I

Roman numeral for one. This is the one roman numeral that seems very natural. For the claim that Roman numerals are efficient for computation, see two classics-list postings: (I) and (II)

I

Immediate. A key on an AUTOVON phone, q.v.

I

India. Not an abbreviation here, just the FCC-recommended ``phonetic alphabet.'' I.e., a set of words chosen to represent alphabetic characters by their initials. You know, ``Alpha Bravo Charlie ... .'' The idea behind the choice is to have words that the listener will be able to guess at or reconstruct accurately even through noise (or narrow bandwidth, like a telephone). Hence, ``Indecision'' might be another fine choice, I guess, probably.

i

Information.

I-

Interstate. A US system of limited-access high-speed roads (Autobahnen). Initiated in the 1950's as a kind of successor to the unlimited-access system of US routes. It was justified at the time, and in particular the federal subsidies for it were justified, by treating it as a part of military preparedness (for army movement of men and materiel) and civil defense (you know, getting away from A-bombed cities). I really ought to explain that at the Eisenhower Interstate System entry, but I don't.

Just as in the US route system, odd-numbered routes go (generally) north-south, and even-numbered routes east-west, but that system applies only to numbers below 100. Three-digit numbers refer to roads that bypass cities: e.g., 195, 295, 395 and 495 are used for bypasses around various cities on I-95. In contrast with the US road system, some of whose major roads were Rts. 1, 9, 22, 66 and 101, the interstate system tried to number the most important roads in multiples of five. Whereas the US route system started numbering in the Northeast (Rts. 1 and 22 go through New Jersey, 101 is California's coastal highway), the Interstate system starts numbering in the Southwest (I-5 and I-10 go through Los Angeles; I-90 and I-95 go through Boston),

USTravelGuide.com is oriented primarily to travel on interstates.

Alaskan, Hawaiian, and Puerto Rican highways that are part of the interstate system have the prefixes A-, H-, and PRI-.

I

Iodine. Halogen solid at room temperature. Atomic number 53.

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

Here, from his The Isles of Loch Awe (1855), pp. 343-4, is the poem ``Iodine'' of Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1834-1894):

There was a time when we were taught
The elements were only four;
The curse of old Saint Athanase
Might cling to those who dreamed of more.
But now we have enlarged our faith,
And Science widens all her range,
Till recent knowledge holds as truth
What erst had sounded false and strange.

But none of all our elements
Is half so wonderful as thee,
Strange extract of the golden weeds,---
Strange daughter of the eternal sea!
And of our sixty elements
Not one has properties like thine,
Thou mistress of the solar light,
O violet-fuming Iodine!

Oppressed by Nature's vastest forms,
Lie hid in many a mountain chain
Poor souls who dwell from year to year
In shadowed darkness of the brain.
For these thou hast a potent charm
That fills their hearts with health and light,
And makes a sunrise in the soul
That slept before in haunted night.

I've seen about the western isles,
Encircling zones of golden weed,
A wondrous spirit lurks therein---
By fire alone it may be freed!
An artist-substance that receives
Distinct impressions line for line,
More sensitive than painter's eye,
The wonder-working Iodine!

Appended to this is a note, quoting Septimus Piesse in The Mining Journal:

Iodine derives its name from a Greek word, signifying ``violet-coloured;'' but the transcendent beauty of the colour of its vapour requires further elucidation than simply saying that it has a ``violet hue.'' If a little iodine be placed on a hot tile it rises into a magnificent dense vapour, fit for the last scene of a theatrical representation. This remarkable substance was discovered by accident about forty years ago. At that period chemical philosophy was in great repute, owing principally to the brilliant discoveries of Sir Humphry Davy. So singular a substance as iodine was to Davy a source of infinite pleasure. His great aim was to prove its compound nature; but in this he failed; and to this day it is believed to be one of the primitive ``elements'' of the world we live in. The sea furnishes an inexhaustible supply of iodine. Whatever be the food of sea-weeds, it is certain that iodine forms a portion of their daily banquet; and to these beautiful plants we turn when iodine is to be manufactured for commercial purposes. The inhabitants of the Tyrol are subject to a very painful disease called goître, or cretinism; for this malady iodine is a perfect cure. Photography tells the whole truth without flattery; and the colours used in this process are only silver and iodine.

There's a semiannual Iodine Poetry Journal published in Charlotte, North Carolina. I don't know how the journal name was selected.

I.

Island. (Also Is., Isl.)

i.a.

Latin: inter alia or inter alios, meaning `among other things [alia]' or `among other people [alios].'

If you were paying attention back when et al. was being defined, you may have noticed that `other people' there corresponded to alii rather than alios. I'll explain this later if I get around to it.

IA

Internal Affairs.

IA

Intra-Arterial. If you're trying to open an IV line, this is a messy mistake. You'd figure it's a difficult mistake to make, but I've heard of an instance. In fact, it's common enough to have a common name, which is ``arterial stick.''

IA

Iowa. USPS abbreviation.

The Villanova University Law School provides some links to state government web sites for Iowa. USACityLink.com has a page with mostly city and town links for the state.

IA

Issuing Authority.

IAA

Initial Address Acknowledgment.

IAA

Israel Antiquities Authority.

IAACD

Indian Academy of Aesthetic and Cosmetic Dentistry.

IAAF

International Amateur Athletic Federation. The 23-member Council of the IAAF decides where the World Championships in Track and Field will be held.

IAAM

International Association of Assembly Managers. It ``comprises leaders who represent a diverse [diverse!] industry--entertainment, sports, conventions, trade, hospitality and tourism. These leaders manage, or provide products and services to public assembly facilities like arenas, amphitheaters, auditoriums, convention centers/exhibit halls, performing arts venues, stadiums and university complexes.'' The Annual Conference and Trade Show is held in the Summer.

IAAO

International Association of Assessing Officers. ``The majority of our members are property appraisers and assessment personnel who work for the government; however, membership is open to anyone, including individuals working in industry, academia, and the general public.''

IAAS

Irish Association for American Studies. IAAS is a constituent association of the EAAS. This part of the alphabet soup is certainly rich in vowels.

IAAS

Israel Association of American Studies. If you can only have one ally in the world, the US is a good choice. I remember back in the days of old Enver, when I explained to (my Israeli friend) Andy that after its bust-up with China, Albania no longer had any allies in the world. He was amazed (Andy, not Enver). How could they survive?!

This IAAS is an affiliate member of EAAS.

IAB

Internet Architecture Board.

iABI

Intel Application Binary Interface.

IAC

Information Analysis Center. (DoD term.)

IAC

Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.

-IAC

Integrator And Calculator. Popular ending on early computer names. See Woz entry for list.

IACAC, I.A.C.A.C.

International Air Cargo Association of Chicago.

IACAP

International Association for Computing and Philosophy. ``The IACAP exists to promote scholarly dialogue on all aspects of the computational turn and the use of computers in the service of philosophy.'' Cyclic waste, if you know what I mean. More horrors at the the relevant CAP entry.

IACAP also uses an expansion with of in place of for above. One of the first lessons of programming is to be consistent in the use of names.

IACBE

International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education. The three major business-school accreditation agencies in the US are AACSB, ACBSP, and IACBE, in order of diminishing prestige. IACBE is not recognized by the CHEA or by the US Department of Education. (No, I don't know what that would entail, but the fact entitles me to look down my nose at the IACBE-accredited despite my having no business credential whatsoever, so it's clearly useful.) As its name may suggest, IACBE accredits forms of business education that don't amount to business programs -- training academies that offer continuing-education business courses, and whatnot. And if you're taking wooden nickels, be sure they're authentic wooden nickels: like AACSB, IACBE has a ``membership'' that includes institutions that it has not accredited.

IACCP

International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology. Wassamatta you!?

IACHR

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

IACP

International Association for Cognitive Psychotherapy. It's ``a professional, scientific, interdisciplinary organization whose mission is to facilitate the utilization and growth of cognitive psychotherapy as a professional activity and scientific discipline. In addition, the Association serves as a resource and information center for matters related to cognitive psychotherapy.''

