anything
valuable inside. Page 122 bears the running head ``The Final Loss of the
World'' (mixed-caps, but I can't be bothered to reproduce the formatting) and
page 123 has ``The Distinctiveness of the World'' at the top. Random text from
page 123:
`Nearness' cannot be measured or calculated, but is defined in relation to what
is environmentally closest to Dasein (i.e., the book on the desk rather
than the glasses I am wearing) [SBF says, concrete examples are soooo
helpful]. Equally, equipment is not merely present-at-hand, occurring at
random in some spatial position ..., but all equipment has its place
(Platz) in a specific region (Gegend): ``In each case the place
is the definite `there' or `yonder' [`Dort' und `Da'] of an item of
equipment which belongs somewhere....
I feel like I ought to photocopy some of this stuff and send it over to the
boys at baggage claim to see what they can make of it.
Have I ever mentioned ------? (Oops. I had.) Her luggage was lost for a few
days when she visited Greece, but fortunately she
had a new package of panties in her carry-on. (Look, I just report this stuff.
I don't know if Greek panties are not part-compatible or something.)
Eventually she got her suitcase back and it had a mark across it as if a
tractor tire had rolled across it. Later when she was talking with the
airline's adjuster about her losses, she mentioned that ``it looks like a
tractor ran over it.'' The adjuster said ``yes, that's probably what
happened.'' I guess when you're a claims adjuster, the mysterious becomes
ordinary. Dasein -- don't leave home without it. (And stuff a couple
in your carry-on -- you never know how far ``nearness'' may be.)
Actually, I do have some information relevant to the part-compatibility issues.
My mother's stepfather was a tailor, and he spent long stretches of his career
in Germany, then Latin America, and finally in the US. With each move, he had
to change his dress patterns. Generally speaking, in Latin America the
patterns conformed more closely, so to speak, to that health ideal called the
``pear-shaped body.''
- WORM
- Write On[c]e Read Many. Usually refers to CD that can be written to by
the user (CD-R). Optical-disc WORM's are
O-WORM's.
- WORMS
- World-Wide-Web for
Operations Research and Management Science.
- worse than previously thought
- A somewhat otiose headline phrase. For the most part, general news sources
translate quantitative information into qualitative description, and what is
lost in translation usually cannot be recovered directly. Even when numerical
information is offered, this is done with context inadequate for understanding.
Numbers are at best decoration for emotive claims (see
000). ``Worse than previously thought'' thus means
something like: ``It's not just bad! It's bad!''
- wortkarg
- German, `taciturn,' from wort (`word,' duh) and karg (meager,
sparse). The word wortkarg is not exactly equivalent to taciturn in
connotation, however. In English, a person described as taciturn may
reasonably be inferred to have a somewhat dour or sour temperament.
Wortkarg doesn't carry that load. Is it possible that English, a
language with a bulging armamentarium of words sufficient to wage
simultaneous logomachies on three different continents, does not have a word
meaning wortkarg? Of course not! The proper translation is
laconic. There's also schweigsam, which might be translated as
`quiet.'
- WOSA
- (Microsoft) Windows Open Services
Architecture.
- wot
- Eye dialect for what. Chiefly
British.
- WOTD
- Word Of The Day. A service that provides erudition at an eye-dropper rate.
Here's one served by the
OED.
- WOU
- World ORT Union.
- WOW
- Windows On Win32.
- wow-com
- World Of Wireless COMmunications.
The public face of the CTIA.
- Wow, who's the mother?
- In the strictest mathematical sense, this is the absolute worst thing that
a man can say when a close female friend calls excitedly to announce that he is
to become a father.
Hmmm, could be I inhabit an alternate social universe. In the movie ``The
Opposite of Sex,'' Dede (played by Christina Ricci) has seduced her gay
half-brother's boyfriend Matt (played by some guy, okay?). She gets pregnant
and breaks the news to Matt while they're lying on the bed fast-forwarded after
some PG-level lovemaking (I don't know how the movie earned an R), and he asks
``Is it mine?'' She answers ``See? Only straight boys ever say that line.
You're in!'' On the other hand, the movie is advertised as a comedy because
you can't take the plot or many of the premises too seriously. We'll have to
go on collecting data. Later, in a heated discussion with Dede's half-brother
and a friend (Lisa Kudrow) who hangs around so the movie can have multiple plot
lines, Matt insists that he's not gay but bisexual.
I should note that Matt asks whether he's the father even after Dede has
explicitly implied that he is. To find out how she implies explicitly (it's
easier than explying implicitly, I'm sure), see the
pregnant we entry. Yes, it does seem that
I'm milking this scene for all and more than it's worth, but Ricci has the
udders for it, especially when she hasn't slimmed
down for some thin role.
Oh, and -- ladies? Here is something for you to avoid doing. Do not interrupt
sex to answer the phone. It spoils the entire act, if you know what I mean.
I never realized what an old-fashioned romantic I was until recently, seeing
couples walking through the scenic campus hand-in-hand. They are immersed in
worlds of their own, oblivious to everything except the cell phones they hold in their other hands.
- Woz
- Nickname of Stephen
Wozniac, a cofounder of Apple Computer. The
``Woz'' is somewhat evocative of ``the Wiz.'' Some important early computers
had names ending in IAC:
ENIAC, various ILLIACs, JOHNNIAC,
and MANIAC, that I can come up with.
Oh wait, that's ``Wozniak'' with a k! Never mind, then.
Gee, seeing as how the connection between this entry and the -IAC machines
is kinda tenuous, we might as well mention some -AC
machines: BINAC and
EDSAC (1949);
EDVAC, an early machine; and UNIVAC, which had some name recognition into the
1960's. There's also a much later CMAC.
Frankly, the ILLIAC's don't really qualify as -IAC machines, since the second I
stands for ``Institute'' instead of ``Integrator,'' or as -AC machines, since
the AC stands for ``Advanced Computation.''
- WOzCDS
- Washington OZaukee County Dental
Society. ``[P]romotes dental health and education in Washington
and Ozaukee Counties (of Wisconsin). WOzCDS is a
nonprofit component society of the Wisconsin and American Dental Associations''
(WDA and ADA). For other
Dental organizations, see the list maintained by Sue
Hutchinson.
- WP
- Warsaw Pact. The post-WWII military grouping
of the USSR and its ``allies'' (smile for the
camera!). Cf. NATO.
- WP
- The Washington Post. Also
``WPost.'' In 1995 they were still piggy-backing
an AT&T site. Then again, until 2007, I hadn't updated this entry. These
days, as Pinch Sulzberger destroys his family's New
York Times (quondam ``paper of record'' of the US), the Washington Post is
becoming the country's leading paper by default.
- WP
- Wheel Pulser.
- WP, wp
- White Pages. In US telephone books, the white pages list numbers
ordered alphabetically by the name of the party reached at the number.
Increasingly, white pages listings have separate residential and business
sections. In New York City, something like a third of residences have
their numbers unlisted.
- WP
- White Paper. A special report, the result of a study. In another
context: A general research proposal, or outlook, without a budget and
not submitted formally through the contracting agency of the author(s).
- WP
- WordPerfect. Novell owned
it during '95, but their site at first seemed
to have only a
little information on WordPerfect. You had to look under ``Network Applications.''
Anyway, they sold it at the end of January 1996. I think Corel sells it
now as part of an office automation suite.
WordPerfect was the word processing program that became dominant on the PC platform while MS Word became dominant on the
Macintosh. Now the platform base is expanded for both, and they're fighting it
out. In the process, version 6 of MSWord was written for the PC, and the Mac
version apparently used a crude translation of the PC code. This made a
significant deterioration in performance, and the code didn't really
have Macintosh look-and-feel, let alone satisfy Macintosh human interface
guidelines. Time to try something new.
- WP
- Word Process{ing | or}.
Name based on similar action of food processor on food.
- WPA
- Wi-Fi Protected Access.
- WPA
- Works Progress Administration.
Perhaps I should write a couple of words about this Depression-era relief
program. The words would be ambitious and unprecedented. If I
could have an adverb I would definitely go for an
intensifier like utterly. Of course, the Great Depression was itself,
for combined duration and depth, unprecedented (and happily unrepeated) in US
history. FDR was no economist, but he had the
reasonable idea that a big problem would require a big solution, and he had a
sense that the urgency of the problem justified testing audacious solutions.
