Painful Acronyms

I just finished my psychology take-home essay test (a critique of two health intervention campaigns of my choice - totalling 12 pages) and while it was perhaps not up to my highest standards, I think it was fine. My favorite part was this:

The messages were developed and final versions selected by a panel of experts. However, without input from members of the target audience, it is difficult to ensure that the content and presentation of the ideas came across as relevant, understandable, worth paying attention to, and not just the same old thing experts always say and people rarely act upon with any consistency. All twelve emails came with the same subject line – “HEALTH: Healthy Eating and Active Living Together For Health” – which is lengthy, boring, redundant, and contrived to yield a cumbersome governmental-sounding acronym that borders on self-parody; this is unlikely to grab people’s attention in their inbox as promising anything interesting, novel, or valuable that they should take the time to read.

This reminded me of how the first time I saw a US PIRG bumper sticker (I refuse to link to the idiots) on a sidewalk at Rice, I didn't know what it referred to and with Tam, created a variety of possible interpretations. The one I came up with that I still remember and enjoy was "Under stress, practice invoking relevant gods."

Last night, while lying in bed before falling asleep, I decided that the OK Department of Wildlife Conservation needs to put together a program called OUTDOORS: Outdoorspeople United Together to Develop Oklahomans' Outdoor Recreation Skills. Perhaps I should not give them any ideas.