Seven years later, I see this entry hasn't aged well.
In German, IT is expanded Informationstechnologie.
Nowadays people naturally association information technology with computers, but even before computers there was digital information technology more sophisticated than fingers. Data could be represented by holes punched in cards, and those cards sorted mechanically. You could even do computational data processing by mechanical means. For more on this, in connection with the Manhattan Project, see the calculator entry.
Therefore, we'll talk here about nominal uses of she, and finding them. If you search a convenient literature database for instances of ``the she,'' mostly what you come up with is ``the she-wolf'' and runner-up ``the she-bear.'' There's even ``the she-snake'' and ``the she-tatterdemalion'' (the latter in chapter 12 of George Douglas Brown's 1901 The House with the Green Shutters -- it's actually a very affecting scene).
Fortunately, I have an example ready to hand. In a letter to her sister Cassandra (May 12, 1801), Jane Austen wrote this:
I am proud to say that I have a very good eye at an Adultress, for tho' repeatedly assured that another in the same party was the She, I fixed upon the right one from the first.
Country code for international calls is 39.
In Vergil's name, there's an Italian search engine powered by Infoseek.
The soc.culture.italian newsgroup has an extensive FAQ.
Here's the Italian page of an X.500 directory.
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il, con, un, per, ex, brum [English brougham], budget, pallet, computer, (and computer graphics, computer musics, ecc.), smoking, sidecar, smog.
(It's interesting that the plural of the masculine noun pallet is pallets; most foreign loans are not inflected for number in Italian. In fact, in 2007 I saw an announcement of a Master in Studi Americani offered by the Università di Torino. Here you could argue that they prophylactically circumcised the formal plural. I just don't get ``musics.'')
Most of the final-consonant words are foreign loans, of course, and most of these are English nouns. English loans are pronounced approximately as in Britain. I was intrigued by how the words beginning in sm were treated, so I checked the pronunciations given for all 291 such words in Nuovo Vocabolario Illustrato della Lingua Italiana, by Giacomo Devoto and Gian Carlo Oli (Milan, 1988). With four exceptions, the initial s in these sm- words is voiced. Thus smithite, smithsonite, smock, smog, and smoking all begin with /zm/, to say nothing of the less obvious loans. (I think that smèctico, a variant form of smettico, probably counts among these non-obvious loans, or among foreign-influenced words.)
The four exceptions (initial /sm/) were all obvious loans: smart set, smash, smerdy, and smrti. Smrti is a Sanskrit term meaning `memory' or `tradition'; it is used in a technical sense in Sanskrit literature to refer to works or groups of works that have a sacred value even though they are not regarded as being of divine authority or revelation. Smerdy is a plural noun from Russian, dating back to the times before the tartar yolk, no wait, I mean the Tatar yoke. It designates field workers who constituted the lowest free social class of the time. The term is akin to the Lithuanian smirdas, `that stinks, is fetid.' This must be an evocative term in Italian, since, for example, the native word smerdato means `covered in shit.' Devoto and Oli don't mention it, but the word is also akin to the name of Smerdyakov, the servant of Karamazov père (what, you want the Russian word?) in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. He is the son of a retarded girl called Stinking Lizaveta, who dies giving birth to him. I feel sure that something is lost in the translation ``Stinking Lizaveta,'' but I'm not personally going to sniff it out.