The WPA was a relief measure established on May 6, 1935 by executive order 7034
of Pres. Roosevelt. It was a make-work program, but not so sharply focused on
construction projects as programs created earlier in FDR's administration
(FERA, PWA, and
CWA). It included
- The Federal Writers' Project, which prepared state and regional
guide books, organized archives, indexed newspapers, and conducted
sociological and historical studies.
- The Federal Arts Project, which employed artists to decorate
hundreds of post offices, schools, and other public buildings with
murals, canvases, and sculptures, and which created symphony orchestras
and choirs.
- The Federal Theatre Project, which created some experimental
theatre and scores of touring stock companies.
The WPA was also much larger than the previous large programs. By March, 1936,
it was providing employment for more than 3,400,000 -- about of third of
workers without nonrelief employment. Of course, there was still plenty of
construction work in the mix. Over its eight years of existence, the WPA
built, repaired or improved
- 651,087 miles of highways, roads, and streets,
- 124,031 bridges (including the Golden
Gate Bridge),
- 125,110 public buildings (including the high school's fieldhouse in
my home town),
- 8,192 parks, and
- 853 airport landing fields.
This all cost money. The WPA spent about $11 billion in its eight-year life,
employing at one time or another a total of 8,500,000 different people on
1,410,000 different projects.
It was reorganized in 1939 (see WPA infra).
Once the US got into WWII, military spending became
the big spending program, and war production took up the labor supply that
didn't go into uniform. The WPA went out of existence on December 4, 1943.
- WPA
- Works Projects Administration. Name of the old Works Progress
Administration (WPA, supra) from 1939 on,
when it was reorganized as part of the Federal Works Agency.
- WPA
- The Council of Writing Program Administrators.
Writing Program Administration
- WPA: Writing Program Administration. (The Journal of the
Counsil of Writing Program Administrators.)
- WPA
- Wyoming Press Association.
- WPAFB
- Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. In
Ohio. ``Wright-Pat'' for short.
- WPB
- War Production Board. An institution of the US government created to
control the distribution of strategic materials and empowered to control or
suspend production of consumer goods during WWII.
See also OWM.
- WPB
- West Palm Beach, Florida. ``West Palm.''
- WPC
- Walsworth Publishing
Company.
- WPC
- Water Pollution Control.
- WPC
- Washington Publishing Company.
``[S]pecializes in managing
and distributing Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
information, primarily in the form of documentation for organizations that
develop, maintain, and implement EDI standards.''
- WPC
- WaterProof Chartbook.
- WPC
- An abbreviation never used by the Weeks Publishing Company. Good call!
This
company publishes ``food product design
[don't ask] and food executive magazines.''
- WPC
- Western Publishing
Company, Inc. A printer of playing cards.
- WPC
- Whey Protein Concentrate.
- WPC
- Williamsburg Publishing
Company. Publishes WILDLIFE NEIGHBORS OF THE WILLIAMSBURG AREA
(Jamestown, Williamsburg, Yorktown).
- WPC
- Wimbledon Publishing Company. It may
have been bought out in 2002.
- WPC
- Witter Publishing
Corporation. ``Through magazines,
conferences, trade shows, Internet sites and related products, Witter
Publishing provides the information that professionals in the fluid handling,
critical cleaning, industrial metal cleaning and business continuity markets
need to make business and technology decisions.''
- WPC
- Women's Political Council. A teachers' group. Rosa Parks was arrested on
December 1, 1955,
for refusing the order of a bus driver to move further back in the bus. The
WPC, led by JoAnn Robinson, initiated the idea of a one-day bus boycott.
Within 24 hours, the WPC had distributed more than 52,000 fliers announcing the
bus boycott, which was to take place December 5, the day of Parks's trial. As
the vacant buses made their circuits around Montgomery that day, she was
convicted and fined $14. She would appeal to the circuit court.
Read more about it
in the Encarta Africana article about Rosa Parks, or at the related MIA entry.
- WPC
- World Publishing
Corporation. Core business: fifteen monthly newspapers (shoppers)
distributed free in the East Valley area (the area around Mesa -- east of
Phoenix, Arizona). Had we but world enough and time, this coyness, lady, were
no crime.
- WPC Expo
- Formerly ``World PC
Expo.'' You know what PC means, don't you?
- WPD
- Warm, Pink, Dry (skin).
- .wpd
- WordPerfect Document. A filename
extension.
- Wpg.
- WinniPeG. A girl's given name, formed by contraction of the names Winnie
and Peggy (nicknames for Winifreda and Margaret). Just like pretty, pretty,
pretty, pretty Peggy Sue. At the time that Buddy Holly hiccupped this song to
the top of the charts, Peggy Sue was the girlfriend (and future wife) of
Buddy's buddy and drummer J.I. Allison.
Hmmm. A faithful reader of the glossary has sent in a, uh, comment. I was
right, of course, that Winnipeg is a given name (but the name was given to a
Canadian city).
- WPH
- Wafers Per Hour. Silicon, not communion.
- WPI
- Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
- WPL+
- Word-oriented language internal to PRODOS Applewriter 2.1.
- wpm, WPM
- Words Per Minute. A hundred is a good clip. On the other hand, if you're
using Morse Code that's about impossible, unless all the words are a.
To get a novice ham radio licence in the UK you still
need to demonstrate 5WPM Morse Code capability, 12WPM for more advanced
licences. Morse code requirements for ham licenses in the US ended in the late
seventies or early eighties.
- WPost
- The Washington Post. See the WP entry; I
don't feel like repeating myself.
- WPP
- Web Presence Provider. Web Host -- a company that provides http (and
generally some other) servers; the WPP's bandwidth and local storage (or
rack space) are leased by third parties. There are a lot of WPP's out there.
ISP check uses subscriber responses
to rate the good ones, and also provides information on the others, all searchable. Startplace bases its ratings on test
suites. Hmmm. Just tried to browse Startplace and their server was not
responding. Not a good sign. Microsoft also has a WPP certification program.
- WPPSI
- Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence. Intended for ages
4 to 6. More at WAIS (q.v.). WPPSI-R
is the current Revised version.
- WPS
- Word-Processing Software.
- WPT
- Wireless Power Transmission.
- WPU
- William Patterson University. In
Wayne, New Jersey. In 2005 it celebrated the sesquicentennial of its founding.
(That means its 150th birthday, you moron.)
- WPW
- Wolff-Parkinson-White (syndrome). A heart disorder -- an arrhythmia often
accompanied by only mild symptoms. There's a brief nontechnical
description from The Arrhythmia
Service of St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center. Here's a page of links
from The Waisman Center
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
(UW). There's an
internet Discussion Forum for the Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome.
- W(q)
- Watts of heat. Q or q traditionally represents heat. See
W(e) for discussion.
- WQ
- Wilson Quarterly. You know, you'd never guess it from reading the
articles, but the Wilson quarterly is a government publication, published
by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, housed in the
Smithsonian Institution Building. Maybe they could send a SWAT team to
any of the other departments and see if they can begin to rescue the
English language.
- WQWM
- Water Quality and Waste Management.
- WR
- Water Resource[s].
- WR
- Waveguide, Rectangular. In such designations as ``WR-62.'' Cf.
infelicitously named WC.
- WR
- Wear Resistant.
- WR
- Wide Receiver. An offensive position in American football. A very
offensive position, in fact. The strong acids of team chemistry. Probably a
majority of WR's are underperforming prima donnas. ``Wide'' refers to the fact
that the receiver lines up wide to the left or right of where the ball is
spotted. WR's also called wideouts. It's unconscionably easy to find
metaphorical parallels between their position and their attitude. There are
also some exceptions.
- WRA
- Waste Regulation Authority.
- WRAM
- Window Random-Access Memory (RAM). A dual-ported
video accelerator memory like VRAM, but with very
wide internal buses (256-bit wide, say) for gigabyte-per second speeds. And
priced like DRAM?! Oh, ``near-DRAM prices.''
Not clear whether this will become the name for a next generation of VRAM,
or just stay the name of VRAM from Matrox.
- WRAP
- Warfighting Rapid Acquisition Program.
- WRAT
- Wide Range Achievement Test. ``WRAT-3'' is the third revision.
- WRC
- Welding Research Council.