IACW

International Association of Crime Writers. It also has an official Spanish name: Asociación International de Escritores Policiacos.'' It's interesting how the English words associated with this genre are less official. A roman policier in French is a ``mystery'' or a ``detective story'' in English.

Writing in his blog on October 25, 2004, Roger L. Simon, a former officer of the IACW, described it in passing as ``left-leaning.''

IAD

Integrated Access Device.

IADB

Inter-American Development Bank. Also abbreviated IDB (in English) and BID in Spanish.

IADC

International Association of Drilling Contractors. They only drill for oil.

This trade association was founded in 1940, and has gone by the initialisms ODC and AAODC.

IADL

Instrumental Activities of Daily Living. IADL's include cooking, writing and driving. Distinguished from ADL's.

IAEA

International Atomic Energy Agency. If the Stammtisch Beau Fleuve glossary were a Francophone resource, we would list this entity as AIEA (pour l'Agence internationale de l'energie atomique).

IAEDB

International Association for the Education of Deafblind.

IAEP

International Association of Equine Professionals.

IAF

Inter-American Foundation. In Spanish, this is expanded Fundación Interamericana, but the English-order acronym tends to be used.

IAF

International Astronautical Federation. Described here. It has 130 member organizations in 46 countries, and it holds an annual congress, but it doesn't seem to have its own website. Visit AAS instead.

IAF

Internet Address Finder.

Some other similar resources: Bigfoot.com || Switchboard.com || Peoplefind.com || WhoWhere.com || Yahoo People Search.

IAF

Islamic Action Front. Oh look, cool coincidence:

IAF

Israeli Air Force. For years I used to see it spelled out in English with the attributive noun: ``Israel Air Force'' but I see now that even the IAF's official website uses the adjective on its English pages. (The English name is not an exact translation of the Hebrew. I suppose that when there are two countries that use Hebrew as a national language, it may be more useful to make the country name explicit.)

IAFIS

(The FBI's) Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. They have more than 213,000,000 fingerprints, and of those only about 127,000,000 are criminal.

IAFN

International Association of Forensic Nurses. Based in Pitman, New Jersey.

IAGLR

International Association of Great Lakes Research. ``Your Source for Research on the Great Lakes and other Large Lakes of the World.'' Find out about testicular anomaly in lake trout.

IAGO

Initiatives at Achieving Goals Outstanding. A charity based in South Bend, Indiana.

Normally one associates an awkward expansion like this with a lazy, half-hearted, or merely incompetent attempt to justify a backronym. That might be the case here; one need only make the reasonable assumption that the creator of the acronym liked the sound of the target word but didn't happen to know its meaning or associations -- with race, say. A part of literacy -- even cultural literacy -- is possession of an adequate vocabulary. Fortunately, the subject charity doesn't really aim to educate anyone. Instead, it focuses on building self-esteem in kids who are disruptive in school. According to itself, the organization has been very successful with these ``at-risk kids.'' Also, students in the program are paid for raising their GPA's and for ``every positive remark of improvement from a teacher.'' (This is fair to the kids whose parents teach them to stay out of trouble: since they're well-behaved already, they're probably not eligible for ``remarks of improvement,'' so why should they be paid?)

Please donate money to this charity so they can continue and even expand their work. Things will have to be much more broken before anyone does what is obviously necessary to fix them.

IAHC

International Association for History and Computing. ``[E]xists to encourage and maintain interest in the use of computers in all types of historical studies at all levels, in both teaching and research.'' AHC is used productively, in the names of some of the national organizations (e.g., UK AHC, American AHC). It's also used for the international organization. So the IAHC is really a productive application of ``AHC'' for the AHC. Clear?

AHC has a mailing list: H-AHC, sponsored by H-NET.

IAHR

International Association for Hydraulic Engineering and Research. As the initialism suggests, it used to be the International Association for Hydraulic Research. The organization used, and still uses the symbol IAHR/AIRH also. The impression I get from searching the web with ``Association Internationale de Recherches Hydrauliques'' and ``Association Internationale d'Ingénierie et de Recherches Hydrauliques'' is that not a lot of their business is currently conducted in French.

IAHS

International Association for Hydrological Sciences. Nominally IAHS/AISH.

IAHS/AISH

International Association for Hydrological Sciences/Association internationale des sciences hydrologiques. Try saying that one time fast.

IAI

Israel Aerospace Industries. Previously Israel Aircraft Industries.

IAICU

Iowa Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. An affiliate of NAICU.

IAIH

Intra-uterine Artificial Insemination Homologous (AIH).

IAJE

International Association of Jews from Egypt. (Post-biblically.)

IAL

International Algebraic Language. The original name of Algol. See also Jovial.

IALA

International Association of Lighthouse Authorities. French AISM.

IALA

International Auxiliary Language Association. Promotes, disinterestedly studies, and promotes international auxiliary languages like Esperanto. History at the Interlingua site.

IALD

International Association of Lighting Designers.

I admit it: I'm bored.

IALL

International Association of Law Libraries.

Hi y'all!

IAM

Initial Address Message.

IAM

Interactive Ancient Mediterannean.

I am an award-winning author.

I have won an award you've never heard of for a book you've never heard of. Lucky you.

I am often asked

I wish someone would ask me. A rhetorical questioning.

IAME

Institute for Advanced Medical Education.

IAME

International Association for Management Education? You want ``AACSB -- International Association for Management Education.''

I am happy to know that I have touched your heart.

It was a small target.

IAMI

Israel Aerospace Medicine Institute.

IAML

International Association of Music Libraries.

IAMS

Institute for Archaeo-Metallurgical Studies. Based at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. ``An international body whose purpose is to initiate and promote research into the origins and developments of metallurgy and its culture-historical [been reading a little too much German lately, eh?] significance, from its earliest, prehistoric beginnings to recent times.''

IAMS

Institute of Advanced Manufacturing Sciences. Old name of TechSolve, Inc., until late 2000. Under the old name, this nonprofit company was typically referred to by the acronym IAMS, which was occasionally confused with Iams, the pet-food company based in the Dayton area. In 2000, IAMS had also expanded into the Dayton area.

In 1986, I interviewed for a position in Athens, Ohio. When I came back I complained to my co-workers that it would be pretty uncool to work in a place named Athens. Paul K. commiserated. He said he once interviewed for a job in Dayton, Ohio. I asked ``Dayton was an ancient Greek city-state?'' I was just thinking lèse majesté. I didn't get the job. I wonder if the job Paul had interviewed for was at the University of Dayton.

IAMS, Iams

A high-end dog food. Pronounced ``I'ms.'' (You know: the plural of the contraction of ``I am,'' as the name suggests.) More information at the Eukanuba entry.

IANA

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Assigns default port numbers to client/server protocols. E.g., 70 for gopher, 80 for http, etc. Here's a fairly extensive list.

IANAL

I Am Not A Lawyer. But I've got a fatuous imagination; take my free advice.

IANGV

International Association for Natural Gas Vehicles (NGV).

IANR

Institute of Agriculture & Natural Resources.

IANTD

International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers.

IAoM

International Association of Management. This is the nomenclatural equivalent of empty calories. The name contains only the kind of words I skip over when I'm trying to find out what it's about. ``Association'' ... ``international'' ... ``of'' ... I guess they're about management. I suppose that's substantive enough. See AoM/IAoM.

IAOM

International Association of Orofacial Myology. ``[T]he professional and certification organization for the Orofacial Myology Practitioner. ...

``Orofacial Myology/Myofunctional therapy is defined as treatment of the orofacial musculature to improve muscle tonicity. It is the establishment of correct functional activities of the tongue, lips, and mandible, so that normal growth and development may take place or progress in a stable homostatic environment. It may include the treatment of parafunctional habits to eliminate noxious oral behavior patterns [I think this is where "digit habit" comes in]; or temporomandibular muscle dysfunction as it relates to bruxism/clenching, range of motion activities, or postural habits of the tongue, lips and/or mandible.''

IAOP-2001

Forum on Innovative Approaches to Outer Planetary Exploration 2001-2020. A workshop held in January 2001. A book of extended abstracts was published.