Italian, like English, is fairly easy-going about the adoption of foreign words. (French would be at the opposite extreme. German has been like French at certain times. Nowadays a lot of Germans complain that German has so much English it doesn't look like German; I think most of the loans will fall out of use without much fuss.) I'm trying to find a smooth transition here, but I can't, so I'll just say that I ran across a scholarly monograph in the series Materiali di Marketing dell'Arte. This one has a double-colon title; the second subtitle is La Nona sinfonia di Ludwig van Beethoven (capitalization sic). This is the platform for L'Economia dell'Arte: Una verifica empirica del modello teorico. It's edited and has substantial content by Aldo Spranzi, but all I'm interested in are the delicious barbarisms, like la customer satisfaction dell'economia dell'arte and cosa sono le teaching notes e a che cosa servono. [The italicization -- inapt word there -- implies that the phrase ``customer satisfaction'' is not yet considered to be naturalized, but ``teaching notes'' is. Wonders never cease.] BTW, it's focused on the modern Rezeptionsgeschichte, so there's nothing -- leastwise nothing substantial -- on Wagner's promotional efforts. (We mention a bit about this at the New Class entry.) One thing to keep in mind about the ninth is that it's an unusually expensive symphony to produce.
Hmmm. It looks like I was trying to say something about Italian after all. In that case, I should probably have started out by noting that Italian is not exactly a spoken language in the usual sense. Italian is song. It's possible to speak the words of the language, just as it's possible to speak the lyrics of a song, but in ordinary usage one simply sings. It was recently reported to me that there are three people in the world who actually dislike this song (I mean Italian). Well, it's a big world.
Incidentally, it's very difficult to shout Italian; what you find is that you're simply singing at the top of your lungs. (Now, perhaps, you can understand why I was so shocked about Berlioz.)
The melodies of Italian vary by region. The first time I was in a loud dining room in Rome, I realized where the rhythm of Argentine Spanish comes from. I mean bonaerense Spanish, of course. The characterustic (sic Spanish of Cordoba, Argentina, like the Spanish of some Mexicans, is sing-songy. This is something very different, involving the almost arbitrary imposition of a song on speech.
Other countries have also participated and have been described as members, but their precise status is confusing. The initial agreement among the ``big four'' signatories in April 1988 contained what was known as the ``Canada clause.'' It said that ''[a]fter consultation with the other parties, each party may involve in its contribution to the conceptual design activities other countries which possess specific fusion capabilities.'' Canada's ``special capability'' is its tritium technology, obtained through the operation of the CANDU reactors used in nuclear power plants. (Visit ITERCanada.) Canada's participation became official in July 1988.
The next major ITER agreement (I am tempted to call it the next ITERation, but I've got too much class), concluded by about the same four partners (the USSR having been succeeded by Russia), was signed in Washington, DC, on July 21, 1992. (Also, in 1993 the EC became the EU.)
In October 1998, the US Congress refused to continue the US share of ITER funding, and the U.S. discontinued its membership. Canada stayed involved at some level. Next thing I knew, it was December 2003. The US was back in, but Canada's federal government found being a full participant or bidding to be the construction site too expensive, and officially pulled out Dec. 5, 2003. Also, South Korea and China were now members, on what terms I don't know. The six members met in Reston, Virginia, to decide whether to site in France or Japan. Commenting on condition of anonymity, a member of one of the delegations (not the EU delegation) explained that the US, Japan, and Korea favored the Japanese site, while China, Russia, and the EU favored the French site. South Korea was the most flexible, and may have abstained in some sort of vote, but the decision is apparently intended to be made by consensus, so some were quite pessimistic that an agreement could be reached, either by the next meeting in January or February, or at all. Reading a bit between the lines, it seemed that there would be some serious log-rolling negotiations (outsourcing some tasks in return for support, etc.).
The IRS will issue you an ITIN if you are a nonresident or resident alien and you do not have and are not eligible to get an SSN.
Use form W-7. See also ATIN.
One day I was tapping at the terminal talking with Joshi when he went ``wow!''
It was easy to guess that I hadn't done any sudden impressive feat of coding, and he quickly assured me that I would never guess what had amazed him. It turned out that in response to a request from him I had replied ``I shall.''
Moore's Law times a couple of hundred. (I.e., broken out into component technologies and capabilities.) Looking ahead 15 years or so. No, it's not as mechanical as simply applying an exponential scaling law. One reason is that on a close-up view, technology evolves in discrete steps, transitioning as new capabilities become available or economical.