- WRC
- World Radio Conference. That's a world conference on wireless
communication, not a world conference conducted over the radio. It's
probably sponsored by the ITU.
- WREC
- World Renewable Energy Congress.
...
- WREC2000, July 1 - 7, Brighton, United Kingdom.
- wrinkler
- This is a crucial first element in a bill ``acceptor,'' typically
integrated into the front of the rubber draw mechanism. Its purpose is to
prevent it being too easy to insert a bill, and to ensure that subsequent
attempts will be progressively harder.
- WRISTOMO
- A Wristwatch-style PHS phone that went on sale May 7, 2003. Hello, Dick
Tracy. 37,000 Yen, 113 grams, two hours continuous talk time, 200 hours
continuous stand-by time, 64 kbps/32 kbps data rates (down/up, I
presume), dark gray metallic.
- writer
- Personalsese occupation term meaning `unemployed.'
- writers in the paint industry
- More precisely, writers who have been managers of paint factories, in the
formulation of Philip Roth. Roth raised the topic with Primo Levi in a
conversation they had in Turin in 1986, published later in
Shop Talk. (See pp. 16-17.)
- Italo Svevo (1861-1928)
- Italo Svevo means, loosely, `Swabian Italian.' It was the pseudonym
of Aron Hector Schmitz, who was born in Trieste, and who used the name
Ettore Schmitz, at lest after Trieste became Italian. He is best known
as the author of The Confessions of Zeno (also published under
the title Zeno's Conscience.
The Italian title is Conscienza di Zeno, and coscienza
means both `conscience' and `consciousness,' so what the heck.
Throughout his life, his writing was a hobby. In 1898 Schmitz married
his cousin Livia Veneziani. Her family's company Società
Veneziani, manufactured marine paint; Schmitz joined the firm,
eventually becoming manager of the business after the death of his
father-in-law. The firm, like the family, was based in Trieste, which
changed hands from Austria to Italy at the end of
WWI.
In Shop Talk, p. 17, Primo Levi tells an amusing
tale about this. The marine paint had special antifouling properties
(it prevented shellfish incrustation). It was supplied to the Austrian
Navy (that has an odd ring these days, doesn't it?) before and during
the war, and to the Italian and British navies after. Levi claims that
Schmitz took English lessons to deal with the British Admiralty. The
very interesting thing is that he took these lessons from an
then-unknown Irish writer named James Joyce. They did meet, and become
friends, but in 1907. Joyce was already working on Ulysses, and
he used Schmitz both as a model for the character of Leopold Bloom, and
as a source of information on Judaism. (Schmitz's parents and he were
Jewish, but he converted to his wife's Catholicism at some point after
they were married.) Joyce spent the war years in Zürich,
though he did return to Trieste.
Ettore Schmitz's mother's maiden name was Allegra
Moravia, and that antifouling marine paint, according to Levi, was
called Moravia also (using a surname in the family). Another famous
Italian writer, born in 1907, was Alberto Pincherle. He used the
pseudonym Alberto Moravia; Moravia was his paternal grandmother's
maiden name. According to Levi, it's the same Moravia family.
- Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)
- Another nonchemist who was just in the business as a business.
When he was living in Elyria, Ohio, he managed a mail-order business
and paint manufacturing firms. Roth contrasted his situation with
Levi's: ``Anderson had to leave the paint factory (and his family) to
become a writer; you [Primo Levi] seem to have become the writer you
are by staying and pursuing your career there.''
- Primo Levi (1919-1987)
- He's pretty famous, and you can learn a lot about his experiences
as a chemist in some of his books [e.g., The Periodic
Table (1975)], so I'm not going to write much. After
surviving at Auschwitz, he returned to Turin and lived the rest of his
life in the house where he had been born. From 1948 he worked for the
Accatti family's paint business SIVA (as principal chemist from 1950).
This company, according to Levi (in Shop Talk) ``specialized in
the production of wire enamels, insulating coatings for copper
electrical conductors.''
In the course of giving his view of The Monkey's Wrench, Roth
describes Levi in passing as a scientist. As part of his reply (p.
10), Levi remarks the following:
By the way, I am not a scientist, nor have I ever been. I did want to
become one, but war and the camp prevented me. I had to limit myself
to being a technician throughout my professional life.
- WRL
- War Resisters League.
My high school electronics shop teacher, Mr. Coulter, was in the Signal
Corps in 'Nam (.vn). He always said
Ten percent is good enough for government work.
Oh, that was resistors. Sorry.
- WRNS
- Women's Royal Naval Service. WWII organization
that served as a kind of ``Ladies' Auxiliary'' in the British Navy before women
were allowed to join on a more equal basis. Informally, WRNS was pronounced
and spelled with an ee: ``Wrens'' and an individual member was called a Wren.
The US equivalent was WAVES.
- WRO
- WROclaw Airport,
IATA airport code. (In
Polish,
the name of the operating company is Port Lotniczy Wroclaw SA.)
- WROS
- With Right Of Survivorship.
- WRT, wrt, w.r.t.
- with respect to.
- WRU
- Wide Receiver (WR) University. Officially known
as the University of Tennessee.
- WRULD
- Work-Related Upper Limb Disorder. Think RSI.
- WRX
- World Rally Cross Country. Used by Subaru as a model name.
- WS
- Wannier-Stark.
- WS
- Watt-Second. In other words, a joule/second × second, or. lessee,
a joule! The abbreviation is apparently used in medicine. Kinda
reminds me of nonadiabatic.
- WS
- Weak Safety. Not an offensive epithet, but a defensive position, in
American football.
- WS
- Wiener Studien. Studies of small hot dogs? Not quite. `Vienna
Studies,' a classics journal (Austrian, of course)
catalogued in TOCS-IN.
- WS
- Wigner-Seitz. The Wigner-Seitz cell is the set of points in quasimomentum
space that are closer to the origin than they are to any other point in the
reciprocal lattice. In other words, this is a unit cell in the reciprocal
lattice constructed as a Voronoi cell. This is a common way to choose the
first Brillouin zone (BZ).
- WS
- German, Wintersemester.
- WS
- Women's Studies.
- WS
- WorkStation.
- WS
- World Series. A series of baseball games played each Autumn between the
season's champions of the American and National Leagues (i.e., between
the winners of the ALCS and the NLCS).
The World Almanac was originally published by the company that published the
New York World. In the time before television,
New York City had as many as fifteen newspapers. The World is one
of the ones it doesn't have any more. In many important respects, the modern
game of baseball originated in New York, but the ``World'' in the series name
does not refer to the New York World or any other newspaper.
The American game of baseball evolved from the English game of rounders,
introduced to the British colonies some time before 1744. Rounders was also
called round ball, goal ball, post ball, town ball, and base ball, and the
rules were about as standard as the name. It was something vaguely like tag or
war ball played on a cricket pitch, or like stick ball. With one, two, or
three bases besides home, it was called one old cat, two old cat, or three old
cat.
The American game became standardized in something approximating its present
form after 1845, when Alexander J. Cartwright, a member of the New York
Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, drew up rules that were soon widely adopted.
Until the
Civil War, the game was popular primarily in the New York and Boston areas, but
it spread behind Union lines and the veterans brought it back home across the
country. The original postseason series, between the pennant winners of the
National League and the American Association, was played in 1882 and annually
from 1884 to 1891. The first ``World Series'' to carry that name was a
postseason series played in 1903 (Boston over Pittsburgh, five games to three).
No WS was played in 1904, but
in 1905 the National Commission established it as an annual event. Also
established in 1905 were
the ``Brush rules,'' which included some traditions that continue today: that
the WS is a best-of-seven series, and that 60% of receipts for the first four
games are paid directly to the players. (No you don't make out a check
directly to a player. If you did the endorsed canceled check might be worth
more than the price of admission.) Since 1905, the series has been canceled
only in 1994 (due to an owner lock-out in response to a player strike).
The game was introduced and grew quickly in popularity in Japan and Cuba before the end of the nineteenth
century, so by the time the WS was inaugurated, baseball was not just a US
sport. Still today, only US major-league teams are eligible to compete in the
World Series. However, the series is played in the world.
