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Thursday, April 28, 2011

The Art of The Recursive Acronym


Just a small update in between larger ones..

The computer world ( and the government) is filled to the brim with acronyms. SQL, RAID, SSD, ANSI, MAC, IP, BBS, RAM..the list goes on and on..I've gotten quite used to coming across acronyms, I'd dare say I've even become adept at attempting to remember them. I was thrown into a particularly loopy situation, recently when I was reading up on programming. I came across an acronym in which I've seen before, but never really knew what it stood for. PHP. (It turns out PHP is a set of turns and code to design web pages). Now PHP originally stood for "Personal Homepage" but sense has some how incorporated itself into its own acronym. The new meaning of PHP is "PHP Hypertext Preproccessors" The 'P' standing for PHP. So the acrconym has an acronym...which itself has an acronym.. going on forever...Now you see why this sparked some interest...so true to form, I dug a little deeper and found some others.

* Note*
I'm not entirely sure you'll find any of these entertaining in the slightest if you haven't seen them already.. but here goes.

VISA ( Credit card company) - "VISA International Services Association"

GNU - "GNU's Not Unix"

PINE (An older email service - "PINE is not elm"

MULTICS (a precurser to UNIX) - "Multic Information Computing Systems"

LINK (If you live in the UK you'll know this one) - "LINK Interchange NetworK"

BWIA (west indies airline compnay) - "BWIA West Indies Airways"


And finally we have :

TIARA: (the cleverest of all acronyms..) "TIARA IS A RECURSIVE ACRONYM"

Well that's all folks, a lot more exist but its much more fun to actually know the acronym before its explained. I just thought this endless loop of acronyms calling itself would be a great fit for the blog.  A quite poetic way of explaining this, is Douglas Hofstander, in the book "Godel, Escher, and Bach". A Genie explains that God stands for "God Over Djinn". Meaning that no matter how many types you look into God, it will always mean the same thing. You'll never be able to get past that.  Anyway if you do have any of your own, please post them!

51 comments:

  1. Hm, that's pretty interesting.

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  2. That's pretty crazy, I would never have thought those were recursive acronyms. Astronomy gets a lot of great acronyms, like computer tech, they can be fun to pick apart.

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  3. Pretty interesting stuff indeed!

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  4. acronyms are really interesting, language has always been perculiar

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  5. I never thought about it but this is great indeed!

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  6. Wow, I never realized those exist, that's pretty funny though.

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  7. Really interesting post. Ill be back for more.

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  8. Acronyms are technically a group of letters that both stand for something and read out as well like
    MAAD
    STAR
    TAKS
    etc...

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  9. i lol'd when i heard this one

    "every female in a game is a GIRL - GuyInRealLIfe"

    :3

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  10. When it comes to acronyms: GIYF :) +1

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  11. You are right it fits perfectly into your blog. Probably you should go on with such things!

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  12. there are so many acronyms it is hard to keep up

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  13. @ Miyamoto: lol, I like that one..oh so true..
    @Mac-and-me: I tried to pick ones that people would know. WINE doesn't really come up that much

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  14. Very interesting, and pretty educational, too! I'll definitely be keeping my eye on your blog!

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  15. Hmm, I find it weird that the first letter of an acronym represents an acronym. 0.o

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  16. @Zach, I thought the same thing.

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  17. Very interesting, good read! Thanks for the post!

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  18. fits great! thx for the post

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  19. Hehe, interesting stuff. I'm a fan of recursive loops (comes with the territory of being a programmer), so this is pretty neat.

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  20. Funny read hehe, thanks for sharing ;)

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  21. Hmm.. so that's why my professor avoided making a slide about what PHP stood for, haha

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  22. lol there are so many acronyms u could probably make a blog that is only meant for listing them all. lol great post

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  23. Just another proof that humans as a people, are lazy.

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  24. Thats a good read mate, interesting stuff

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  25. hehe, psycology is amazing^^

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  26. Wow this is actually mind blowing for me.

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  27. Haha, now that's crazy. Thanks for sharing. :)

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  28. Acronyms are just going crazy these days, you sure know what I mean if you work for a medium~large company with bullshit working protocols.

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  29. super interesting keep up the good work!

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  30. Very interesting, thanks for the post!

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  31. I always wondered what the hell php stood for, and now I know. Awesome post by the way.

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  32. There's this swim team called NOVA that I know of.

    Nova of Virginia Aquatics.

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  33. I can write php... get at me!

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  34. Acronyms get hugely overused these days...

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  35. LAME = LAME Ain't an Mp3 Encoder

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  36. Very interesting, you have an interesting viewpoint!

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