IAP

Independent Agrochemical Observer. A Danish organization rivaling the Stammtisch Beau Fleuve (SBF) in utility and scope.

IAPA

International Airline Passengers Association (tm).

IAPH

International Association of Ports and Harbors.

IAPM

International Association of Progressive Montessori. Montessori is a common noun? Oh well, I guess we get the idea. Based in Spokane, WA.

IAPR

International Association for Pattern Recognition.

IAQ

Indoor Air Quality.

IAQ

Infrequently Asked Questions.

IAR

I.A. Richards.

IAR

Indiana Association of Realtors.

IAR

Initial Address Reject.

IAR

Ivor Armstrong Richards. Is this padding, slumming, or what?

IARC

Illicit Antiquities Research Centre. In Cambridge, England. Mentioned here.

IARC

International Agency for Research on Cancer.

I.A. Richards

Ivor Armstrong RICHARDS. Born in 1893, he died afterwards. (That would be in 1979.) A twentieth-century college English teacher. He's been deemed pretty important in lit-crit circles -- important enough to merit a Wikipedia article and an I.A. Richards Web Resource.

Despite this, he's a lot of fun, so we'll be mentioning him at various places in this glossary, such as the Practical Criticism and mixed-metaphor entries, as well as the eventual Basic-English-related entries.

I have a big entry under development about this dude, but it might be years before I get around to finishing it, so let me at least mention the following: There's an old story about a small college that was considering expansion. If you're utterly out of the loop you may not have heard it, so I'll regale you with it now. The plan was to add one department: either physics, mathematics, or philosophy. The committee on expansion reported back to the trustees that the main difference among these was the cost of supporting research: physics professors need all sorts of expensive equipment, but mathematicians only need paper, pencils, and a garbage can. Philosophers don't even need a garbage can.

IARU

International Amateur Radio Union. Looks like a Japanese verb written in romaji, doesn't it?

IARW

International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses. I guess association is one of those fusty old collective nouns, like gaggle for geese.

IAS

Indicated Air Speed. Not the same as True (TAS).

IAS

Institute for Advanced Studies. The one in Princeton.

IAS

Institute of Alcohol Studies. Also visit IAST (next) and the Research Institute on Addictions (RIA).

IAS

Inter-American Studies. There's an M.A. program in IAS offered by the University of Bielefeld, Germany. It's a four-semester program representing ``a cooperation between Bielefeld's faculty of Linguistics and Literary Studies, the faculty of History, Philosophy and Theology, and the faculty of Sociology [and nothing? I was getting into the rhythm!] and is a nationwide unique interdisciplinary project.''

I guess they study Inter-Americans, whoever they or we are. It's gotta be better than studying Interahamwe. Safer, anyway. Oh, here it comes!

``The M.A. takes up a double perspective that concentrates on the hemispherical interconnections between Anglo-America and Latin-America and in doing so follows a recent trend of research within the framework of transnational regional studies. Literary, cultural, and media studies as well as linguistics, sociology, political science, and transnational history are integrated to participate in an interdisciplinary dialogue. The social, cultural, historical, and political developments in the Americas (both in regard to their specifically national characteristics and to the processes of transnational integration) form the main focus of the course of studies. Current research paradigms related to questions of transnationality, interculturality, globalization, and concepts of World Society are the major theoretical guidelines.''

``The program is designed for students with a B.A. certificate (or its equivalent) in a related area of studies, and provides them with an individual specialization within the participating fields of studies which will qualify them as future experts in international cultural, social, and communicative processes. Proficiency in English and Spanish, as well as German are needed, but can be improved throughout the course of studies.''

Heck, the Bielefeld folks still haven't ``improved'' their punctuation skills. Incidentally, I imagine that Brazil is not meant to be excluded from ``Latin-America.'' Some writers in Spanish mean, and occasionally state, that by latinoamérica they mean only the former colonies of Spain. It reminds me of the old joke about who a Yankee is.

IAS

International Association of Sufism.

IASA

Improving America's Schools Act of 1994. It was a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). It was up for reauthorization in 1999 but quietly expired. It was succeeded by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002.

IASA

International Air Shippers' Association. I don't remember where I grabbed this acronym and its expansion, but if it ever existed it appears to be well dead now. See instead IATA and TIACA.

IASC

International Association of Seed Crushers. Based in West Sussex, UK.

IASIL

I could've sworn I knew an elf (sorry -- an elvish person) by that name. Oh well, it seems we have entered the age of men. (Persons! Sorry -- I mean, ``the age of persons''!) IASIL is the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures. They publish an annual bibliographical listing of publications pertinent to Irish Studies; publications in a language other than English are accompanied by a translation of the title.

A popular maneuver in postmodern or ``theoretical'' discourse is to make unnecessary plurals as a way of ``transgressing narratives'' or something. The idea is that anything you might like to say is false, because it's not perfectly true, and it's not perfectly true because your narrative is only one of many equally true (i.e., false) narratives, blah, blah. Anyway, I don't think that's what's going on in the ``Irish Literatures'' of the IASIL expansion. I think the idea is to emphasize that the bailiwick of IASIL includes Irish literature in both English and Irish Gaelic. But of course, I am probably wrong.

IASL

International Association of School Librarianship.

IASME

International ASsociation of Mechanical Engineers. I kid you not. They even capitalize the first ess as we do, just so you don't wonder about any missing word. As written, it does seem to suggest a relationship with the (organizationally unrelated) ASME.

``The IASME is a non-profit scientific organization that promotes the Mechanical Engineering through Journals, Books, Conferences, Seminars, Workshops, Research Projects and Summer Schools. It was founded by WSEAS members in August 12, 2003 after a WSEAS successful conference in Crete, Greece.''

IAST

Institute for Addictions Studies and Training. Page temporarily down. Also visit the Research Institute on Addictions (RIA).

IAT

Integrated Access Terminal.

IATA

International Air Transport Association. They assign improbable three-letter codes, listed here, to airports around the world. Based in Montreal.

IATA collaborates closely with ICAO.

IATA

International Amateur Theater Association.

IATAFI

International Association for Technology Assessment and Forecasting Institutions.

IATAS

International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. A division (!) of the NYC-based National Television Academy (NATAS). ATAS awards Emmys. IATAS awards the iEmmys. NATAS and its regional chapters (dare I say ``divisions''?) also award Emmys, but they're much less glitzy and have been exiled to inferior broadcast surroundings.

IATEFL

International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language. Based in the UK.

I suppose one mustn't hold oneself hostage to the potential pranks of graffiti artists, but ``IATEFL'' is rather too easily modified to read ``HATEFL.''

IATH

Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The IATH was profiled in the May 1995 issue of Lingua Franca.

IATJ

Illinois Association of Teachers of Japanese. An affiliate member of the ICTFL and the NCJLT.

iATN

International Automotive Technicians' Network. A group of about 23000 ``professional automotive technicians [at least four years' full-time work experience or current ASE certification] from 101 countries. The automotive professionals of this group exchange technical knowledge and information with other members from around the globe....''

Also offers a referral service.

iatrogenic infection

Infection acquired through medical intervention. Also referred to as a nosocomial infection. For more or less, see the autoinfection entry.

IATSE

International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes [sic], Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States and Canada. Their use of the unregularized spelling of employee is apparently traditional, and not some stupid idea they got from reading the Washington Post. Don't be surprised that your theater program regularizes the spelling.

IATUL

International Association of Techological University Libraries.

IAU

International Astronomical Union. It was only founded in 1919, the year after the end of the Great War. It was formed in a merger of various preexisting organizations, one of which was already itself known as a union (the Solar Union). The IAU is a member of the ICSU.

IAU

International Astronomical Unit. An official value for the astronomical unit: 149.5978 Gm.

IAVCEI

International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior. Founded 1922. See also Volcano Information Center (VIC).

IAW

In Accordance With. Looks like internetese, but on reflection you won't be surprised to learn it's military jargon.

IAW

International Water Association.

IAW

Ion Acoustic Wave. A plasma excitation.

IAWL

It's A Wonderful Life. A movie directed by Frank Capra, released December 19, 1946. After you have memorized it, Robin's Web is a good place to continue the study of this great movie.