For
1919, in a move that may be interpreted as motivated principally by greed
for gate receipts or by a desire to satisfy heightened post-war demand, the World Series returned to the
best-of-nine format used in 1903. That was the year of the famous ``Black
Sox'' -- eight of the Chicago White Sox players conspired to throw a series
that, until word of the fix leaked out, they had been heavily favored to win.
Toward the end of the 1920 season some of the conspirators confessed. In 1921,
with the records of all three confessions stolen from the prosecutor's office,
they were acquitted of conspiracy in criminal court, but all eight players were
subsequently banned from professional baseball for life.
In 1922, the series returned to best-of-seven.
The Sporting News (TSN) archives have brief
summaries of all
past World Series since 1903.
We have other 1919-related entries. It was a big
year for scams; cf. IRC.
- WSA
- Weapons Storage Area.
- WSA
- Westfield Soccer
Association of Westfield, NJ. Westfield was
always a big football town. Don't get me wrong -- it probably still is -- but
like a lot of towns where parents selfishly put the health of their kids before
the pride of the town, more children have been playing that foreign game. The
joke's on them: heading the ball has been clinically proven to cause brain
damage. Ha-ha! It's slightly worse for young kids, since their skulls are
still a bit soft, but basically the concussion's the thing. Oh well, at least
they won't suffer a career-threatening rotator-cuff injury.
- WSBI
- World Savings Bank Institute.
- WSBN
- Web Sports Broadcast Network. They
won't be worrying ESPN any time soon. They're decidedly a network (four
servers) for broadcasting web sports -- what are normally called
games and not sports. Cf. PBA.
- WSBT
- Could be the AM radio station or the the television station now. One-time WSBT-FM has
been WNSN since 1984.
- WSBT-AM
- A typical news-talk radio station. A particular one serving the
South Bend area. You know -- Dr. Laura, the usual trash. A CBS affiliate since 1932. Owned by Schurz
Communications, Inc. (SCI).
WSBT began broadcasting as WGAZ in 1922 and became WSBT in 1925. In the radio
station's early days, South Bend was not quite the backwater it is today, and
the station racked up one
or two firsts or near-firsts.
- WSBT-TV
- Channel 22, serving the South Bend area.
There are no VHF TV stations serving South Bend. WSBT-TV is a
CBS affiliate just like WSBT-AM, and also owned by
Schurz Communications, Inc. (SCI).
- WSC
- Winston Spencer Churchill. What to say, what to say? I'm at a loss for
words, relatively speaking.
- WSC
- World Scrabble®
Championships. Held in odd-numbered years, starting in 1991. It may be
that there's such a thing as home-field advantage in Scrabble. The year the
WSC was held in Malaysia (in Kuala Lumpur), it was won by Panupol Sujjayakorn
of neighboring Thailand. Of the eight WSC's up to 2005, the US and Canada have
won three championships each. Also, eight of the champions have been men
(including the 1995 champion, David Boys). The Joels have won back-to-back
championships (J. Sherman in 1997 and J. Wapnick in 1999).
- WSEAS
- World Scientific and Engineering Academy and
Society. Covering all bases, or is the acronym some kind inside joke in
Greek slang? ``Unifying the Science.''
- WSECS
- Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. One of those organizations
that doesn't have a homepage, just a few pages each for some of its more recent
annual meetings (usually in February).
- was at Northern Arizona University (no conference
link)
- was at California State University San Bernardino (no conference
link)
- at
the University of Nevada, Las Vegas
- at Arizona State
University
- at
Chapman University in California
They seem to have petered out.
- WSET
- (UK) Wines and Spirits Educational Trust.
There -- a single acronym for every kind of fun: wine, women, and science...
- WSET
- Women in Science,
Engineering and Technology. It's an entry under
the LC number Q130 in the CyberStacks.
- WSFA
- Washington Science Fiction Association.
(For the greater Washington, D.C., area.)
- WSFA
- Welsh Science Fiction Association.
- WSFI
- Wood & Synthetic Flooring Institute
- WSFN
- Which Stands For Nothing. A concept acronym. Also the name of
a beginner's language for Atari computers.
- WSFS
- World Science Fiction Society.
Membership in the World Science Fiction Society is defined as the membership in
the upcoming Worldcon, so joining that Worldcon
is the only way to join WSFS.
- WSI
- Wafer-Scale Integration (chip consisting of whole wafer; vide
integration).
- WSJ
- Wall Street Journal. The dominant
national business daily in the US. Published by Dow Jones and Company.
- WSL
- Waterloo Systems Language.
- WSM
- Wafer Starts per Month. Typical fabs in the eighties did 10K WSM, at
the end of the nineties, the standard is approaching 30-40K WSM.
- WSMR
- White Sands Missile Range. A
tri-service facility operated by the US Army, occupying an approximate
rectangle in South Central New Mexico, 40 miles wide (E-W) by 100 miles long
(N-S). The southernmost point is about 15 miles north of the NM-TX border.
- WSN
- Wireless Sensor Network.
- WSO
- Weapon[s] System[s] Officer. Term used by various air forces (including US
and Singapore), meaning gunner. All four forms (with and without either final
ess) are widely used. If there's an official convention for the US, it's hard
to be certain what it is.
- WSOP
- World Series Of Poker.
Look, who cares about that? Here's a
site called <poker-babes.com>.
- WSPA
- Western States Petroleum Association.
``... represents the full spectrum of those companies which account for most
of the exploration, production, refining, transportation and marketing of
petroleum and petroleum products in six Western states (California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and
Hawaii).
Founded in 1906...'' when neither Arizona nor Hawai'i had attained statehood.
- WSPA
- World Society for the Protection of
Animals.
- WSPECW
- Western (US) Society of Physical Education for College Women.
- WSQ
- Wavelet/Scalar Quantization.
Used for fingerprint image compression under development by FBI.
- WSR
- Weather Surveillance Radar. ``WSR-88D'' is NEXRAD.
- WSS
- War of the Spanish Succession.
- WSS
- Wide Screen Signaling (line). In the future, scan line 23 of all
625-line TV broadcasts in Europe will contain data identifying the signal
format (PAL, PAL+, SECAM, etc.). PAL+ will also use this WSS line to
indicate whether film or camera mode (successive frames of related or
unrelated pictures, respectively) is in use. Cf.
GCR.
- WSSU
- Winston-Salem State University.
- WSW
- West SouthWest. Vide
compass directions.
- WSWB
- See MSF.
- WSWG
- Water Sector Working Group. Yeah, you're not the only one whom it reminds
of WYSIWYG.
- WSWS
- World Socialist Web Site. Published by
the ICFI. Opinions about labor and the US, sometimes
both.
- WT
- Waiver Tourist. A travel status in the US equivalent to a B-2 visa. Nationals of certain countries can
visit the US for up to ninety (90) days under the conditions that hold for
the B-2 visa, but instead of applying for a B-2 visa from a US consulate
before traveling, they just get an I-94 card with the notation ``WT.''
Just like the WB status, which see for the list of
participating countries.
- WT
- Waste Treatment.
- WT
- WaveTable.
- wt.
- WeighT.
- WT
- Wireless { Telecom[munications] | Transmi{tter|ssion} }
- WT, W/T
- Wireless Telegraph[y]. Usually refers to radiotelegraphy, an old
technology sort of like texting, except that you
typed in all the letters using just one key.
- WTA
- Winner-Take-All.
- W.T.A.
- World Twirling Association.
According to this
history,
In 1960, Victor Faber founded the World Twirling Association. He left his mark
on the sport of baton twirling by founding TWO twirling organizations
[I guess the other one must've been the IERS]
and for being the only person in his field to lead a twirling organization who
had been a championship baton twirler.
- WTAM
- West Texas A&M University.
- WTB
- Want[ed] To Buy. Actually, I prefer[red] to have it free.
- WTB
- Wireless Telecommunications
Bureau of the FCC.
- WTC
- The Wellcome Trust Centre for the
History of Medicine at UCL.
- WTC
- Wilson (truck) Trailer Company.
- WTC
- World Trade Center. Built over a period of many years in the 1970's, so we
all (in the metropolitan area) had a chance to watch it go up. A
seven-building complex owned by the Port Authority,
dominated by twin towers 110 floors tall, it was destroyed in terrorist attacks
on September 11, 2001. We all had a chance to watch it come down on TV.
