- JASIS
- Journal of the American Society for Information Science. Published
by ASIS.
- JASNA
- Jane Austen
Society of North America. See also the British
and Australian Societies.
If you want some real resources, however, instead of club dues information,
try the Jane Austen
Info Page.
- JAST
- Journal of American
Studies of Turkey. ISSN 1300-6606. ``A print and on-line publication
of the American Studies Association of Turkey (ASAT), the Journal of American Studies of Turkey
publishes work in English by scholars of any nationality on American
literature, history, art, music, film, popular culture, institutions, politics,
economics, geography and related subjects.''
- JATO
- Jet-Assisted Take-Off. More at the RATO entry.
- JATR
- Not a journal. The initials of J.A.T. Robinson, an HJ researcher who wanted to believe that the
gospels were all written before the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE.
He argued that an event of that magnitude would surely have gotten bigger
play in the gospels, at a time when Christianity and Judaism were not
completely resolved as distinct religions, if it had occurred before these were
written. It's hard to credit this, since some, at least, of the Christian
scriptures were written after the destruction and none mention it explicitly.
Usually, GMark 13 is taken as referring to the
second Temple destruction; this is taken as one of the most important among the
few guides, none very reliable, for dating the Christian scriptures.
- JATS
- Japanese Association for
Toothfriendly Sweets. See also the heavy in the good-cop/bad-cop routine:
JADR (Dental Research). There's an international
umbrella organization for tooth-friendly sweets: TSI.
- JAVA
- Japanese
Anti-Vivisection Association.
- Java
- Object-oriented (OO) programming language and
environment. Originally called Oak. Omar Patiño maintained a Virtual
Library (W3VL)
page for Java that appears to
have expired.
This page allows you to suffer Java in French.
Try the Digital Cats' Java
Resource Center. They probably already have something like this animation
utility.
The following paragraph is what I thought back in 1996 or so, after writing my
first long Java program. These thoughts are now more than a decade out of
date, but I don't have any new ones. (Either that or I'm older, and less
disposed to credit my own opinions.)
On the whole, although all its compilers are pre-beta-level buggy, and it
displays security-inspired obstacles at every turn, handles strings obscenely
clumsily, handles complex numbers not at all, makes most easy things strenuous,
is not at all platform-independent as advertised, and though its design
incorporates more really bone-headed choices than there is space in this vast
glossary to describe, and even though object-orientedness is mostly hype, and
even though C++ sucks but is much better, after all
Java cannot be said, in the strictest sense of the word, to be utterly
evil, probably. It should find utility as the ultimate punishment in
countries that permit torture. In a country whose main export commodity was
once coffee, but is now white, how appropriate to make Java fit the crime.
Traffickers will beg for extradition to the US, where the highest punishment is
merely capital.
For a taste of Java, try
Michael Neumann's extensive list of
sample short
programs in different programming languages. As of now, it has
five Java
programs.
- JavaScript
- You can find out a lot about JavaScript on the web. Locally, we serve a
short page about JavaScript comments and browser
compatibility.
Michael Neumann's extensive list of
sample short
programs in different programming languages includes
three
JavaScript programs.
- JAVMA
- Journal of the American
Veterinary Medical Association. The journal
``began
publication in 1915 and is the most widely distributed veterinary medical
journal. The mission of the JAVMA is to promote the science and art of
veterinary medicine and to provide a forum for discussion and dissemination of
ideas important to the profession.'' The AVMA
also publishes the American Journal of Veterinary Research
(AJVR).
- jaw-dropping
- Awesome.
Here's something from Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business
(from the 54th printing, 1957) by the influential Dale Carnegie (author of
How to Win Friends and Influence People). On page 227, Review Exercise.
1. Surrender your jaw, let it fall like a dead weight from your head. Take
in a deep breath, feel as if you were sucking the air down into your stomach,
and chant ``ah'' with ease, without one tiny trace of effort.
Why didn't he do any books on yoga? He was a natural!
![[column]](images/column.gif)
- JAWS
- Journal of Ancient War Studies. Earlier proposal for a new journal.
Now AMW (Ancient and Medieval Warfare)
is being considered.
- Jaws
- A nickname of NFL analyst and former American football quarterback Ron
JAWorSki.
- JAXA
- Japan Aerospace EXploration
Agency.
- Jaycees
- Name derived from original initialism:
JC for Junior Chamber (of Commerce).
- Jazz
- Buffalo was a big Jazz
venue once, but few if any of the greats are from here. Even New York City
was not the birthplace of too many. A Stammtisch investigation lends strong
statistical support to the hypothesis that
Pittsburgh and other Pennsylvania cities have been the birthplaces of
Jazz greats. The Chicago era was
nourished by local talent, Detroit, etc.
John Coltrane was from
Philadelphia.
I couldn't think of anything less relevant to write about Jazz. What did
you expect, I should explain soul and tell you where to get some?
Oh, I thought of something else: if you want to be simultaneously pretentious
and multi-culti, Jazz is the ticket.
- J.-B.
- Jean-Baptiste. French name meaning `John the Baptist' (Jo. Bapt.). I was going to write that it's a
common name in French, but I remember when I told Sabine about a woman I met
named Bernadette (I think that was it) and she laughed because it was such an
old-fashioned name. Of course, I thought it was pretty remarkable that someone
could be named Sabine and survive childhood without major psychological
scars, but if this glossary ever becomes popular reading I'm probably going to
catch hell for that remark, so I really should edit this bit out, instead of
repeating it in the Jennifer Jones entry.
Being beautiful has psychic benefits. Sabine suffered no apparent
psychological trauma on account of her name.
- JB
- Jurum Baccalaureus. `Bachelor of Laws.'
- JBap
- John the BAPtist. This is the guy who
lost his mind, isn't it?
- JbbPrBrG
- Jahrbücher für preußisch-brandenburgische
Geschichte. A German journal that might have been named `Yearbooks of
Prussian-Brandenburg History' in English. Notice the letter-doubling (bb) to
indicate plural (Bücher, `books,' instead of Buch, `book').
See Stuart
Jenks's page of Tables of Contents of Historical Journals and Monographic
Series in German for a partial
table of contents (deutsche Seite:
Zeitschriftenfreihandmagazin Inhaltsverzeichnisse
geschichtswissenschaftlicher Zeitschriften in deutscher Sprache).
- JBC
- Journal of Biological
Chemistry.
- JBL
- James Bullough Lansing. Founder of the company that makes JBL speakers.
Lansing was born James Martini in 1902, but when he was 25, he changed his name
to James Lansing at the suggestion of the woman who would become his wife. You
might say he took his wife's name, even though his wife's name was Glenna
Peterson. When he changed his last name, he also adopted the middle name
Bullough from the name of a family he lived with for a short time as a child.
He adopted the new name shortly before registering a company called the Lansing
Manufacturing Company (on March 9, 1927) with his partner Ken Decker. That
company manufactured loudspeakers, but it was not exactly the forerunner of
JBL, Inc. Lansing Manufacturing went downhill after Decker died in a 1939
plane crash, and in 1941 Altec Service Corporation bought it for the parts.
That is, as components manufacturer for its own loudspeakers. They also hired
Lansing himself as VP of Engineering with a five-year contract.
When his contract with Altec Lansing expired in 1946, J.B. Lansing left and
began a new loudspeaker company initially called Lansing Sound, Inc. Altec
Lansing thought that infringed their trademark, and the name was lengthened to
James B. Lansing Sound, Inc. Lansing designed new loudspeakers initially very
similar to ones he had designed for Altec Lansing, and at first tried to sell
them under the ``Iconic'' brand name that he had come up with for, and that was
used by, Altec Lansing. As this suggests, and as the decline of his first
company after Decker's death is also supposed to show, he was a much better
engineer than businessman; for this reason, or simply because of poor economic
conditions, the new company did not prosper in its first three years. This
contributed to the despair that led to Lansing's suicide in September of 1949.
The company survived, however. I think the company name is still legally James
B. Lansing Sound, Inc., but it sells its speakers under the JBL brand and does
business as the JBL Company.
Other very very important details: James was the ninth of fourteen children,
many of whom changed their last name to Martin. A couple of his brothers
named Martin went to California to work for Lansing at some point. Be careful
what you say to your coworkers about the boss -- you never know.
Steve Martin, well-known as a comedian and actor, wrote a best-selling novella
called The Shopgirl (2001). (It was made into a movie, 2005.) At the
start of the story, Jeremy (a vertex of the central romantic triangle) works
stenciling logos for a struggling Los Angeles-based amplifier manufacturer.
(When Jeremy proposes to go on the road to promote sales, his boss Chet is
thinking of hiring a nephew to replace him.) The author, who grew up in the
Los Angeles area, was born Stephen Glenn Martin in Waco, Texas, in 1945; he is
the son of Glenn Vernon Martin, who was probably too young to be a brother of
James Lansing. I can find no indication on the Internet that Steve Martin is
related to Lansing, and I guess he isn't. And the fictional manufacturer has
the rather lame name of ``The Doggone Amplifier Company.''
- JBL
- Journal of Biblical Literature. Catalogued by TOCS-IN.
- JBS
- Jamaica Bureau of Standards. The JBS has a range of laboratories for
standards development and testing in textiles, paints, microbiology, chemicals,
food, metallurgy, paper, furniture and packaging.
You call this ganja, mon? Weak! We put you in jail fa dis.
- JBS
- Journal of Biblical
Studies. ``[A]n electronic journal dedicated to the field of Biblical
Studies in general. Articles on any aspect of Biblical Studies (including:
archaeology, linguistics, exegesis, history, and textual issues) are welcome,
and contributions that challenge the traditional boundaries of Biblical Studies
are encouraged. We would also like to see articles that discuss the
relationship between Biblical Studies and other disciplines.''
- JBSP
- Journal of the
British Society for Phenomenology. And existentialism. Throw some
onions in the soup too -- that usually improves the flavor. From the ``NOTES
FOR CONTRIBUTORS'':
The JBSP publishes papers on phenomenology and existential philosophy as well
as contributions from other fields of philosophy. Papers from workers in the
humanities and the human sciences interested in the philosophy of their subject
will be welcome too. Space will be given to research in progress, to book
reviews, and to bibliographies of use to students. The journal will also
provide a forum for interdisciplinary discussion.
JBSP was founded in 1970 by the late Wolfe Mays.
A subscription to JBSP is included in the price of membership in the BSP.
JBSP is published in three issues per year -- January, May, and October.
[Unlike some such journals, they really seem to mean it: I received
announcements of the January and May 2006 issues (vol. 37, Nos. 1 and 2) in
January and May, respectively, of 2006.]
- JBY
- Jewish believers in Yeshua. Christian proselytizers among Jews like this
term, evidently because it emphasizes the Jewish origin of Jesus.
Yeshua is the original Hebrew or Aramic name that we translate Jesus.
(For more on this, see the His entry.)
- JBY
- Just Be Yourself.
- JC
- Jakob-Creutzfeldt. A nasty virus which infects oligodendrocytes in the
brain. Oligodendrocytes wrap around nerve processes and produce myelin, a
fatty substance that provides electrical insulation. As this tissue is
destroyed, neurological dysfunction follows. Kidneys harbor inactive JC
virus in healthy individuals. When immune response is suppressed by HIV, JC virus migrates in some way to the bone
marrow, from which it makes its way to the brain within B lymphocytes.
This virus does not cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD, q.v.).
- JC
- See Jaycees.
- JC
- Jean
Chrétien.
A possible answer to a tough trivia question in the US:
name a twentieth-century Canadian
prime minister other than Pierre Trudeau.
If you can't remember, you might get away with ``oh, it's on the tip of my
tongue -- the initials are Jay, uh, Cee -- it's uhh....'' J and C have been a
popular pair of initials for Canadian PM's. An interesting borderline case is
John
Turner. After serving in a few Liberal governments, in 1975 he resigned in
protest from a Pierre Trudeau government and went to work in the private
sector. He returned to full-time politics in 1984 when Pierre Trudeau retired.
That June he defeated Jean Chrétien (remember him?) to be elected leader
of the Liberal Party, and so became PM. How did he defeat Jean
Chrétien? Well, a number of unsatisfactory theories have been proposed,
but I think the name is key. Even though he was apparently born John Napier
Turner (in Sussex, England), he was also known as John Christopher Turner.
Perhaps that provided the margin of victory.
You could hardly believe it, but in just a few short months, Turner was
engulfed in scandal, and the next September he was replaced as PM by
Progressive Conservative Party leader Brian Mulroney. (So Turner was PM
``1984-1984.'' Parliamentary systems have their lighter side.) It should have
been obvious that Mulroney's successor in June 1993, Kim Campbell, had to use
the nickname Jane when she faced Jean Chrétien the following
November. PM ``1993-1993.'' She was overwhelmed because her opponent was
Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien. It was overdetermined.
What we see here is that a partial JC may sometimes be able to defeat a full
JC, probably not a replete JC, while a BM may defeat a partial JC. Probably a
BM wouldn't stand a chance against a full JC. (Oh, of course Pierre Trudeau
defeated Joe Clark. Get real.) With Paul Martin, it seems the
Grits were experimenting with PM for PM (it might
explain BM).
Hmmm. After less than a year, it didn't seem to be working out very well. He
was replaced in 2006 by another partial JC (Steven Joseph Harper). However,
since most people just think of him as Stephen Harper, he had to form a
minority government. On the other hand, he's an evangelical
Christian, so he won reelection handily in 2011.
In 2015, the Liberals were led by Justin Trudeau. Since it was a contest of
partial JC's, it looked to be a close race, with the winner expected to be
forced to form a minority government. In the closing days of the campaign,
however, Justin Trudeau promised to use deficit spending to reform Question
Period by replacing it with new daily Doonesbury strips, and his party won in a
plurality rout.
The JC effect is equally effective in US elections. When Ronald W. Reagan
defeated Jimmy Carter in 1980, it was the first time that a major-party
candidate with initials J.C. was defeated by someone with neither a J nor a C
since 1920, when Warren G. Harding defeated James M. Cox. Both elections were
won in landslides, which just goes to show how strong a candidacy has to be to
overcome the JC effect.
- JC, J.C.
- Jesus Christ. In the same way that (okay not really in the same way that)
J.R. have been popular initials in the US lately, it seems that around the
first century BCE (if only you knew it), if you wanted to be an important
personage J.C. were the initials to have.
Jesus is essentially the Latin
transliteration of the Greek name Iêsoûs. (The circumflex
on the e is to indicate that it's a Greek letter eta; the second circumflex is
just a circumflex accent. Sorry. For what it's worth, accents weren't indicated graphically in Greek until
centuries later.) The Greek name, in turn, comes from the Aramaic name
Yeshua used among Jews (and which therefore may be regarded as a Hebrew
name of that time). That name, in turn, is a version of the older Hebrew name,
in use to this day, Y'hoshua. This is normally rendered as
Joshua in English. Interestingly, coincidentally, suspiciously,
providentially, or significantly, depending on your POV, Joshua means something along the lines of
`[the Lord] saves.' The first famous Joshua, of course, was the son of Nun,
and that makes a good pun (pone?) in English, when you consider that Mary was a
virgin when she was inseminated or whatever by a holy ghost, so she was as
celibate as a nun. Nancy Freedman had some fun with Joshua, Son of
None, which she used as the title of a 1973 novel. In her book, some cells
are saved from the dying JFK and cloned. The
resulting child is named Joshua. The idolatry surrounding that guy is
astounding.
From Hellenistic times, Greek (more precisely Koine) had been the widely used lingua franca
of the eastern Mediterranean from Egypt to Greece. The Greek name Iesus
(the borrowed version of Joshua, remember?) was adopted into Latin (as a fourth-declension noun, I'm sure you wanted to know). In the usual way,
consonantal I came to be written J after that letter was invented, and
pronounced as a voiced fricative in English. While there are many versions of
Latin pronunciation, Church Latin coincides with (our reconstruction of)
Classical Latin for this name, pronounced YEH-soos (the oo is the oo of Sue;
for vowel quantities you're on your own).
Christ means messiah. The English word messiah is derived from
the Hebrew word meshiah (or maybe the Aramaic, I'll check details
later). The Semitic word means `annointed [person],' a term with an
interesting Biblical history. The word was readily translated into the Greek
christos, etymon of the English word Christ.
- JC
- Gaius Julius Caesar. This and other Classical Latin names explained at the tria nomina entry.
- JCAHO
- Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
- JCANT
- Journal of
CANnabis Therapeutics. Published by Haworth Press starting in 2001, it
went up in smoke at the beginning of 2004.
These days, when you publish an article in a Haworth Press journal, along with
your offprints they send you a little packet of chochkes to help you promote
their journals. These include a notepad and a ballpoint pen with their URL on
it and ... a foil-wrapped chocolate medallion imprinted with their logo.
The chocolate is something new; maybe if they'd started providing munchies
earlier, JCANT jmightve.
- JCB
- ``Joseph Cyril Bamford
launched the construction and agricultural equipment manufacturing company
that bears his initials, in 1945.'' The
company is also in materials handling equipment these days, but in the
UK the
initialism has come to be used as an antonomasia for backhoe-equipped digger,
which the company pioneered.
On page 10 of Harm Done, an Inspector Wexford Mystery by Ruth Rendell,
the inspector is driving his grandsons to school. One of them expresses his
pleasure about some road-building work. ``I liked the diggers. I'm going to
drive a JCB when I'm grown up and then I'll dig up the whole world.''
Boys, as Ruth Rendell has observed through Wexford's thoughts, take longer to
reach an age where they are able to appreciate pretty landscapes. (Wexford is
a wuss.) Incidentally, this novel is not recommended. At various points the
writing is confusing, possibly for effect, but the immediate effects are
confusion and irritation. Also, it is drearily obsessed with what bad people
men are to women. (Only some men! Don't want to appear insensitively
sensitive. And not any more often than once every page or so.) As you can
imagine, correctly, the book is almost excruciatingly politically correct. Of
course, for the sort of people who like to read that sort of book, this is the
sort of book they would like to read. To help you decide if that's you, here
is some of Inspector Wexford's thought from page 4:
If she had been, well, a different sort of girl, Wexford wouldn't
have paid so much attention. If she had been more like her friends. He
hesitated about the phrase he used even in his own mind, for he liked to keep
to his personal brand of political correctness in his thoughts as well as his
speech. Not to be absurd about it, not to use ridiculous expressions like
intellectually challenged, but not to be insensitive either and call a
girl such as Lizzie Cromwell mentally handicapped or retarded. ...
Stupid. That will do.
- JCC
- Jewish Community Center.
- JCC
- Job Control Command. Like ``get to work, you,'' and ``we'll do it my
way,'' but in words a computer can understand. I only remember this as a term
in the context of IBM-mainframe JCL.
- JCCC
- Joint (J) Communications Control Center. DOD term. Hey, man -- come on over and get high.
- JCCD
- Junction Charge-Coupled Devices. Whereas ordinary charge-coupled devices
(CCD) use MOS capacitors (MOS-C), JCCD's use the capacitance of
reverse-biased pn junctions.
