Fame at last!

JON: I have a weekly subscription to New Scientist, my favorite magazine – it used to be that I just looked at the job vacancies, but now I actually read the text. One of my favorite columns is “Feedback” which is where the NS keeps its funnies. Feedback recently had a piece on acronyms. I responded by sending them my favorite homemade acronym which I’ve always been rather proud of, so I was very pleased to see it in print in the July 10th issue, wrapping up a long discussion of third-order multiply nested acronyms (don’t ask!). Here’s my bit:

“And that, surely, is that, we thought — but no, for here is Jon [...] telling us that some years ago he presented a paper at the 1995 Annual Scientific Meeting of the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Hong Kong, which had the title ‘Average chewing rates on nut yoghurt mixtures". ‘As you will see immediately’, he says, ‘the acronym of this paper title is ACRONYM.’ He challenges Feedback readers to produce a similar title, one which is an acronym for "acronym", and then – this is the hard part - get it published in a reputable journal. Unless and until this happens, that’s enough on acronyms.”