The ITRS is an assessment of semiconductor technology ``requirements.'' ``Requirements'' is an interesting word. Different technologies are required to advance in a loose coordination, in order to produce integrated-circuit performance improvements. But in principle and in fact, slack from any lagging technology is taken up by one or more alternatives. The Roadmap trieds to predict how the technology competitions will play out, and includes predictions about transitions between qualitatively different technologies as well quantitative changes. You can think of ``requirements'' as being what you as a supplier can expect to be required to supply if you want to stay in the business.
Research advances are almost a commodity: you want faster advances, you buy more research manpower.
The ITRS, updated annually, ``is a cooperative effort of the global industry manufacturers and suppliers, government organizations, consortia, and universities. ... It is sponsored by the European Semiconductor Industry Association (ESIA), the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA), the Korean Semiconductor Industry Association (KSIA), the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), and Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (TSIA). International SEMATECH is the global communication center for this activity. The ITRS team at International SEMATECH also coordinates the USA region events.''
Abbott: ITS nano TES.
Costello: What's nano TES?
Abbott: A nano TE is a thermoelectric made from nanostructured material.
Nano TES is the subsociety for nano TE's.
Costello: I know what a nano TE is, everybody knows that! What I
mean is, whose nano TES?
Abbott: ITS.
Costello: Whaddaya mean, ``its''?
Abbott: I-T-S!
The name is better than the motto: ``Promoting thermoelectric technology to mitigate global climate change.''
Attendees of the annual International Conference on Thermoelectrics (ICT) automatically become members of the ITS. Membership runs from the first day of the conference attended until the day prior to the next annual conference.
There's also a conference that's brand new (afaik, as of this writing): IOTEC (Inorganic and Organic Thermoelectrics). Like, as opposed to what? As of November 27, 2012, you can visit the official webpage for IOTEC 2013 - Harvesting Electricity from Heat -- Inorganic and Organic Thermoelectrics. ``Registration deadline December 15 / Agenda and more will soon be available here.'' Better hurry up and buy the pig in that poke, the conference is January 24. Oh! The pig is free and includes lunch. Can't look a gift pig in the poke. Better information in this pdf and this ITS page. It's sort of a one-day (9am-6pm) tutorial introduction consisting of ``plenary lectures.''
Oh, here's a nice sample for study. On June 18, 2001, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke for three hours with US reporters. He was able to make very clear his opposition to a US missile defense. That's really quite simple, because the burden of argument is clearly upon those who want to deploy it. Obviously, defensive weapons are dangerous and evil, and may provoke another arms race, whereas offensive weapons of mass destruction are recognized as ethical and politically stabilizing. It is really quite gracious of Putin to recognize these facts, and to come out for political stability and international arms balance, when so many of his countrymen have recognized that the old USSR's inability to keep pace in the arms race motivated the actions that eventuated in Putin's presidency. In any case, this is all very simple and Putin had no trouble, even though he communicated through an interpreter. All he had to do was to point to various moves available to his pieces in the chess game.
US reporters wanted to know if Putin and US President Bush, in earlier talks in Slovenia, had talked in detail about ``Iran and Russia's growing arms relationship with its leaders.'' The answer was yes, but Russia has a ``complex relationship'' with Iran. See, now if he had been translated as saying ``it's complicated,'' then that would have been a completely different story. Then one might be justified in suspecting that the entire complexity of the relationship consisted in Iran having cash and Russia having arms, and each wanting some of what the other has. Obviously it's not like that at all. It's a ``complex relationship.'' It's rocket science. I certainly can't figure it out. Probably the reporters have a clue, but they're not saying.
Chechnya was very simple: it was someone else's fault.
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It was a dark and stormy night and the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
This is the first sentence of Paul Clifford (1830), a novel by Edward George Bulwer (1803-1873). (He added his mother's family name at age 40, on inheriting Knebworth, ancestral home of the Lytton family. In 1866, he was elevated to the peerage in recognition of his depredations on literature, and became known as Lord Lytton. He is remembered as Bulwer-Lytton.)