- WTEC
- World Technology
Evaluation Center and ``companion'' Japanese
Technology Evaluation Center (JTEC) ``at Loyola College provide assessments of
foreign research and development in selected technologies under a cooperative
agreement with the National Science Foundation (NSF).
- WTF
- What The?!?! Cf. WTH,
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
- WTF
- Women's Tennis Federation.
- WTFDYTYA
- Who Do You Think You Are?
- WTFH2TWMD
- What Happened TO The
Weapons of Mass Destruction?
- WTGL
- Wave-pipelined
Transmission-Gate Logic.
- WTH
- {What|Who|Why} The Hell? Interrogative pronouns in decreasing order of
likelihood. Not `What The Hades?' Hades is a
person, albeit a Greek god. He has a
two-tined pitchfork, or something. Some dictionaries have surrendered the
field to ignorance, but we uphold a few standards here. (To be needlessly
honest, even some ancient texts use Hades as a metonym for his realm.)
- WTL
- Writing To Learn. English teachers' and college administrators'
interference in the learning process. The attitude motivating this may be best
illustrated in Roots in the Sawdust: Writing to Learn across the
Disciplines, ed. Anne Ruggles Gere (NCTE,
1993). Syrene Forsman's contribution had the title ``Writing to Learn Means
Learning to Think.'' WTL is associated with WAC.
- WTM
- Wright Technology Network. An Ohio
nonprofit dedicated to technology transfer (T2) from the Air Force
Research Laboratory (AFRL) (at WPAFB) to industry in Ohio. See also ODOD.
- WTO
- World Toilet Organization. A
nonprofit based in Singapore. ``Improving Toilets and Sanitation Globally.''
Jack Sim, president of the WTO, was quoted in a July 31, 2007, Time
magazine article by Ceri Au (``Fighting for the Right to Flush''):
Ladies prefer to keep silent while they queue up all their lives at public
toilets, missing the show after [intermission], doing kung-fu stances to pee
because the seat cover is too filthy. We don't talk about [public restrooms].
And what we don't discuss, we can't improve.
(It's not my mess; I didn't do it. The square-bracketed bits are in the
original article.)
Jack Sim established the Restroom Association of Singapore (RAS) in 1998 and
discovered that there were other toilet associations in existence around the
world, but that there was ``no channel [good word!] to facilitate
information-sharing and gathering of resources.'' (Okay, the last
square-bracket thing is my fault. I'm quoting here from a
WTO page on the Founder.) So he founded the WTO in 2001. ``Today, WTO
comprises of [aaagh!] 54 members in 41 countries.'' By now (August 4, 2007) it
may be up to 42 countries (Time).
The memberships are piling up! The American Restroom Association (ARA)
represents the US in WTO.
The homepage also bears the UN logo. It's not clear that WTO has
UN recognition, and one reason may be that the UN has
(or had) two other WTO's (explained here). My
view, however, is that the WTO nameturf war is the UN's greatest success in
defusing a conflict so far this century, and they should build on it. Later,
as a further confidence-building measure, they can send some blue helmets to
keep Liechtenstein and Andorra from
going to war. (That's not a synecdoche.
I mean just send the helmets. That's enough, and almost all the UN can handle
logistically.)
``Message
of Logo: `LOVE OUR TOILET'
The logo of the WTO is the image of a toilet seat-cover viewed from an angle as
how most people would see it. The ring in the middle of the toilet seat-cover
signifies a connected circle of members. Blue was chosen as the colour of the
toilet seat-cover as a symbolization of water and how WTO is also
closely-related to water issues.'' It's deformed slightly at the top so the
outer outline resembles the ``heart shape.'' On some pages it's compressed
vertically so it looks like parted metallic-blue lips.
Visit the entire website, hopping from one virtual foot to the other if
necessary. It's a gas! Observations on the homepage menu bar links: ``Useful
Links'' is unnecessarily graphic. ``Toilet Entertainment'' is all clean.
About Us > Our Team shows pretty much everyone smiling except Philip, who is
the lead trainer in World Toilet College.
- WTO
- World Tourism Organization.
Created long before the World Trade Organization,
which -- as the Economist put it -- ``pinched its
initials.'' Adding insult to injury, in 2005 the
General Assembly of the
UN approved changing the World Tourism Organization's
initialism to UNWTO (with a parallel 5-letter
acronym in Russian, which had a parallel namespace problem). The change went
into effect on December 1 of that year. In
French and Spanish
the initialism remains OMT. What all the
initialisms have in common is that they are unpronounceable as acronyms. This
seems to be part of a broader pattern (see at least
VVV). You should check out
yet another WTO (not known as YAWTO,
though it's the most recent). Maybe they can tell you where you can go when
you go there. We also have a Tourism entry.
- WTO
- World Trade Organization.
You will be assimilated.
Resistance is futile. In fact,
it's so futile it's downright amusing.
For amusement, visit the Responsible
Trade Campaign Home Page of the
Sierra Club, the Mobilization Against
Corporate Globalization, the
Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, United for
a Fair Economy (UFE), or Global
Exchange (GX).
What, back already? Okay, here's something: the WTO was created by the Uruguay Round to succeed GATT (q.v.) on January 1, 1995. The WTO expanded
GATT's rules to apply to trade in services and IPR, and includes a tribunal to misadjudicate trade
disputes.
- WToO
- World TOurism Organization. Once used instead of the usual
WTO when necessary to distinguish it from the
World Trade Organization (the other WTO).
Rare or rarefying since the UN decided to assign
the initialism UNWTO to the tourism organization.
- WTR
- Western Test Range. NASA acronym.
- WTrO
- World TRade Organization. Once used instead of the usual
WTO when necessary to distinguish from the World
Tourism Organization (the other, senior
WTO from which the initials were shamelessly filched). Since 2005, WTrO
has become increasingly unnecessary; see why at this
WTO entry.
- WTT
- William
Tindale (or Tyndale) Translation (of the bible). He completed a
translation of the Greek New Testament in 1526, and
copies of this began to be burned as soon as they appeared in England. He then
began translating the Hebrew Old Testament, but
only managed to translate the Pentateuch (the ``Five Books of Moses'') and
Jonah before he himself was burned at the stake in 1536.
http://www.catholicapologetics.net/kill.htm
Eventually, his translation formed the
basis of the only English translation of the bible authorized to be published
in Great Britain and its dominions (KJV).
The Tindale translation is not to be confused with the translation of Reverend
Dimmesdale, which also was not completed. Indeed, it wasn't even begun, so far
as is known, but Hester Prynne apparently red a letter or two in it, with an
alternate recension of the commandment concerning whether adultery should be
committed.
- WTU
- WaveTable Upgradeable.
- WU
- Washburn University. In
Topeka, Kansas. It would be so cool if they gave doctorates in thinkology.
- WU
- Winthrop University. In Rock Hill,
South Carolina.
- WUC
- Writer's Union of Canada? Oh, you want
TWUC.
- WUI
- Web User Interface.
- Wunder
- German noun meaning `wonder' or `miracle.' Cognate with English,
wonder, just as Wunderbar is cognate with `wonderful.'
- WUPJ
- World Union for Progressive Judaism.
Established in London in 1926.
According to the Overview page, it
is the largest body of religious Jews in the world. Its
basic aims are, first, to create common ground between its constituents and,
second, to promote Progressive Judaism in places where individuals and groups
are seeking authentic, yet modern ways of expressing themselves as Jews.
The World Union for Progressive Judaism serves congregations and communities in
nearly 40 countries, encompassing more than 1,200 Reform, Progressive, Liberal
and Reconstructionist congregations and more than 1.5 million members
throughout the world. Its international headquarters is in Jerusalem, with
regional offices in London and Moscow and New York.
Progressive Judaism is rooted in the Bible, especially the teachings of the
Hebrew Prophets. It's founded on authentic manifestations of Jewish creativity,
ancient and modern, particularly those that stress inwardness and desire to
learn what God expects from us; justice and equality, democracy and peace,
personal fulfillment and collective obligations.
The practices of Progressive Judaism are anchored in Jewish thought and
tradition. They seek to extend the range of observance - e.g., by granting full
equality to all Jews, irrespective of gender and sexual orientation - while
challenging laws that are contrary to Judaism's fundamental principles.
