In RetroTech: NetLingo Blog

Three-dimensional printers make manufacturing possible at home. Could they spell the end of mass production?

What is 3-D printing?
It’s a revolutionary manufacturing process in which the design for physical objects, from toys to jewelry to machine parts, can be digitally transmitted to a device that makes them out of plastic, metal, or ceramic materials. Once the stuff of science fiction, 3-D printers have rapidly evolved in recent years, becoming smaller, faster, and cheaper. A basic, microwave-size 3-D printer costs less than $1,000, making almost anyone a potential manufacturer. Tonight Show host Jay Leno uses a $30,000 device to print hard-to-find parts for his collection of classic cars. “It’s a bit like when I was a kid and I watched The Jetsons and they’d walk up to a machine and press a button and get a steak dinner,” Leno said. “But instead of a steak dinner, you’re getting an old car part.”

How do 3-D printers work?
Just as a traditional ink-jet printer sprays ink onto a page line by line, modern 3-D devices deposit material onto a surface layer by layer, slowly building up a shape. The process begins with a designer using computer software to create a virtual 3-D model of an object, such as a toy car. Another program slices that model into thin horizontal sections and instructs the printer to lay down an exact replica of each slice. Some printers use a computer-controlled heated nozzle that moves back and forth across a print platform, setting down a layer of melted material. Others use a laser or electron beam to fuse powdered plastic or metal into the required shape. After each layer is completed, the printing platform is lowered by a fraction of a millimeter and the next layer is added, until the object is completed.

What’s the advantage of this technology?
It makes it easier and cheaper for ordinary people to get into the business of making things. Inventors can print a model of their latest creation in a few hours, then tweak it and print again, instead of waiting weeks for a prototype to emerge from a factory. Injection molding, which requires toolmakers to build metal casts into which heated plastic is poured, is only cost-efficient for large-scale production. With 3-D printing, the cost per unit stays the same whether you manufacture one part or one million. “I can cost-effectively make a cellphone cover that is unique to every customer,” said Ryan Wicker, an engineer at the University of Texas at El Paso. “I could build 100 different ones just as cost-effectively as building them all the same.”

What are people printing now?
MyRobotNation.com lets customers design their own toy robot, which is manufactured on a 3-D printer, and the online retailer Shapeways.com sells everything from printed jewelry to desk toys. But the technology isn’t being used just to build novelties. Danish firm Widex prints hearing aids perfectly tailored to the wearer’s ear canal, and San Francisco’s Bespoke Innovations is experimenting with printing custom-fitted prosthetic limbs. Aerospace firms like Boeing and EADS are starting to print complex aircraft parts in single pieces rather than multiple sections. By doing away with bolts and screws that previously held components together, 3-D printing has reduced the weight of certain parts by up to 30 percent, saving fuel costs, said Boeing design engineer Michael Hayes. Eventually, Boeing thinks it might be able to print an entire aircraft wing. “That’s where the industry is trying to go,” said Hayes.

What more could 3-D printing do?
A possible next step is for virtually every home to have its own printer. “Once that happens, it will change everything,” said Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk, which makes imaging software used by designers, architects, and engineers. “See something on Amazon you like? Instead of placing an order and waiting 24 hours for your FedEx package, just hit print and get it in minutes.” Most experts, though, think the Jetsons era remains far off. The desktop 3-D printers available on the market now can only extrude plastic, limiting the objects they can produce. And even if you owned an advanced machine capable of creating whatever you wanted, you’d need a large stockpile of different materials. If your microwave breaks and you want to print a replacement part, “what are the chances that your 3-D printer is going to have the right material?” said industry analyst Terry Wohlers.

How might people use 3-D printers in the future?
Instead of fiddling around at home, we’re likely to turn to manufacturing hubs with specialist 3-D printing machines, “rather like when people go to specialist shops to get higher quality photos printed,” said Richard Hague, an expert on 3-D printing at Loughborough University in the U.K. Once introduced on an industrial scale, 3-D printing could have a profound economic impact. Companies would no longer need to keep huge warehouses filled with goods, as products could be printed locally on demand. And 3-D printing could compel American manufacturers to repatriate production now done abroad. “There is nothing to be gained by going overseas,” said Bespoke Innovations co-founder Scott Summit, “except for higher shipping charges.”