- JCE
- Journal of Cancer
Education. The official journal of the American Association for Cancer
Education (AACE) and the European Association
for Cancer Education (EACE).
- JCE
- Journal of Chemical
Education. LC number QD1.J825.
- JCER
- Jewish Council for Education &
Research. A political action committee that no one ever heard of until
2008. The website doesn't indicate when the organization was founded, but is
worded in a way that seems to try to suggest that it is a long-established
organization. (That is, it emphasizes that the issues it addresses are of long
standing, and mentions the experience -- in other organizations -- of JCER's
leaders.)
JCER is basically a nominally (and no doubt by the letter of the law)
independent organization campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate
Barack Obama ``and six other [sic] Congressional candidates.'' I
suppose that if JCER were only supporting a single candidate they couldn't
register as an independent PAC.
Obama is apparently relatively unpopular among Jews, polling at around 65%.
Jews have for decades been among the most loyally Democratic voters, and 65% in
the general would be a poor showing, comparable in recent decades only to the
support received by unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidates like
Michael Dukakis (who lost in 1988).
JCER has churned out a number of pro-Obama, er, heavily researched educational
videos. As I write this, on October 6, 2008, the one featured on its website
is ``Israel's Generals Speak.'' In the same day's edition of Israel
Hayom (`Israel Today'), Dan
Lavi reports that ``misrepresents several former Israeli security officials
by claiming that they back Obama.'' [All English quotes are translations by
Aaron Lerner of IMRA.]
Former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Uzi Dayan complained that ``the announcement
of my support for Obama is a lie and deception. I never supported him or
his positions. I demand that the organization drop me from the video and I
will consider legal action.''
Former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy, who also appeared in the video, said
that ``there is a complete misrepresentation of what I said. I said nothing
that could be interpreted as support for Obama in the US presidential
elections.''
It would be very hard to produce an honest video showing substantial Israeli
support for Obama. Because Israel is heavily dependent on the US for its
security, and because there is a strong possibility that Israeli government
will have to deal with an Obama administration, people in the Israeli
government (and even in parties that have any hope of forming part of the
government in the future) are diplomatically ambivalent in expressing opinions
on the US presidential contest. Polling of the Israeli public, however,
reveals what Israeli politicians concede privately: Israeli support is strongly
for John McCain. One idiosyncratic reason for this support is McCain's history
as a prisoner of war. This is a condition Israelis have regular occasion to
think about and sympathize with, and a survivor of the experience is naturally
respected.
More programmatically, McCain benefits from his association with George Bush.
Bush 43 has been the US president most supportive of Israel since Richard
Nixon's emergency airlift of arms in 1974 saved Israel in the Yom Kippur War.
Israelis, like Kurds and other groups the US MSM
are less likely to think of when assessing Bush's effect on the international
standing of the US, generally respect and like George W. Bush. Properly
speaking, of course, McCain benefits very little from Israeli satisfaction with
Bush. There are a few thousand American Jews living in Israel, though, and
they are expected to cast a majority of their votes for McCain.
Palestinian leaders and elites generally expect or claim that the Palestinian
public (presumably including Arab Israelis) support Obama. You'd imagine that
someone with a middle name of Hussein would start with a natural advantage.
Reports from the ground, however, suggest that this support is tepid if it
exists.
- JCG
- Journal of Crystal Growth. LC number QD921.J6.
- JcG
- Just Classical Guitar. An old
site that now forwards immediately to a ``Classical Guitar Internet
Resource Site!'' with a focus on the greater (I don't know how much
greater) Savannah area. We also have a bare-bones
CG (classical guitar) entry.
- JCIC
- Japan Center for Intercultural
Communications.
- JCL
- Job Control Language. Probably IBM JCL,
operating system for a mainframe.
- JCL
- Junior Classical League. A conspiracy to promote
Latin, classical Greek, and other dusty
classical learning among impressionable youth (US and Canadian high school
students). A membership organization for unwitting US and Canadian high school students, manipulated
(``sponsored'') behind the scenes (as we reveal here on your computer screen
for the first time) by the American Classical League (ACL). Longer alternate name is National Junior Classical League (NJCL). If a distinction is made between the
terms JCL and NJCL, it seems to be that students belong to the NJCL and student
chapters in a high school belong to the JCL. Five students who've studied a
classical subject with a teacher suffice to form a chapter.
The JCL cosponsors competitive national exams with the ACL -- in Latin (NLE), Classical Greek (NGE) and mythology
-- but they still don't get to look at the answers beforehand.
JCLers who experience separation anxiety when they graduate high school can
join the SCL.
- JCMEC
- Joint (J) Captured Materiel Exploitation Center.
- JCMOS
- Joint Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) logic. Another name for JMOS
(q.v.).
- JCMS
- Journal of Crystal and Molecular Structure. LC number QD901.J62 . Volume 1 in 1971, volume
11 in 1981; continued as JCSR.
- JCN
- Japan Corporate News. See JCNN. Newswire.
- JCN
- Jewish Communication Network.
- JCNN
- Japan Corporate News Network. In
principle, JCN Newswire (as opposed to JCN
Network) carries company press releases and JCNN carries business news,
but it's hard to see the distinction in practice.
- JCO
- Journal of Clinical Oncology.
ASCO's peer reviewed journal.
- JCP
- Japanese Communist Party. In a new platform adopted at the end of a party
convention on January 17, 2004, the JCP toned down its revolution rhetoric and
accepted the emperor system as something temporarily acceptable. I thought
that was worth a chuckle.
- JCPA
- Jewish Council for Public
Affairs. An umbrella group of 125 Jewish communal relations councils
(JCRC's) across the United States, plus two dozen or so national organizations.
- JCPC
- Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. We don't explain ``Privy
Council'' at its abbreviation PC either. Who knows what we might find if we
looked?
- JCR
- Journal Citation Reports. An annual publication that provides
information about academic journals in the sciences and social sciences. It's
the source of a widely used ``impact factor'' for each journal.
- JCRC
- Jewish Communal Relations Council. A generic term; see JCPA.
- JCS
- Job Control Statement.
- JCS
- Joint Chiefs of Staff. At one time this was the
body through which the separate activities of the four US military services
were coordinated. Since the Goldwater-Nichols DOD
Reorganization Act of 1986, its role is firmly advisory. This law resolved
an ambiguous situation that had been evolving since WWII, when the the JCS exercised direct executive
authority. The National Security Act of
1947 treated the JCS as a planning and advisory group, but its members had
continued to exercise executive power in their separate roles as chiefs of
military services. Since 1986, their status as military advisors --
i.e., as members of the JCS, takes precedence over their other duties to
the exclusion of an executive role specifically in the direction of combatant
forces (though not in other management tasks).
You can read some relevant history, oddly enough, at the LSJ entry. What, I don't mention Napoleon or the
Prussian innovations? This is pretty incomplete.
- JCS
- Journal of Cuneiform
Studies. An annual publication of the American
Schools of Oriental Research. See AASOR for
other publications.
- JCSR
- Journal of College
Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice. Published by
CSCSR, it ``is a scholarly refereed quarterly
journal. The volume year publication date is October (1), January (2), April
(3), July (4). Subscription is for a volume year.'' Quoting from the same
informative page (text harvested September 2004):
NEED FOR THIS JOURNAL
Current U.S. retention figures have not improved over time, even with large
amounts of money expended by colleges and universities on programs and services
to retain students. In spite of these programs and services, retention figures
have not improved. [Why does the content of this sentence sound familiar?] In
fact, only about 66% of high school graduates attend
college and about 50% of those who attend college earn a bachelor degrees.
[Sic. I just cut and paste, okay?] Put in real numbers [is that with
the natural topology?], about 2,800,000 students will graduate from high school
this year, 1,850,000 will attend college and only 925,000 of these students
will earn a bachelor [sic; it's not some funny font glitch, afaik] degree. Colleges are looking for ways to keep
the students that they recruit. The Journal will provide the educational
community with current theoretical foundations, research and practice results,
which will help educators and institutions to retain students.
Let me add a note here, since there is something not mentioned that needs to be
explained. The fact that ``retention figures have not improved over time''
despite ``large amounts of money expended'' on ``programs and services'' does
not reflect poorly on the trained professionals who run the programs and
provide the services.
Based on Department of Education statistics, I think ``college'' in the quoted
text excludes junior colleges. Roughly half as many associate's degrees are
granted per year as bachelor's degrees. Most AA's are awarded by junior
colleges, and about one third of these are university-parallel or general
humanities degrees, designed to allow immediate transfer into the junior year
of a four-year college. The remaining two thirds are business, technical,
professional associate degrees and the like, for students planning to work
immediately afterwards.
The abbreviation JCSR isn't all that common, which might
be just as well. An alternative short form is Retention Journal.
- JCSR
- Journal of Crystallographic and Spectroscopic Research. LC number QD901.J62 . Volume 12 in 1982;
continues JCMS, which reached vol. 11 in 1981.
- JCSR
- JISC Committee for
the Support of Research. (That's the UK
- JISC.)
- Jct.
- JunCTion. In place names, it typically refers to rail spurs.
Like Princeton Jct. (See NJT entry.)
- JCV
- JC Virus.
- JCW
- Juggalo Championship Wrestling. Misspelled here. The correct spelling
makes the hilarious substitution of a letter t in place of the p. We realized
that you couldn't stand so much intense and bloody cleverness. A product of
ICP.
- JD
- Jack Daniels. This guy
advertises in Scientific American (SciAm). Too
hoity-toity. That must be the reason why George Thorogood [unofficial page of rated links;
excellent page from Finland,
including lyrics;
weak official page] doesn't
drink with him when he drinks alone, with nobody else.
(His web site seems to have
passed out of existence.)
- JD
- Julian Day. A chronological system apparently invented by the astronomer
John F. Herschel, and based on counting days and fractions of days from the
first day of the Julian period.
In Herschel's original scheme, dating begins at noon (at the Greenwich
meridian) in order that an entire night of observing (at least for Herschel
and his European colleagues) occurred on a Julian day.
For Western historians, counting the beginning of a day from noon is
inconvenient. Hence historians came to define Julian days that began at
midnight. Historians also use the abbreviation JD, but the scheme is
distinguished by calling its days ``chronological Julian days,'' as opposed to
``astronomical Julian days.'' As you can imagine, in practice one rarely
sees these terms except in explanations of the difference.
To be precise, I should say that chronological Julian days begin at midnight
twelve hours before the start of the corresponding astronomical Julian day.
Most discussions of Julian days are phrased with the implicit understanding
that the twelve hours before the first (astronomical) day of the Julian period
are already in the first Julian day. That is, people implicitly think in terms
of a day that begins before noon. Surprise.
In the neverending search for convenience and saving two keystrokes, historians
have also defined an MJD.
Peter Meyer has a clear
exposition of the various Julian Day numbers.
- J.D.
- Juris Doctor. Latin, `Doctor of Law[s].' This is a rebranding of
what used to be known in the US as the LL.B., the
basic law degree. I suppose the name change was justified as reflecting the
progressive professionalization of legal practice. People who have been
awarded the J.D. traditionally are considered entitled to append ``Esq.''
after their names, but using ``Dr.'' as a title is too brazen for most. On
personals websites lawyers generally select ``doctorate'' as their highest
level of education completed, but this is perfectly acceptable because
personals are supposed to be deceptive.
- JDA
- Joint
Duty Assignment. Can be multi-Service, joint or
multinational. I'm not going to speculate on the distinction between
multi-Service and joint. Maybe this means ``multiservice -- joint or
multinational --.''
- JDAL
- Joint
Duty Assignment List.
- JDAM
- Joint (services) Direct-Attack Munitions.
Marshall McLuhan is credited with this prediction (and rather a lot of others):
``World War III will be a guerrilla information
war, with no division between military and civilian participation.''
- JDBC
- Java DataBase Connection.
- JDC
- Joint Declaration on Cooperation.
- JDC
- Joint Distribution
Committee. A Jewish Relief organization.
- JDEC
- Joint
Document Exploitation Center. Just like JCMEC.
- JDF
- Juvenile Diabetes Foundation
International. I think this is a previous name of the JDRF. See also the main diabetes entry
DM.
- JDISS
-
Joint (J) Deployable
Intelligence Support System. ``A transportable workstation and
communications suite that electronically extends a joint intelligence
center to a joint task force or other tactical user.'' In DOD usage, as far as I know, information about the
enemy is the only meaning of the word intelligence.
- JDK
- Java Development Kit.
- JDL
- Jewish Defense League.
- JDRF
- The organization formerly known as the
``Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.'' I guess ``Type-1 Diabetes Research
Foundation'' just doesn't have the same ring. I'm just
glad they didn't rename it TOFKAJDRF.
- J. D. Salinger
- Jerome David Salinger. Known as Jerry. But really, you shouldn't ask.
He doesn't like personal questions like that. Even now that he's in the
privacy of the grave, it probably still bothers him.
- JDW
- Jane's Defense Weekly. They've really
leveraged the name recognition. Now JDW is part of Jane's Information Group. For a list, see our
entry for Jane's Fighting Ships.
- JEA
- Journal of Egyptian Archaeology.
Catalogued by TOCS-IN.
- JEA
- Journal of Experimental
Algorithmics. Published by the ACM.
ISSN 1084-6654.
- JEAL
- James Edward Austen-Leigh, born 1798, died 1874. Nephew and important
biographer of Jane Austen. He was the eldest son of James Austen, Jane
Austen's eldest brother. The Austen family tree had a lot of rather leafy
branches, and they tended to overuse some names. (Then again, in the period
1750-1799 a fifth of all English boys were christened William and almost a
quarter of girls were christened Mary, so this can't have been a peculiarity.)
Within the family, JEAL was called Edward.
The mother of Jane and James Austen was born Cassandra Leigh (1739-1827). Her
brother James Leigh (1735-1817) changed his name to James Leigh Perrot in 1751
in order to inherit the estate of his maternal great-uncle Thomas Perrot. When
Mrs. Leigh Perrot died in 1836, JEAL inherited Scarlets (the Leigh Perrots'
Berkshire estate) on the condition that he add the name Leigh to his own. This
stuff happened repeatedly. For example, JEAL was originally named after his
uncle Edward Austen (1767-1852). However, uncle Edward had been adopted in
childhood by his cousin Mr. Knight, and became Edward Knight in 1812. A rose
by some other name may smell a lot sweeter with a comfortable legacy. (And on
the subject of clichés, see about Bulwer Lytton's name at the entry for
``It was a dark and stormy night.'')
I haven't seen specific instructions on the pronunciation of the Leigh surname.
However, a celebrated cousin, Dr. Theophilus Leigh, was master of Balliol
College, Oxford for over fifty years. (When elected, he'd been expected to be
just a temporary placeholder, as he was thought to be in poor health. He lived
to be over 90.) In a letter to Dr. Samuel Johnson, local resident Mrs. Thrale
wrote his name as ``Dr. Lee,'' so there's a clue.
Jane Austen died on July 18, 1817. Jane Austen's last surviving sibling,
Admiral Sir Francis Austen, died in August 1865 at the age of 91. With a
consciousness that the last of those who had any personal memory of Jane Austen
would soon be passing away, and with some concern about what distant family or
non-family might write about her, the family decided that a biographical memoir
of Jane Austen should be prepared.
As a schoolboy, JEAL had once -- with Aunt Jane's encouragement -- begun to
write a novel, though he never finished it. Late in life, he had published
Recollections of the Vine Hunt (1865), and this success probably
encouraged him in his efforts toward a biography. As the only son of JA's
eldest sibling (this is sounding a little like a mafia story, isn't it?), JEAL
took the task as his duty. His A Memoir of Jane Austen was based on his
own and two of his sisters' recollections (his sister Caroline and his
half-sister Anne), as well as those of some cousins. There were also a few
relatives alive who for various reasons did not cooperate, and one consequence
of this was that JEAL did not have access to all of JA's surviving
correspondence.
JEAL began writing the memoir on 30 March 1869 and was done in early September.
According to his daughter's memoir of him [Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh: James
Edward Austen-Leigh: A Memoir, privately published in 1911], JEAL's
A Memoir was published on 16 December 1869 -- what would have been JA's
94th birthday. The volume contains a postscript dated 17 November 1869, JEAL's
own 71st birthday. In any event, the volume, published in a small print run of
about 1000, bore the publication year 1870. A revised second edition of the
memoir, published or at least printed on JEAL's 72nd birthday, dated 1871.
(This sort of forward-dating is common in book-publishing, at least partly
because it makes books seem fresher longer. Another book I can think of that
was forward-dated was Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams -- it
was published on November 4, 1899, but the date in the book is 1900.) Don't
tell me you didn't need to read all this -- it's too late.
Two important documents that contributed to JEAL's memoir were written by JA's
favorite brother Henry, who had seen her novels through to publication,
including Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, which were published
posthumously. Henry wrote a ``Biographical Notice'' that prefaced the two
posthumous novels. (The four previous novels had been published anonymously,
though their common authorship was indicated as they appeared successively.)
Henry Austen's ``Memoir'' of 1833 was largely a shorter reworking of the 1818
notice, padded back up with quotes of favorable reviews, for inclusion in a
new publication of Sense and Sensibility.
Ordained in 1823, JEAL was a clergyman his entire life. Yes, some clergymen
hunted. Those who could, I think. Chaplain Groves (US Army), father of
General Leslie R. (``Dick'') Groves, of the Manhattan Engineer District, was a
severe Presbyterian who considered ``any leisure-time activity other than
reading, hunting, and fishing to be a frivolous waste of time if not downright
diabolical.'' [I quote William Lawren from p. 45 of a book mentioned at
this MED entry.] Interestingly, from 1852 on,
JEAL was the vicar of Bray, sir!
[The datum on names in 1750-1799 is lifted from a book by Maggie Lane: Jane
Austen and Names (Blaise Books, 2002),]
- jean
- A durable cotton fabric useful for long treks across the
Scrabble tablelands. Gee
(``Jea''?), I wonder if this has anything to do with pants called jeans. In
any case, the plural jeans is also accepted by
all three major Scrabble dictionaries,
but of these three only OSPD4 and
TWL2006 accept jeaned (as an adjective). That word
was not in OSPD3 and is not in
SOWPODS as of 2006. There's no mention of
jeaning in any of the above-named dictionaries.
- Jeb
- A nickname that is sometimes given to males with the initials J.E.B. The
most famous instance is probably still the Confederate Army general James Ewell
Brown ``Jeb'' Stuart.
So Jeb can be an acronym. In the case of John Ellis Bush, better known by his
nickname Jeb, it gives rise to ``Jeb Bush,'' an
acronym-assisted Aap pleonasm. (Jeb, who
served as the 43rd governor of Florida, is brother of
dubya, who served as the 43rd president of the US.
The number 42 is special, though it is neither
perfect nor prime. The father, George H.W., served as the 41st president of
the US.)
