Some mild hilarity for you: I’m presently reading a paper from 1988 on energy-minimizing splines for computer vision problems – they’re called “snakes” due to the movements they make as they move through each energy minimization iteration. A quote:

“…the length of a snake. The resulting snakes are flaccid. In order to erect more rigid snakes, it is vital to use a more stable method that can accomodate the large internal forces. Our semi-implicit method allows forces to travel the entire length of a snake in a single…”

I really have to wonder sometimes.