That sentence has come to be regarded as a paradigmatic example of writing that is correct grammatically, in terms of spelling and syntax, but otherwise quite poor -- overwrought I would say, and perhaps a bit windy, possibly even with occasional violent gusts of excessive verbiage running down the page (for it is texts that are our context). It excites an uncontrollable urge to parody. An annual bad-writing contest is named in Bulwer-Lytton's honor or whatever (BLFC). I believe that academic writing is excluded from the contest, nominally on the grounds that it is nonfiction, and really to keep the number of entries to a manageable number and give regular people a shot at being the worst.
A note to our younger readers (those born since 1870): ``dark ... night'' is not a pleonasm. It is true that today, or better said tonight, the night (we exclude the twilight hours) is always dark relative to the day, and one night is as dark as another; in 1830, however, even in the great metropolis of London, street lighting was not so widespread or so bright (``the lamps that struggled against the darkness,'' were few and of ``scanty flame'') that one could not tell, as one can still do today (yeah, yeah, tonight) in many rural areas, the difference between a dark, new-moon night, and a night illumined by a full moon, bright enough to read bad novels by.
(People who resent being able to read bad novels out on moonless nights have clubs where they can complain about it to other people who feel the same way and are not sick to death of hearing them bellyache. The IDA is one such.)
- IU Bloomington -- IUB, the main main campus, the only residential campus, and a smaller one of the ``Big Ten'' (or ``Big Howevermany'' these days).
- IUPUI, one of the few American universities with a palindromic five-letter acronym, I'm pretty sure, is one of the two ``core campuses'' of the IU system, but it's not the ``flagship'' campus, because IUB is.
- Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne -- see IPFW.
- IU East -- IUE.
- IU Kokomo -- IUK.
- IU Northwest -- IUN.
- IU Southeast -- IUS.
- IU South Bend -- IUSB.
Early August 2003: BAC Local Leadership Conference in Notre Dame, Indiana.
Long ago, Gary's in-laws (``the L's'' will be specific enough for this entry) hired a contractor to build a new stone fireplace in their home. Two guys were working at it, and as the L's watched they realized that the fireplace was turning out to look asymmetric: the two guys had different styles, and even though they were using stones from the same stock, the sides were different. So Mr. L said ``stop,'' but they didn't. Then Mrs. L said ``stop!'' The skilled craftsmen continued their work. Then together in unison Mr. and Mrs. L said ``stop!!'' I'm not sure when exactly the stonemasons deigned to pause, but it turned out that their deafness was principled: they worked for the contractor and took their orders from him (and not from a couple of clowns who happened to be paying for the work, apparently, and in whose house they were working -- maybe the L's should have said ``leave'').
The contractor did not charge for having the work redone. When two masons work together in parallel, they have to work together. In particular, they're supposed to trade places occasionally so their different styles do not produce different patches that are large enough to notice. Potentially, all work is skilled work. The trouble is workers with skills incommensurate to the work.
By the way, if you've been reading on since the previous IUBAC entry, the following may make sense. In late August, the marquee was changed to read ``THANKS FOR 7 GREAT YEARS / WELCOME BACK STUDENTS.'' Oh.
Not to be confused with IUSB. Another initialism not to be confused with IUSB is UCSB.
Invented in 1909 by R. Richter.
Anyway, East is part of the IU system, which has at least a couple of other campuses named for compass points. (They're IUN and IUS; nope, guess again.) East isn't located anywhere in particular, so if you're in Indiana and not located near any particular place, then there's a fair chance it's nearby. By ``particular place,'' I mean a place described by a proper noun (other than, like, IUE or Springwood Hall) rather than by latitude and longitude. By ``near'' I mean driving distance in a snow storm. YMMV. By ``fair chance'' I mean nonzero probability.
Oh, alright, IUE is at Richmond, Indiana, near Ohio.