Download, print, aim, fire
Forget background checks and waiting periods. If you have a 3-D printer, you might soon be able to build a gun in your own home. That’s the goal of a group called Defense Distributed, which wants to create downloadable blueprints anyone could use to print a fully functioning firearm. They’re not there yet, but late last year the project’s leader, University of Texas law student Cody Wilson, announced that the group had successfully fired six shots from a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle built with several printed plastic parts. The gun then fell apart. Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) is urging Congress to renew the Undetectable Firearms Act—which bans the production of guns that don’t show up on metal detectors—before it expires at the end of 2013. “When the [act] was last renewed in 2003, a gun made by a 3-D printer was like a Star Trek episode,” he said. “But now we know it’s real.”

Vanessa Van Edwards' 6-step roadmap to taking the "workation" of your dreams is an inspiration! Check it out...

"I take a sip of chilled Sauvignon Blanc while gazing at the sprawling vineyards below my balcony. With the sun on my face, my husband and I dig into some fresh fruit from the local farmers' market — crisp pears, figs and goat cheese.

A warm breeze flutters the gauzy fabric of my sundress as we open our laptops to start the workday. It's 1:00 PM in Santa Cruz, Chile, 9:00 AM on the West Coast in the U.S. — and day 17 of our "workation."

Six years ago, my husband (then boyfriend) and I set out to find a way to develop our careers while traveling the world — and without breaking the bank.

People told us we were crazy.

During some of our low points — power outages in China, freak storms in Belgium and lost luggage in South America — we thought that they might be right. But the highlights, such as working from a cruise ship that was sailing through Chilean fjords, have made what we have dubbed our "workations" worth the effort.

To date, we've taken our virtual office to 24 locations, turning the process of traveling while working into a science. Whether you're an independent entrepreneur like me or you hold down a regular nine-to-five (the way my husband does as a marketing manager for an education company), you, too, can see the high-rises of Shanghai, the peaks of Patagonia or the beaches in Singapore — all while achieving your career goals.

The Career Benefits of Workations

Before you decide that taking a workation would be the equivalent of committing job suicide, consider these facts:

* Research has found that multi-cultural experiences and exotic surroundings generate more inspired and creative work.

* Workations decrease stress, which increases productivity, and leads to fewer sick days. Studies show that people with high levels of stress spend nearly 50 percent more on health expenses.

* A study in the Harvard Business Review found that when employees take just one day off per week, they report greater job satisfaction, more open communication with team members and better work-life balance, compared to regular employees.

As long as you do it right, a workation could very well improve your performance. Here are six of my personal tips to help get you on the road to work-travel bliss.

1. Take stock of your job
It's true that workations best lend themselves to certain professions, especially ones that require a lot of computer work. So surgeons or chefs probably won't be able to pull off a workation regularly, if at all.

But if you do have a job that can be done mostly by computer or phone, you should try to fit workations — even just one every year or two — into your life. As for work tasks that need to be done in person, most can be accomplished virtually on a temporary basis, such as face-to-face meetings via Skype or conference calls conducted using speakerphone.

For example, my husband is on work video chat from nine to five, so his team can send questions any time — and ask to see the view from wherever in the world we're working.

2. Prepare before talking to your boss
First, try to schedule a workation for times that work best with your office schedule, such as a slow month. Or look at tacking a workation onto a work conference or some other event that requires travel, so you can spend a few extra days workationing before or after the work trip.

Once you pinpoint a good time, draft a plan to make your workation go as smoothly as possible. It should account for any necessary meetings, time zone differences and your ability to stay in touch. If needed, plan to also work during the hours that you normally spend commuting. And try to propose the idea of a workation to your manager right after you've delivered on an important goal — no boss will grant a workation to an employee who isn't performing well.

3. Choose a vacation-worthy destination
Now for the fun part. If you aren't tied to a specific location due to a work event, then pick a destination that excites you.

Our home base is Portland, Oregon, and my husband and I structure our workations based on locations with the best weather. During the winter we'll travel to the Southern Hemisphere where it's summer, such as South America, Australia and New Zealand. And we spend summers in the United States, Europe or Asia.

Our general schedule is to spend four to six weeks at home, regrouping and conducting in-person work, and then head on a two- to four-week workation. This allows us to conduct necessary face-to-face business, and get out of town.

4. Organize communication methods
Technology is essential for seamless workations, so make sure that your destination has speedy Internet access. And coordinate with your office on which technologies you will need to use to keep in touch, like attending meetings via video (Google offers free video chat) and conducting conference calls on Skype.