How significant is this movie? Karolyn Grimes played the youngest daughter of George and Mary (Hatch) Bailey. She had six minutes of screen time (out of a total running time of 129 minutes) and was listed thirty-third in the credits. Apparently her current career consists in making IAWL-related appearances and selling IAWL-related products. Visit her web site, <zuzu.net>.

IAWL's initial copyright period ended during the time when copyright terms lasted only twenty-eight years. The copyright holder could have an extension free for the asking, if the asking was done near the end of the initial period. (Later on, the copyright renewals became automatic, but that change did not affect works of IAWL's vintage.) Whoever had the responsibility of filing the request for extension reportedly forgot (or perhaps ``forgot''). If the copyright had been renewed, then it would clearly have been under copyright at the time that Sonny Bono's Egregious Bill To Extend Copyrights Obscenely In The United States Of America (not the official title) came into effect, and the film would have remained under copyright continuously and forever (new copyright extensions should be passed from time to time). Because the copyright was not renewed, it was widely assumed that the movie had passed into the public domain, and in the late seventies and through the eighties, IAWL aired on approximately every television station.

The rights to IAWL were originally held by Capra's company Liberty Films. Republic Pictures Corp. (NTA at the time) is successor in interest to Liberty Films. On June 14, 1993, Republic asserted that it owns the rights to (at least some of) the music in the film. (Republic acquired these exclusive music rights, which did remain protected, in a series of transactions with Warner/Chappell Music, Irving Berlin Music Co., Edward B. Marks Music Co. and Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. Inc.) Based on this and its ownership of the copyrighted short story upon which the movie was based, Republic has regained effective control over the distribution and use of the film and derivative products. I'm not sure that their claim has ever been tested in court, but the preponderance of legal opinion seems to be that they can make their claim stick. Their reasoning is based on (and their purchase of the music rights was motivated by) an April 25, 1990, US Supreme Court decision involving Alfred Hitchcock's ``Rear Window.'' The court ruled in that case that distributors of the movie were required to share rerelease earnings with the copyright holder of the underlying story on which the film was based. After a final cluster of independent broadcasts at Christmas 1993, Republic contracted an exclusive license with NBC.

In August 1995, Republic signed a joint marketing agreement for the film with cool, market-savvy heavy-weight...Borden, running Oct. 15-Feb. 29 (distribution began Sept. 19, 1995). It was the ``fiftieth anniversary'' of the 1946 release. That Winter, it peaked higher (#13) on the Billboard charts than the 1994 TV version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (#15) -- more authentic malice and greed, I guess -- but the next season Grinch was back on top. After Republic's aggressive protection and promotion of its movie, IAWL has dramatically declined in popularity.

Republic does not distribute a Colorized version. Video Treasures was one of the companies that did. The latter sued Republic in December 1993, challenging Republic's claim of sole ownership. On July 8, 1994, the suit was settled out of court, with VT acknowledging Republic's claim and Republic allowing VT to distribute a Colorized version until 1998. (Rights to that version had been acquired from Hal Roach Studios, which had been acquired by RHI Entertainment, which had reached agreement with Republic earlier in December 1993. Under the terms of that agreement, RHI ended the Video Treasures license in the U.S., as well as those with Gaga in Japan and Transvideo in Portugal.) Most of the 100 or so independent distributors of IAWL preferred to avoid litigation.

The late Stephen Jay Gould, a gifted science writer and celebrated Harvard professor, published a book in 1989 called Wonderful Life, describing radically new conclusions about the contingency and the rate of evolution. These conclusions, based on his graduate students' speculative reconstructions of fragile Cambrian fossils from the Burgess shale, would have been very important had they been correct. A fact not very clearly adverted in the book is that the hypothesis it promotes had never (as it has not since) achieved widespread acceptance, even among the gullible gaggle of paleobiologists. Gould's claim that the Burgess shale of British Columbia contained representatives of a large variety of exotic taxa (rather than a jumbled bunch of bits from rather ordinary phyla like annelids and arthropods, and the latter's apparent ancestors the velvet worms, still represented in 90 known living species) is no longer tenable, if it ever was, but his book remains in print. (Cue Marc Anthony's eulogy of Caesar.) Not that I have anything special against this specific book. Some of the minor errors in the book were not original with Gould, and anyway he was prolific and promoted ideas in other areas of his incompetence such as neoteny and intelligence measurement; his ideas are widely respected outside the scientific community to this day. IAWL was one of Gould's favorite movies; that's not a recommendation.

IB

In-Band.

IB

Instruction Buffer.

IB

International Baccalaureate. ``The IB Diploma Programme is recognized internationally as a qualification for university entrance, while allowing students to fulfill the requirements of their national education system.'' The IB program was developed and overseen by the IBO. According to reports, it is academically rigorous, and generally sound in the sciences and math, but apparently the selection of great literature is only politically correct.

The use of ``bachelor's degree'' and related terms has evolved over time, and has evolved differently in different places. In Spain and Spanish America, the traditional sequence of titles is Bachillerato, Licenciado, and Doctor, corresponding to Latin Baccalaureatus, Licenciatus, and Doctor. At one time, the bachillerato was a sort of advanced high-school degree taken by students planning to go to college, equivalent to what is called the Abitur or Matura. (Graduation from nonacademic high schools might take place at age 16 or 17 -- i.e., a year or two earlier. Cf. the older Canadian system at the HS entry.)

Traditionally also, school courses in general education, general culture, liberal education or whatever you want to call it, were supposed to be taken care of in high school -- that is, with completion of the bachelor's degree. One entered college to pursue a specific career, and most courses were focused on that career and taken within the relevant department (facultad) of the university. The licencia was earned upon completion of coursework in that facultad. This traditional scheme is evolving irregularly toward a system more like the current American one, and a degree called the Maestría has been introduced.

IB

Interpreter's Bible. In the original edition, there was usually one Bible book per volume of the IB. Cf. NIB.

IBA

IsoButyl Alcohol.

IBA

Israel Broadcasting Authority.

IBAC

In-Band, Adjacent Channel.

IBAD

Ion-Beam-Assisted Deposition.

I very bad.

IBANGS

International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society. Please, please: they've just got to hire William Hung to sing a theme for them!

IBB

International Broadcasting Bureau (of the US). VOA ventriloquism?

IBC

Independent Breweries Company. Root beer since 1919. The eighteeth amendment (prohibition) didn't take effect until 1920.

IBC

Inside Back Cover.

IBC

Integrated Broadband Communications.

IBC

Interdigitated Back Contact (solar cell). The idea is to avoid the trade-off between shadowing by the contact and series resistance. That is, in the usual geometry, a solar cell has a front contact that lies in the path of the light that's supposed to be absorbed and converted into electric power. If this front contact layer is thin, then it absorbs little light -- which is good -- but it then has a high sheet resistance, so more of the power generated in the cell goes into Ohmic heating of the front contact -- which you probably don't need me to tell you is bad. On the other hand, thickening the layer shades the device, reducing power generated while decreasing the fraction dissipated by the contact resistance.

IBC solves this by using what are lateral pn junctions on the back surface, defined by different implantations or diffusions into a high-carrier-lifetime bulk material.

IBC

International Business {Company|Corporation}.

IBC

Inuit Broadcasting Corporation.

IBC

ISDN Burst Controller.

IBCN

Integrated Broadband Communications Network. Broadband ISDN.

IBD

Inflammatory Bowel Disease. IBD is not IBS, dammit! IBD refers to either or both of two chronic diseases that cause inflammation of the intestines: ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease.

IBD

Investors Business Daily. Was originally called ``Investors Daily.'' Instead of adding an utterly redundant word to their title, they might profitably have invested in an apostrophe.

Mirabile dictu -- they have!

According to this page, in March 2002,

``Founded in 1984 by William J. O'Neil, Investor's Business Daily is now America's fastest growing newspaper, boasting a daily readership of over 800,000. Designed to provide both concise and comprehensive coverage of business, financial, economic, and national news, Investor's Business Daily is highly organized and tightly edited to help you make the most of your time. This newspaper is a must have for all investors.''