IPFW is part of the IU system, but is operated in cooperation with, and is administered by, Purdue University. At least they didn't go acronym-crazy like IUPUI. The original Fort Wayne was named after General "Mad" Anthony Wayne.
Many years ago, flying back from Montreal to Chicago, I sat next to a hot little sociology professor. It turned out that she taught at IUN, and when I called her, she was impressed that I tracked her down (yeah, it was that long ago) and we set up a date.
There's no ``Indiana University Northeast,'' but there's an IUS, and if you want to go waaaaay east and south a bit, there's...
I visited once just to say I had. (I also visited Princeton, W.Va., and Princeton, Ill., and bought tee shirts featuring the high school tiger mascot at both. I also bought condoms in Condom, in southern France.) I didn't buy a tee shirt (wink, wink) in the town of Indiana, seat of Indiana County of Pennsylvania. I mentioned the visit to a friend of mine who grew up in Maryland, and he told me that IUP is a big teacher's college, and that many of his high school teachers came from there.
They don't emphasize that on the website, but some of the 130 undergraduate programs of study, as of today (April 15, 2012) are Art Education; Business Education; Chemistry Education; Deaf Education; Early Childhood Education/PreK-Grade 6 and two Elementary Education majors (one is ``Urban Track''); Education of Exceptional Persons (wow, you gotta be pretty smart to teach geniuses, huh?); English Education; Family and Consumer Sciences Education (I think that might qualify you to teach home eck); French Education; Health and Physical Education; Mathematics Education; Music Education; Physical Education and Sport; Physical Education and Sport, Aquatics; Physical Education and Sport, Exercise Science; Physical Education and Sport, Sport Administration; Social Science Education, Anthropology Concentration; Social Science Education, Sociology Concentration; Social Studies Education, Economics Track; Social Studies Education, Geography Track; Social Studies Education, History Track; Spanish Education K-12; Vocational-Technical Education. I guess my friend was right. There are a number of majors that don't include the word education in the name, such as Engineering and Exercise Science (that's two separate majors).
I didn't know where any of my high school teachers had attended college, although I found out where my calculus teacher went to get his masters when he dropped a math course I was taking in my second year in college.
Gary tells me that he's never heard anyone pronounce ``IUPUI'' in any other way than as an initialism: ``eye you pea you eye.'' (Stress on the eyes, iirc.) Well yipee-eye-ay to that. He claims that after a bit of practice, it rolls easily off the lips, but I recommend a thin coat of vaseline.
Not to be confused with IUBS.
About 20 years later, stacked against the wall behind the clerk at a pharmacy in the US, I noticed boxes labeled ``BD Micro-Fine IV Insulin Syinges.'' I understand that people who are insulin-dependent typically inject themselves. I hadn't imagined that they were mainlining the stuff. It turned out that they aren't. The ``IV'' in ``BD Micro-Fine IVTM Insulin Syinges'' is the Roman numeral for four. (Another Roman connection!) BD used to sell a Micro-Fine IIITM. Just for alarming me, Becton Dickinson and Company, based in New Jersey, won't get its own BD entry.
Insulin-dependent diabetics normally dose themselves subcutaneously (SQ). It's what druggies call ``skin-popping.'' Other entries of interest: IA, IM. But hospitals do inject insulin intravenously, as necessary.
Incidentally, I have seen ``taxo'' as a Spanish translation of the English word ``tax.'' It's just about the ugliest anglicismo I know.
You may think that people lie about things that are hard to check, like their precise income, or their juvenile delinquency. That's true, but my cousin Victoria discovered something else about personals ads: people tell obvious lies. That is, they don't just tell lies that might not be discovered (according to the rules of dating, this is allowed). Rather, they tell lies that their mere presence betrays, and which the liars must realize will be discovered. She made this discovery using the experimental method. She ran personals ads that mentioned her height (6 feet, and not one barleycorn more). Guys would reply to this ad, or she would reply to guys' ads (it was all very complicated -- this was in the days of newspapers), and one way or another she would be led to understand that her prospective dates were taller than she was. Then she would meet them, and standing in low-heel shoes, she would be looking down at them. See also recent photograph.