If you're in a different time zone, designate working hours each day — and set boundaries with colleagues by letting them know when you will be online.

5. Travel affordably
Workations don't need to break the bank. Consider swapping your apartment with a fellow traveler to save on hotel costs, or check out Airbnb.com and VRBO.com, which feature furnished, short-term apartments and homes for rent.

You can also rent out your own home to cover housing costs and earn extra travel money. (Some cities have made short-term renting illegal, so just be sure to research whether regulations in your cities make this a viable option for you.)

My husband and I pay about $1,200 in monthly housing expenses. However, thanks to the short-term-rental market rates in our Portland neighborhood, we can charge up to $3,200 per month or $108 a night — which covers our rent and gives us an extra $2,000 to spend on flights and other travel costs.

6. Balance work with vacation
Be sure to spend evenings and time on the weekends away from the computer, so you actually get refreshed by your new surroundings. If you are in a different time zone, designate certain working hours each day — and set boundaries with colleagues by letting them know when you will be online.

Although workations can help you feel rejuvenated, it's also important to take full work-free vacations, which are essential for our minds and bodies to rest."

It certainly seems to be featured in an inordinate number of sex-specific words! According to Bruce Price, less than 1 percent of English words start with J, a minor letter with an odd shape and few other distinctions. Except when it comes to sex. Then J is jumping, one might even say jolly and juicy.

Leadbelly sang about Jumping Judy:

Well, jumping Little Judy, she was a mighty fine girl.
Judy brought jumping to this whole round world

Dylan Thomas liked to get juiced and tell the prettiest girl at the party, "I want to jump your bones."

J has some weird sexual je-ne-sais-quoi mojo, some humor (jests, jibes, jokes, jocularity), some sweetness (jams and jellies, Jujubes and Jujifruit), and some heat (joules).

Mick Jagger just sounds randy. And mint julep just sounds debauched, as The Clovers revealed in the 1952 hit "One Mint Julep":

I didn't know what I was doin'
I had to marry all day screwing....
One mint julep was the cause of it all.

Jugs jiggle; and a johnson is a big one. A hooker's customer is a John. Jack basically means male. The female of some species is called a jenny (e.g., jenny wren). And sexy young girls are jailbait.

The First Lady of the jungle was "You, Jane." Mary doesn't work, does it? While we're in the jungle, a famous lesbian novel was called "Rubyfruit Jungle."

Yes, that's what it means, as does jelly roll. An old blues song pulsed:

Jelly roll, jelly roll, sittin' on a fence
If you doan get some you ain't got no sense
Just wild bout my jelly
My sweet jelly roll.

Sexy women often have J-names: Jezebel, Jasmine, Jewel, Joy, Josephine. If you listen to Fats Domino sing about Josephine, you know she's hot:

Hello Josephine, how do you do?
Do you remember me baby?
Like I remember you
You used to laugh at me and holler, woo woo woo

Just about the only color name with J is Jade, a green stone, a girl's name, and a word with hot subtext. Urban Dictionary says, "Jade is someone who overreacts about a sexually orientated situation. For example, 'Oh my god, my nipples are erected!' 'You're such a Jade!'" Too much of that makes you jaded.

Jockey is all about riding, sometimes riding people. Jubilees are occasions for jubilation. Jamborees are good parties, people jitterbugging, sexy music on the jukebox. Juke originally meant "bawdy" or "wicked."

Hand jive, doesn't that sound dirty? When Johnny Otis (A.K.A. Willie and the Hand Jive) sang about "doing that crazy hand jive," this was serious titillation. Censors believed the song glorified masturbation, at least. That was all they could dare mention in 1958:

Mama, mama, look at Sister Flo
Doing that hand jive with Uncle Joe
When I gave little sister a dime
I said "Do that hand jive one more time"

Jazz was sexual slang before it was music. "Jas" was a Creole brothel where jezebels worked. Music for the clients became known as "Jas music", sometimes "Jass music." When the word "Jass" was printed on posters, the letter "J" was sometimes crossed out for a joke. Promoters knew "ass music" was offensive, so the spelling moved from "Jass" to "Jazz", hence "Jazz music."

A lot of porno words start with J; and words that aren't always porno words move in that direction very quickly: junk, jack, jerk, jag, jam, jimmie, and joint. Sex can hardly be discussed without the word job. "Jack off" spawned "jill off."

