Where angels fear to tread

That's usually where you'll find me blundering about like a baby elephant.

So rather late in the day I've decided to investigate those who went before me in adopting the acronym MAHL, and the word if it exists. Those I've unearthed, in Google-Order, include:

• mahl magazine, which I must confess I spent no time whatsoever looking into. On that basis my impression is that the people behind it are likely to very skinny girls in smock tops and boys with exotic-shaped bits of beard about the jaw line, plus a couple of older men in artistic spectacles;
  
• there are, of course, the mahl stick and the mahl bridge - available at all good suppliers of artists' requisites. ;
  
• there's also the Mid-Atlantic Hockey League, which if it sounds more interesting than this can be reached here;
  
• it is a surname*
  
• a language spoken by the half-dozen or so inhabitants of Minicoy Island, India. It is a variant of the official language of the Maldives (and it is actually spoken by about 15-20,ooo people). It is also sometimes refered to as Mahal.
  
• a place in Texas, USA**, Latitude 31.7336, Longitude -94.6761, Altitude (feet) 449
  
• it stands for Maastricht Aachen Hasselt Liège (major cities of the Meuse-Rhine)
  
• and Master of Arts in Hebrew Literature/Letters
  
• and Midland Amateur Hockey League (Midland, Michigan)
  
• it is also the stock code on the Stockholm (that's Sweden, ok?) bourse for a company called AB MÄHLER & SÖNER, producers of "snow clearance equipments for truck, wheel loader, and road grader." It was founded in 1895 and is based in Rosson, Sweden. (This is not investment advice, ok.)
  
• there is the MAHL method, which is something brain-achingly science-ish
  
• it is the ID for a weather station at Horseshoe Lake in Arizona, USA** at LATITUDE: 33.98, LONGITUDE: -111.71, ELEVATION: 2001 ft
  
• it is the name or partial name of sundry sole practices and partnerships (an inevitable consequence of it being a surname and some people of that name becoming doctors*
  
• Milton Adult Hockey league: "of Miltonians, by Miltonians, for Miltonians" or something very like that

Finally, the search produced the web pages for the Mercian Order of St.George about which I could unearth little besides the self-descriptory phrase "an Eclectic Unitarian Fraternity". You can read a little more here.

* Doctors are on the whole a pretty dedicated bunch of self-publicists who never knowingly under sell themselves and have taken to the internet as a marketing tool like a very large flock of particularly agressive ducks.

** Does this grate? Redundancy always does.

Now scanning that lot I have to concluded that I got off lightly. Even the Mercians might be god botherers but they're hardly offensive in their belief-set or approach. The rest are largely either hockey nuts or derived from a surname.

So I think that's that. It is safe to describe myself as a Militant Atheist Humanist Libertarian.