IBDC

Indian (i.e. Native American) Business Development Center. Vide MBDA.

IBE

Indiana Black Expo.

IBE

Ion-Beam Etch.

IBEW

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. In a piquant footnote to the history of the trade-union versus craft-union conflict, the Buffalo Jills joined local 41 of the IBEW in July 1995.

IBF

International Bicycle Fund.

IBF

International Boxing Federation. The youngest of the three credible international boxing title-granting and ranking organizations. Founded in the eighties with some idealistic notions of cleaning up the ``sport.'' The other two are WBA and WBC. When a promoter wants to stage a fight that is grossly inappropriate, or in order simply to claim that an ordinary bout is for some title, he can use the good offices of the genuine-sounding WBO or WBU.

IBF

International Business Forum. ``[P]rovides information about business opportunities in the international marketplace. It is intended for companies wishing to export or expand into foreign markets as well as for those interested to acquire products and services from other countries.''

IBG

Internationale Bodenkundliche Gesellschaft. German name of the International Society of Soil Science -- AISS in French, ISSS (main entry here) in English, SICS in Spanish.

IBG-YBG

I'll Be Gone, You'll Be Gone. The philosophy of pursuing an investment strategy focused on high short-term gains, even though the investments are high-risk, because in the long term one won't be around to have to take responsibility for disastrous losses. This philosophy was popular during the boom that ended in 2007-2008, among investment-company employees who were encouraged or required to make those risky investments. So you see, it wasn't their fault if they were left standing when the music stopped. Give me back my bonuses!

ibid.

Notation in references (footnotes or endnotes): `in the same place' [bk., chap., pg., etc.] [Abbreviation of Latin ibidem.] Same remarks apply as for op. cit., for which it is an approximate synonym.

IBL

Internet (Bermuda) Limited. A member of CIX.

IBL

Israel Baseball League. The inaugural season features (I'm writing in the present tense because it's happening in the present) six teams each playing 45 games. The games have only seven innings and no extra innings: a tie is settled by a home run contest. The promoters must be soccer fans. The teams are Bet Shemesh Blue Sox, Modi'in Miracle, Netanya Tigers, Petah Tikva Pioneers, Ra'anana Express, and Tel Aviv Lightning. According to news reports, each team has one paid manager and two player-coaches. There are 15 Israeli players, and the rest are foreigners, who seem to be more like adult league players on a long Summer paid vacation than minor leaguers. I guess you have to start somewhere. Most of the 3112 fans at the first game (Modi'in at Petah Tikvah; June 25, 2007) were immigrants from the US and their children. (What, you were expecting Japanese expats and their children?)

IBLN

Indiana Black Librarians Network.

IBM

Infinite Barrier Model.

IBM

Interacting Boson Model. For low-energy excitations of nuclei.

I.B.M.

International Brotherhood of Magicians.

IBM

Current name of a company that was renamed ``International Business Machines'' by Thomas J. Watson, Sr., a salesman who got his start in Buffalo, NY. IBM has a corporate-issue glossy homepage. The Microelectronics pages are nice.

IBM made the greatest corporate contribution to literary criticism in the twentieth century.

IBM is still by far the largest computer company (counting HW, SW, and services together).

IBMA

International Bluegrass Music Association.

IBMG, iBMG

Het instituut Beleid & Management Gezondheidszorg. Dutch, `The Institute of Health Policy and Management. Part of Erasmus University Rotterdam. They insist that the first i of Institute is in lower case in English as well as Dutch.

IBM Journal of Research and Development

View abstracts and feature article of recent issues. Has good review and tutorial articles, as well as regular articles. We have it (LC number TK7800.I14) in the library, but you could still subscribe or get further information.

IBMS

International Bone and Mineral Society.

IBM Systems Journal

View abstracts and feature article of recent issues. I'm not very familiar with it. We have it (LC number TK7800.I14) in the library, but you could still subscribe or get further information.

IBM 650

A tube computer used in the late fifties, succeeded by the 700 series (see 704 entry below). It is best remembered for Donald Knuth's dedication of his Numerical Algorithms:

This book is affectionately dedicated to the Type 650 computer once installed at Case Institute of Technology, with whom I have spent many pleasant evenings.

For all I know that might be the first book dedication to a computer in history. (Francis Fukuyama dedicated his book The End of History, an expansion of a lecture he gave with that famous and enigmatic title, to the cpu that ran his word processor.) To run a program on the 650 required all the patience that love can give. It used a rotating magnetic drum for memory. Technically, that might constitute random access memory (RAM), since memory locations on the drum are addressed individually. However, the drum has to be turning to be read, and one has to wait for the drum location to rotate around to the head azimuth, so it's not really any faster than reading serial memory and discarding most of what's read. FOLDOC has an extensive list of the languages it ran.

IBM 704

A tube computer from early in the second half of the twentieth century. It incorporated RAM, in the form of magnetic core arranged in 36-bit words. A typical set-up had a cubic foot of magnetic core in a glass enclosure, for 32k words, a total of 144Kbytes. (In the store this would be about about ``1 Meg[abit]'' of RAM hardware. A vast improvement on the essentially serial memory (magnetic drum) of the IBM 650 that the 700 series superseded. FOLDOC has a detailed technical reminiscence.

IBM 709

A science-application version of the IBM 704.

IBNR

Incurred But Not yet Reported. An event that may obligate an insurer is regarded as an IBNR claim. When reported it becomes an RBNS claim.

IBOC

In-Band, On-Channel.

IBP

International Biological Program.

IBRC

In-Band, Reserved Channel.

IBRD

International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Established as part of the Bretton Woods Accords in 1944, it became a specialized agency within the United Nations when that was established, but it is ``owned'' by its member nations. The IBRD and the IDA (International Development Association, fnd'd 1960) together are known as the ``World Bank'' (see WB). The World Bank is the largest provider of development assistance to developing countries and to ``countries in transition.''

Suppose your economy has been expanding briskly but steadily, but that a large economy in your vicinity (like Japan's say) has been stagnating for the better part of a decade. Suppose further that the Japanese government convinces your largest importer (the US, say) to strengthen its currency to avert a further Japanese economic disaster, and that the prices of your export goods become relatively unattractive (because your currency is pegged to the dollar). Your exports weaken, currency speculators see an opportunity to sell you short and bet against your currency until it cracks, your stock market crashes and you start defaulting on loans to your biggest creditor (Japan, whose banking system was already insolvent anyway). That's the good news: Japanese banks go on cooking the books, so in the long run maybe you just default on some onerous loans and your credit rating takes a hit (so capital becomes expensive). The real bonus is you have a decent chance of replacing your corrupt dictators with a brand new set of kleptocrats. Of course, this requires a little short-term pain, since well-fed children don't riot. Okay, maybe this isn't such good news. But here's worse: the World Bank comes to your rescue! In exchange for a sequence of short term loans, you hand over central management of your economy to the seasoned experts who have been fixing the Asian economic crisis for all these years.

It would be cool if IBRD were BIRD in French, but I haven't seen that used. I'll have to keep on looking.

IBS

International Berkeley Society. Founded in 1975, it ``holds meetings, conferences, and symposia, [I think that covers all bases] and publishes the results of scholarly research on both sides of the Atlantic [just two sides?] and brings attention and information, both old and new, about [sic] George Berkeley and his works.'' IBS is based at Texas A&M instead of the obvious place.

They say he ``is especially famous as the author of the philosophical theory known as `immaterialism'.'' That doesn't sound very substantial. He also ``made important contributions in the fields of philosophy, mathematics, and economics.'' Afaik, his most important contribution to mathematics was objecting that Newton's fluxions were not rigorously defined. That's exactly the sort of thing that philosophers would consider an important contribution. (In this case, it was. See this.)