A printed J doesn't look sexy. But script a cursive capital J. It's rubenesque and voluptuous. Maybe that's J's secret.

A Hungarian physicist finds that the web's organizing principles aren't all that different from "six degrees of Kevin Bacon."

The outer limits of the worldwide web can feel like an infinite fraying of loose ends and time-sucking wormholes. But the web's estimated 14 billion individual pages and 1 trillion documents are actually connected more efficiently than anyone might reasonably imagine.

Researchers, publishing their findings in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, have discovered that you can navigate from any single page on the web to any other page in a mere 19 clicks or less. The principle is similar to the game "six degrees of Kevin Bacon," except with obscure, fringe-y GeoCities pages instead of, say, Cameron Diaz.

The 19-click threshold was discovered by Hungarian physicist Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, who used computer simulations to get a better grasp of the web's vast, unmapped architecture.

Here's where things get particularly fascinating: Even though the web is growing at an unprecedented rate — some estimates suggest as many as 3.7 million new domains are registered every month — Barabasi claims the magic number 19 will hold true until the last ethernet cable on Earth crumbles into dust.

How can this be? According to Smithsonian Mag, Barabasi argues that the web, while it may seem random, is actually arranged "in an interconnected hierarchy of organizational themes, including region, country, and subject area." In that sense, it doesn't matter how much bigger the web gets, since it will always be organized in a similar way.

How does this organization work? Look at this website's navigation bar up above, for example. Or scroll to the bottom of Wikipedia to see data organized by different languages. The basic organizing principles employed by search engines, aggregators, and other big, connecting nodes like Reddit help to make the web a less messy place overall. In fact, these large internet hubs are what make getting from Point A to Point B possible in the first place — like the LAXs and JFKs of the digital globe.

So go ahead. Give it a shot. We can't guarantee you'll be able to pull off 19 clicks at first blush. But, in the spirit of interconnectedness, we do recommend that you try starting your journey from here :-)

Millennials like listicles, right? Millennials stopped sexting and posting selfies just long enough this week to notice something curious on the Internet: A story in TIME titled, "The Me Me Me Generation: Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents. Why they'll save us all."

It was written by Joel Stein, a member of Gen X, which invented flannel and Wynona Ryder. The cover features a girl taking a selfie on her iPhone. It's a skill every millennial learns now instead of how to write in cursive. (We made a listicle about it, the millennial's preferred way of consuming information.)

Stein balances negative traits associated with millennials (narcissistic, lazy, stunted) with positive ones (resourceful, optimistic, adaptable) for what Salon's Daniel D'Addario calls an "admirably executed" story. TIME's cover alone, however, was enough to raise the ire of millennials, who took to the internet to do what they do best — talk about themselves:

1. The Awl
The Awl — an online publication popular with millennials — summed up TIME's business savvy in a tweet that linked to some photos, a new-fangled method of driving something they call "traffic" to "content."

2. TIME Millennials
Once millennials are done tweeting, they check Tumblr, just in case someone posted a picture of Ryan Gosling. That's where TIME Millennials was born. It showcases one of the Me Me Me Generation's greatest talents: Creating memes, this time out of a controversial magazine cover:


3. Marc Tracy, New Republic
Marc Tracy, a self-proclaimed millennial, wonders if members of his generation are "stunted" — i.e., not leaving their parents' house, getting married, or having kids — because older generations left them with a shattered economy:

Right now, older generations are in the process of slowly bequeathing millennials a society more "in debt" than ever before: "in debt" in the sense of living on borrowed time, with only future, merely hypothetical promises as collateral — "in debt" ecologically, financially, politically, culturally. At this moment, TIME has decided to focus on the millennials, and to tar them as "entitled" for not feeling totally okay about all of this. [New Republic]
4. Elspeth Reeve, The Atlantic Wire
Reeve takes us on a nostalgic tour of alarmist magazine covers past, from a 1976 New York article by Tom Wolfe titled "The Me Generation," to another TIME special saying this about Generation X:

They have trouble making decisions. They would rather hike in the Himalayas than climb a corporate ladder… They crave entertainment, but their attention span is as short as one zap of a TV dial… They postpone marriage because they dread divorce. [TIME]

The problem with these stories, says Reeve, is that everyone, in every generation, is kind of lost and navel-gazing in their 20s.