Jeb also occurs directly as a given name. That's the case with Jeb Stuart
Magruder, who achieved notoriety in the Watergate scandal. According to his
memoir,
[m]y brother Don, who was named for our father, was born in June of 1930, and I
arrived in November of 1934. Since my father was both a Civil War buff and a
horseman, he named me for his favorite Confederate general, Jeb Stuart, his
ideal of a hard-riding cavalry officer. I can remember seeing my father ride a
few time when I was quite young. He was into middle age by then but he rode
beautifully, always wearing a treasured pair of riding boots from his days in
Squadron A.
[An American Life: One Man's Road to Watergate (New York: Atheneum,
1974), p. 15. Earlier Jeb Magruder explains that in 1916, Donald Dilworth
Magruder had joined the New York National Guard's famous Squadron A, the last
cavalry division in the US Army, but that he saw service in
WWI as a sergeant in the 27th Infantry Division.
I'm not sure what ``last cavalry division'' is supposed to mean; horse-mounted
cavalry were used by the US in WWI and WWII, although modern weapons did render
old-stye cavalry charges obsolete.]
Don senior grew up in Staten Island, New York, but from his choice of a CSA general's name for his second son, you might
suspect a Southern background. In fact, the Magruder family was established in
Maryland in 1659 by family patriarch Alexander Magruder. Thomas Jefferson
Magruder, Jeb's great-grandfather, smuggled shoes and boots into Virginia
during the American Civil War, and another ancestor, John Bankhead Magruder,
was one of Robert E. Lee's generals (p. 13). Alexander, incidentally, arrived
from Scotland as an impounded prisoner, and 1659 was the last year of
Cromwell's rule -- the year before the restoration of the Stuarts to power. So
there's another nominal connection. Moreover, after he was released from
prison, Jeb Magruder pursued a career in the Presbyterian Church. (The
Presbyterians are originally Scottish Calvinists. They were generally less
regicidally disposed to Charles I, not necessarily because the Stuarts were a
Scottish line of royalty.)
I myself met Robert E. Lee personally when he visited the Engineering Research
Center at Arizona State University in the late 80's.
He was introduced as Robert Lee, but I noticed a middle initial E on his
briefcase and asked him if he was one of the Virginia Lees. He said no, his
parents just liked the name. When Lee Iacocca (actually Lido Anthony Iacocca)
was working his way up the corporate ladder at Ford, he spent some time in the
South, where his Italian surname was regarded as difficult.
He would break the ice by joking about being or not being part of the famous
Lee family. (That's from memory; I suppose I read it in his best-selling 1984
autobiography.) The point, if there is one, is that you can't conclude too
much from a name, although the collocation of ``Jeb'' and ``Stuart'' is rather
suggestive, especially when Stuart is a given name.
That brings us to Jeb Stuart. He was born in 1956 in Little Rock, Arkansas,
and is a scriptwriter probably best known for the screenplay of Die
Hard, based on a novel by Roderick Thorp. (This is the 1988 action movie
-- the first in a franchise that will eventually include 23 sequels and an
unknown number of prequels. For Die Hard XV through XXIV, a stunt
double will be used for all scenes which require Bruce Willis to walk without
assistance. Later, he will shill for the DieHard automobile battery company,
which will have been spun off from Sears, which will have died around 2013.)
This was Jeb Stuart's first script, or at least his first that was commercially
produced. I hesitate to say that it's been downhill since then.
The point is (okay, this isn't the point, but I just ought to point this out),
that those who do not remember history are condemned to use ``Jeb'' as a
sealed acronym. Also, if it's true (as
some claim) that ``Jeb'' arose independently as a short form of ``Jacob,'' then
it might be a backronym. My head hurts when I
try to figure out whether it could possibly be a sealed backronym.
- JEBO
- Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
- JECL
- Job Entry Control Language.
- JECS
- Journal of Early Christian Studies. Catalogued by TOCS-IN. Used to be called Second Century
and abbreviated SCent.
- JEDC
- Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control. A journal, as you have
probably surmised. An economics journal. About dynamics and control.
I hope that's clear.
- JEDEC
- Joint Electron Device Engineering
Council.
In a talk on 1997.10.1, a speaker on JEDEC specs in development was asked what
``JEDEC'' stood for, and he said ``it used to stand for'' the expansion above,
``but everyone had trouble remembering that so now it's just `jedec'.''
[Both ees short, accent on the first syllable.] (It's a good thing I put these
comments in the glossary shortly after the meeting. I was just throwing away
some old notes from that meeting, and ``jedec `used to' '' was all I had
scribbled down.) It would help people realize that JEDEC no longer has an
expansion if it was written
- Jedec
- See previous entry.
- JEDI
- Joint Enforcement Database Initiative.
May the Enforce be with you.
- Jeep
- It seems to be generally believed that the word jeep, as a common noun or
proper noun for the vehicle, originated as a pronunciation of an abbreviation
GP (GP ... ``Gee Pee'' ... ``Jeep''). If so, the GP stood for either General Purpose (vehicle) or as a
manufacturer's internal designation of the vehicle for part numbering, the G
standing for government. It might have stood for both, if quartermasters
correctly misinterpreted the manufacturer's code.
Originally introduced by Sir Harold Austin as a rugged utility vehicle for
the American market, it never quite caught on in the twenties and thirties;
the American Austin company, reorganized under some other name I forgot,
continued to make them in small numbers right up to the war. They achieved a
small cult following. When the US went to war, bids were requested for a
general-purpose 4WD military vehicle, to be produced
in unheard-of numbers. The successful bids were all for minor variations on
that American Austin vehicle. Ford and Willys produced 75 per day, and from
1942, when civilian production was halted
for the duration of the war, that was
the closest thing to a car that American industry produced. After the war,
Willys continued to manufacture a 2WD version for
the civilian market, instead of returning to conventional car production. They
eventually made some small ``improvements'' like roll-down windows.
In the 70's, the military finally replaced the Jeep with the
HMMWV (Humvee).
WWII-surplus jeeps in the Philippines were
converted to small, garishly decorated open buses called jeepneys.
Here's a page with lots of
Philippine Jeepneys. A similar vehicle is used in Puerto Rico.
It's Willys and not Willy's,
after owner John North
Willys. Jeep, the vehicle and brand, has been a kind of curse -- a
perennial survivor of the auto companies that manufactured it. American Motors
(AMC) had the Jeep for a number of years after
Willys folded, and introduced the highly successful Wagoneer series. Renault
tried to make a go of American Motors, and when they sold AMC to the Chrysler
Corporation, Jeep was the only product line that eventually survived (I think
they also kept up the Eagle line for a little bit). In 1999, Chrysler ``merged
with'' (i.e., was diplomatically taken over by) Daimler-Benz, which
unloaded it for a loss in 2007. Chrysler's Plymouth brand was an immediate
casualty of the takeover, but Jeep keeps on truckin'.
- JEEP
- Joint Engineering, Environmental and Processing (beamline). An X-ray
beamline at the Diamond Light Source -- the UK's
national synchrotron facility, which is located at the Harwell
Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
- JEES
- Japan Educational Exchanges and
Services. JEES ``provides services and supports for all students in Japan
to promote international understanding and exchange.'' One service it does not
appear to provide is a homepage in any language other than Japanese, although
the site for its Japanese
Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) is in English.
Aw, geez!
- JEIDA
- Japan Electronic
Industries Development Association. Merged with EIAJ in 2000 to form JEITA.
- jein
- German,`yes and no,' from ja and nein. Part of the reason
this works is that, despite orthographic appearances, the two words share a
vowel. This is apparent in IPA, in which the words
are written /ja/ and /nai:n/.
- JEITA
- Japan Electronic and Information
Technology Industries Association. Created on November 1, 2000 in the
merger of the two Japanese electronics industry
associations EIAJ and JEIDA.
- JELLY
- Jerusalem English { Language | Lending } Library for Youth.
- JEMI
- Joint Equipment Manufacturers Initiative.
- Jenney
- Short for a four-year series of Latin
textbooks. They had their origin in Minnie L. Smith's First Latin
lessons (1904).
Charles Jenney, Jr., authored revisions to later versions of that book at least
as early as 1954, and eight years later, it was still being published as
Smith and Thompson's First year Latin, revised by Charles Jenney, Jr.
(Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1962). Jenney's second-year book then was called
Scudder's Second year Latin, revised by Charles Jenney, Jr.
Allyn and Bacon had a front-page advertisement for the set on the 1948-49
school year's first issue of Classical Weekly
(CW). The advertisement bore the caption ``Latin and
World Peace.'' Those were the days. The days of dodgy reasoning, among other
things. It's not like that any more. From the ad, I infer that the third-year
book was by Kelsey and Meinecke by then, and the fourth-year by Carlisle and
Richardson. I have no idea how well coordinated the original ``well-tested
Series'' was.
The books have continued to be revised by an army of successors, but (or
perhaps therefore) the only author whose name appears on the cover
nowadays is Jenney's (Jenney's First Year Latin, etc.), and there are
workbooks available for the first two years. (In 1948 there was a workbook by
Thompson and Peters, and an associated volume of classical myths compiled by
Herzberg.) Your opinion of the books is bound to depend strongly on your
opinion regarding the value of the traditional
``grammar-translation'' approach. It is a very traditional book based on
``real Latin'' -- excerpts from classical literature -- rather than made-up
readings. Other texts typically introduce ``real Latin'' in the fourth year.
Here's
a detailed review. (There is some sentiment that the 1984 edition is
better than the subsequently improved versions.)
- Jennifer
- A girl born in 1974.
- Jennifer Jones
- The mother of Tom Jones in Richardson's novel of that name.
- A contributor to various web resources on Victorian literature,
such as Voice of
the Shuttle: English Literature and The Victorian Canon.
[The latter is a ``web site devoted to investigating the problem of
taste and aesthetics with regard to the Victorian canon in particular,
and to the canon debates in the academy in general . . .
contains on-line syllabi (e.g. Victoriana: The Popular Canon; The
Victorian Novel; Victorian Poetry; The Novel and the Long 19th Century;
Literature of Empire), on-line texts (including short stories by Lady
Jane Wilde and Mary Elizabeth Braddon), images, external links, and a
theory archive.''] Okay, so Richardson is pre-Victorian; it's close.
- An
Academy-Award-winning actress. She starred as Emma Bovary in the
1949 movie Madame Bovary,
which was constructed as a frame narrative about Gustave Flaubert's
famous novel. She co-starred in The Man in the Gray Flannel
Suit, discussed at the Babbitt entry.
In her mid-twenties, she was cast as the
fourteen-year-old Bernadette in the 1943 Song of Bernadette. This
is a story about the creation of the religious attraction at Lourdes,
and as such you expect it to have taken place in medieval times, but
Bernadette reported her vision in 1858. Madonna named her daughter
Lourdes. It seems to run in the family. Once I mentioned to Sabine
that I had met a woman named Bernadette in France, and she laughed out
loud -- Bernadette seemed such an old-fashioned name to her.
- There's
another Jennifer Jones in show business, as well as a
Jennifer
Leigh Jones and
J.B. Jones, who has gone
by ``Jennifer Jones,'' and assorted Jennifer Joneses in non-acting
roles.
- Jenny
- Woman's name, or nickname for Jennifer.
- jenny
- Female donkey.
- JEP
- Journal of Economic Psychology. Do you really want to pay for
this journal? Buy it and see.
- jerk
- Third time derivative of position, equivalently the (first)
time derivative of acceleration. Corresponds approximately to
the ordinary notion of a jerk.
- [Among the old Los Alamos `device' makers] an energy of
1016 ergs. Does not correspond even approximately to
anything ordinary.
- jeroboam
- Five-liter resealable container for ethanol-water solutions.
Cf. the smaller magnum and the larger
double imperial. I learned
all this cool stuff by watching TV.
The term jerry can, for a flat-sided metal fuel can, capacity about
five (US) gallons, stems from jeroboam in the sense of a large fluid
container. A lot of folks who don't drink enough probably suppose it has
something to do with this other jerry.
- JERRV
- Joint Explosive Ordinance Disposal Rapid Response Vehicle.
- jerry
- A German soldier, blitzing his way across the low-lying rectilinear
battlelines of the Scrabble
tablelands.
- JERS
- Japanese Earth Resources
Satellite.
- JES
- Job Entry Subsystem.
- jess
- A regular verb (regular in the morphological sense, anyway) meaning to
fasten straps around the legs of a hawk. Even if you're not into falconry, but
just happen to find yourself lost and looking for a way out of the
Scrabble forest, you might find this a
useful word. Keep in mind also...
- jesse
- This is an alternate spelling of jess. It's
accepted by all three major Scrabble
dictionaries.
- JESSI, Jessi
- Joint European Submicron Silicon Initiative.
- Jessica Mitford
- Jessica Mitford is one of the famous Mitford sisters. They're so famous
that they really don't need a glossary entry. (However, as their
floruit recedes into the past, such an entry may become necessary as
early as next week.) We already have Jessica Mitford content elsewhere in the
glossary. The most important bits are at the
Lady Bird entry and within the
U and non-U entry (specifically at
this point, where ``You-All and Non-You-All''
and Poison Pen are discussed).
Jessica's (and all her sisters') mother had the given name Sydney. Around
1982, I myself met a woman whose name was Sydney. This Sydney was American,
and I would guess she was born in the 1950's. I asked her how she felt about
her name. I can't remember her exact words, but she seemed to rather resent
her parents' having given it to her. I didn't ask why she didn't change it.
Apparently she was waiting for 1995 and the release of
``The American President,''
in which Annette Benning played the love interest of Michael Douglas, as the
lobbyist Sydney Ellen Wade to his President Andrew Shepherd.
Jessica Mitford herself was always known personally as ``Decca.'' Her first
child, who died in infancy, was named ``Julia Decca Romilly.'' Her surviving
children called her ``Decca'' or ``Dec'' rather than anything like ``mom.''
(Her daughter was called ``Dinky Donk'' and variants or pieces of that.) The
kids got
some press when they helped to promote Peter Sussman's Decca: The
Letters of Jessica Mitford, published in 2006.
In early 1995, Jessica Mitford and her backing band recorded an album as
``Decca and the Dectones.'' The band was described
by
Patricia Holt in the San Francisco Chronicle as
``a kazoo-and-cowbell orchestra led by San Francisco author escort [the SBF
glossary does not know what that means] and recording producer Kathi Kamen
Goldmark. (Goldmark has done other similar projects; some are linked from
this webpage, where you can order
the two-song album in CD or MP3 format.) Yeah, Mitford was 77 at the time.
That's not such a big deal; my mother was still singing (soprano in choirs)
into her mid-80's. Mitford was wheelchair-bound with a broken ankle when she
did her recordings, and she died of lung cancer a year-and-a-half later, aet.
78. Holt wrote, ``certainly the term `barrel-voice' comes to mind.''
I don't know how Jessica Mitford came by her nickname, but Decca was a
well-known name in music for much of the twentieth century. In 1914, the
musical instrument maker Barnett Samuel and Sons patented a portable record
player called the Decca Dulcephone. The word Decca is said to have been coined
by Wilfred S. Samuel, who merged the word Mecca with the initial D of
their logo ``Dulcet'' or their trademark ``Dulcephone.'' I don't know what
motivated an etymology based on Mecca. Barnett Samuel and Son was eventually
renamed ``The Decca Gramophone Co., Ltd.'' and in 1929 it was sold to former
stockbroker Edward Lewis. I suppose 1929 was a good year for former
stockbrokers who still had their shirts to get into another line of business.
Lewis fared well; his ``Decca Records, Ltd.'' [I guess there were partners]
became the second-largest record label in the world. I used to own many of
their records from the 1950's.
I'm not sure precisely when Jessica Mitford used a married name, but she does
describe at least one occasion in Poison Penmanship. Vivian Cadden, an
editor at McCall's, invited her to do an article on Elizabeth Arden's
Maine Chance (a weight-loss spa located, against toponymic expectation,
in Arizona):
... a slight feeling of paranoia took hold at the moment
of actually picking up the phone to call Elizabeth Arden's for a reservation.
Maine Chance would surely be, for me, enemy territory [she had earned a
reputation as a muck-raking journalist]; what if my identity were discovered by
the reservations people? Would they refuse my application? I could use my
married name, but this would be scanty cover at the local Arden salon in San
Francisco [she lived in Oakland], where they might easily make the connection
with Jessica Mitford. So I telephoned to the New York office and announced
myself as Mrs. Robert Treuhaft, which was how I was introduced to the other
slimmers at Maine Chance. One day at lunch I overheard a woman asking another,
``Who is that?'' ``Oh, that's Mrs. Fruehauf'' came the reply. ``Her husband
is very big in trucking.''
- JEST
- Journal of Extraneous
Scientific Topics. SBF homeboy sez: Check it out!
- JET
- Joint European Torus. An old tokomak.
I thought the
major was a lady suffragette.
(Hey, a jet has wings, Wings had a Jet.)
- JETP
- Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics. The Physical
Review Letters (PRL) of the Russian Federation.
- JETRO, Jetro
- Japan External TRade
Organization.
- JETS
- Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society.
- JETS
- The Junior Engineering Technical Society.
``Promoting Interest in Engineering, Science, Mathematics and Technology.''
An associate society
of the AAES.
- jeunes des banlieues
- French term literally meaning `suburban
youths.' A euphemism for ``beurs''
(not a euphemism) from any of the crime-infested rings of housing projects (see
HLM) that were built on the outskirts of
French cities in the 1960's and 1970's.
In October 2005, when major rioting broke out in les banlieues around
Paris, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy repeatedly objected to the euphemism,
insisting for example that voyous (`thugs') was a better word for the
rioters than jeunes (`youth'). A snit-load of bien-pensants
criticized him for using accurate terms such as this and
racaille, q.v.
But the voters found a way to punish Sarkozy: they made him Co-Prince of
Andorra! (And President of France.) Also, his half-brother married Mary-Kate
Olsen. I don't know what to say, but I don't have to.
- JEZ
- Joint (J) Engagement Zone. This is not the
romantic kind of engagement. This is a different kind, also expected to end
only when someone has died. For a nonelliptic explanation, see the weapon
engagement zone entry of the DOD's online
Dictionary of Military
Terms.
- JFA
- Journal of Field Archaeology. Catalogued by TOCS-IN. If you think field archaeology is all
the archaeology there is, consider IJNA.
- JFA
- If you're looking for the LGBT equal-rights organization with ``Justice for
All'' in its name, you want AJA (And Justice for
All).
- JFA
- Justice For All. ``Justice For All
and our JFA E-mail Network were formed [apparently by the AAPD] to defend and advance disability rights
and programs in the 104th Congress [1995-1997]. One JFA goal is to work with
national and state organizations of people with disabilities to get the word
from Washington D.C. out to the grassroots.''
- JFA
- Justice For All. ``Justice For All shall
act as an advocate for change in a criminal justice system that is inadequate
in protecting the lives and property of law-abiding citizens.'' JFA sponsors
<murdervictims.com> and
<prodeathpenalty.com>.
- JFAST
- Joint (Military Services) Flow and Analysis
System for Transportation.
- JFDI
- Just Do It! Adjective, as in ``JFDI
methodology.''