Many customers are bothered by the conceptual aesthetics of this process. GIFT and ZIFT are a little better in that category, and also have slightly higher success rates.
The famous first human baby conceived by IVF was Louise Brown, born in Britain in 1978. In 1999, she was working in a daycare center. Asked if she would use IVF herself, she said she'd pass it up. That's very interesting, and she's the oldest woman you could ask the question of who has the experience of being an IVF baby, but she was a healthy twenty-one-year-old when asked. IVF is most famously, now, used by older couples that have difficulty conceiving. It's also used by younger couples who have difficulty conceiving, but that hasn't generated the same volume of politically pointed literature.
IVF was first introduced in the US in 1981. It is the most common ART (q.v.), accounting for about 70% of procedures.
Oh, good: here's a clarification of the politically fraught thoughts of Shulamith Firestone on reproductive technology.
The fifth (IWCE-5) was at Notre Dame in 1997. IWCE-7 was at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. My, how the time goes by. IWCE-10 was back in Indiana (Purdue University, in West Lafayette).
It is the voice of reasonable women with important ideas who embrace common sense over divisive ideology.
We don't pretend to speak for all women - but perhaps we speak for you.''
Preamble to the IWW Constitution (1905):
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production and abolish the wage system.
We find that the centering of management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping to defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the workers have interest in common with their employers.
These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, ``A fair day's wage for a fair day's work,'' we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, ``Abolition of the wage system.'' It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the every-day struggle with capitalists, but to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
All I want to know is, where does that leave us symbolic manipulators, eh?
The IWW never formally disbanded, but when the US entered World War I, most of its leaders were jailed under terms of the Espionage Act of 1917. History in a palindrome:
Still, the IWW never formally disbanded. In fact it still exists! You can visit their website.
There is no news in Pravda, and no truth in Izvestia.
I don't understand why it didn't go the other way around. Unlike Pravda, Izvestia has changed with the times and remains in business as Russia's leading liberal newspaper.
I nternationalizatio N |<-- 18 letters -->|Cf. E13n, j10n, L10n, and las onces.
There's a Unicode and Internationalization Glossary online. [I.e., a glossary having to do with written-language internationalization.]
Oh! Look at this: it also works in British spelling:
i nternationalisatio n
|<-- 18 letters -->|
A truly i15d abbreviation. How touching. I think this magic
also happens with e13n and L10n, but I don't have time to count letters.
We could do this more generally: L2e t2s. C2l, h1h?
For a very early (16 c. or so) application of this principle, see las onces entry.
The British thing reminds me: I have a lot of old British books, and for a long time they apparently thought it was fine to represent a 1 with a small upper-case I. It wasn't. And I don't recommend writing i18n with a capital i or L10n with a lower-case l. (Oh yeah -- it wasn't really an I or l, it was just a 1 that looked exactly like an I or an l. Right.)
Almost all of the New York section of I-90 is part of the New York State Thruway system, and most of the ``mainline'' section of the NYST is I-90. (Look, I'm trying to make this as complicated as possible, okay? And I'm getting help from the NYST, which also favors complexity and unclearly-defined names.) However, a quarter or a third of the system is designated by other interstate numbers or no interstate number.
A helpful ASCII map from Mark explains what happens around Albany:
| I-87
|
|
I-90 = NYST |(24)
---------------#----
| \ state line
| | :
I-87 | | I-90 :
= NYST | | :
| | :
| |(B1) :
(21A)#-----#---------------:-----------------
| BS I-90 = BS : I-90 = MA Turnpike
| :
| :
I-87 | :
= NYST |
Numbers in parentheses are exit numbers; BS is the Thruway's Berkshire Spur. You can get a more metrically accurate color map from mapquest, but it won't be as clear what happens to I-90.