"Basically, it's not that people born after 1980 are narcissists, it's that young people are narcissists, and they get over themselves as they get older," Reeve writes. "It's like doing a study of toddlers and declaring those born since 2010 are 'Generation Sociopath: Kids These Days Will Pull Your Hair, Pee On Walls, Throw Full Bowls of Cereal Without Even Thinking of the Consequences.'"

5. Ezra Klein, The Washington Post
Ezra Klein, the media world's very own millennial wunderkind, put his objections to the article in easy-to-digest chart form:



That looks awfully like the priorities past generations had. To many in the media, however, the 1 percent of millennials who think becoming famous is "one of the most important things in their lives" are the only ones that exist.

The vast majority of the American population is mildly addicted to technology.

Anyone who spends their day staring at screens can speak to the modern-day epidemic of eye fatigue. But what is our digital obsession doing to our brains?

Researchers have noted a rise in something called Digital Attention Disorder — the addiction to social networks and computers in general.

How does it work? More than 50 years ago, psychologist B.F. Skinner was experimenting on rats and pigeons, and noticed that the unpredictability of reward was a major motivator for animals. If a reward arrives either predictably or too infrequently, the animal eventually loses interest. But when there was anticipation of a reward that comes with just enough frequency, the animals' brains would consistently release dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain that (basically) regulates pleasure.

What does this have to do with the Internet? Some researchers believe that intermittent reinforcement — in the form of texts, tweets, and various other social media — may be working on our brains the same way rewards did on Skinner's rats.

"Internet addiction is the same as any other addiction — excessive release of dopamine," says Hilarie Cash, executive director of the reStart program for Internet addiction and recovery, a Seattle-area rehab program that helps wean people off the Internet. "Addiction is addiction. Whether it's gambling, cocaine, alcohol, or Facebook."

"The vast majority of the American population is mildly addicted to technology, and our clinic treats only very serious cases," she told me in a phone interview. "Most of the people that come are young adult males around the ages of 18 to 30 who spend a lot of time on the Internet. Their health is poor, their social relationships have turned to crap, they have no social confidence or real-world friends. They don't date. They don't work."

Cash continued:

Internet and video game addiction starts young. Most young men are given computer or video games when they are five or six years old and therefore their childhood development is profoundly wired for these activities. It's quite different to drug addicts and alcoholics who are usually exposed to drugs or alcohol closer to the age of 15. Internet addicts usually have 15 to 20 years of addiction on them due to starting younger.

The problem isn't just young men, either. "Women are getting addicted, too," Cash told me. "Although women usually become addicted later in life and, more often than not, directly to social media, while men are more adept to becoming addicted to multiplayer games. Women seem to juggle addiction and life better than men."

So how does Cash's program work? According to the website: "Our professionally trained clinicians understand technology related process addictions, and the impact problematic use has on life. We work with individuals, couples and families to promote a better understanding of problematic technology use; assist users in discovering the underlying issues (e.g., depression, anxiety, ADHD, learning differences, stress, family relationship issues, and addictions) that may be co-occurring with excessive use patterns; and work together to design an individualized plan to promote a healthy, balanced lifestyle."

Now, at "just under $20,000" for a minimum 45-day Internet rehab (60- and 90- day options are available), the reStart program may not be for everyone. Indeed, you could always just... turn off your phone and computer.

Still, the new wave of young Internet addicts that Cash describes might be heralding something sinister for future generations: We've all seen the ease at which a toddler can operate an iPhone or iPad. These days, maybe kids are just born addicted to the Internet.

Read the DSM's 8 criteria of Internet addiction here.

The search giant is getting swamped by warrantless requests for users' information.

"It may be easier than you think for government entities to demand the private data you've stored on Google's servers," says Andy Greenberg at Forbes. In its latest biannual Transparency Report, Google has announced yet another rise in the number of government and law enforcement requests for data on users — anything from web surfing habits to identifying who owns an email account to the content of emails — and for the first time broke down the U.S. requests by how the authorities asked for the information. In the vast majority of cases, officials didn't bother with a search warrant — the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) allows authorities to just issue subpoenas for data that's at least six months old.

The king of search complies with about 90 percent of U.S. government snooping requests, "but Google's willingness to reveal this data in the first place should be seen as a credit to the company's respect for privacy," says Greenberg, and one not shared by its peers — Microsoft and Facebook — or wireless carriers. The government authorities asking to peer into your electronic life don't inspire much confidence, either, says Matt Sledge at The Huffington Post. At a tech panel devoted to investigating how the government obtained the emails exposing former Gen. David Petraeus' career-ending extramarital affair, Google legal director Richard Salgado dropped this "depressing and revealing factoid about how law enforcement is actually using its subpoena and warrant powers to get information" about you: "I can't tell you how many requests we get for Facebook."