The story is told that once, after presenting a paper at a conference of film
academics, P. Adams Sitney was asked by an audience member how he would
characterize the methodology used for his analysis. Sitney replied,
My methodology is called `watching the films.'
- JFDP
- Junior Faculty Development Program. There's one run by
USAID for Russia.
- JFE
- Journal of Fluids Engineering. LC number TA357.T69; published by
ASME.
- JFET, J-FET
- Junction Field-Effect Transistor (FET).
First proposed by William Shockley in Procs. of the
IRE, 40, 1365 (1952). The first functioning JFET was made by
G. C. Dacey and I. M. Ross, ibid., 41, 970 (1953).
- JFF
- Jordanian Fencing Federation. No-no: not that kind of fencing.
No, not that kind either! Fencing the sport -- with swords'n'all.
- JFIF
- JPEG File Interchange Format.
- JFM
- Journal of Fluid Mechanics. LC number QA901.J87 . First volume in 1956.
It took 33 years to generate the first two hundred volumes; it took six
years to generate the next hundred.
- JFR
- Jane's Foreign Report. (``Foreign''
here means other than UK.) For a list of
information services offered by Jane's
Information Group, see our entry for
Jane's Fighting Ships.
- JFS
- Journaled File System. IBM disk-use system for
machines running AIX, as near as I can make out.
- JFK
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy. A US president. Also an airport (next entry). John Forbes Kerry,
another Roman Catholic Senator, also a Massachusetts Democrat, ran for
president in 2004, another closely contested, high turn-out election. If he
had won, we'd have had a massive namespace collision that might've taken years
to sort out. Instead, we got President Bush. Man, did we ever dodge a bullet!
- JFK
- IATA code for
John F. Kennedy International Airport. Located on the southern coast of
Long Island. It used to be called Idlewild, after the location, although the
official name was New York
International Airport. Renamed for the assassinated
president in memoriam. JFK is one of four airports for which reservations
are always allocated by the ARO.
Here's
its status in real time from the ATCSCC.
- JFNA
- Jewish Federations of North
America. A federation, er, umbrella organization, of upwards of 150 Jewish
federations. It was the ``United Jewish Communities'' until October 2009.
Judging from the tool to find local
organizations, the ``North America'' in the name includes Hawaii and
excludes Mexico.
- JG
- Junction-Gate [of a Junction (-gate) Field-Effect Transistor (JFET)].
- JGB
- Japanese Government Bond.
- JGU
- Japanese Geomorphological
Union.
- Jhb
- JoHannesBurg. One local name for the town is eGoli, meaning `city
of gold.' Another town that doesn't have any
native gold resources is Jerusalem, which has the epithet Yerushalayim shel
zahar, `Jerusalem of gold.'
- JHBC
- Jackson Hole Bible College.
``One God ... One Creation ... One Year ... One Foundation'' Trilogy. (Sorry,
felt like sneaking that in.)
``Jackson Hole Bible College is a one-year, in depth study of the scriptures
with a creation emphasis leading to a Biblical Foundation and Christian
Worldview. ... We are dedicated to providing our students with a quality
program combining outdoor recreational activities and solid Biblical teaching.''
One question you will ponder: ``How was the Grand Canyon really formed?''
Somehow I get the idea that this isn't going to be addressed from the ordinary
godless perspective of a typical geology course. (Someone mentioned last
February 2004 that there was a news story on just this topic: A book claiming
that the Grand Canyon was formed in the aftermath of the Biblical flood was for
sale at a US Park Service gift shop.)
Another: ``Could all the animals really fit on the Ark?'' Sure -- at the time
all the life forms were prokaryotes.
Located in Jackson, Wyoming.
``Come visit our campus in the center of the beautiful Tetons.'' Pretty racy
language for a bible college.
- JHI
- Journal of the History of Ideas. Published by Johns Hopkins
University Press. Catalogued by TOCS-IN.
- J Homosexual
- ISI abbreviation for the Journal of
HOMOSEXUALity. I guess nothing shorter would do. They wanted to avoid
confusion in case someone should start up a publication called Journal of
Homologous Series (J Homo Se). I'm sure that's the reason.
Okay, the manuscripts were due at the end of August, and the following June, we
heard that the relevant special issue was in press. It's November, two issues
have appeared since the heads-up, but our issue hasn't. This isn't slow -- not
even a little strange. It's f---in' queer!
There's actually a little bit of historical information (in your face!)
at the GLQ entry.
- J-horror
- Horrible film of Japan origin. Ah, sorry, please mistake, ah, HORROR film
of Japanese origin.
Required features:
- Creepy little girl with long, dark hair.
- Supernatural stuff.
- Water as symbol of death.
- Western stars.
Recommended features:
- Remake of version with all-Japanese cast.
- Kouji Suzuki included in writing credits.
Movies like
``The Ring'' (2002) (not to
be mistaken for the 1998 version
with an all-Japanese cast or the
1999 Korean version),
``The Grudge'' (2004) (not to
be mistaken for ``Ju-on: The
Grudge'' (2003), Japanese cast), and
``Dark Water'' (2005).
- JHOS
- Jobs, Health care, Oil, and Security. Pronounced, not very propitiously,
``jay-hose.'' Acronym, used within the 2004 Kerry presidential campaign, to
refer to the campaign's essential message. Democratic presidential campaigns
seem to generate more neologisms than
Republican ones do. Cf. scorps.
Y'NO, I hadn't realized Kerry 2004 had a prospective policy-related message,
but if I'd had to guess, I guess I'd have been way off. It's true that
campaigns don't regularly have the luxury of being about what they'd like to be
about, but this was ridiculous.
- JHP
- Journal of the
History of Philosophy. ISSN 0022-5053.
- JHPIEGO
- JHPIEGO, the Johns Hopkins Program for
International Education in Reproductive Health. I know, I know: it's a
little bit difficult to extract the initials G-O from the words Reproductive
Health. I only found this expansion in an article from 1999. Since then,
they're even more reluctant to give an expansion. A few pages have the
expansion, but the easiest way to find a page that gives it is to guess the
expansion correctly first. It's the ``Johns Hopkins Program for International
Education in Gynecology and Obstetrics.''
When they were founded, in 1973 or so, this was okay; since then, I guess the
gee and oh terms have become increasingly politically fraught, so they're
covering their, uh, asses. We live in a crazy world, but what's the
alternative? This particular craziness is what we have come to recognize as a
sealed acronym, but the seal is very
slightly ajar or nonhermetic or something: Googling in January 2005, I found
that for every page that revealed the original expansion of JHPIEGO, there were
300 that used JHPIEGO without the original expansion (whether without any
expansion, or with the appositive and partially accurate expansion).
That's unusual, but here at SBF it's our
bread and butter, or anyway our virtual bread and butter. [In January 2013, it
looks like someone has virtually eaten our breakfast, because that 300 is down
to less than 20.]
Many webpages explain that JHPIEGO is ``pronounced `ja-pie-go'.'' When I learn
how ``ja'' is pronounced (elsewhere than Jamaica), I'll let you know.
- JHS
- Journal of Hebrew Scriptures.
You're probably asking yourself, ``are there some new ones?'' There always
are.
- JHS
- Journal of Hellenic Studies. Founded in 1880, but it still hasn't
got a website of its very own. Catalogued by TOCS-IN. A publication of the Hellenic
Society (SPHS), annual since 1958 (previously
semiannual).
Since the 1950's the JHS has had a supplement entitled Archaeological
Reports (AR).
- JHS
- Junior High School. Typically seventh through ninth grades, distinguished
from middle school, which ends at eighth grade (extended random thoughts at the
MS entry).
- JHU
- Johns Hopkins University. The only
university whose name is an admissions test. If you mess up the
grammatical-number agreement in
the school
name, they toss your application in a slush pile for forwarding to
UMBC admissions. Okay, I made that part up. They
probably just write ``ADDRESSEES UNKNOWNS'' in big letters across the front and
return to sender. That's what I would do. Cf.
Liouville.
- JHU-CTY
- Johns Hopkins University CTY.
- JI
- Joint Implementation (of action
on greenhouse gases).
- JI
- Junction Isolation (q.v.).
- JIC
- Apparently Japan
International Cooperation. Standards.
- JIC
- Joint Industry Committee. An organization that standardizes hydraulic
fittings specifications and symbols. More standards.
George Westinghouse, now best remembered for his electrical enterprises,
made his fortune with an air brake for trains, and was a great proponent of
industrial standardization. He lost his money in a crash (of the stock
market) and died poor.
- JIC
- Joint Information Center.
- JICA
- Japan International
Cooperation Agency.
- JICC
- Japan Industrial Conference on Cleaning.
- JICC
- Jerusalem International Computers and
Communication.
- JICC
- Joint Industry Coupon Committee.
- JICST
- Japan Information Center of Science
and Technology.
- JID
- Jane's Intelligence Digest. They've
really leveraged the name recognition now. JID is part of Jane's Information Group. For a list of
their information services, see our entry for
Jane's Fighting Ships.
- JIEO
- Joint Interoperability
and Engineering Organization. [Of US Dept. of Defense
(DOD).]
- JIES
- Journal of Indo-European Studies. A journal catalogued in TOCS-IN.
- jigger
- A dry liquid measure: 1.5 oz.
- Jigger
- Obsolete term for four iron (golf club).
- JIIP
- Japanese Institute of Intellectual Property.
- JIL
- Job Information List. The MLA has
one that's divided up by academic disciplines.
Abstracted from the English Edition of the October MLA JIL's, 1975-1998, here is a graph of the number of
positions listed. It peaked at 1053 positions in 1988. Another graph, served by
ADE, shows the number of Ph.D.'s granted (probably only in the US) in English
and American language and literature, 1958-2000. The curve has a similar
shape, but it peaks at 1412 in 1973.
- jill
- An alternate spelling of the volume unit normally spelled gill.
Like gaol (British spelling of jail, pronounced ``jail''),
gill is pronounced with a ``soft gee.'' So even though few people will
recognize the unit in this alternate spelling, at least they'll know how to
pronounce it. Also, it's accepted by all
three major Scrabble dictionaries.
The gill is now generally taken to be equal to a quarter of a pint: 4 fluid
ounces in the God-Ordained Tradition! System of Weights and Measures in use in
the US, or 5 fluid ounces in the old British Imperial system. (Note that those
are different fluid ounces: the fluid ounce of the US customary system is a
volume equal to 1.8046875 cu. in., while the British fluid ounce measures
1.733871 cu. in., approximately.)
A half a gill (an eighth of a pint) is a noggin... in some places. In others
it's equal to twice or four times that. Ain't it great?
At various times and places, mostly in the past and England, a gill has also
been a half pint, and in those places a quarter pint was a jack.
In Tour of the Hebrides for September 20, 1773, Boswell records
Johnson's saying ``Each man called for his own half-pint of wine, or gill, if
he pleased.'' I don't know how ``or'' was meant there (i.e., I don't
know whether it is implied that a gill is a half pint), but I think it's worth
pointing out that until British Imperial units were introduced, the Scots pint
was a volume about equal to 1.80 US quarts.
Let's consider the spellings. English spelling generally reflects etymology,
so that the pronunciation of certain letter sequences depends on the origin (or
sometimes the mistakenly imputed origin) of the word. The initial letter
sequence gi is a case in point.
The g is normally ``hard'' (or ``guttural'') in words of Germanic origin.
Examples include
giddy,
gift,
gild, gilt,
gird, girdle, girth,
girl, and
give.
The g is ``soft'' in words taken from French, Italian, or
Latin (even if they only passed through one of these
languages on their way from Arabic or Greek). Relatively simple examples
include giant, gibbet, giblet, gigantic, gigolo, ginger, and
gingivitis. Gill itself is from the Old French gille, from the
medieval Latin gillus, a wine vessel. Some exceptions to the rule can
be explained on the basis of gui- spellings in Old
French, including gimlet, gingham, and
probably gizzard. More complicated things have happened as well (see
gaol).
I suppose all this information really belongs at a gill entry rather
than at this jill ``alternate spelling'' entry. Therefore, its presence
here is a bonus.
Just to round out the entry, I should point out that in seventeenth-century
England, the gill was once a unit used to measure quantities of tin, and
in that application it corresponded to a full pint.
- JIM
- Japan Institute of Metals.
- Jim
- A nickname for James. In fact, ``James'' has a somewhat formal sound, so
most Jameses are called Jim by their friends. But an Indian friend of mine is
named James, and he doesn't use ``Jim'' because in many languages of the Indian
subcontinent, jim means `dog.'
- jimmie
- A tiny bit of candy for decorating ice cream, and a valid Scrabble word
(with regular plural) according to the OSPD4 and
the TWL2006. It wasn't listed in
OSPD3 and was added to
SOWPODS during the year or so before June 2007.
- Jimmy
- Diminutive form of Jim.
- jimmy
- Jimmy the lock! Donald -- duck! Shit, John! It's a snap, Ginger! Oh
Joy! You understand, Ken?
- Jimmy
- Name that GM came up with for its GMC truck
division products. Cf. RB.
- Jimo
- Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter. A proposed NASA
vehicle that could move in and out of orbit around three of Jupiter's largest
and most distant moons. The orbiter, to be powered by a nuclear reactor (for
instruments and for an ion propulsion system) and expected to cost billions of
dollars, is not expected to launch any earlier than 2011; exploratory studies
for the project only began in February 2003.
- JIMS, JIMSS
- Journal of Intelligent
Material Systems and Structures.
- JINR
- Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.
JINR is a research center in Dubna, Russia.
The first major research instrument was built at Dubna in 1947-1949, and the
USSR Academy of Sciences eventually had two research institutes there: the
Institute for Nuclear Problems (INP) and the Electrophysical Laboratory.
CERN was created in 1954, and in 1956, keeping up
with the Joneses of the West, the Soviet Union used those two Academy
institutes as the basis on which to establish JINR. Initially, JINR could be
regarded by the Soviets as their CERN, but over time they diverged. In
particular, CERN eventually had showcase high-energy accelerators for
elementary particle research, whereas Dubna stayed in what became the
medium-energy regime -- nuclear physics. Probably the thing for which Dubna is
best known is the discovery of new transuranic elements. This defines its
peers: initially (like its prececessor INP), it competed with Berkeley
(LBL) for discovery of and naming rights to new
elements. Berkeley eventually moved in different directions also, and now
Dubna's main peer institutions are GSI in Germany
and the RIKEN Nishina Center (Heavy Ion Nuclear
Physics Laboratory) in Japan.
The ``Joint'' in the name originally referred to various parts of the Soviet
Empire: some, at least, of the republics of the USSR, and Soviet bloc member
states. In a couple of days, I hope to find out about possible members or
``participants'' that are no longer such. I wonder in particular about the
Baltic republics. It seems there may have been a little hesitation evem among
those that re-upped: sovereign but not-especially independent Belarus renewed
or continued its participation in 1991, seven other current participants that
had been Soviet Republics did so only in 1992. (These were Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan). Russia, where Dubna is
located, was always a participant by dint of the owner and operator, the Soviet
Academy of Sciences, becoming the Russian Academy of Sciences. Nine other
countries participate formally: Bulgaria, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Mongolia,
North Korea, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Vietnam. Most of these, or their
Soviet-era predecessors, have been members since 1956; Cuba joined in 1976; and
for North Korea (the ``Democratic People's Republic'' and mass prison),
appropriately enough, no details are available.
Most of my life, I've heard JINR referred to simply as ``Dubna.'' The 1962
accident that ended Lev Landau's career took place when he was being driven to
Dubna. He was being driven by a graduate student, so you might suppose Dau was
going to JINR. I think he was, but he was probably mixing business with
pleasure. As his widow Kora Landau-Drobantseva explained in ch. 4 of her 1983
memoir (Akademik Landau.
Kak mi zhili, `Professor Landau: How We Lived'), the Landaus had an
open marriage. That fateful morning of January 7, 1962, he told her that she
shouldn't answer the door -- he would do so. This was what she called a `stop
sign' or `red light' -- evidently a warning not to be too inquisitive about his
plans.)
- JINSA
- Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs.
- JIR
- Jane's Intelligence Review. Just how
much intelligence can they have if they try to hijack the acronym of the
real JIR? How bright is that? They want the
free publicity, sure. For a list of information services offered by
Jane's Information Group, see our entry for
Jane's Fighting Ships.
- JIR
- Journal of Irreproducible
Results.TM Either this or
Nature (London) is the most widely read scientific journal in the world.
This is particularly impressive when you consider that JIR is no longer
published as a periodical -- they're just reprinting best-of collections in
book form. For something that's up-to-date, but no less um, whatever, see
AIR.
- JIRCAS
- Japan International Research Center for
Agricultural Sciences.
- JIS
- Japan Industrial Standard. Standards
established by JISC (infra).
More
English-friendly JIS information served from Chiba University.
- JIS
- Jurisdictional Interstate Service.
- JISA
- Japan Information Service
Association. (In English
also.)
- JISC
- Japan
Industrial Standards Committee.
- JISC
- Joint Information Systems Committee
(of UK). Sometimes incorrectly expanded
``SubCommittee.'' Man, that kindof sloppiness really gets on my nerves.
- JISCII
- Japanese Industrial Standard Code for
Information Interchange. Slang designation of JIS character-set standards,
modeled after ASCII (q.v.).
- JISP
- Juvenile Intensive Supervision Program. A New Jersey alternate-punishment
program. See the ISP entry.
- JIT
- Just In Time. A manufacturing strategy that minimizes the capital invested
in inventory by substituting close coordination with suppliers. First widely
implemented in Japan, where many companies belong to
keiretsu (loose conglomerates, very loosely speaking) that engender
broad cooperation. There are both horizontal and vertical (integration)
keiretsu, and some of both kinds would probably be in violation of antitrust
law in the US. Most allegations of predatory practices by Keiretsu are never
proven. It reminds me of Big Jule in ``Guys and Dolls'': ``Well, I used to be
bad when I was a kid, but ever since then I've gone straight, as has been
proved by my record: Thirty-three arrests and no convictions!''
The acronym is also used in computer programming. In general it refers to the
second stage in certain two-stage compilations. In the first stage, the source
code of a stand-alone program or module is ``compiled'' to byte code. In the
second stage, which occurs at run time, the byte code is ``JIT compiled'' or
``jitted'' into an executable. This sort of two-stage compilation, and the
term JIT, are characteristic of Java in general, and of all programming
languages running within Microsoft's .NET framework.
- JITC
- Joint Interoperability Testing Center.
- JIT Lieferung
- German term meaning `Just In Time delivery.' In other words, it means
`JIT.'
- JITSR
- International Journal of IT Standards and
Standardization Research.
- JIU
- Josai International University. A new
university in Japan, founded 1992. The initialism
is (as is fairly standard for romaji acronyms) given using English letter names
(i.e., pronounced ``jay eye you'' -- or rather jei ai yu in
romaji). You can hear this on the university song (WAV format here).
- JIVE
- Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe.
When we learned the word ogive in statistics (used as an alternate term
for a cumulative distribution function) in high school, somebody observed that
it was like, so cool to say ``oh jive!''
- J.-J.
- Jean-Jacques.