But perhaps there was some interesting mathematics in his writings on vision. [On a quick look, though, A [sic] Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709) has only the most elementary sort of geometric argument.] That brings us to physiology and... yes, medicine! What about George Berkeley's famous contributions to medicine? His most popular work was on that subject. [Most popular, that is, during his lifetime, and probably until the time that A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713) became regularly assigned college texts. Then again, can college texts truly be said to be popular? Give me 2000 words on that.] The work introducing his speculations on tar-water was Siris, Philosophical Reflexions and inquiries concerning the virtues of tar-water, and divers other subjects connected together and arising from one another (1744). Tar-water was the clear water drained off from a mix of pine tar and water after the (mostly insoluble) pine tar has settled. The diverse other subjects connected together and so forth are philosophical. The work went through a second printing in 1747, and in 1752 he published Farther Thoughts on Tar-Water. In 1753 he died.

On tar

Hail vulgar juice of never-fading pine!
Cheap as thou art, thy virtues are divine.
To shew them and explain (such is thy store)
There needs much modern and much ancient lore.
While with slow pains we search the healing spell,
Those sparks of life, that in thy balsam dwell,
From lowest earth by gentle steps we rise
Through air, fire, æther to the highest skies.
Things gross and low present truth's sacred clue.
Sense, fancy reason, intellect pursue
Her winding mazes, and by Nature's laws
From plain effects trace out the mystic cause,
And principles explore, though wrapt in shades,
That spring of life which the great world pervades,
The spirit that moves, the Intellect that guides,
Th' eternal One that o'er the Whole presides.
Go learn'd mechanic, stare with stupid eyes,
Attribute to all figure, weight and size;
Nor look behind the moving scene to see
What gives each wondrous form its energy.
Vain images possess the sensual mind,
To real agents and true causes blind.
But soon as intellect's bright sun displays
O'er the benighted orb his fulgent rays,
Delusive phantoms fly before the light,
Nature and truth lie open at the sight:
Causes connect with effects supply
A golden chain, whose radiant links on high
Fix'd to the sovereign throne from thence depend
And reach e'en down to tar the nether end.

IBS

International Builders' Show. An annual shindig sponsored by that NAHB.

IBS

Ion Beam Sputtering. A deposition method.

IBS

Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

To me, as I'm sure to many, it came as a revelation that the emotional disposition of internal organs could have serious health consequences. But why should we have been surprised? It's well known that repetitive stress can cause injury to the heart, and everyone has heard of Carping Tummy Syndrome (CTS). The legendary moodiness of the black lung is killing, and just one shot of testosterone has been known to make muscle's tone highly impertinent. These are organs with attitude.

But it's not just the bigger organs: research has shown that the aptly-named little gall bladder is full of bile, and the tiny appendix sometimes becomes dangerously inflamed. And that's not even the smallest. Within the ugly pancreas, the islets of Langerhans are lonely, and in the microscopic spaces where nerve processes whisper to each other, the serotonin levels themselves are depressed. This can ruin the mood of the entire organism.

Of course, it's natural to expect soft-tissue organs to show weakness, but there are even skeletal ``issues.'' I've heard reports of merciless ribbing. Pity too the alienation and desperate anomie of the dislocated shoulder. These problems are not rare. If rigid sternum were recognized as a disease, I'm sure it would be a pandemic.

It should be clear by now that these are not mere passing mood swings of the body, but persistent problems that must be regarded as full-fledged emotional or cognitive disorders of the feeling body. The ``funny'' bone, euphemistically so-called, is no joke, and the deviated septum should receive a wide berth. Yes, the wracked body just throbs with turbulent emotion -- from the in-groan toenail, past the glowering glomeruli and the violent spleen, right on out to the petulantly opposed thumbs.

IBT

International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Currently (2005) headed by James P. (`Jim') Hoffa. There's some historical information at the teamster entry.

IBTA

International Baton Twirling Association. Founded in 1962 in the US. For similar organizations, see the majorette entry.

The Dynamic Twirlers Majorette Corps notes on its history page that it was ``awarded `Most Improved Corps 2004' for the second year running'' (I assume the first year running, they won it for 2003), and that this ``has NEVER been award[ed] to any other Corps two years running in the history of the IBTA.'' They say they celebrated this.

IBTR

Indiana Board of Tax Review.

IC

Illinois Central Gulf Railroad. Formed from the merger of the Illinois Central Railroad with the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio, and is currently owned by the IC Industries. The merger took place in 1972, but as of 1990 the railroad still used IC and GMO reporting marks in addition to ICG.

The Illinois Central was chartered in 1851. It had its share of accidents. In 1900, it had a minor wreck at Vaughan, Mississippi. There was one fatality -- the engineer, John Luther Jones.

John Luther Jones was nicknamed after his home town -- Cayce, Kentucky. Wallace Saunders, an engine wiper, wrote a song about Casey Jones and the accident that killed him. The song became popular locally, and a couple of years later it was picked up and adapted by a song writer who was passing through Jackson, Tennessee. How much adapted is hard to know now, but the story has a Rashomon character -- every version is different, and the ballad tells a different story than the accident report or his widow recalled for an Erie Railroad Magazine reporter twenty-eight years later [also here], or than his fireman recalled fifty years later.

Find A Grave has found Casey's. The page points out that, though his widow years later used the spelling Casey in letters, John Jones himself used to sign ``Cayce.'' In the news article linked above and in railroad historian Bruce Gurner's interview with her at age 90, his wife is reported as giving Cayce as his place of birth, but according to an Encyclopedia.com article, he only moved there at age seventeen. That he worked as a telegraph operator there might help explain his nickname, but according to a possibly somewhat creative obituary of his wife, he got the nickname from her mother, who ran a boarding house in Jackson.

For a bit more on rail accidents, see the rail accidents entry.

IC

Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine.

i/c

In Charge [of].

IC

Incremental Cost.

IC

Individualism-Collectivism.

IC

Information Center.

IC

Initial Cell.

I & C

Instrumentation and Communication.

IC

Integrated Circuit. First created by Jack Kirby at TI in 1958. Noyce and Moore independently invented a similar structure in 1959, using Fairchild Semiconductor (i.e. their) planar process.

IC

Intelligence Community. A kind of echo chamber used to amplify the inaudible.

IC

Intercultural Communication.

IC

Interexchange (telephone call) Carrier. Better: IXC.

IC

Internal Circumference. I don't know who else uses the abbreviation besides the makers of square cut (SC) rubber belts for VCR's.

IC

International Conference. Productive prefix.

IC

Interstitial Cystitis. A poorly understood bladder problem suffered by about half a million people in the US. About 80% of IC cases are among women.

IC

Ion Chamber.

IC

Ion Chromatograph[y].

IC

Iron City. A famously bad beer and a Pittsburgh-area favorite. The initialism is used as part of the name of the light beer ``IC Lite.''

Stefan, a Mancunian friend of mine, explained to me once why bad beers are traditional favorites in old industrial regions. I felt sure I passed this along, but just in case I didn't: it's because workers need something to drink before they start their shift at the steel mill. That suggests that the beers are bad because they're weak (small beers). I'll have to investigate this. It will require experimental work.

i c

I see. Chatese. C n e.

ICA

International Communication Association. Cf. NCA.

ICA

International Cooperation Administration. One of several US agencies that took over Marshall Plan functions in 1953 or so. In 1961, it was absorbed into the newly formed Agency for International Development (AID).

Granted that the administration of cooperation may sound a bit heavy-handed, even if it essentially consists of giving away money. But if you want something with shake-down bad vibes, there is today a <http://www.co-prosperity.org>. I suppose it's intended to be ironic, but the humor is a bit thin.

ICA

International Council on Archives. Based in France (Conseil international des Archives); established in 1948.

ICA

International Cooperative Alliance.

ICA

Internet Classics Archive.

ICAA

Acronym for both L'Institut Canadien Académique à Athènes and for L'Institut Canadien d'Archéologie à Athènes, of which it was the parent organization. The ICAA, at least, and possibly also the ICAA, is now defunct and has been succeeded by l'ICG.

In English, those ICAA expansions above correspond to `The Canadian Academic Institute in Athens' and Canadian Archaeological Institute at Athens,' respectively. A bit more at the CAIA entry.

ICAA

International Civil Airports Association. Based at Orly Airport near Paris.

