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It's shaping up to be a Good Friday

Dear members and constituents,

What do laser, radar and scuba have in common? (No, the answer does not involve the plot to a James Bond movie). Give up? They are all acronyms...

  • Laser = Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation
  • Radar = Radio Detection And Ranging
  • Scuba = Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus

Sure, the world of telecommunications is fraught with them (try to think of the last five sentences you uttered, I'd be extremely surprised if at least one of them did not contain one or more acronyms), however they've been around longer than you may realize. Early Christian inscriptions in Roman catacombs used the image of a fish as a symbol for Jesus because of an acronym—fish in Greek is ΙΧΘΥΣ (ichthys), which stood for Ιησους Χριστος Θεου Υιος Σωτηρ (Iesous CHristos THeou Uios Soter: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior).

In case you're wondering, donut is not an acronym (although, understandably, geeky scientists and engineers have from time to time named things so their acronym would spell donut). Donuts are, however, here courtesy of Roger Greene! So, come on down, get yours and walk away feeling energized to discuss the SLAs your customer wants for VT, EPL or CDN (although technically the jargon in the preceding sentence has initialisms, not acronyms, because none of those abbreviations are pronounced as words... but that would be splitting hairs)

Have a Good Friday!

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