Of the twelve million Jews in the world today, nearly one-third live in
countries where Jewish life is weak and where there are few opportunities for
meaningful Jewish practice. It is the World Union's goal to ensure that all
Jews have access to the vibrant Jewish life that can best inspire them
spiritually and bring their communities together practically. We are committed
to this sacred task.
The word authentic appears twice. Whether it's protesting too much a
revealing insecurity, or asserting what is confidently believed, it points to a
real issue of authority or legitimacy.
- WURST
- Wideband, Uniform Rate, and Smooth Truncation.
(NMRtian.)
- WUSTL
- Washington University in St. Louis.
The abbreviation used to be well-known because of the
popular ftp site they used to serve.
- WUSA
- West University Softball Association.
A collection of girls' little league teams. West University is a Houston
neighborhood just west of Rice University. My great aunt Mona used to live
there. The 10 and under team is called ``The Blazers,'' 12 and under ``The
Waves,'' 14 and under ``The Flash,'' 16 and under ``The Crush.''
I think this is the first softball entry, so here's where I'm going to mention
it: according to international softball rules, in all innings after the ninth,
each team starts with a runner on second. (There are seven regular innings
of play.)
- wuzzy
- Was he?
- WV
- West Virginia. USPS abbreviation.
The Villanova Center for Information Law and
Policy serves a page of West Virginia state
government links. USACityLink.com
has a page with a few municipal
links for the state.
- WVO
- Waste Vegetable Oil. See SVO.
- WVR
- Within Visual Range.
- WVTR
- Water-Vapor Transmission Rate.
- WVU
- West Virginia University.
``Where Greatness is Learned.''
They're obviously not going for the small potatoes at WVU.
- WW
- Wide Well. Vide coupled quantum well.
- WW
- WidoWed. A personals-ad abbreviation. Usage example: ``WWWPF'' means
``widowed white professional female'' or possibly ``white widowed professional
female.'' See W for a nonusage example.
Personalsly, I'm bothered by the ``professional female'' thing. It's like
pornography advertisements for ``amateur girls.'' What, they didn't get enough
practice? Their girlhood apprenticeship was too brief?
In early March 2006, Classics-L (``Classical Greek and Latin Discussion
Group'') had a discussion under the subject head ``vomiting courtesans,''
prompted by an image of Würzburg L 479 at the blog Laudator
Temporis Acti. One posting included the following:
> ... Your subject line looked at first glance like more porn spam. (Yes,
> Virginia, there are newsgroups and websites for those who like to watch women
> vomit. TMI, but if I have to know this, so should the rest of you.)
Actually, it was clear from the original posting that what was meant was
something like ``vomiting onto the feet of ancient Greek courtesans.'' The
author had meant to write ``vomiting komast'' (the one interpreted as vomiting
on the girl).
Yeah, you needed to know all that, else you wouldn't have read it. There's an
old joke that still makes some sense even with Caller ID. The punch line is
this: ``Well if this is the wrong number, then why did you pick up the phone?''
- WW
- World War. Choose WWI, WWII, WWIII, or WWIV. (Also written with Arabic numerals, and
with space or hyphen after WW).
- WWA
- Western Writers of America,
Inc. ``Literature of the West for the World.''
- WWACD?
- What Would Ann Coulter Do? Ann Coulter is a right-wing, um, there's a word
for this, and she writes books. In 2006,
Cafe Press is
offering a variety of gear (coffee cups, bumper stickers, tee shirts) with
WWACD? logos. Cf. WWJD?
Commentator? Provocateur? Firebrand? Wacko? Planter's variety-pack?
One of the events at the first YearlyKos (see Kos)
was a workshop called ``Pundit Project Training,'' run by the
Center for American Progress. According to a
handout distributed there, when you appear on television you mustn't wear
pyjamas (I think they only imply that). Men are advised to wear blue shirts,
and to accept make-up if it's offered. [As many talking heads -- white ones,
anyway -- have noticed, you can look sickly pale without it.] Women are
advised, ``don't dress like Ann Coulter. Cover up for God's sake, preferably
with a neutral-colored jacket and a bright shirt.'' (See the Matt Labash
report from YearlyKos: ``Riding
with the Kossacks,'' in the June 26 Weekly Standard.)
- WWAR
- WorldWide Art Resources
- wwb
- Writer's WorkBench. Unix software.
- WWBBD?
- What Would Brian Boitano Do? The touchstone of all philosophical analysis posed
by the boys of South Park when considering a moral dilemma.
It parodies WWJD?
- WWBD?
- What Would Betty
(Bowers) Do? If you
read her advice here, then perhaps you will be saved, but probably not.
As the Good Book says, many are called, but few pick up because caller-ID just
says ``out of area'' when the call is from, you know, up there.
Cf.
WWJD?, WWBBD?
- WWC
- Walla Walla College.
``Walla Walla College
is situated in the Walla Walla Valley in Southeast Washington State.''
In Spanish, the letter w is called doble
ve (`double vee'). While we're on the subject, and since there are so many
above, I'll mention that the double el (``ll'') in Spanish originally
represented a palatalized el (like ``gl'' in Italian), but it lost the el and
now sounds like an English consonantal y in most of Spain and Latin America, zh
(French j) in Argentina, Uruguay, and thereabouts, and English j in various
others. (Puerto Rican ``ll'' sounds like j softened a little towards zh, to my
ear, but it's a while since I heard it.)
The ll sound originally developed from pl and cl consonant clusters.
The letter y arose in different contexts than ll, but today it's a pretty
reliable rule that consonantal y and ll are pronounced identically, however
they are pronounced (i.e., as zh in Argentina, etc.).
Vocalic y, pronounced like Spanish i, is largely obsolete in Spanish. It
occurs in a number of surname variants (e.g., Yglesias for
Iglesias). Greek loan words with y in English use i in Spanish (also,
ph and th appear as f and t).
Gee, Walla Walla must be a pretty interesting place!
- WWC
- Women's World Cup. Quadrennial soccer competition. Inaugural WWC in 1991
was won by the US. Norway won in 1995 and USA won in 1999.
When I say ``USA won,'' naturally I mean that the entire country was out on the
field. Each American woman was on the field, usually for about 0.4
milliseconds. It was a traffic jam, but the team stayed fresh. It's because
of this kind of participation that all American women can take pride in
our victory.
- WWC
- World Water Council.
- WWCC
- Western Wyoming Community College.
``Western'' for short.
- WWE
- World Wrestling Entertainment. `World championship wrestling': very
strenuous acting. If you had a stunt double, you'd never get on. Previously
called the WWF (q.v.), but it had to change
its name.
- WWED
- What Would Escher Do? The initialism appears on the outer side of a wrist
band in the form of a Møbius strip, which in turn
appears with the expansion on an
XKCD comic.
- WWF
- World Wildlife Fund. That was its earlier worldwide designation, and
continues to be its name in the US. Outside the US, it has been the ``WWF -- World Wide Fund for Nature'' since 1989.
Brief
description here from WCMC.
Gee, it seems I neglected to mention that WWF press releases bear as close a
connection to reality as the next WWF bears to authentic wrestling.
- WWF
- World Wrestling Federation.
Mr. Jesse Ventura, governor of the state of Minnesota (MN) from 1999, and the first head of the US Reform Party
not to be named Ross Perot, performed in the WWF as Jesse ``The Body'' Ventura
before going on to host a radio call-in show and do a stint as a mayor (in a
city where mayor is essentially just one vote in the town council). Mr.
Ventura is, contrary to the stereotypical assumption outside his state, a man
of rather liberal tendencies. He was the only one of the three major
candidates in the 1998 election who came out strongly in favor of abortion and
gay marriage, and since the election he has had a cooperative relationship with
the Democrat-Farm-Labor legislators in his state legislature, but not with the
Republicans. (THE DFL coalition is a Minnesota peculiarity, a legacy from
Fritz Mondale, Hubert H. Humphrey, and before.)
I don't know Ventura's position on conservation, but I suspect he's among a
tiny minority of either WWF-ers who would feel at home at the other WWF.
Everybody calls the governor ``Jesse'' outside his presence, but he prefers to
be called ``Mr. Ventura.'' He's constantly suspicious that, because of his
occupational background, people don't take him seriously. He wants people to
be aware that he spent more years doing radio talk than he spent in the WWF.