ICAAC

Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

ICAAN, I-CAAN

Inter-Campus Animal Advocacy Network.

iCab

Internet Cab (as in taxi). A web browser for the Mac that tells you whether a page viewed is various kinds of HTML-compliant.

ICAF

International Capoeira Angola Foundation. Capoeira Angola, or Capoeria, is ``a blend of both martial art and dance, Capoeira is an acrobatic ritual that includes a distinctive musical repertoire and oral history'' according to a probably accurate email I received. Mestre Cobra Mansa, who was the Kellogg Institute's Visiting Chair in the Study of Brazilian Culture in 2005, is the founder of ICAF. Cobra is ``one of the foremost practitioners of Capoeira Angola.'' Notice that it is not just a blend of ``martial art'' (clever singular) and dance, but a blend of both.

Right now, of course, and especially with the ``oral history'' thing, this just sounds like cultural propaganda. However, it reminds me of a walk I took on the mall in Washington, D.C., in the Summer of 1985, give or take a year. There was some sort of cultural fair going on, and some guy was being piously announced as a practitioner of a venerable and highly authentic folk craft called ``rap.'' So I guess these things can progress from public-radio curiosities to mass-market abominations.

ICAIC

Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos. `Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Industry.'

ICAIR

International Centre for Antarctic Information and Research. At Christchurch, New Zealand (.nz).

ICALEO

International Congress on Applications of Lasers and Electro-Optics. Sponsored by Laser Institute of America.

ICAM, I-CAM

Integrated Customer Access Network.

ICAME

International Corpus of [Medieval and] Modern English.

ICAN

International Conference on the Ancient Novel. Hmmm. That's the link for the fourth conference, in Lisbon in July 2008. The third one was at the University of Groningen in July 2000. Do the math: if you miss this one you may be waiting a long time to present at the next. In case I neglect to update the link, check the Petronian Society Ancient Novel Page.

ICANN

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN determines policies that affect the international top-level domains.

ICANN has three ``foundations.''

• Generic Name Supporting Organization (GNSO). [Successor to the Domain Name Supporting Organization (DNSO), which used to serve the ccTLD's as well.]
• Address Supporting Organization (ASO), responsible for numbering.
• Protocol Supporting Organization (PSO), responsible for technical infrastructure issues.

ICANN has made an awful lot of people angry. ICANNWatch, for example, which offers a nice nontechnical tutorial.

I cannot vouch for their accuracy.

They are not accurate.

ICAO

International Civil Aviation Organization.

ICAO collaborates closely with IATA.

ICAP

International Congress of Applied Psychology.

ICAR

Indian Council of Agricultural Research.

ICASSP

International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing. The major annual conference sponsored by the IEEE Signal Processing Society. In 1996, the ICASSP conference was followed immediately afterwards in the same facilities by the ISCAS.

ICAT

International Catastrophe Aversion Team. I have an aversion to catastrophe myself, but I think this name is one. Cf. CATO.

ICB

Interim Change Bulletin [NASAnese].

ICB

Interrupt Control Block.

ICB

Ionized Cluster Beam. A deposition method. Wait for this student's paper on a variant form of the method to load.

ICBH

Institute of Contemporary British History. Part of the Institute for Historical Research (IHR) of the School of Advanced Studies (SAS) of the University of London. Sometime between Summer 2002 and the end of 2007, it became the CCBH (Centre for ...).

ICBM

InterContinental Ballistic Missile. Note that a ``used ICBM'' is not exactly the same as a ``second-hand ICBM.''

Missile is an old word for missive, and is still sometimes used in that sense ecclesiastically. What I'm looking forward to is a short papal bull.

James Baron, who has been a regular contributor to the Classics list, alludes to the message-carrying capacity of missiles in his .sig, which concludes with

Phone:
email:
ICBM:   W 76d 45' N 37d 16'

(He doesn't leave the phone and email fields blank; I've done it to minimize nuisance.)

When physicists speak of the relativistic speed limit, they try to use precise formulations that allow for the movement of pre-constructed images at higher speeds. In order to exclude such apparent movement, one says that information cannot travel faster than the speed of light. (Keep in mind, however, that a brick through the window may be quite as informative without an attached note as with.) Interestingly, one way of demonstrating the contradictory nature of higher speeds involves regarding a missile as a message.

To be clearer: the mathematics of relativity does not directly exclude the possibility of faster-than-light travel (FLT). All it does is demonstrate that it is equivalent to travel backwards in time. Although there are a lot of other questions left open if one tries to incorporate FLT into one's understanding of the universe, the main reason for rejecting FLT is the kinds of logical contradictions that arise automatically with ``time travel.''

For example, suppose a sentinel fires a missile (probably not an ICBM, but maybe similar) at any intruder as soon as it detects one. If the intruder interacts with any form of radiation that travels superluminally (faster than light) -- that is, if the intruder is ``visible'' in radiation of that speed, then the message can arrive ``too soon'': if the sentinel fires soon enough, even a subluminal but still fast missile can destroy the intruder before the time that it sent the signal that was detected by the sentinel.

ICBS

Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. See also CBS.

ICBY

I Can't Believe it's Yogurt! A chain of dessert shops. (Unless you've never eaten a meal before in your life, in which case the yogurt is an appetizer.) Do not confuse with ICTY or TCBY.

ICC

Illinois Classical Conference. A statewide organization of high school and college teachers of Latin and Greek.

ICC

Indiana Classical Conference.

I.C.C.

Inter-institutional Collaborative Course. Name used by Sunoikisis for a teaching method it has developed. Sunoikisis is or is related to ``the Associated Colleges of the South Virtual Classics Department.'' (The name Sunoikisis is that of the alliance of Greek cities that revolted against the Athenian empire in the Peloponnesian War, in 428 BCE.) I.C.C. was described in the July 7, 2000 Chronicle of Higher Education.

ICC

International Code Council. ``Setting the Standard for Building Safety.^TM''

ICC

International Cricket Council. The name since 1989 of what had been called the International Cricket Conference since 1965, before which it had been called the Imperial Cricket Conference, since its founding in 1909 by representatives from England, Australia, and South Africa. It's the international governing body of cricket, currently headquartered in Dubai.

The ICC Board is the primary decision-making body of the ICC. On February 8, 2014, a meeting of the ICC board in Singapore radically changed the ICC structure in ways that reflect the disproportionate importance of Indian Cricket, which is run by the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India).

The proposals were approved by eight of the ten full member countries' representatives. (Pakistan Cricket Board and Sri Lanka Cricket abstained in the vote, citing a procedural requirement for more time to discuss the amended resolution within their respective organizations. They pledged to further discuss the proposals, with the aim to achieving unanimous approval over the subsequent weeks.)

One headline change is the creation of a new five-member executive committee that makes recommendations to the ICC Board, which remains the decision-making body. The ``Big Three'' of India, England, and Australia (i.e., BCCI, ECB, and CA) are to have permanent seats on the executive committee.

If you're still reading, you're more interested in this stuff than I. BCCI generates 80% of the game's revenues, and the changes reflect that.

ICC

International Criminal Court.

ICC

Interstate Commerce Commission. Born 1897, died Jan. 1, 1996.

ICC

Interface-Controlled Crystallization.

ICC

ISDN Communication Controller.

ICCE

International Conference on Consumer Electronics. Sponsored by the Consumer Electronics Society of the IEEE.

ICCF

Interexchange Carrier Compatibility Forum.

ICCF&D

The Internet Centre for Canadian Fashion and Design. ``The purpose of the INTERNET CENTRE FOR CANADIAN FASHION & DESIGN is to help create a united presence and global recognition for Canadian Fashion and Design on the World Wide Web. We hope you find this a useful starting point to all Fashion and Design sites.''

ICCL

I Could Care Less. Email acronym for a common expression that means the same thing as the old expression it presumably (some dispute this) evolved from: ``I could not care less.'' Maybe it was a case of too much irony. For a similarly paradoxical expression, see the discussion of pois não at the ou entry.

ICCL

I Couldn't Care Less. Email acronym. It may be difficult to tell from context which acronym is meant -- this one or the previous. Fortunately, when the other ICCL is used, this one is meant, whereas when this one is used, this one is meant.