- JJA
- June, July, August. Aggregated Summer data. Take your complaints to the
MAM entry. Cf. DJF,
SON.
- JJAP
- Japanese
Journal of Applied Physics.
- JJ coupling
- A procedure for treating the LS coupling
in high-Z atoms (and essentially all nuclei), which for
some electrons (nucleons) is so strong as to rival the residual Coulomb
(internuclear) interaction magnitude. The procedure consists in first treating
the LS coupling of individual electrons (nucleons), to define states of
definite L, S, J and Jz, and then to treat the residual interaction
as a perturbation coupling different J states.
- JJRS
- Japanese Journal of Religious Studies.
- jk
- JoKe. Chatese.
- JKFF
- JK Flip-Flop. ``JK'' stands for Jordan and Kelly, the inventors.
Or so I've heard. I've also read in various
places that in 1919 W. H. Eccles and
F. W. Jordan published the first FF
circuit design. They called the circuit a ``trigger.''
- JKR
- J. K. Rowling.
- J. K. Rowling
- Pen name of Joanne Rowling, author of the hugely successful children's book
series about the young wizard Harry Potter. It was supposed that boys would be
less inclined to buy a book if they thought the author was a woman, hence the
use of initials. Since a single initial tends to look unbalanced or inadequate,
Rowling used the initials J. and K. The kay honors her late paternal
grandmother Kathleen. Rowling, seemingly inappropriately, rhymes with
bowling rather than howling.
In college, Rowling read French with a Classics
subsid (majored in French and minored in Classics; you could do a Classics
subsid at Exeter without studying Latin). In one interview no longer at its
old URL she said,
I went to Exeter University straight after school, where I studied French.
This was a big mistake. I had listened too hard to my parents, who thought
languages would lead to a great career as a
bilingual secretary.
Her books are full of Latinate invented words, and she gave Hogwarts school
the Latin motto Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus (`Never Tickle a
Sleeping Dragon'). As she put it in a March '99
interview at the Mothers Who Think website,
I taught for about four years, mainly teenagers. It is my own memories of
childhood that inform my writing, however; I think I have very vivid recall of
what it felt like to be 11 years old. The classics part of my degree at Exeter
College did furnish me with a lot of good names for characters -- not exactly
the use my lecturers expected me to put it to, however.
It was announced in December 2001 that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's
Stone, the first book in the Harry Potter series, would be published in
Latin (in 2003) and ancient Greek (later). The stated intention is to help
children overcome the common dread of studying the two dead languages. (Gives
you a whole different take on ``scary stories,'' huh?) Peter Needham, who
taught Latin and Greek
at Eton College for more than 30 years, was contracted
to do the Latin version. Needham is ``calling Harry Harrius Potter. Arrius is
a Latin name -- there's an Arrius in a Catullus poem -- and it declines
perfectly well so that, for example, we have Harrium Potterum. The literal
translation of Potter would be Figulus but I very much hope that Potter will
survive.'' (This is a bit of sly humor. In poem 84, Catallus ridicules Arrius
for his speech defect: he inserts an aitch -- a rough breathing rather than a
sound, as the Greeks and many Romans thought of it
-- before words beginning in
a vowel. Hence, he'd have pronounced his own name Harrius.)
For more on Roman attitudes to aitch, see comments in the Noctes Atticae
(`Attic Nights') of Aulus Gellius, bk. II, iii.1-5, Quintilian, IO 1.5.19. One
secondary source that I can think of, just speculation really, is E. S.
Sheldon, ``H as a Mute in Latin,'' vol. 5 HSCP (1894), pp. 167-168.
Our small contribution to Harry Potter studies is the Voldemort entry.
For a deeper analysis of the use of initials and other variations in name
presentation, see
- F. L. Wells and Helen R. Palwick, ``Notes on Usage of Male Personal
Names,'' Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 31 (1950):
pp. 291-294.
- A. A. Hartman, ``Name Styles in Relation to Personality,''
Journal of General Psychology, vol. 59 (1958): pp.
289-294.
It turns out the ``J. Rowling'' might have implied, depending on circumstances,
that the author was self-derogatory or masochistic. ``J. K. Rowling'' is a
form that may (as it does in this case) indicate a desire to avoid revealing
oneself.
Ezra Pound gave Hilda Doolittle the pen name H.D.
I'm not clear whether this was intended to help get her work published; her
first three published poems all appeared in the literary magazine Poetry, published by Pound's friend
Harriet Monroe.
Other famous authors who have used a pseudonym that concealed the fact that
they were women: George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans],
George Sand, Collette. (No, ``Collette'' doesn't dissimulate the author's
gender, but read on.) Samuel (Erewhon) Butler argued that The Odyssey
(yeah, ``Homer's Odyssey'') was written by a woman (the title sort of kills the
suspense of the argument: The Authoress of the Odyssey). A somewhat
different case is presented by the Pentateuch, redacted from texts written by a
number of authors (possibly not all male) and attributed to Moses (see
J entry).
Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin (neé Dudevant) co-wrote her first novel
with her then-lover Jules Sandeau, published under the single pseudonym Jules
Sand. Her second novel, Indiana (my state of
residence!), and subsequent novels, she single-authored as George Sand.
She was famous not only for her novels but for her sexual iconoclasm -- smoking
cigars, affecting male clothing, and engaging in multiple affairs with a lack
of secretiveness unusual for women of her class. She had a prodigious output
-- she wrote for the money. As Dr. Samuel Johnson said -- ``No man but a
blockhead ever wrote except for money.''
Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine first wrote several books published under her
husband's name (Henri Gauthier-Villars). After her divorce, she published
first under her maiden name and then as Collette. In her memoirs she wrote
Born into an unmonied family, I never learned a métier. I knew how to
climb, whistle, and run, but no one ever suggested that I earn my living as
a squirrel or a deer. The day necessity put a pen in my hand, and in return
for my written pages I was given a little money, I realized that every day
thereafter I would slowly, tractably, patiently have to write . . .
(Did I mention Dr. Johnson? Have I pointed out that a major irritant in the
long feud between Dostoyevsky and Turgenev was the fact that the latter was
better-paid for his work? Dostoyevsky complained that Turgenev was paid five
times as much per word. I wouldn't have complained if Fyodor had written
shorter novels.)
George Sand, Collette, and J. K. Rowling all had unhappy first marriages,
divorced and were poor, and wrote to make money. Mary Ann or Marian Evans, who
wrote under the pen name George Eliot, never had a legally sanctioned first
marriage -- unhappy or otherwise -- but she lived happily with George Henry
Lewes from 1854 until his death in 1878. (He was unable to obtain a divorce
from his first wife; his sinful cohabitation with Evans was a scandal.) There
must be a pattern or a lesson in all this, but I can't imagine what it is.
Joanne Rowling was married on Friday, October 16, 1992. In Harry Potter and
The Prisoner of Azkaban, Professor Trelawney tells Lavender Brown, ``That
thing you are dreading -- it will happen on Friday the 16th of October.''
Some of the people who write romance novels are men, but none of the names of
authors listed on the covers of romance novels are men's names. If you'll just
do the arithmetic, you'll see that this means that there are men writing under
female pseudonyms. In the traditional romance novel, the heroine finds
happiness in her first marriage. (Although there does now exist a
``second chance'' subgenre.)
I read three romance novels once, almost, and later
I thought, ``Hey, I can turn out shlock like this too!'' My cousin Victoria
(raking in the big bucks as a schoolteacher) encouraged me in this enterprise,
sort of, and came up with a good pen name for me. Eventually, however, I
realized that to write what you can't bear to read any more of can really put a
damper on your working life, so that project is on hold everlasting.
There's a bound typescript publication by Alice Kahler Marshall, Pen Names
of Women Writers from 1600 to the Present (1985). For Laura Riding, the
pen names listed are Barbara Rich; Laura Riding (Jackson; Gottschalk). Don't
worry if you find this confusing. It was confusing. There was an article on
her in TNR many years ago (1980's, probably), and I
think the title was Laura Riding Roughshod.
- JKT
- The Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope. A 1.0-meter telescope operated by
ING on behalf of the NWO and other scientific do-gooders.
- JLA
- Journal of
Late Antiquity. Published twice a year, it ``is the first international
English-language journal dedicated to the study of Late Antiquity writ large.
The journal provides a venue for multi-disciplinary coverage of all the
methodological, geographical, and chronological facets of Late Antiquity, going
from AD 250 to 750, ranging from Arabia to the British Isles, and running the
gamut from literary and historical studies to the study of material culture.
One of the primary goals of the journal is to highlight the status of Late
Antiquity as a discrete historical period
in its own right.''
Here's something
interesting that the whole family can appreciate: a half-page ad
(5.5 × 4") costs $206, while a full-page ad
(5.5 × 9") costs $275.
- JLab, JLAB
- Jefferson LAB. Previously, and still
informally, known as CEBAF. Known more formally
as the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. Street address: 12000
Jefferson Avenue, Newport News, Virginia.
- JLA:NWO
- Justice League of America: New World Order. Superman (with longer hair
than I remember from years ago), Batman, Wonder Woman, and Flash (?), and three
lesser heroes including the Green Lantern, a Martian,
and somebody else green and super, I think. From DC Marvel Comics.
Superman's parents perished when his home planet was destroyed, and Batman's
parents were murdered. They're both very unhappy about these violent demises
of course. I don't know about the other superheroes, but I think I see a
pattern of childhood fantasy here that would not want to recognize itself.
Harry Potter is a sort of boy superwizard; his parents are killed at the
beginning of the first Harry Potter book.
Incidentally, you know that according to oral history as handed down and
reported by Flavius Josephus (Antiq. Jud. 1.13, 2), Isaac was twenty-five
years old when Abraham set out to sacrifice him. Also according to the oral
history, they came down Mt. Moriah in silence and never spoke to each other
again. I mean, like, what do you expect?
[I think it's just so cool how, by proceeding methodically in alphabetical
order, all of these unexpected connections just automatically reveal
themselves. (Don't mind the dangle.) There must be something to literacy.]
J. K. Rowling's mother died of
MS when the author was twenty-five. Her father
moved in with another woman what-many-regarded-as indecently soon after, and
due to various other circumstances, relations between Joanne and her father
were strained. It seems they talk infrequently, if ever. I'd say more, but
recently a Byzantinist I know, and I too, have been criticized for publicizing
information about JKR. You know -- personal, private stuff, the kinds of
secrets you only learn about if you read newspapers. God forbid if that kind
of information were to get into a mailing-list or web site -- everyone
would know about it. If I pick up any information in my lonely monitoring of
the Tonight Show With Jay Leno, I'll be sure to keep mum about that too.
- JLCA
- Java Language Conversion Assistant. The one I know of that is so called is
meant to output or yield C# code.
- J-lead
- An IC chip carrier lead shaped like the letter
J. Typically, the lead comes out of the side of package, goes down
along the vertical side of the package and then continues past the bottom in
the shape of a semicircle, tucking underneath the package.
- J'lem, Jlem
- JerusaLEM.
- JLENS
- Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense
Elevated Netted Sensor. A theater-based sensor system using deploys tethered
aerostats.
The US Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology originally
established the JLENS program office in 1996 as the Joint Aerostat Project
Management Office. Originally targeted for initial deployment in 2012, the
roll-out has been moved up (as of 2005) to 2010.
- JLI
- Japanese-Language Instruction.
According to ACTFL figures mentioned in this
report by Kyoko Toriyama (1992), it experienced a surge in the 1980's. By
1985 US high-school enrollments for Japanese had surpassed those for Russian,
making Japanese the sixth-most-studied foreign language, with a total
enrollment of 8,558. As of 2000, Japanese was still in sixth (at 0.8% of
FL enrollments), after
Spanish (70.8%, including
SNS), French
(18.3%), German (4.8%), Latin (2.7%), and Italian (1.2%).
The source for the Y2K percentages in the last paragraph is
the ACTFL report
quoted at the SNS entry, which does not list Japanese-language enrollments
for 1985. It appears that enrollments continued to surge in the early 1990's
and then began to stabilize: total public high-school enrollments were 24,123
in 1990, 42,290 in 1994, and 50,884 in 2000. (Yes, the ACTFL does these
studies rather irregularly. In my experience, US Education statistics are
gathered at haphazard intervals.)
California public high schoools had the most students studying -- about 10,000.
Hawaii had 7400, which probably represents the highest percentage of students.
The 1992 study by Toriyama was primarily based on a survey sent to 29 high
schools; usable responses were obtained from 17 schools. These schools
reported using 11 different textbook series. The most popular textbooks were
designed for the college level, and there was evident dissatisfaction with the
available texts designed for English-speaking high-school students.
Most schools were allocating 3 to 6 weeks to learn hiragana and an
additional 2 to 6 weeks for katakana. There was enormous variation in
the rate at which kanji were introduced. The focus was generally on speaking
and understanding first.
- JLIP
- Joint Level Interface Protocol.
- JLo
- Jennifer LOpez. Hispanic actress and singer who became a star with her
portrayal of murdered Hispanic singer Selena. (Is that a stretch, or what?)
Lopez (also Lópes) is a common
Spanish surname. There's a Jennifer Lopez who
works as an announcer on The Weather Channel.
- JLOTS
- Joint (Military Services) Logistics Over The
Shore (LOTS).
- JLPT
- Japanese Language
Proficiency Test. A particular one set by JEES
and administered by JEES in Japan, by the Interchange Association in Taiwan,
and by the Japan
Foundation elsewhere.
(The Japan
Foundation is a Japanese government organization that appears to have no
other function than to administer the JLPT abroad, at no charge.)
- JLTA
- Japanese Livestock Technology Association. I
don't really have any information on livestock technology that you could use
around the home, Japanese or otherwise, although cattle probes are tempting.
Why don't you visit the cow magnet entry? It
describes a technological cure for the bovine malady known as hardware disease.
- .jm
- (Domain code for) Jamaica.
- JM
- James Madison. He signed himself JM.
- JM
- Johnny Mnemonic. Protagonist of a 1995 movie by the same name. There used to be a pretty good JM-themed
pinball machine (from Gottlieb, I think). You probably remember the great Gary Larson comic in which a
Neanderthalish fellow in the middle of the class asks to be excused, because
``[his] brain is full.'' That's basically the premise of this movie.
- JM
- Junge Mädchen. [German: `Young Girls.'] Nazi Brownies (pre-Girl
Scouts). Cf. BDM.
- JMA
- Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology. Catalogued by TOCS-IN.
- JMCC
- Jerusalem Media and Communication
Centre. An organization that polls Palestinians.
- JMD
- Journal of Molecular
Diagnostics. Published by ASIP and
AMP.
- JMEP
- Journal of MicroElectronic Packaging. They seem to be pretty
careful. One of our papers received three peer reviews. It's not like they
needed a third to break a tie: all three were positive. Maybe they used three
reviewers to be sure they got the paper reviewed within two months (their own
target, which they met).
- JMGS
- Journal of Modern Greek Studies.
- JMHO
- Just My (Honest|Humble} Opinion. Modeled after
IMHO.
- JMMH
- Journal of Medieval Military
History. Published annually by Boydell and Brewer for Deremi. One of the founding editors, and
contributor to the first issue (I hope that's not a conflict) commented on
Mediev-L that `` one of the reasons for this journal has been the ignoring of
military history by Speculum and other so-called mainstream journals.''
The first issue: November 2002.
- JMO
- Just My Opinion. Modeled after IMO.
- JMOS
- Joint(-gate) Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (MOS). A
realization of CMOS logic in which gates are
constructed with PMOS transistors below (typically) and NMOS above a common
gate.
- JMOU
- Joint Memorand{um|a} Of Understanding (MOU).
- JMP
- JuMP. Assembly-language goto.
- JMS
- Journal of Manufacturing Systems, published by the
Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME).
If I order now (because I ``belong to a very special group'') I'll
receive Passion for Manufacturing absolutely free! Wow. My
mouth is secreting enzyme-rich anticipatory saliva.
They list no web site.
- JMSB
- John Molson School of
Business. Part of Concordia College
(in Montreal). Why could't they be ``MSB'' like
everybody else?
- JMSC
- Japan MIDI Standards Committee.
- JMT
- Journal of Music Theory.
- JMU
- James Madison University.
- JNC
- Jet Navigation Chart.
Well, if the navigation chart is jet, I hope they used a light-colored ink.
- JNCL
- Joint National
Committee For Languages. ``Since 1976, the Joint National Committee
for Languages has provided a forum for cooperation and discussion among
language professionals.'' ``JNCL is affiliated with the National Council for
Languages and International Studies (NCLIS),
an advocacy organization with which it shares a governance structure and staff.
- JND
- Just-Noticeable Difference. The smallest difference sensible.
A famous rather approximate rule says that within a broad range, the JND
is a fixed fraction of the stimulus magnitude. From this, if one regards
the JND as a perceptual ``measuring unit,'' one concludes that sense is
logarithmic. That is, the subjective difference in magnitude between
two stimuli is proportional to the absolute ratio of their stimulus
intensities. This makes decibels (dB) a natural
unit of measure.
Compare Least Publishable Unit (LPU).
- JND
- Just-Noticeable Distortion. In political speech, any level of honesty
beyond this level is known as `martyrdom.'
JNDA
- Japan Numismatic Dealers Association.
- JNES
- Journal of Near Eastern Studies. Catalogued by TOCS-IN.
- JNF
- Jewish National Fund.
- JNI
- Jane's Navy International. See our
entry for Jane's Fighting Ships.
- JNI
- Java Native method Interface.
- JNJ
- Journal of Nursing Jocularity.
- JNNS
- Japanese
Neural Network Society. Quite apparently distinct from
International and
European same, though they publish a thing or two
jointly.
- Jno.
- John.
Although this is used systematically (among those who still bother to
abbreviate John) to the exclusion of ``Jo.'' (which is
used for Joseph, Joel, and some related names), an exception occurs for
John the Baptist (Jo. Bapt.).
- JNO
- Jump if No Overflow. Assembly mnemonic.
- JNPT
- Johnson-Noise-Power Thermometer. The power spectral density of noise
in a resistor is proportional to the absolute temperature and to the
resistance. This discovery, and its
theoretical explanation, were presented in back-to-back articles in the
Bell System Technical Journal, by Johnson and Nyquist, respectively, in
about 1920.
- JNSL
- Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages.
- JNTO
- Japan National Tourist
Organization. Also see Tourism entry.
- Jo.
- Joel, Joseph, Joeline, Josephine, and
some other names. Not used for John (Jno.).
Except in the case of John the Baptist (Jo.
Bapt.).
- .jo
- (Domain code for) Jordan.
- jo
- A sweetheart. Specifically, a Scrabble® sweetheart. The
kind of sweetheart that is cherished because it's a two-letter word that enables a ``player''
to discard a letter J that is no longer wanted. It does sound rather
heartless, but it's accepted by all three
major Scrabble dictionaries.
Interestingly, this kind of jo appears to be a concrete count noun without a
plural form (JOS is not accepted by any of the three major Scrabble
dictionaries). Maybe it's a lonely instance of the vocative in English.