Here's a numerical look at how often U.S. and foreign governments try to tap into the e-lives of Google users, and how often they succeed.

21,389 = Government requests for data worldwide from July to December 2012

33,634 = User accounts targeted in those searches

66 = Percent of those requests that resulted in Google handing over at least some data

20,938 = Government requests for data from January to June 2012

70 = Percentage rise in number of requests for data since 2009

8,438 = Requests from U.S. government authorities and investigators from July to December 2012

68 = Percent of those requests that came through subpoenas instead of court-issued warrants

88 = Percent of those requests Google complied with

22 = Percent of requests that were through search warrants, usually approved by judges under the ECPA

88 = Percent of those requests Google complied with

10 = Percent of requests from "court orders issued under ECPA by judges or other processes that are difficult to categorize"

90 = Percent of those requests Google complied with

2,431 = Data requests from India

66 = Percentage of those requests Google complied with

1,693 = Data requests from France

44 = Percentage of those requests Google complied with

1,458 = Data requests from the UK

70 = Percentage of those requests Google complied with

97 = Data requests from Russia

1 = Percentage of those requests Google complied with

149 = Data requests from Turkey

0 = Percentage of those requests Google complied with

The Wisconsin Tourism Federation realized in 2009 that geek-speak had made its acronym WTF pretty laughable.

In 2010, New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority announced that it would be rearranging some of its subway signs because they resembled a slightly naughty bit of internet slang. The signage for the F, M, and L lines read "FML," which savvy web users know as self-deprecating shorthand for "F*** My Life." The double meaning of its signs caught the transit authority off guard, but they worked quickly to switch around the letters. New York's subways are hardly the first victims of acronym problems, though.
According to Ethan Trex in Mental Floss, here are 10 other organizations, places, and businesses that have realized a bit too late that their initials meant a little more than they had intended.

1. WTF
In 2009, the Wisconsin Tourism Federation's biggest problem wasn't finding a way to attract more people to the metropolitan Kenosha area; it was the realization that its initials mirrored the slang abbreviation for "What the F---?" The WTF from America's Dairyland has been around since 1979, so it likely predates the vulgar WTF. In the end, though, you can't fight an internet meme. The organization changed its name to the Tourism Federation of Wisconsin.

The WTF's only consolation must be that it's not alone. In 2008, the North Carolina DMV allowed drivers whose license plates contained "WTF" to swap out their tags free of charge. The DMV also had to change its website; the sample plate pictured on the site was "WTF-5505."

2. DOA
In a move that must have been unsettling for thousands of Iowa's seniors, the state changed the name of its Department of Elder Affairs to the Department on Aging, or DOA, in 2009. Something's telling us that the change hasn't helped Iowa's elderly sleep any easier. The organization now goes by IDA, for Iowa Department on Aging.

3. AIDS
When Joan Woehrmann started her ambulance company in Whittier, Calif., in 1955, she hit on a pretty brilliant acronym: AIDS. The letters stood for "attitude, integrity, dependability, and service," which are all great qualities for an ambulance line. The name was also easy to remember in times of crisis.

She didn't foresee the name eventually signifying one of the greatest medical catastrophes of the century, though. By 1985, The Los Angeles Times reported that Woehrmann's drivers were being taunted and that the public mistakenly started to think that the line only transported AIDS patients.

Finally, she had enough and changed the line's name to "AME," even giving up the ambulances' customized line of "AIDS 1" and "AIDS 2" license plates.

4. SUX
While FAA identifiers for airports aren't technically acronyms, the three-letter codes can give rise to their own headaches. Just ask the Sioux City Gateway Airport, which the FAA saddled with the unfortunate designator "SUX." Airport authorities petitioned for a new code, and the FAA — "this is not a joke" — offered them "GAY" as a nod to the "Gateway" part of the airport's name.

Sioux City decided that switching to GAY probably wouldn't save them much sophomoric taunting, so officials decided to make the best of the SUX situation. Now the airport markets playful t-shirts emblazoned with slogans like "Fly SUX."