ICCOC

Iowa Community College Online Consortium.

ICCP

Inter-Control Center Communications Protocol. Data exchange protocol for the electric power generation and distribution industry. Governs communication among different utilities, between utilities and non-utility power generators, and among different systems withina utility.

ICCPR

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

ICCS

International Conference on Compound Semiconductors.

ICD

Implanted Cardiac Defibrillator. Mnemonic: In Cheney, Dick.

Also ``implantable cardioverter-defibrillator.''

ICD

International Classification of Diseases. Chapter V: Mental and Behavioral Disorders is a psychiatric manual like DSM. (Classification rules figure more prominently in mental illness, since so little is understood about etiology that one is largely stuck with classifying the symptoms.)

``ICD-9'' is the ``ninth revision of the ICD'' (meaning the eighth revision of the first ICD). As of 2003, we were still on the tenth, issued in 1989 and dated 1990. That's the longest we've gone without a new edition since ICD-1 in 1900. However, there's a separate ICD for Oncology, also bearing the title Morphology of Neoplasms. The three editions of that are dated 1975, 1990, and 2000. Also, in 2004, there was a ``provisional edition'' of selected five-character codes, modified in 2005. (Until ICD-9, the code characters were all decimal digits.) Looking at how the codes have been jumped around, I'm not so surprised that a few percent of my spam is email offers to help me code various tricky disorders. I have to admit that it's no less useful to me than the offers of all-natural breast enhancement.

ICD

International Code Designator.

ICD

Iterative Coordinate Descent. An approach to the extremization of a functional of many variables.

ICDA

International Classification of Diseases, Adapted for Use in the United States. The ICDA based on ICD-8 was superseded by ICD-9-CM.

ICDA

International Confederation of Dietetic Associations. The ICDA recognizes up to one national dietetic association per country.

ICD/FS

Iterative Coordinate Descent (ICD) using Functional Substitution (FS).

ICD/NR

Iterative Coordinate Descent (ICD) using Newton-Raphson root location.

ICDR

Ion-Cyclotron Double Resonance. The conventional or original-flavor of ICR is now occasionally distinguished as ICSR. I think that in most cases you use the same equipment and just pay attention to a different signal.

ICDS

International Conference on Defects in Semiconductors. In 1997 its #19 was in Aveiro, Portugal.

ICD-9-CM

International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification. A version of ICD-9 used in the US. The ``Millennium Edition'' (2002) of ICD-9-CM is sixth [revised] edition. Cf. ICDA.

ICE

Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The largest investigative arm of the US DHS, and the one with the coolest acronym.

ICE

In-Circuit Emulator.

ICE

Institut canadien des évaluateurs. The Francophone AIC. I notice that, in order to foster national feeling, the website editors have used the same images for both English and French versions. That man in the reddish shirt definitely looks like he might speak French or English.

ICE

(UK) Institution of Civil Engineers.

ICE

Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad. Spanish, `Costa Rican Electricity Institute.' State enterprise in charge of telephone and electric utility service. In a March 2000 speech, the Costa Rican president announced plans to privatize this into two separate entites -- a telecommunications and an electric power company.

ICE

Integrated Circuit (IC) Engineering (corporation). Homepage here.

ICE

Internal Combustion Engine.

ICE

International Corpus of English.

ice cream

A corrupted expression of the original term iced cream. Ice cream is about half air by volume. (The froth above the liquid in a glass of just-poured soda is often also roughly half air, but the bubbles are larger and the condensed component is all liquid.)

You probably came to the ice cream entry with the following question: what is there that is half air not by volume but by mass? That's a toughie. Maybe some soap bubbles. (I'll come back and say for sure after I do a calculation.) The specific gravity of air at sea level pressure averages around 0.00124. That's pretty high, considering. Even in the middle of a heavy downpour, nitrogen and oxygen gas constitute not just most of the volume (good news for animals without gills) but even most of the mass (good news for animals without hard-hats).

This just in from the dollar table: The Ice Cream Diet (NYC: Award Books, 1970), by Gaynor Maddox (borderline nomen est omen, there), author of The Safe and Sure Way to Reduce. Maddox is or was a member of the National Association of Science Fiction Writers. Wait, strike the ``Fiction'' bit. It turns out that on this diet you can only eat ice cream ``sometimes three times a day,'' and the servings are only a quarter cup each. I think I'll stay with the beer diet -- I get to read the scale through beer goggles.

iced cream

Cream that has been chilled to freezing. More precisely, it's an emulsion of milkfat in sweetened diluted milk, whipped and frozen. It's now called ice cream.

When my mother was a girl in Wroclaw, Poland (then Breslau, Germany), there was an Italian ices shop in town, with a very Italian name she doesn't remember. Her cousin Heinz Aaron went to work for his uncle, and with money from his first paycheck he took my mother out to try an Italian ice. That was 1935; they didn't have ice cream in those days. (Heck, she still remembers the times she ate chocolate.) Ice cream was a revolution. When it arrived, ices were history. Oh sure, they still have a bit of the market. Ice cream alternatives still try, too: fat-free ice-``cream,'' frozen yogurt... There's a reason why these presumptively healthier products don't stake out a very large corner of the market. The reason is a secret ingredient in fatty foods that makes them taste good. The secret ingredient is fat. Cream is mostly milkfat.

In German, ice is called Eis.

I mention Harvest of the Cold Months at the entry for traditional liquid measure. I'm going to have to have another look at that book.

ICEM

International Federation of Chemical, Energy Mine and General Workers' Unions. Sounds menacing, duddnit? Ice 'em.

ICEM

International Conference on Electrical Machines. First held in London, 1974. To be held 2-4 September 1998 in Istanbul in 1998.

ICEME

International Conference on Engineering and Meta-Engineering. ICEYOURSELF!

ice queen

Fashion plate with rocks.

ICES

International Conference on Evolvable Systems.

ICESat

Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation SATellite.

ICEV

Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle.

ICF

Inertial-Confinement Fusion.

ICFC

Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation. A UK commercial development bank for small businesses, founded in 1945. What the US SBA might have looked like had it created a part of the Federal Reserve. In 1973, it was made a subsidiary of Finance for Industry (FFI), later called 3i.

Over the years, ICFC has invested by a varying mix of measures: making loans and guaranteeing loans, taking an equity share (the venture capital approach, avant le lettre), and supporting management buy-outs.

ICFE

IntraCollisional Field Effect. The failure of the common assumption that scattering cross sections are field-dependent, and the associated calculational approximations (fundamental calculations of scattering rates usually assume asymptotically flat ``initial'' and ``final'' potentials). See Robert W. Zwanzig, pp. 106ff, in Lectures in Theoretical Physics, edited by W. E. Brittin, B. W. Downs and J. Downs (New York: Interscience, 1961); John R. Barker, J. Phys. C 6, 2663 (1973).

ICFI

International Committee of the Fourth International. They publish the WSWS.

I was able to track down one instance of the phrase ``National Committee of the Fourth International'' here, and it appears not to be a typo. It apparently refers to AQI.

ICFT

Interagency Commitee on Federal Technology Transfer.

ICFTU

International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. Notice that we're not talking about ``free-trade unions'' here. ICFTU was founded in London at a meeting that began December 7, 1949. ``Free'' then meant essentially ``not government-controlled'' or not communist. I think there wasn't much opportunity to explore whether they were willing to accept unions aligned with communist (as opposed to Marxist or quite socialist) political parties in noncommunist countries, since these weren't interested in joining. But I have to look into that more carefully. The ICFTU also had problems with rightist regimes it labeled as totalitarian, which in some cases forbade their national trade union organizations from affiliating with ICFTU.

ICG

A reporting mark for the Illinois Central Gulf Railroad. More information at the IC entry.

ICG

L'Institut canadien en Grèce. A/k/a the Canadian Institute in Greece (CIG) and also To Kanadikó Institoúto stên Elláda (KIE). CIG is the former CAIA, which changed its name in 2005 or 2006.

ICGSL

An Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages. By S. Moscati, publ. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz [Verlag], 1969.

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