- JOA
- Joint Operating Agreement.
- JOAD
- Junior Olympic Archery Development.
``Our most important asset in archery, just as in life, is our youth.'' Tough
luck for me.
- Joad
- Surname of the family at the center of John Steinbeck's 1939 novel
The Grapes of Wrath.
The title of the novel is borrowed from the song ``The Battle Hymn of the
Republic.'' (``Oh mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. / He
is tramping out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. / He has
loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword. / His truth is
marching on.'' These are not the lyrics exactly as Julia Ward Howe wrote them,
but as I have always heard them.) The lyrics allude to Rev. 14:19, which
mentions a ``great winepress of the wrath of God'' (in the
KJV) that yielded blood (Rev. 14:20). There are
plenty of other Biblical allusions, and the name Joad sounds somewhat Biblical
too, echoing Joab, Moab, Job, Joed, and a very large number of personal and
place names ending in -ad.
- job
- Here's an unusual use of the English language:
I got a job by accident.
When we were graduate students in physics, and we observed as each student in
turn disappeared beyond the event horizon of the final public oral
(FPO), to be torn apart by the tidal forces of the
job-market black hole, one of the few triangulation points we learned was the
following datum:
Job offers are bosons.
That is, they obey Bose-Einstein (B-E) statistics:
if you are in a one-job-offer state, your probability of transitioning to
a two-job-offer state is twice the probability that the poor guy with no job
offer will get even one; if you are in a two-job-offer state, your chances of
getting another offer are three times his chance of getting a first job offer.
The injustice of this situation is obvious, since the person with no job offers
needs a job offer much more than the person with two, who is going to turn down
one of the offers anyway. It is said that the market is cold, and while no
precise temperature measurement has been reported, it appears that we may be
close to the Bose Condensation (BEC) regime, where
all the job offers condense on one applicant. On the basis of this
observation, I think that an effective jobs program would be to give that one
applicant a secretary. That would not only open up a secretary position, but
the excess job offers could be turned down promptly, creating a population
inversion, etc.
Even I get tired of teeteringly extended metaphors, and I hadn't even discussed
lasing. It is probably fair to note that early
research on job offer statistics is implied in the classic research of Saint
Matthew (Matthew Principle) However, I
first learned about quantum job-offer statistics from Steve, a student of
Arthur S. Wightman, so it may be that the principle has now been placed on a
rigorous axiomatic field-theory foundation.
New research suggests that MOTAS statistics are
also bosonic. For more detail on job stats, try following the link at the
BLS entry.
Although they're not pronounced identically, it seems appropriate that the
Biblical Job and the quotidian job should have the same spelling. Both
are associated with great suffering. Incidentally, the English word job
has been borrowed into German as a masculine noun. This loan is reputed to
have a German pronunciation simmilar to the English (something like what would
be spelled ``jawp''). But it's a very common word, and without researching the
matter, I suspect that as usual its pronunciation will go a bit native and
start to resemble that of the name of the Biblical character (also spelled
Job or almost equivalently Hiob).
- JÖB
- Jahrbuch der Österreichische Byzantinistik.
- Jo. Bapt.
- John the Baptist. The guy who lost his head two thousand years ago.
Not used as a given name in English, but in some other languages, such as
French (Jean-Baptiste, abbrev. J.-B.).
Note that normally, Jo. abbreviates Joel and some
other names, and John is abbreviated Jno..
I've also seen JBap used, by HJ people who think nothing of posting
ten-thousand-word messages every couple of days for months on end,
all under the subject head ``Historical method.''
- JOBOP, JobOp, Jobop
- Job Opportunity.
- job out
- A term patterned on drop-out. A job out is someone who is lured out
of a technical training program by a job.
- JOBS
- JOsephson (junction) Broadband Spectrometer.
- Joburg, Jo'burg
- JOhannesBURG, South Africa.
- JOC
- Japanese Olympic Committee.
- JOCV
- Japan
Overseas Cooperation Volunteers. The Japanese
Peace Corps.
- JOE
- Java Objects Everywhere.
- Joe
- Short for Joseph. Hey -- where' you
goin' with that gun in your hand?
- joey
- Baby kangaroo. A kid sister of Carrie Fisher, who's on a
TV show. ``Ellen'' vel sim.
I'm goin' down to shoot my ol' lady, you know I caught'er messin'roun' with
another man.
- joggers with umbrellas
- I thought of that today when I didn't see it. That's how free association
works, probably.
- John
- Elton's last name. He was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight.
- JOHNNIAC
- JOHN von Neumann Integrator and Automatic Computer. An early computer
built by the RAND corporation and based on the IAS architecture developed by John von Neumann and
named in his honor. Like all computers of its era, it was a one-of-a-kind
machine that could not exchange programs with other computers
(even other IAS machines). Then again, the programs were pretty short.
JOHNNIAC operated from 1953 until February 11, 1966, logging over 50,000
operational hours. The machine currently takes up space at the Computer History Museum in
Mountain View, California.
The preceding information, but not the crucially important attitude component,
was cribbed from the JOHNNIAC
entry at Wikipaedia, the
free encyclopaedia, with an extra vowel because this is SBFary, the free glossary.
According to the Giant Computers
file, this computer contained about 3000 tubes,
no crystals, and about 200 relays, and occupied 250 square feet. It was
used for scientific calculations for general research.
- Johnny Rotten
- Gerard is taken with the album title:
Never mind the bollocks.
JR got back together with the rest of the Sex Pistols for a recording session
or concert or something, in 1997, so he could insult them and give a filip to
his sagging solo career.
- Johnson
- Johnson is the second
most common surname in the US.
When Gary and Susan married in Scottsdale, one of my tasks, as a local, was to
taxi some of the out-of-town guests, including Gary's sister. Sitting in the
back seat, she asked about the frilly black garter on the floor of my car. I
had to explain about how a famed composer of liturgical music, David A.
Johnson, had passed away not long before, and how, as a direct and unavoidable
consequence of the Law of Unintended Consequences, a letter of
condolence had arrived at CSSER, where another
David A. Johnson was an ASU graduate student in
EE. It was decided to celebrate David's passing with
a memorial quaff at a nearby bar, within walking distance of EE for the badly
decomposed body himself. Seeking to show the proper respect, I called a few
funeral homes for information, but they all said it was an east coast thing, or
an Italian thing, and they had no idea where I
could get a black armband, so I went out and bought a black garter as the
next-best thing.
Then Gary's sister asked me about the castanets.
One of the problems with having a popular name like David Johnson, in addition
to people mistaking you for another David Johnson, is people mistaking you for
another David Johnson when it's really you. This happened to Orioles
manager Davey Johnson, who on the same day at the end of the 1997 season (a)
was fired from his job and (b) won the American League Manager-of-the-Year
honors. It was the same guy, but the team owner obviously thought that
the Davey Johnson who did such a good job was a different Davey Johnson than
the one he was firing. I guess. Perhaps owner Angelos was confused because
the same Davey Johnson had managed teams in both American and National Leagues
(none of which had ever finished lower than second place). Perhaps Mr. Angelos
was confused because Davey Johnson had managed the team to a second-place
finish the previous year, but this year the team was in first place from the
first day of the season to the last. Perhaps Mr. Angelos was just confused.
Maybe Davey Johnson can pretend to be the different DJ who won the award and
get his old job back as a new DJ. Reminds me of the new Richard Nixon.
There ought to be some way to take advantage of this kind of thing.
Legally, I mean.
- JOI
- Japanese Olympiad
of Indiana.
- JOI
- Jewish Outreach Institute.
- joking
- Remember, you can't spell joking without king. When the king
tells a joke, everybody laughs.
``The Great Race'' (1965) was directed by Blake Edwards and had an all-star
cast (alright, not quite literally) led by Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and
Natalie Wood (not credited in that order). Jack Lemmon played Professor Fate
-- one of the racers -- and also Crown Prince Frederick Hoepnick of Pottsdorf,
where the movie is temporarily detained on its way from New York to Paris. I
won't be able to finish this entry until I revisit that.
- jökulhlaup
- The Icelandic word for glacier runs -- flooding due to glacier melting.
- JOM
- Journal of the Minerals, Metals, & Materials Society.
- JONES
- Joints, Obvious (cardiac), Nodules (subcutaneous), Erythema marginatum,
Syndeham's chorea. The major criteria for acute rheumatic fever, in mnemonic
form. (From Seth
Wright's list at Vanderbilt.)
- Jones, LeRoi
- Imamu Amiri Baraka.
- Jón Gnarr
- This entry is among the j's rather than the g's because it starts with J,
see? Anyway, in many languages the pronunciations of j and g overlap.
Granted, that's not the case in Icelandic: the initial g in Gnarr is unvoiced.
(I.e., it's pronounced /k/. Interestingly, all the stop consonants in
Modern Icelandic are unvoiced, and the distinction between voiced and unvoiced
consonants that is typical in other European languages is replaced by a
phonemic aspirated/unaspirated distinction.) Nice try, though. Honestly, I've
put the entry here because I wanted another j entry. Also, this is the name of
a person whose last name is not Gnarr. The full name is Jón Gnarr
Kristinsson. As you may have gathered, it's an Icelandic name, so Kristinsson
is a patronymic and not a family name. Jón was named Jón
Gunnar Kristinsson at birth (on January 2, 1967), but in 2005 he had the
middle name legally changed to Gnarr, which is the way his mother pronounced it
when he was kid. How did she pronounce it later? I don't know.
For the moment, most of our substantive information about Jón Gnarr is
at Farting People, The.
- Jopará
- A mixture of Spanish and Guaraní.
- JOPES
- Joint (Military Services) Operating Planning and
Execution System.
- Joseph
- Joseph was a snitch. It says so at Genesis, ch. 37, verse 2: he would go
and rat to Dad on his own older brothers. That's the real reason they hated
him. It wasn't the coat.
No one likes a snitch. His own brothers wouldn't even talk to him (37:3). God
spake directly to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Joseph? Let him interpret dreams.
- Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
- Joseph's father gave him a garment that was described in Hebrew as
[transliterated; I'll get around to Unicode in a
decade or two] k'tonet passim. The first word means `garment' of some
sort, but the second word is a mystery, at least as of 1995, which is the most
recent literature I've looked at. (Of course, some speculations are expressed
confidently. Shame on me for being taken in.)
The Septuagint (LXX) translates the term with
chiton polikilon, `many-colored coat.' But the Septuagint translation
came many centuries after the text of Genesis was first composed (the Hebrew
continued evolving, though), and it appears that `many-colored' was a guess.
(Most of the relevant Genesis chapter, 37, appears to have been written by the
J author. In fact, the sentence that introduces
the famous garment calls Joseph's father ``Israel,'' and that is generally
regarded as a reliable indication that the author was J. However, the other
two contexts of k'tonet passim in this chapter are E, so the clause with
this phrase is considered E. Textual criticism, ugh.)
Another traditional interpretation is that passim here means `with
sleeves,' and that is the translation favored by, for example, the
revised standard version (``robe with sleeves'').
Yick. No one ever seems to mention that -im is a plural ending, and for
`sleeves' one might expect the dual ending -ayim. I mean, to the extent that
the -ayim is possible or probable, its absence counts as weight in the balance
against the sleeve interpretation. (Ah say, ah say gimme that ollllllld time
relijun! The KJV, in His Own English,
says ``coat of many colors.'' Yea and Amen!)
For a word like passim, it's natural to seek
occurrences elsewhere in the Bible. In addition to the three occurrences in
the Joseph story (ch. 37, vss. 3, 23, 32), k'tonet passim occurs in
II Sam. 23:18, where it describes a garment worn by the daughters of
kings.
That's the uncertain state of affairs as it stood, in limbo for a couple of
millennia. In the twentieth century, there was some new old information.
Among cuneiform inventories (written in Akkadian, another Semitic language),
one kind of clothing listed is kitu pishannu and kiutinnu
pishannu [details in JNES vol. 8,
p. 177 (1949)]. These were ceremonial robes for draping over the statues of
goddesses, and pishannu apparently denoted gold appliqué
ornaments. (The ornaments were sewn on; they would come undone and require
resewing, at which time they would appear in the inventories.)
I'm not sure how firm this Akkadian stuff is, but it's good enough for me.
Anyway, you can see that title ``Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor
Dreamcoat,'' for a musical by Andrew
Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, takes no unusual liberties in translation.
- journal
- A circular disc concentric to a shaft, which
rests in a complementary bearing and
supports centered rotation when the shaft is subject to lateral stress, as
in a camshaft or crankshaft. Cf.
magazine.
- journalistic balance
- In a 1984 conversation with Edna O'Brien,
Philip Roth commented (Shop Talk,
p. 109) that she ``write[s] about women without a taint of ideology or, as far
as I can see, any concern with talking a correct position.'' Her reply began
thus:
The correct position is to write the truth, to write what one feels regardless
of any public consideration or any clique. I think an artist never takes a
position either through expedience or umbrage. Artists detest and suspect
positions because you know that the minute you take a fixed position you are
something else--you are a journalist or you are a politician.
- journalistic instinct
- The courage to ask a question which accurately reflects the ignorance
of one's audience, combined with the wisdom to accept an answer only if it
is consonant with one's own sincerest prejudices.
- jovial
- For thoughts on the common adjective jovial, you obviously don't
want the JOVIAL entry -- that's about a computer
language. See the JPO entry instead.
- JOVIAL, Jovial
- Jules's Own Version of IAL. IAL was the original
name of Algol, and Jovial was similar to Algol 60.
I don't know who this fellow Jules is, or perhaps was, but he was apparently
associated with the US Air Force, since that was
the main customer for Jovial. And is! The felicitously named
USAF JOVIAL Program Office, based at Hill
AFB, has a
webpage that was updated as recently as April 2006. Then again, the
B-52 was last
manufactured in 1962, and the plan is for the Air Force to still be flying it
in 2040, so I suppose this isn't all that surprising.
- Jowett
- Benjamin Jowett, of course, born in London, 1817. Often referred to as
``Jowett of Balliol,'' the college at Oxford where he was master from 1870
until his death in 1893. A Church of England clergyman, he also served as vice
chancellor of Oxford.
The following bit of doggerel, written about him during his early years as a
lecturer, expresses something of his personality and the pronunciation of his
name:
First Come I
My name is Jowett;
It is not knowledge
If I don't know it.
Another instance of poetry used to elucidate the pronunciation of an English
name is given at the Pepys entry. The poems
convey the pronunciation information in rhyme as well as meter. Of course,
many kinds of poetry do not use rhyme. That is particularly true of poetry in
Ancient Greek (which will become relevant to this entry later) and
in Latin (whose most prestigious poetic forms were
adapted from Greek). As Dante wrote in Vita nuova, in his day (around
1300), the ``poet'' word was reserved for writers of Latin verse, and the rest
were mere ``rimatori.''
Japanese poetry also doesn't make much use of rhyme. (Frankly, with mostly
synthetic verb conjugation and with a verb-last syntax, rhyme might get pretty
boring and even silly, though it seems to work in German despite the V2 structure.) So haiku is based on syllable
counts. For an instance of pronunciation clarified by haiku, see
the homogeneous entry.
- Joyce
- You needed password authorization to access
<www.jamesjoyce.org>. This
seemed fundamentally wrong, and sure enough, they no longer have a DNS entry.
- Joyce ACC
- Edmund P. Joyce Athletic and Convocation Center Fieldhouse. It's located
west of the Notre Dame Football stadium. (At one
time, Juniper Road ran behind the west of where the stadium now, stands. Then,
to accommodate the expanding campus, Juniper Road was shifted east, and the
parts of it that remained inside the campus were renamed ``Old Juniper Road.''
The stadium was on the west side of the new Juniper Road, and later the
Joyce ACC was built on the east side across from the stadium. Juniper Road was
normally a two-way street, but for many hours on football Saturdays it was
one-way ``in'' (toward the stadium) or ``out.'' Other buildings continued to
be built east of Juniper, and in 2006 or so, to accommodate the expanding
campus, most of Juniper Road was torn up and grassed over, or otherwise
landscaped or repaved as part of the new parking configuration. As of 2008,
Joyce ACC is separated from the stadium by a plaza, so it looks like part of a
stadium complex. Joyce ACC is frequently mis-expanded (or at least
unofficially expanded) as ``Joyce Athletic and Convention Center.''
When WNDU-TV's first transmission tower was
completed in June 1955, its blinking red beacon was installed eighteen inches
below the apex rather than at top, as is normal. You might think that this
displacement would have endangered any barnstorming pilots coming in to land
(VFR) at South Bend
Regional, but not to worry: at the top was ``a gilded statue of Mary,
mother [an avatar, as I understand it] of God,''
according to
WNDU, which goes on to point out that
The simplicity of the sculpture is overwhelming.
Frankly, if the closest most people will get to see it is 570 feet (the height
of the original broadcast tower) minus eye height, why spend money making a
complex speculative likeness?
Maybe it is the simplicity of the faithful that is overwhelming.
In 1415, as the friar Jan Hus (`John Huss' in English) was being burned alive
at the stake, he remarked, or quipped (with great presence of mind, IMO):
O sancta simplicitas!
[`Oh Holy Simplicity!'] This was apparently a reference to a peasant adding a
faggot to stoke the fire. It was also presumably an allusion to a comment of
Saint Jerome -- Veneratoni mihi semper fuit non verbosa rusticas sed sancta
simplicitas. [`I have always revered not crude verbosity but holy
simplicity.'] Then again, maybe he was misheard and actually said ``Oh Holy
Shit!''
That hasn't aught to do with this entry, I guess, except that the tower
functions as a lightning arrestor, so the statue is scarred up some after
fifty years. What does have to do with this entry is that in June 1955, Father
Edmund P. Joyce demonstrated his athleticism by climbing to the top of the
570-foot tower and blessing the statue. Just how close did he have to get?
Couldn't he bless it from the ground? In 1970, the statue was lifted to the
top of WNDU's new 1000-foot tower, but it wasn't necessary to rebless it
because it had already been blessed fifteen years earlier. Why didn't they
think ahead in 1955 and first put it at the top of a two-foot tower so that it
could be blessed at a convenient height? Then they could transfer it to the
new (570-foot) tower with no need for a rebless climb (just as it wasn't
needed in 1970). These clerical types just aren't practical.
Father Edmund Joyce, C.S.C., died in Spring 2004.
In a press release dated November 23, 2005, the University of Notre Dame
announced that it had reached an agreement with
Gray Television, Inc., under which Gray
acquires all of the capital stock of Michiana
Telecasting Corporation, the university-owned company that operates
WNDU-TV, for $85 million in cash, most of
which will be invested in the university's endowment. Student internships at
WNDU-TV will continue. The agreement is subject to certain conditions and
regulatory approval, and is expected to be completed before June 30, 2006.
According to the press release, WNDU-TV ``is the NBC
affiliate serving the South Bend-Elkhart, Ind., television market, the nation's
87th largest Designated Market Area (DMA).''
Eighty-seventh largest DMA out of roughly two hundred? A four-syllable rank?
