Wednesday, February 01, 2006




Cab Calloway, animal droppings and public transport









Merriam-Webster provides three definitions for the word scat:
  1. to go away quickly
  2. an animal fecal dropping
  3. jazz singing with nonsense syllables
Do any of these definitions inspire confidence in a mass transit system? It seems that four public transportation systems in this country - South County and South Coast in California, Suffolk in New York and Sarasota in Florida think so, or at least didn't know to ask. All four utilize the acronym SCAT to varying degrees (Sarasota, where I first noticed the troubling acronym, puts it on the side of their buses with the logo above).

Perhaps these organizations had the first definition in mind, though I highly doubt it. Considering the purpose of public transport, it's disconcerting that the definition does not allow for coming back quickly or at any other rate of speed. There's also the fact that the most common connotation of that particular definition is something you'd yell at a bothersome cat, which I'd imagine is where the animal droppings come into play. Maybe they were hoping to score Cab Calloway to promote their services. After all, the kids love Minnie the Moocher.

With the exception of South Coast, where the S and C are both part of the name, these organizations may want to consider dropping the word county from their names - not only would they avoid the fecal acronym but they'd be describing an activity customers could enjoy while riding.


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Posted by Joel at 2/01/2006 08:09:00 PM