SUX might not even be the worst airport code. According to a 2008 Los Angeles Times story, Fresno's is FAT, and Perm, Russia's is PEE. The big winner has to be Fukuoka, Japan, though. We'll let you guess how that one gets abbreviated.

5. SLUT
In 2007, Seattle opened a new streetcar line connecting the South Lake Union neighborhood to the city's downtown. While the project was officially called the South Lake Union Streetcar, local residents began ribbing it as the South Lake Union Trolley, or SLUT. Although the city and the line's developers did what they could to dispel the notion that the line had a bawdy name, residents still refer to it as the SLUT; in 2007 the Seattle Post-Intelligencer even reported that a coffeehouse was selling t-shirts that read, "Ride the SLUT." Cringe.

6. CCRAP
In 2000, delegates of Canada's United Alternative convention needed a name for their newly formed political party. They came up with Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party, which in addition to taking roughly six minutes to pronounce was abbreviated CCRAP. Organizers quickly realized the blunder and changed the party's name to the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance.

7. WPPSS
In 1998, the Washington Public Power Supply System chose to change its name to Energy Northwest to discourage people from pronouncing its unfortunate acronym as "Whoops!" The old name left the utility open to quite a bit of taunting in 1983, when the WPPSS defaulted on $2.25 billion worth of bonds. Whoops indeed.

8. POOF
In 1990, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Florida decided it had heard just about enough kidding about its acronym, POOF, which resembled an old offensive term for a homosexual man. The musicians changed their name to the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra.

9. THE C-WORD
In 2002, Microsoft had to do a little rearranging on the fly. It quickly and quietly changed its ribald "Critical Update Notification Tool" to the more family friendly "Critical Updated Notification Utility."

10. NIC
What's wrong with NIC? In English, nothing. In Arabic, a whole heck of a lot. When the Coalition Provisional Authority began planning new Iraqi armed forces in 2003, they originally called them the New Iraqi Corps. They hit a big snag, though. As ABC News reported, in Arabic "nic" is "a colorful synonym for fornication." The coalition quickly changed the name to the New Iraqi Army.
Go to the NetLingo List of Internet Acronyms & Text Message Jargon!

Younger generations are far more adept at textspeak, a rich and subtle form of communication, according to Arika Okrent in The Week.

When people talk about textspeak — the acronyms, abbreviations, and emoticons used in electronic communication — their arguments (complaints, really) are usually framed around the idea of a generational decline. Kids text too much. Kids are forgetting how to spell and use proper grammar. College students are turning in term papers littered with textspeak!

It's the latest iteration of the same old story: Youngsters are ruining the language, and we are all doomed. But of course, just as in every previous iteration of the story, the language will be fine, and we are not doomed. Well, the youngsters aren't anyway.

English professor Anne Curzan, who in 20 years of teaching has never seen an essay using textspeak, writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education about how textspeak in the classroom can be a great teaching tool. She describes an exercise she does with her students to help them discover the implicit rules of their electronically mediated communication or "EMC" (not a textspeak abbreviation but an academic one). Rules? critics might say. Isn't EMC just a random, disorderly corruption of English? Apparently not:

One student noted that his dad texts like a junior-high-school airhead. His dad, it appears, doesn't yet have control of the stylistic choices that constitute 'sophisticated texting.' For several semesters now, I have asked students to compile with me a list of EMC etiquette rules, and I am struck by how detailed, creative, and consistent the rules are. Anyone who says that text language is chaotic isn't paying enough attention to the system of rules that users have developed to move real-time conversation into written form.

If students notice when the rules are being broken, then there must be rules. Older people, who don't get as much exposure to the conventions, get the conventions wrong. Do you use too many acronyms and abbreviations? Do you miss the subtle distinction between "ok." "ok!" and "ok…"? Do you still use LOL to represent laughter when it often means "just kidding"? ("hahaha" is a better choice for laughter.) Then you might be showing your age.

That's okay. It just means that if you don't want to be judged for not knowing the rules, you need to spend some time being exposed to them. The same goes for people who don't want to be judged for not knowing the rules of formal written English. Curzan, as an English professor, has the job of being that expert for the youngsters she teaches, and she has found an ingenious way to use what they know to help them learn what they might not yet know. Once they go through the exercise of discovering the rules of the systems they are most comfortable with, they can see "that the conventions of formal academic writing are just another set of rules for writing well in a specific register — maybe not as 'fun' as EMC but not in any way an alien exercise.