_haystacking_, _haystack_, v. (not in dictionaries)

[Victor Steinbok]

It sounds like it could be or could become a term of art in
crime/detective novels or in spy novels. It's not merely the ordinary
misdirection. The most common current association appears to be with the
Friday Document Dumps (see under "White House"). But there are uses,

1)

http://goo.gl/PzVyH
http://goo.gl/jTLTN
> Here's what's at the root of that problem: I call it "social media
> haystacking."
> That's the act of adding social media activities to an already full
> schedule and then beginning to slowly but surely resent social media
> as yet "another thing you have to do." Women entrepreneurs are
> particularly susceptible to this pitfall because we usually have 90
> other things we already "have to" do.

2)

http://goo.gl/Ig6La
http://goo.gl/CR3kx
> Spectral broadening or `haystacking' is the process whereby the
> turbulent, time-
> varying inhomogeneities in the flow scatter tonal sound fields, which
> decreases
> the level of the incident tone, but increases the broadband level
> around the
> frequency of the tone. The scattering process is modelled
> analytically, using
> high-frequency asymptotic methods and a weak-scattering assumption.

3)
http://goo.gl/fw4rl
> Malkiel & Buffett Agree On Haystacking!
> 05-03-2004, 2:49 AM

which redirects to:

http://goo.gl/ABMNB
> Are you looking for the next Warren Buffett, the extraordinary
> investor and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.?
> As the Plato of efficient markets, Burton Malkiel discourages
> investors from searching, and says most would be better off in
> broad-based index mutual funds than single stocks or actively managed
> mutual funds.
> The Princeton University economics professor, Vanguard group director
> and author of the classic ``A Random Walk Down Wall Street'' --
> originally published 31 years ago and selling more than 1 million
> copies -- says once you take the index route, costs become more
> important than security or fund selection in enhancing performance.
> Costs matter because Malkiel and other market savants predict modest
> market returns for the next decade. Since your net return is what you
> keep after investment expenses and taxes, the lower the cost, the more
> you can build your wealth.

     VS-)




On 12/27/2011 1:57 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> This one doesn't appear even in the urbandictionary, where all the glosses ('Hayward, CA', 'nickname for fat person', 'stack of hay', and the obligatory sexual term) are for the noun.  But the gerund does appear in the UD for a relevant (although not identical) use:
>
> =============
> The act of sending an lengthy email chain to a recipient with vague directions to "see below" or "please note" without providing further instructions. This forces the recipient to search through a long list of email correspondences in hopes of figuring out what you're referring to (i.e. searching for a needle in a haystack).
> =============
>
> The verb/gerund appears (at least) twice in a forensic context in Michael Connelly's _The Reversal_, to refer to the practice of prosecutors overwhelming the defense team, or vice versa, with so much evidentiary material that they won't be able to locate the needle of relevant evidence within the largely irrelevant haystack in time to meet the needed goal in the courtroom.  Here's one example; the deputy DA is trying to reassure a prosecution witness about the potential witnesses named in the defense lawyer's list:
>
> "Just because they're on that list, it doesn't mean they'll be called.  They pull names out of the records and load up the list to confuse us, Sarah.  It's called _haystacking_. They hide the real witnesses, and our investigator--Detective Bosch--wastes his time checking out the wrong people."
>
> LH

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