Education: The Agonies of Acronymania

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Ironically, people have a natural reluctance to clutter their memories with clusters of letters. Even those in the midst of the highest acronymic concentrations occasionally lose one. During the Apollo 12 mission, according to The Washington Monthly, controllers discovered that a minor malfunction was due to something called the Digital Uplink Assembly. "We think we've figured it out—your DUA was off," they radioed to the vicinity of the moon. Replied Apollo: "What is a DUA?"