This is humiliating. No wonder all our local stations are in UHF Siberia
(WNDU is channel 16,
WNIT is 34, WSBT is 22;
there's at least one other). Gray previously announced its acquisition of
WSAZ-TV, the NBC affiliate serving Charlestown-Huntington, W.Va. Where?
Gray Television, headquartered in Atlanta, will own 35 stations when the WNDU
and WSAZ acquisitions are complete, reaching approximately 6 percent of total
U.S. TV households. This is not making me feel better. Of these 35, 16 are
CBS affiliates, 10 are NBC affiliates, and 7 are
ABC affiliates. Twenty-five of the stations ranked
No. 1 in local news audience, and 24 are No. 1 in overall audience within their
respective markets. Is this impressive? Why sure: the 35 stations serve only
30 TV markets, so at most 30 could be first. I don't know if any more than six
of these markets are served by a No. 2 TV station.
- Joy's Law
- Computing power of the fastest microprocessors, measured in MIPS, increases exponentially in time. Roughly,
(Year-1984)
uP speed = 2 MIPS
Oh joy.
While RISC processors are following this trend, the
essentially CISC personal computer uP's have been
scaling more slowly. Cf. Moore's Law
and Rent's Rule.
Bill Joy is a co-founder of Sun
Microsystems, Inc.. In addition to this ``Joy's Law,'' he has other,
noneponymous laws, such as ``The smartest people in every field are never
in your own company.'' I bet this makes him real
popular with his own employees. To compensate, they hold regular Gates-hates
(not their official or even unofficial name, but accurate). You could see this
sort of thing evolving into those Goldstein scream things in 1984. Which reminds me of the famous advertisement that
Apple Computer used.
- .jp
- (Domain code for) Japan. There's a Japanese <--> English
Dictionary Server.
Here's another. A major resource
for learning Japanese is also available online. A clutch of Japan
FAQ's is available.
International telephone access number 81.
Impress your non-Japanese
friends with authentic-sounding Japanese profound gibberish!
Here's the Japanese
page of an X.500 directory.
The hierarchical structure of domains under the .jp nTLD is described under
JPNIC. Appart from <google.jp>, an
important Japanese search engine is NAVER.
- JP
- Jerusalem Post.
- JP
- Jet Prop{ ellant | ulsion }.
- J. P.
- Justice of the Peace.
- J. P.
- John Pierpont (Morgan) (1837-1913).
- J-PARC
- Japan Proton Accelerator Research
Complex.
- JPC
- Johnson Publishing Company,
Inc. ``The world's largest Black-owned publishing company is the home of
Ebony and Jet magazines.
Also part of the company are Fashion Fair
Cosmetics, Supreme Beauty Products, Ebony Fashion Fair and Johnson
Publishing Company Book Division.''
- JPC
- Joint Publishing Company, Ltd.
(In Hong Kong.)
- JPCERT
- Based at JPCERT/CC (next). A member of FIRST.
- JPCERT/CC
- JaPan Computer Emergency Response
Team Coordination Center. ``Emergencies'' are security breaches.
See CERT for other relevant organizations.
- JPEG, jpeg
- Joint Photographic Experts Group of the CCITT.
Also refers to the compressed graphics encoding defined by this group. There's
a
jpeg-faq for this. Graphics files encoded
according to this scheme often take a .jpg extension. Pronounced
``Jay-peg.'' Cf. MPEG.
- JPG
- Jean Paul Gaultier. He's the guy trying to get non-Scottish guys to
wear skirts. Not a common expansion of this acronym.
- .jpg, .JPG
- Common filename extension for JPEG files.
- JPh
- APh abbreviation that used to stand for the
Journal of Philology, now long-defunct, in which A. E. Housman
published many of his papers, and which now stands for the Journal of
Philosophy.
- JPL
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
- JPL
- Journal of Philosophical Logic.
- JPNIC
- JaPan Network Information Center.
- JPO
- Japanese Patent Office
Others here.
- JPO
- Jovial Program Office. Sign me up! Errr, what's this business about
``orders'' and ``conscription''? The
Air Force runs this thing!? It didn't sound so
serious. It turns out that Jovial is a
programming language, so I suppose JPO does sound serious -- compared to JPPO.
They write it ``JOVIAL Program
Office,'' and I suppose they have a point with the all-caps, since it's an
acronym and all, but what I want to talk about is joviality.
I can see in principle how Jove could be what is called jovial. If I were the
Olympian top dog, or pot
god, or some other permutation, I imagine that I could find my way to a
permanent high. But his reported activities suggest that like JPO, Jove is
basically about target acquisition and force projection. All you hear is
thundrous lightning thrown and nymphs raped by Jove. And when a mere man calls
his wife a ``goddess'' (not even a ``domestic goddess'' or a genia
loci), rightly suspicious sister Juno is decidedly not the kind of babe he
has in mind. ``Saturnine,'' on the other hand -- that I can see.
- JPost
- Jerusalem Post.
- JPS
- Japan Physical Society. When spelled out, it's
normally Physical Society
of Japan.
They publish JJAP, JPSJ, and PTP.
- JPS
- Jewish Publication Society. Based in Cambridge, UK. Known principally for its translation of the Jewish
Bible (``Old Testament'' from a Christian
POV), NJPS.
- JPSJ
- Journal of the
Physical Society of Japan.
- JPSV
- Jewish Publication Society Version. The (Jewish) Bible translation of
published by the JPS in 1917. Superseded by the NJPS. They just keep coming up with better bibles;
you can't stop progress.
- JPW
- An orgy that begins the Friday following Ash Wednesday of the sophomore
year. Extra-large sweat-shirts with the letters J - P - W
are on sale at the university book store.
It must have been a long time ago that I wrote the first paragraph of this
entry. At the University of Notre Dame (in Saint Joseph County, Indiana), JPW
stands for Junior Parents' Weekend. It sounds a bit like it's promoting
teenage pregnancy, but it's actually a juniors' parents weekend: a weekend when
the parents of juniors enrolled in the university come to visit their kids and
see what their $30,000 or so a year is buying. I'm not sure how they pick the
weekend. In 2008 it was the second weekend after Ash Wednesday (Feb. 16-17),
so secular considerations may intrude.
This annual ritual was instituted in 1952 by then-president Father Theodore
Hesburgh. (For more about names ending in -burgh, see the
Pgh entry.) Father Hesburgh (``Father'' is not his
first name, so this isn't an instance of
nomen est omen) felt that
``parents should become more involved in their students' lives at Notre Dame
before the following year's graduation ceremony,'' according to an article in
the student newspaper in 2008, when about 1750 parents were expected for JPW.
A quick bit of googling suggests that Harvard is the only other school with a
Junior Parents' Weekend. Harvard is a more demanding school, though: they also
have a Freshman Parents' Weekend. Saint Mary's College, which neighbors Notre
Dame, has a Sophomore Parents' Weekend on the same weekend that Notre Dame has
its JPW. Entirely by coincidence (surely they wouldn't do it as a deliberate
provocation!?) the students who do a local performance of ``The Vagina
Chronicles'' have a performance on Sunday during the parents' weekend.
Saint Mary's College also holds an annual event for seventh-grade girls from
the local area (Michiana) to, of all things,
``celebrate [the] accomplishments of Saint Mary's students in math.'' They
were expecting 90 students on Saturday, February 23, 2008. (I didn't follow up
to check how many actually showed up, okay?) This (2008) is the 18th year they
hold the event, and it's also the first year that I've heard of it. Of that I
am pretty sure, because a Catholic school celebrating a ``Hypatia Day'' (that's
what the event is called) is immediately arresting and memorable.
Hypatia of Alexandria had other distinctions besides being ``the first female
mathematician'' (whose name we know) and a leading Platonist philosopher.
During the patriarchate of Cyril of Alexandria, a (nonheretical!) Christian mob
kidnapped her to a church, where she was stripped, flayed to death with tiles,
and dismembered. It's not clear what role Cyril played in this episode, but it
was the same Cyril who some time earlier had led mobs in the destruction of the
Alexandrian synagogues and the expulsion of the Jews. I'm sorry, that's
Saint Cyril.
Anyway, for SMC to hold a Hypatia Day displays about as much chutzpah as would
Notre Dame University holding a day to honor Giordano Bruno or Jan Hus or the
Albigensians or Galileo Galilei, although the last was not murdered. He was
even rehabilitated in a sort of mini-de-Stalinization event a few years back.
I guess I can see where this is leading. When ND holds its first Galileo
Astronomy Day, I'll try to mention it here.
- JQR
- Jewish Quarterly Review.
- jr
- James River. They have a clever logo, displayed on a paper towel
dispenser they make in a bathroom around the corner from where I'm typing
this right now. The paper towel dispenser is in the bathroom near
here, but they made it elsewhere. You probably guessed that, even though
my original sentence was ambiguous. The truth is, I guessed it too. I
have no way of knowing for certain. Maybe they snuck in here one night
and set up a paper-towel dispenser factory in the Men's Room. Probably
not. They certainly don't make it there ``right now.'' I know that; I
was just there.
As you've probably guessed, I win a prize this month if I add enough stuff
to the neglected J section of this glossary. For more on paper
dispensers, see the TP entry. Also, see the image
of
JR's toilet paper on exhibit at the VTPM.
- JR
- Japan Railways. Seven companies created in the privatization of
Japanese National Railways (JNR) in 1987. Even in Japanese, this entity is called ``Jei Arr.''
- JR
- Journal of Religion. Catalogued by TOCS-IN.
- jr.
- Junior.
- JRA
- Journal
of Roman Archaeology. (There's a
UK mirror site.) Catalogued by TOCS-IN.
- JRA
- Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis.
- JRAI
- Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute (RAI). The
sister publication of JRAI is at.
- JRAS
- Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
- JRC
- European Commission Joint
Research Centre.
- JRCN
- Japan Committee for
Research Networks.
- JRE
- Jeunes contre le racisme en Europe. `Youth
against Racism in Europe.' It doesn't seem to have its own website any more,
but maybe it was always rather decentralized. It seems clear from its
communiqués or whatever that it was a leftist organization and that the
focus of its opposition was fascist parties. So maybe it foundered in the
usual leftist schismatism.
- JRF
- Junior Research Fellow.
- JRitSt
- Journal of Ritual Studies. Catalogued by TOCS-IN.
- JRNS
- Journal of the Russian Numismatic Society (RNS,
q.v.). Published in the USA.
- JROC
- US Joint Requirements Oversight Council.
- JROTC
- Junior ROTC.
- JRRT
- John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Tolkien's last name is widely misspelled,
mostly as * ``Tolkein.''
I read The Hobbit, and Uncle Charlie and Aunt Mary gave me a copy of
The Silmarillion for my birthday that I recall enjoying, but my interest
flagged about halfway through LOTR. I prefer his
nonfiction. In LOTR, I really felt that he broke faith with the reader when
Gandalf the Grey came back as Gandalf the White. Oh, you hadn't read it yet --
you didn't wanna know. Tough. You shouldn't have been surfing into spoiler
danger, then. Here, go surf
this tribute.
Here's a helpful timeline.
There's an Electronic Tolkien
Encyclopedia Project (ETEP).
The Tolkien Usenet newsgroups generated an faq and a LessFAQ (less frequently
...), no longer maintained (since perhaps 1996), and Steuard Jensen has created
a supplement. See his Meta-FAQ.
- JRS
- Jesuit Refugee Service.
``A worldwide network to accompany refugees and displaced people and offer
practical and spiritual support.''
- JRS
- Journal of Roman Studies. An annual publication of the
Roman Society (SPRS). Journal catalogued by TOCS-IN. ISSN
0075-4358.
- JRT
- Jack Russell Terrier.
- JRTC
- Joint Readiness Training
Center. A facility covering 106,000 acres of Ft. Polk in Louisiana.
- JS
- Jesus Seminar. See JSem.
- JSA
- Junior State of America.
Sort of like a model UN. ``The Junior State is a nationwide, non-profit,
non-partisan political education organization for students in grades 9-12.
We are run completely by and for students, and we hold many events
throughout the year to help further our goals of student political
awareness and involvement.'' So far they haven't declared war on any
Canadian Youth Parliaments.
- JSAE
- Japanese Society of Automotive Engineers. They
sure whupped the SAE for a few years there.
- JSAI
- Japanese Society for
Artificial Intelligence. (You and your browser had better be
Japanese-capable).
- JSC
- Johnson Space Center.
- JSCAS
- Japan Society
for Computer Aided Surgery.
- JSCAS
- Johnson Space Center Astronomical
Society.
- J-school
- Journalism SCHOOL. It's widely reported that top of the heap is the
Columbia School of Journalism
(i.e. Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism).
- JSCS
- Journal of the
Saudi Chemical Society. If you can't read Arabic, then you may not
recognize the link
there to the English version of the contribution guidelines.
``Work submitted for publication must contain original scientific work which
has not been published previously. However, work which has appeared in print
in the form of an abstract or as a published lecture, report, or thesis is
normally acceptable.''
``The manuscript may be written in either Arabic or English. An abstract in
Arabic or English must accompany the submitted papers. Furthermore, a complete
abstract in the language other than that of the manuscript must be included.''
Two issues per annum ``(temporary).'' (Temporary since 1996, at least.)
It's not stated whether being a member of the SCS, or of some other group, has any effect on
the likelihood of your paper being accepted.
- JSEA
- Jesuit Secondary Education Association.
A membership organization serving Jesuit (SJ) high
schools in the continental United States and Puerto Rico. Forty-Six
members as of September 1998.
- JSem
- Jesus SEMinar. A bunch of scholars who get together and vote in a vain
attempt to achieve ``consensus'' on what words in the gospels Jesus did or did
not say. Each person in the shifting membership votes red (that's Jesus!),
pink, gray, or black (no way!).
- JSF
- Joint Strike Fighter. ``Joint'' in the sense
that all of the services (Army, Navy, Air Force...) are buying essentially the
same bird.
- JSIAM
- Japan Society
of Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
- JSMJV
- Joseph Snerdly Mohammed Jackson Version. An illustrated edition of Ye Holy Bible. This doesn't exist yet, but it's
coming. In order to satisfy the surge in religious feeling, yet accommodate
and be welcoming to the diversity of everlastingly true interpretations of that
good book, services will arise to provide customized print-on-demand versions.
It'll give a whole new meaning to the term ``family bible.'' You'll visit a
website, fill out a detailed form stating your requirements (e.g.:
)
There will be a dramatic increase in the number of people quoting chapter and
verse, when they get to choose the wording.
- JSNT
- Journal for the Study of the New Testament.
- JSPS
- Japan Society for the Promotion of
Science. Hmmm, maybe you'd prefer to read English A private foundation
chartered by Emperor Showa in 1932, reestablished as a quasi-governmental
organization within the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture
(Monbusho) in 1967. A researcher visiting here from JSPS gave a talk on VCSEL's. He claimed that JSPS is the Japanese equivalent of the US NSF. The JSPS budget in FY 2000 was 135.2 billion yen, or roughly a billion
dollars US. The NSF had US$3.897 billion for FY 2000 (that's over 5% of the US
government's budget for research).
- JSS
- Journal of Semitic Studies.
- JSSI
- Japan Society
of Snow and Ice. If you or your browser lack Japanese capability, you can find some English-language
information on this topic at the SBF snow
blower entry.
- JSSST
- Japan Society
for Software Science and Technology.
- JST
- Japanese Standard Time. They don't use daylight
saving time (DST) there at any time of the year.
Just like Hawaii (which has the highest percentage of ethnic Japanese of any
US state) and most of Arizona. The Navajo reservation in Arizona does use DST,
however. During WWII, US forces had Navajo
servicemen send spoken messages in their obscure language (particularly obscure
to the Japanese) as a kind of what we might now call ``secure communication.''
The Navajo engaged in this were called ``code talkers.'' There are a few other
places that don't use DST, amounting to about half the world.
- J-STAGE
- Japan Science and Technology
Information AGgregator, Electronic.
- JSTARS
- Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System. A 707 outfitted for
reconnaissance against enemy ground forces.
- JSTF
- Japan Science and Technology
Foundation.
- JSTOR
- Journal STORage. ``Redefining
access to scholarly literature.'' Back issues of paper-printed journals.
- JSU
- Jackson State University. It's a HBCU located in Jackson, Mississippi.
- JSUM
- Japan Society
of Ultrasonics in Medicine.
- JSWS
- Jane's Strategic Weapons Systems.
Not available for purchase to the general public, whoever that is. For a list
of information services offered by
Jane's Information Group, see our entry for
Jane's Fighting Ships.
- JT
- Jahn-Teller.
- JT
- James Taylor.
- JTA
- Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
- JTA
- Joint Technical Architecture.
[For the US Department of Defense (DoD).]
- JTA
- Joint Test Assembly. Another definition for the same DoD acronym. I thought they kept a big acronyms
book to prevent this from happening. JTA's are assemblies of components in
weapon-like configurations delivered by a weapons contractor to the DOD for
flight testing under field conditions. Inside, the ``physics package'' (gotta
love it), consisting of the cased HE and nuclear materials components of the
nuclear weapon, is replaced with ballast to simulate and electronic test
equipment.
- JTAG
- Joint Test Action Group.
- JTAP
- JISC Technology Applications Programme.
[JISC is the UK's
Joint Information Systems Committee.]
- JTD
- Jahn-Teller Distortion.
- JTEC
- Japanese Technology
Evaluation Center ``and its companion World Technology Evaluation Center
(WTEC) at Loyola College provide assessments of foreign research and
development in selected technologies under a cooperative agreement with the
National Science Foundation (NSF).''
- J-Term
- January-Term. A short session between fall and Spring semesters of the
academic calendar, used for short course.
- JTFA
- Joint Time-Frequency Analysis.
- JThS
- Journal of Theological Studies. Catalogued by
TOCS-IN.
- JTI
- Japan Toilet Institute. Most of the
-- ahem -- content is in what Gibbon called ``the decent obscurity'' of a
foreign, if not learned, language. JTI seems to be pushing Western-style
toilets. The Shinkansen have (or had, when I was there in the 1990's) equal
numbers of Western and traditional Japanese models. Generally, the Western
sitting-down models (as opposed to the native-standard squatting models) are
becoming more popular as the population ages.
The JTI pages have prominent links to the Singapore-based
WTO but not to the upstart Seoul-based
WTA.
- JTIC
- Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency
Center. (They don't do, they just write about it. Sort of like
Penthouse Forum.) For a list of information services offered by
Jane's Information Group, see our entry for
Jane's Fighting Ships.
- JTIDS
- Joint Tactical Information Distribution System
(UK).
- JTPA
- Jobs Training and Partnership Act.
- JTS
- The Jewish Theological Seminary
of America.
- JTS
- Journal of Theological Studies.
- JTS
- Jump The Shark. A television
series is said to jump the shark when it airs a particularly lamentable episode
that heralds the show's decline. Often this show involves a, ah, let us say,
daring premise (Josh cloning a thought-to-be-dead Reva, or Reva
time-traveling, on GL), and demonstrates final
exhaustion or jettison of the original artistic inspiration.
