Yeah, yeah, I know. I gotta get back to the grading. But I was reminded of an unintentionally funny government acronym this morning.

One of the (former, it's now a liquor store I guess) gas stations on my drive to work- the parking lot is all torn up and it looks like the construction guys are removing something.

"Uh-oh." I said to myself. "They're another victim of LUST."

LUST = Leaking Underground Storage Tanks. It's a big problem with gas stations; it can also be an issue in places that had oil heat if they had a big reservoir to hold the heating oil. This legislation concerning their removal and mitigation of the problems (mostly contaminating groundwater) came in in the 1980s.

The unintentionally funny part of it? Some years back, the church my parents belonged to got an offer of some vacant land from a local landowner. My dad is a geologist and has also taught short-courses on environmental hazards and such, so the pastor asked him if it seemed like a fair deal. My dad did a little checking and found out that the site was once a gas station (long before legislation saying that the tanks had to be removed) and that if the church accepted the donation, they could also get stuck with the liability of having to remove leaking underground storage tanks.

For several months after that, my dad went around proudly telling people that he had warned his pastor about the dangers of LUST.