'A' Is for ACRONYM Trivia Quiz

Answer: cure it

SARS stands for 'Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome', a contagious, and sometimes fatal, viral respiratory illness which first appeared in China in November, 2002; it is a serious form of pneumonia. SARS was subsequently identified by the World Health Organization in 2003. 'Patient Zero' was a businessman who had traveled from China through Hong Kong, Hanoi and Vietnam; both the businessman and the doctor who diagnosed him died from the disease.

Answer: ethical

PETA is an acronym for 'People for Ethical Treatment of Animals', an animal rights organization based in Norfolk, Virginia and founded in 1980. They have launched campaigns to stop the wearing of fur and leather, to discourage eating meat, trapping, hunting, the use of animals in circuses and just about anything that could endanger animals. It is the largest animal rights group in the world, and tends to be very confrontational in its beliefs and its advertising.

Answer: using a computer

BIOS means 'Basic Input/Output System' and has been part of computer technology language since 1975. The purposes of the system are to "initialize and test the system hardware components and to load an operating system or other programs from a mass memory device". It is the built-in software that determines what a computer can do without accessing programs from a disk.

Answer: there is no minimum age

AARP, the 'American Association of Retired Persons', sends out information inviting membership starting when people turn 50 years old, but there is no minimum age for joining. The group is based in the United States and was founded by Ethel Percy Andrus, PhD, a retired educator.

Their services include Medicare supplemental health insurance and discounts on prescription drugs, and they offer assistance to low-income and vulnerable elderly people.

Answer: ERISA

ERISA stands for the 'Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974'. It is a federal statute which describes minimum standards for the administration of private pension plans and provides employers with fiduciary responsibilities, thereby protecting the assets of funds placed in retirement accounts. ERISA allows participants to sue for breach of fiduciary duty so that the money people have set aside for retirement cannot be stolen (a la the Bernie Madoff 'Ponzi scheme').

Answer: baseball

If you've ever been to a baseball game and kept a scorecard, you know that the term RBI means 'Runs Batted In'. All sports have their own language or jargon to explain the specifics of the sport. For example, in baseball, a strikeout is represented by the letter 'K' (originally for the last letter of 'struck' used in olden days for strikeout) and a walk shows up as 'BB' or 'base on balls'. One of my favorite stories is when an announcer looked at Phil Rizzuto's scorecard while he was broadcasting and asked what the designation on his scorecard of 'WW' meant, to which Rizzuto replied "wasn't watching".

Answer: diode

LED or 'Light Emitting Diode', is a semi-conductor light source, i.e., a device that lights up and displays information when electricity passes though it. An example is the tower lights of New York's Empire State Building, which changed in 2012 when the owners installed a new computer-driven LED light system.

This system can change the color of the lights instantaneously, and can display 16 million colors, allowing the Empire State Building to continue and enhance its tradition (begun in 1976) of changing colors to recognize different holidays and organizations.

Answer: a testing venue

GED is the 'General Education Development' test which, when passed, gives you a Certificate of High School Equivalency. The newer GED exam consists of 4 parts, i.e., Literacy (Reading and Writing), Mathematics, Science and Social Studies, and is about 7 1/4 hours long. You can find practice tests, testing centers and instructional 'webinars' online, all to help you earn your High School diploma.

Answer: a radio personality

AFTRA (formerly AFRA prior to September 1952) is an acronym for the 'American Federation of Television and Radio Artists'. As of January 2013, the two labor unions SAG ('Screen Actors' Guild') and AFTRA officially merged, logically calling itself SAG-AFTRA.

The new entity represents actors, announcers, journalists, dancers, DJs, news writers, singers, voiceover artists and other media professionals. These are the members who vote for the winners of most of the award shows we watch.

Answer: a letter

SWAK stands for 'Sealed With A Kiss'; before computers, people actually wrote letters (forming sentences and paragraphs) to loved ones, sealed the envelopes (before self-adhesives) and would write S.W.A.K on the back of the envelope. To a teenager or even a pre-teen, getting a letter with those letters on it could make your day or even your week.

In fact, in 1962, singer Bryan Hyland made the song "Sealed with a Kiss" a big hit, reaching #3 on the 'Billboard Hot 100'. SWAK was a nice tradition; I hope it has not become obsolete with the rise of technology.