(Oh, well that's different. You've got to respect a radio talk-show
host.) If he felt strongly enough about this perceived lack of
seriousness, he could do something about it by curtailing his own bantering
violent threats and guest appearances as a color commentator for the XFL. Minnesotans still go around pinching themselves
and saying ``We did it, didn't we? We elected a clown! Man, we've got guts.''
And sore, over-pinched behinds.
Ronald Reagan was also an actor, and he did creative sports announcing as well
(reading off a description with feeling and pretending to be live radio; a
widespread practice at the time and also more recently when the 2000 Olympics
in Sydney were tape-delay broadcast to the US). RWR held a minor executive
position as well (head of the Screen Actors' Guild -- SAG) before becoming governor, and then moving on to the
presidency. Some people think that acting skills -- in particular, the ability
to bluster and bluff -- are not the most important skills needed by a US
president.
Lately (2001) Jesse's been trying to slash the Minnesota higher education
budget. Is this a move with direct election implications?
Enough of this political hogwash! LET'S SHOUT ABOUT WRESTLING!
In a dramatic multiround sequence of courtroom smack-downs, the World Wildlife Fund -- a wimpy charity! --
humiliated World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. In a 2001 split
decision,
the wrestling federation had torn away from it the legal right to use the logo
it had adopted in 1998, and the circumstances under which it could deploy the
letters WWF were backed into certain specified cases, only within the US. The
federation made a desperate stand at London's Court of Appeal, but was denied
in February 2002. On Monday, May 6, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company
threw in the towel, tossed in the sponge, cried uncle, and changed its name to
the appropriately effete ``World Wrestling Entertainment'' (WWE).
- WWF International
- No matter how you expand WWF, this is an organization with both World and International
in its name. That's some kind of distinction.
- wwftd
- Worthless Word For The Day.
- WWGD
- World Winter Games for the Deaf.
- WWI
- World War One. Originally called ``The World War.'' Also known as
``The Great War.''
For information on earlier wars, try the
De Re Militari website.
- WWID?
- What Would I Do? Gee, I don't know-- I haven't done it yet. But thanks
for asking. I'm getting a lot of advice:
- WWACD? (Ann Coulter)
- WWBBD? (Brian Boitano)
- WWBD? (Betty [Bowers, not Rubble])
- WWED (Escher)
- WWID (contrived)
- WWJD (Jesus)
- WWJMD (Jim Morrison)
- WWMAD? (Mary Ann)
- WWSD? (Satan)
Here are some more variant variants:
- WWIT? (What Was I Thinking?)
- WWJD (What Would Jesus Drink?)
- WWJD (What Would Jesus Drive?)
- WWSD? (What Would Scoobie Doo?)
- WWI
- World Watch Institute. Yeah, they
spell it out Worldwatch Institute and they use the ``WI,'' but
their magazine is called World Watch, and
their service Worldwatch News, so spelled, is abbreviated
WWNews. Therefore, I
think they should use ``WWI'' to avoid confusion.
- WWII
- World War Two. Also known as ``The Good War.'' Also known in the
old Soviet Union as the ``Great Patriotic War.'' This glossary entry could
be expanded considerably.
The moderated usenet newsgroup soc.history.war.world-war-ii has
FAQ material in hypertext format.
- WWIII
- World War Three. Also known as ``The End of the World.''
In The Mathematical Experience (Boston: Birkhäuser, 1981),
Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh wrote
One began to hear it said that World War I was the chemists' war, World
War II was the physicists' war, World War III (may it never come) will
be the mathematicians' war.
Ignazio Silone said (in the fifties, I think), that
The next war will be between the Communists and the ex-Communists.
``The New York Intellectuals'' was a loosely-defined group of public
intellectuals of the 1940's and 50's, associated more or less with Partisan
Review. The typical New York Intellectual was a disillusioned
ex-Communist. (I have to capitalize these words. They're name brands.)
See, however, the WWIV entry for a more recent
alternative take on WWIII.
- WWIT?
- What Was I Thinking?
- WWIV
- ``I know not with what weapons World War III
will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.'' --
attributed to Albert Einstein.
It's now become popular to regard the Cold War as
WWIII, and to call the war against terror WWIV.
Norman Podhoretz, in the pages of
Commentary, has been one of the main
popularizers. For an alternate take on this, see Marshall McLuhan's comment
quoted at the JDAM entry.
- WWJ
- Wireless Watch Japan.
- WWJD
- What Would Jesus Do? A brand of heavy-duty self-adhesive paper patches
used to repair rusty bumpers and van doors. Like Harley-Davidson, a brand
whose popularity has been used to market clothing and accessories
(tawdry trinkets).
The main difference is that WWJD, reflecting its original product, is rather
downmarket compared to Harley, which nowadays is a rich man's bike.
This is known as market segmentation.
In Carlyle at his Zenith, D. A. Wilson quotes him as saying
If Jesus Christ were to come to-day, people would not even crucify him. They
would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.
The legendary animal trainer Frank Inn, son of a Quaker preacher, was a devout
Christian. In addition to training Benjie (preincarnated as Higgins, the dog
on the TV series ``Petticoat Junction''), Arnold Ziffel (the ``Green Acres''
pig), and hundreds of other TV and movie animals, he also donated dogs to the
handicapped and wrote poetry. Some of his poems pondered whether Jesus had a
dog.
I heard the trope ``what would <admirable personage> do'' long before I
ever encountered WWJD or its expansion. So when I first heard WWJD, it sounded
vaguely sacrilegious -- as if suggesting that He would face all the same
constraints and limitations of a mortal. Einstein once commented that the good
Lord does not suffer from our integration difficulties -- He integrates
empirically (i.e., a physical system is tantamount to an analog-computer
simulation of the differential equations describing it). Well, there are
different interpretations, but for many the popularity of WWJD has turned the
old trope from a general question into an implicit reference to WWJD (hence
joke versions like WWBBD?,
WWBD?, the genius stroke
WWMAD?, ktl.).
[There's an up-to-date list at WWID.] Then again,
not everyone is so affected. James Q. Wilson wrote in The Moral Sense
(Free Press, 1993), possibly without intending this particular irony (pp. 5-6):
Everywhere we look, we see ordinary men and women going about their daily
affairs, happily or unhappily as their circumstances allow, making and acting
on moral judgments without pausing to wonder what Marx or Freud or
Rorty would say about those judgments.
- WWJD
- What Would Jesus Drink? Overheard at Nick's. (Reconstituted wine.)
(Actually, I overheard this at Nick's Patio, but I wanted you to think of
Nick's bar, the doppel of Martini's in IAWL.)
- WWJD
- What Would Jesus Drive? Yet another automobile-related acronym. A
campaign by the Evangelical Environmental Network.
- WWJMD
- What Would Jim Morrison Do? Get stoned. Soooo biblical!
- WWMAD?
- What Would Mary Ann Do? I guess that would be Mary Ann of Gilligan's Island renown.
Cf. WWJD?
- WWMCCS
- WorldWide Military Command and Control System. Of the US, of course. Who
else?
- WWN
- Weekly World News. Also
WWNews. A funny paper available at your supermarket check-out. What keeps it
interesting is that some of the stories are true.
- WWNews
- WorldWatch NEWS.
Propaganda from the depressing people at World Watch
Institute. Some of the stories are true. Cf.WWN.
- WWPA
- Western Wood Products Association.
- WWPC
- WorldWide Publishing Consortium. I'm not entirely clear on what it was
supposed to do (``provide an independent international forum for the
publishing, graphic arts, communications and multimedia industries to
facilitate the exchange of information and advancement of education''), but
apparently it didn't.
- WWS
- Wine, Women, and Song. That's the canonical order, anyway, but you can
expand it however you like.
- WWSD?
- What Would Satan Do? A question pondered by a man in a big office, in a
New Yorker cartoon by P. Byrnes (p. 98, issue of Feb. 18 & 25, 2002).
- WWSD?
- What Would Scoobie Doo? That question no verb, but clearly: get scared and
run away.
- WWTF
- WasteWater Treatment Facility.
- WWTP
- WasteWater Treatment Plant. In a less fastidious time, waste water was
known as sewage. In Rome, the central sewer was called the cloaca
maxima. In chickens, the vessel through which both eggs and chicken
shit pass out of the body is called the cloaca.
- WWU
- Western Washington University.