The term is not applied to the first show or the pilot: there is an underlying
assumption that every show has achieved some sort of level from which it can
decline. It is fashionable to pretend that each show has only one JTS moment,
but the reality is that if a show declines only as fast as standards generally,
there is nothing to prevent it from gaining a new loyal following during its
post-JTS decline. These fans will eventually find their own JTS moment, and so
on.
The term was coined in reference to the episode of Happy Days in which the Fonz went
water-skiing in California and jumped a shark.
- JTSM
- Jane's Terrorism and Security Monitor.
For a list of information services offered by
Jane's Information Group, see our entry for
Jane's Fighting Ships.
- jua jua
- One Spanish version of English `ha ha.' If
the sound of the letters jua as read in Spanish were transliterated into
English, it would be written ``hwa.'' Still, on the web, if not among my
friends, it appears that ja ja is much more
common.
Jwa jwa is also seen, but rarely. The letter w is principally for
foreign loans. (We're not talkin' FIM here.)
Okay look, if you don't find this intuitive, here's what to think of: comedies
of the silent era. No canned laughter, of course, but after someone was
humiliated for the amusement of everyone else (not a rare occurrence), a lone
horn would intone hwa-hwa-hwaaa on a descending scale.
![[Football icon]](icons/football.gif)
- JUCO
- JUnior COllege. Term used in describing the struggle of scholar athletes
to get the strongest possible education.
- Juday
- There are a number of toponymic Judays north of South Bend,
Indiana. Some of these apparently antedate
the puzzling story about
Cary Grant. Not he nor anybody else seems to have been able to track down
with any certainty the origin of the story of his saying ``Judy, Judy, Judy.''
The repeated name is pronounced in an affected way, with both syllables
stressed, and the second syllable sounding a bit like ``day''; this is
sometimes indicated in eye dialect by
writing the name ``Juday.''
Locally, the name comes from meandering Juday Creek, north of the
University of Notre Dame. It's
not clear how that name in turn arose. An 1863 map labels it Sheffield
Creek, and in the late 1880's it was referred to as ``The State Ditch.'' I kid you not..
- judge names
- People whose names include common non-name words, or whose names are odd in
some other way, end up on the bench surprisingly often. A number of them are
listed in the Nomenclature-is-destiny
entry. Here's a complete list of the judges listed there; you can decide which
fit the bill above.
Not mentioned there, because it's hard to state precisely and with certainty
some way in which his name turned out to be unusually appropriate, is John
Minor Wisdom. He's mentioned in the black
Republicans footnotes. I guess from the text quoted there that Judge
Wisdom was known by his last two names (Minor Justice), as Judge Learned Hand
was.
The following is from the chapter entitled ``Judicial Levity'' in Arthur
Train's nonfiction My Day In
Court (New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939), p. 61.
Even the names of the defendants and other trial participants
sometimes had a humorous aspect.
I had a case in the Supreme Court Criminal Trial Term before the
present Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals,
Cuthbert W. Pound, which no doubt he remembers. The defendant's name was
Schornstein (chimney), that of his counsel, Firestone, my own, Train (also
suggestive of smoke and cinders), while the judge and clerk rejoiced
respectively in those of Pound and Penny.
What a knee-slapper, oh boy!
- JUGFET
- A Field-Effect Transistor made out of a gallon container for
moderately-priced alcoholic beverages. Frankfort Kentucky's belated answer to
the Leiden Jar. Okay, maybe not. JUnction-Gate Field-Effect Transistor. Now
generally called JFET.
- Juggalo, Juggalette
- Members of the rap group ICP (that stands for
Insane Clown Posse, but visit the entry anyway) at some point started to refer
to themselves as Juggalos. (The plural is formed without an e.) Lyrics
in their Carnival of Carnage CD make
reference to the jugula' (vein, to rhyme approximately with strangle-uh, and
mentioned in the context of neck-breaking), and also to juggling
(metaphorically). There might be some reference to gigolos too, but probably
not to boogaloo dudes (vide Day Tripper
entry).
The next album, The Great Milenko, included a rap entitled ``What is a
Juggalo?'' that doesn't answer the title question in any essential way. As the
term is used by ICP fans, a Juggalo is an ICP fan. (Unless he is an ICP member
who isn't a fan. I don't know if this second category is, or is conceived to
be, nonempty yet. Positive enthusiasm isn't very cool, you know, if you're a
Juggalo.) A Juggalette (or Lette) is a female ICP
fan, and the term Juggalo is typically used in the complementary sense of a
male ICP fan. Juggalettes can be enthusiastic about ICP and some other groups
(but not eminem!) and not suffer any coolness deficit. (Juggalos should say
that they really like ICP, but that they don't consider themselves Juggalos.)
To signal their coolness and belonging, Juggalos and Juggalettes can use
expressions like ``down wit' de clown'' (DWTC) and
MCL, and buy ICP merchandise. No secret decoder rings yet, though
they could come in handy.
Los and Lettes are unexceptional young white
people (``caucasions'') who are often bored and who think of themselves as
nonconformist. They make careers as associates in the retail service
profession. They like 2 party! Have fun! They used
to wear clown make-up occasionally. There's probably a white-face angle in
this somewhere, but I don't give a %^*##@!!, and that's cool. F off.
Peace.
There's a large Ukrainian community around southern Ontario, extending into the
Detroit and Buffalo areas. I don't know how my
homies in ICP happened to chose the name Milenko (probably for scansion,
dontchathink?), but ICP is Detroit-based. Milenko sounds like a Ukrainian
surname (a large fraction of Ukrainian surnames end in -ko). And Mihalenko
(also Mihailenko or Mihajlenko) is a moderately common Ukrainian surname. But
it turns out that Milenko is mostly a south Slav (Slovenia to Macedonia) man's
given name. I figured I ought to explain that.
- Jughead
- Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display! A
search engine for gopher space!
Veronica is another gopher-space search engine!
Archie searches anonymous ftp servers (by
filename or file pathname only)! The other major teen characters in
the Archie comic book series (Reggie and Betty) don't seem to have any
engines named after them! Gopher servers and gopher-protocol support are
disappearing fast!
- Jukka Ammondt
- A Finnish Elvis
impersonator who sings the King's songs in Latin. I probably should write
the Finnish Elvisimpersonator who..., but
you never know with these crazy Northern types. (I hear that the Finns aren't
even Scandinavians.) At least one CD has been released. See here for
details. Last I heard, he was working on a Sumerian version.
- juku
- Japanese term for a wide range of schools or
classes. In practice now, if not otherwise qualified, it refers to cram
schools.
Cram school makes a lot of Japanese kids miserable, and somebody has to take
the blame. Hence kyoiku-mama.
- Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Syndrome
- This syndrome deserves to be better known, maybe. It's an exaggerated
startle reflex that was first reported to the medical community by G.M. Beard,
at the 1878 conference of the American Neurological
Association [see ``Remarks upon `jumpers or jumping Frenchmen','' J.
Nerv. Ment. Dis. vol. 5, p. 526 (1878)]. The following
description, at least partly a quote of Beard, is in an article at
OMIM (see item
244100):
In response to sudden sensory input, abnormal reaction occurred. For example,
if one of them was abruptly asked to strike another, he would do so without
hesitation, even if it was his mother and he had an ax in his hand. If given a
short, sudden, quick command, the affected person would respond with the
appropriate action, often echoing the words of command. Some, when addressed
quickly in a language foreign to them, would echo the phrase.
Beard found it among French-Canadian lumberjacks in the Moosehead Lake area of
Maine. Many of the lumbermen had origins in the Beauce region of Quebec, and
the syndrome has been documented there and also reported in five offspring of a
French-Canadian fishing guide in Wedgport, Nova Scotia. In some cases, there
was a family history of the syndrome. All this suggests that the condition is
hereditary, but does not exclude a necessary environmental trigger. A 1986
study (see the OMIM article for reference) concluded that the cases they
studied were related to the specific conditions in lumber camps in the 19th and
early 20th centuries. They also concluded that `jumping' is not a neurologic
disease but rather can be explained in psychologic terms as operant
conditioning.
Georges Gilles de la Tourette translated Beard's 1880 article on the syndrome,
and this may have stimulated him to study certain patients making peculiar
sounds and movements. This research led him to describe the disorder that soon
bore his name (see GTS).
- jumping up and down
- When you think about it, there's a lot to ponder in this phrase. Most
people really just jump up repeatedly and allow
gravity to complete the cycle. This seems most efficient. I'll finish
the entry when I'm ready to make a complete final report.
The only time that anyone can recall George Washington jumping up and/or
down in excitement was when he received word of French ship arrivals around Yorktown, which meant that
he had Lord Cornwallis completely surrounded. Cornwallis's subsequent
surrender marked the end of the military action in the Revolutionary War.
- junction isolation
- Doping to achieve electronic isolation between devices. E.g.:
Integrated-circuit BJT's are fabricated as a sequence of successively enclosed
doped regions; an npn presents an outer n
(collector) region. For junction isolation (JI),
this is fabricated in an n epi layer on a p substrate, and different
devices are separated by thick p regions that reach down to the substrate.
The substrate and these doped regions constitute a single electrical node which
is connected to the most negative voltage on the chip, so that the electrical
path between any two transistors is collector-to-collector, through a pair of
junctions equivalent to a pair of opposed, reverse-biased diodes.
Cf. ROx, dielectric
isolation, LOCOS. One striking difference
between junction isolation and dielectric isolation is that within the same
technology, JI'd pnp transistors have much lower
fT values than npn transistors,
whereas dielectric isolation tends to give comparable fT
values.
An early form of JI is (or better ``was'') CDI.
- JUNET
- Japan Unix Network. A researchers' net. (Do
not confuse with JANET.)
- Jungbrunnen
- `Fountain of youth' in German.
The noun Brunnen (`well') is masculine.
- Jurassic Park
- A work of fiction. Vide dinosaurs.
- jury of your peers
- Jury of idle busybodies and suckers too stupid to wangle their way out of
serving.
- JUSE
- Union of Japanese Scientists and
Engineers. Look, this is the order they give. I have a better idea, but
they didn't consult me.
- juser
- The username of Joe User. A restricted subset of foos.
- just coincidence
- Ed Turner, vice-president of CNN, is no relation of Ted Turner, network
founder.
See also the nomen-est-omen item on Samuel Johnson,
Jr.
- just desserts
- Uh, no. See the second definition under
deserts.
When others write ``just desserts,'' you should ridicule their ignorance
mercilessly. Draw it out. Ponder at length whether there are meals that
are postprandial repasts, entire of themselves (just desserts), or if all
deserts are by their nature part of the meal they, conclude. Then run away.
- Just Desserts
- A chain of cafés in the Toronto area. The first one opened
no later than 1994.
- A café in Winnipeg, founded in 1998.
- A cake bakery in the San
Francisco Bay Area, founded in 1974 by Elliot
Hoffman and Gail Horvath.
- A
website for dessert recipes. Its ``team leader'' is
``Saggitarius,'' sic.
- A page of
recipes in the Berks Web's
Authentic Berks County
Recipes. Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking.
Berks County is in
Pennsylvania.
- Third in Savannah chef Paula Deen's The Lady & Sons
trilogy of cookbooks.
- A book by Jerry Oppenheimer, subtitled Martha Stewart the
Unauthorized Biography (sic: no colon within subtitle, just
in my comment to subtitle).
- Title of a book by G.A. McKevett, part of his Savannah Reid
Mystery Series, which also includes Killer Calories, Sugar and Spite, Sour Grapes,
Peaches and Screams,
and Death by Chocolate (another hackneyed title).
- A book for people with guilty esophagi. ``Features 50 delicious
desserts which can be made using fair trade ingredients. Indulge with a
clear conscience in treats such as: tiramisł, coffee éclairs,
pancakes with banana and orange filling, dark chocolate mousse,
hazelnut and chocolate torte.'' It's printed on ethical paper.
Desmond M. Tutu, gourmet and Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa,
endorses the publisher of this book.
- A one-act play for two
actresses, by playwrights Norma Cole and Nancy Elliott. Funded by
a grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. It's about man's
inhumanity to woman, or something like that.
- A made-for-TV romantic comedy from
Hallmark Channel. It first aired in February 2004.
- A band
built around a sax-and-guitar singing duo. It gets a lot of
airplay on college stations, if you know what I mean.
- The trademarked name of a three-color jar candle manufactured by
Yankee
Candle Company.
Taylor's `Just Desserts' specializes in New
Hampshire maple-syrup products.
- Just do it.
- This was/is a campaign slogan for a sneaker company (oh! I'm sorry,
that should be ``athletic shoe'' company). I think it's Nike.
I read the following interesting advice in Some of my best friends are
writers, but I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one! by Robert Turner (Los Angeles: Sherbourne Pr., 1970). It's in the chapter
on getting past initial writer's block -- attacking page 1:
One other warning. The subconscious is a slippery, sneaky little devil,
too. At times, it will try to dodge all your attempts to nudge it into
motion by conning you that you are too sick, too hung over, too depressed,
too tired to try to write. And that if you do write, it will be
appallingly bad, not up to your usual standards; so, forget it. You may
even attempt to do a few pages, then read back over them and decide that
it is true. What you have just written is sheer tripe, so what's the use
of going on?
Ordinarily, this will just not be true. Forget it. Write anyhow. Unless
you are practically a hospital case or have the shakes so bad that you can't
hit the right typewriter keys, what you write under these conditions will
probably not be any worse than at any other time. It will just seem
that way. If you will just persevere, sometime later, when you reread it,
you will realize the truth.
- just don't get it
- Just don't agree; labor under a different enlightenment.
- Just my personal opinion.
- Oh wait, I just remembered: I've got a fully documented analysis here
in my hip pocket.
Cf. JMO.
- just packaging
- Righteous, honest, and complete wrapping.
- Look, don't be so smug. Packagers've got to feed their families
too.
- juvie
- Juvenile detention facility. No, not room 203 after school. Prison. (And
the word is slang. I'm not going to write ``JUVenIlE'' as if juvie were
an acronym; that would be juvenile.)
Stephanie Wilder apparently burned out as an English teacher in juvie and took
a job recruiting deep-foundations and geotechnical professionals. In
Foundation Drilling (see ADCS) she wrote
that she had found frustrating similarities. One is that both juvenile
delinquents and geo industry professionals are tight-lipped and suspicious of
outsiders. Another is that in both the juvenile justice system and the deep
foundations industries, personnel are often needed in a hurry, but when an
appropriate candidate is available the hiring decision often takes too long.
- JV
- Joint Venture.
- JV
- Junior Varsity.
- JVIB
- Journal of Visual Impairment &
Blindness. A publication of the AFB.
- JVM
- Java Virtual Machine. In mid-July 2001,
Microsoft
acknowledged that JVM would not come pre-installed with its next Windows
``upgrade,'' Windows XP.
- JVME
- Journal of
Veterinary Medical Education. A publication of the
AAVMC.
- JVST
- Journal of Vacuum
Science & Technology.
- JVT
- Current-density (vs.) Voltage (as a function of) Temperature.
Cf. IVT.
- JW
- Jehovah's Witness[es].
- JWA
- Japan Weather Association.
- JWA
- The
Journal of World Anthroplogy. Available free on the internet.
- J-walking
- Crossing the street on foot, if the street
is bounded by two regulated intersections. If you want to get technical, this
is probably vague. On the other hand, this is probably not a frequently cited
violation. Also,
that woman you were approaching, who crossed to the other side, that wasn't
J-walking, or jaywalking either. There's a secret codicil to the law now;
everybody else got the announcement in the mail, but it wasn't broadcast so
you wouldn't find out. It's now legal to cross the street to avoid you.
- JWCI
- Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. Catalogued by TOCS-IN.
- JWGT
- Joint Working Group Group on Telemedicine.
Sounds like an infomercial cooperative, but it's sponsored by the US
government's National Agricultural Library (NAL).
- JWI
- Jewish Women International.
- JWI
- Journal of Women's Imaging.
Settle down, settle down. It's a quarterly that ``focuses [ooh, good word] on
all clinical imaging modalities, as well as on health care policy and economic
issues related to women's imaging. The Journal is intended to serve not only
radiologists, but [yes? yes?] all the physicians who are an integral part of
the team required to provide health care to women.'' Alright then, I guess
I'll order Playboy instead.
JWI is the official journal of the AAWR and has an
association with SAWI (qq.v.). It would seem
to make more sense the other way around.
- JWOD
- Javits-Wagner-O'Day. The JWOD Program,
subsidized by the US government, ``provides a wide array of custom solutions at
a fair market price while creating employment opportunities for people who are
blind or have other severe disabilities.''
The original Wagner-O'Day act
``Javits-Wagner-O'Day Act'' is the popular name
of an act that
became law on June 25, 1938.
``In 1971, under the
leadership of Senator Jacob Javits, Congress amended this Act (41 U.S.C. 46-48c)
to include people with severe disabilities and allow the Program to also
provide services to the Federal Government.''
(According to 41 U.S.C. 46 nt., it may
be cited as the ``Javits-Wagner-O'Day Act.'')
- JWR
- Jane's World Railways.
- JWR
- Jewish World Review.
- JWV
- The Jewish War Veterans
of the United States of America, ``organized in 1896 by Jewish Veterans of
the Civil War, is the oldest active national veterans' service organization
in America.''
![[dive flag]](images/dflag.gif)
- JYC
- Jacques-Yves Cousteau. His friends actually pronounced this as an acronym.
Transliterated into English, the acronym is something like ``Zheek.''
With various collaborators, he invented relatively lightweight and
self-contained apparatus for breathing underwater
(scuba). Almost as important, they invented good
watertight goggles and underwater camera housings, and JYC became world-famous
with films and books about his explorations. I still remember watching this
stuff on TV as a kid. His ship was called the
Calypso; whether for the Greek legend or the Caribbean music, I don't remember.
He died on June 25, 1997, at the age of 87, and you can find more information
about him in obituaries from then, like
this reverent one still up at
the IANTD website.
A detail about capitalization. The pronunciation of JYC as an acronym is
mentioned in various French-language articles I can pull up from the 1990's --
mostly obituaries. For example, the AFP
announcement commented en passant, ``JYC, comme tous ses amis
l'appelaient....'' The 26 articles that mentioned the nickname generally wrote
it in all-caps, with the single exception of one article with ``Jyc'' in Le
Figaro (out of four). But here's some really big news: as of 2004,
French-language articles in Lexis-Nexis finally use accented characters!
- J-1
- Visa type for a ``short-term
scholar'' [clever phrase!]. Also professors and au pairs (would
that be aux pairs in
French?) and a variety of other guests. Category
includes graduate students, foreign guest lecturers, participants in meetings
(workshops, seminars, conferences,...). They're permitted to receive direct
compensation as well as payment for travel expenses. There is
a limit on
how many hours per week an au pair may be
required to provide child care services, but
professors do
not benefit from this kind of protection.
Cf. J-2 visa.
- j10n, J10N
- Japanization. A particular L10n.
- J-2
- Visa type for person present in the US as the spouse of someone on a
J-1 visa.
- J2EE
- Java 2 platform Enterprise Edition.