I haven't heard ``quintuple-yoo.'' The URL is something of an inertial
tongue-twister -- once you get started you have to remember to get off.
- WWV
- Call letters of the Colorado-based NTIS
short-wave transmitter (2.5, 5, 10 and 15 MHz) that
provides a time standard following an atomic clock. Cf. CHU.
In addition to voice and beeps, time information is encoded digitally by
PWM on 100 Hz (one bit per second: 0.2 seconds on
for 0; 0.5 seconds for a 1).
- WWVH
- Call letters of the Hawai'i-based NTIS
short-wave transmitter (2.5, 5, 10 and 15 MHz) that provides a time
standard following an atomic clock. Just like the Colorado station (WWV, q.v.), but with a female voice. God, I feel
really sorry for her. What a boring job!
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time ...
could be as bad as recording one of those dreadful `endless loop' tapes.
The technique is demonstrated in one of those Italian neocrazyist films; I think it's in
Antonioni's ``Il Deserto
rosso'' (`Red Desert') from 1964. In it, Giuliano Missirini plays the
radio-telescope operator.
- WWW
- Wicked Witch of the West. I didn't catch her name, so she can go by an
initialism.
No! Not water!
Aiii!
You curséd brat! Look what you've done!
I'm melting! Melting!
Oh, what a world! What a world!
Who would have thought that a good little
girl like you could destroy my beautiful
wickedness?
Oh, she was Elphaba Thropp. Thank you, Hollywood. Actually, it turns out that
Margaret Hamilton, who played
the part in the 1939 film
version, later used WWW sometimes when she signed autographs.
Honorable mention: Water, World & Weissmuller, a biography by Narda
Onyx (1964).
- WWW
- World Weather Watch
of the WMO.
- WWW
- World-Wide Wait. When you're browsing over a dial-up modem, you've got plenty of time to invent new
expansions of old initialisms.
- WWW
- World-Wide Web. You can find an FAQ -- where else -- on the web. Also:
World-Wide Waste of time, etc.
Here's an
authoritative article in postscript. Oh, wait: it's only of historical
interest (year of Oh Lord! 1992). [Berners-Lee, T., et al.
World-Wide Web: The Information Universe in Electronic Networking: Research,
Applications and Policy 1 2 (Meckler, Westport CT, USA, 1992).] For general
information, see also W3C.
- WWW
- World-Wide Webb. Just the
fax, ma'am.
- WWW
- Wretched Writers Welcome. Usage peculiar to BLFC.
- WWW
- WWW.
- WWWC
- World-Wide Web Consortium. More commonly
W3C.
- WWWVL
- World-Wide
Web Virtual Library.
- WW1
- World War 1. See WWI.
- WW2
- World War 2. See WWII.
Arabic numerals make a more compact and convenient numbering system,
especially if you're expecting a long sequence of them. Cf.
WWIV.
- WW3
- World War 3. See WWIII.
Arabic numerals might have a certain appropriateness, depending on where
the next big one begins.
- WX
- Weather. [Aviation code.]
- WX Detc.
- Weather (WX) DETeCtor. Gives flight crew advance
warning of clear air turbulence (CAT). Drinks
are served immediately.
- WY
- Wyoming. USPS abbreviation. Paul Bunyan used
to park his blue ox cart there when he attended school in Alberta.
The Villanova Center for Information Law and
Policy serves a page of Wyoming state
government links. USACityLink.com
has a page with a few town
links for the state.
Maybe you can't afford to live in your own private
Idaho, but you can probably afford
wyoming.com (an
ISP).
To judge from Yahoo's
listings, Wyoming appears to be the only US state without a private
baccalaureate-granting institution. In fact, it does seem that there are no
private institutions there that you can attend, in the traditional sense
of the word, to earn a bachelor's degree. Isleuth finds a bunch of
private institutions, perhaps 17 of them distinct, but are all online -- with one partial exception: there are
students actually physically manning Preston
University. (Yes, I did have to state the fact in that infelicitous and
obscure way first. Don't ask why.) Preston is
``headquartered'' in Cheyenne at 1204 Airport Parkway, and you can attend
classes in person (f2f),
but only if you're going for the MBA. For other
degrees, you can do the online thing or else just attend classes at any of
almost 50 affiliated campuses worldwide (as of 2004). The one that's located
in the western hemisphere is in Caracas (or was; the
link is dead).
The University of Wyoming is the state's
only public post-secondary institution. Its two campuses are in Laramie, about
50 miles west of Cheyenne, the state capital.
- WYD
- World Youth Day. A Roman Catholic missionary effort based in Cologne,
Germany. Wow, they're really taking it to the
pagans' and atheists' home court!
- wye
- The name of the letter "y." Essentially a version of the Greek letter upsilon, and so called in German and
some other languages. In Spanish and French it's called Greek i (Sp. i
griega, Fr. i grec). The name is used in various practical
applications to refer to the shape of the letter.
A wye turn, for example, effects a U-turn: drive just past a road or drive on
the right, stop and back into it (use your right turn signals), then make a
left from that to return to the road you were on, but moving in the opposite
direction. If your turning diameter is larger than the road width, and you
don't have a crossing at which to execute a wye
turn, try a kay-turn. I always thought the shape of a wye turn more resembles
an upper-case tee than a lower-case wye, but it's a case of stare decis.
You can do a wye turn at a tee intersection.
In elementary circuit analysis, a useful set of formulas is the delta-wye
transformation. Externally, a delta and a wye both present three nodes.
Internally, a delta is in the form of a Greek letter delta, a triangle. Each
side is a two-terminal circuit element connecting two of the external nodes.
The wye (I suppose you could call it an upsilon for consistency) has a central
node joining one end of each of three two-terminal circuit elements, the three
remaining ends each connecting to one of the external nodes. I'll do the ASCII art later. It's straightforward to analyze
this and any similar generalization (square and cross, say) using Kirchoeff's
laws and the characteristics of the circuit elements. However, deltas and wyes
with passive linear elements (resistors, capacitors, inductors) occur
frequently, and I have to run now and finish this entry later. Okay, back now.
The delta-wye transformation given below allows one to replace a delta network
with a wye network, and vice versa. This turns out to be useful even
when oh, no, not again! I'll be back.
The characters in Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire live in New Wye, U.S.A.,
home of Wordsmith College. (I'm not going to say that's where the novel is
set; it's not that kind of a novel, necessarily. Maybe it's not a novel
either.) You can't spell toponymy without two wye's. Go for the gusto at the
Yreka entry.
Although the OED and some other dictionaries come
right out and define wye and aitch as the names of the letters Y and H,
many dictionaries avoid the issue of whether wye or aitch are names. The Random House Dictionary gives wye as a spelling (not an
alternate spelling) of the name of
the letter Y, but doesn't indicate what that name is. One linguistic authority
who shall remain nameless (like the letter i) has sent me numerous (two) emails
insisting that Y is the name of the letter Y. Some of you (spelled why, oh,
you) may think that words like name have only approximate meanings
determined by usage, and that this question turns on details of its meaning and
usage that are not generally agreed. I disagree, and when I retire I'll try to
remember to put resolving this important issue on my list of things to get around to.
- WYSIAYG
- What You
See Is All You Get.
Of course, it's not polite to stare.
FOLDOC has one
explanation of the term, essentially in terms of the limitations of
PC-based GUI desktop publishing (DTP) ap's for
large-scale documents.
- WYSIWYG
- What You See Is What You Get. Describes some screen-based text-editing
programs or their editing modes. [Pron. ``wizzy-wig.''] The term has become
sufficiently standard as a spoken word that it is subject to misspellings that
reflect pronunciation overruling the expansion: WYSIWIG.
Vide CLI, GUI.
- WYSIWYN
- What You See Is What You Need. Claim of Allaire's HomeSite HTML
editor.
(For the Mac, a similar program is BBEdit.)
- WZO
- World Zionist Organization.
- WZR
- Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der
Wilhelm-Pieck-Universität Rostock. Registerband zu den
Jahrgängen 1(1951/52) bis 25(1976) / herausgegeben im Auftrage des Rektors
von der Universitätsbibliothek Rostock.
- W3C
- World Wide Web Consortium. An
industry consortium run by the Laboratory
for Computer Science at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
- W3VL
- World Wide Web Virtual Library.
(