1261 Watching grass grow! Two EAO sources of information
austraLasia 1261

Watching grass grow!  Two EAO sources of information

ROME: 26th September 2005 -- They say that yacht racing (compared to Formula One) is like watching grass grow!  There are two other items which fall into the same category - EAO statistics and the Salesian lexicon.  But both, fortunately, are at the 'lawn' stage already, in other words they cover a fair bit of ground.  The incremental, blade by blade growth, to keep roughly to the same metaphor, is a bit like the Gospel images of agricultural growth towards fullness!
    All of which is another way of saying that you could benefit from occasionally checking BOSCONET at www.bosconet.aust.com for newer editions of both the EAO stats package, now at v3.1 and the Salesian lexicon, otherwise known as SELECT, also now at v3.1.
    In the former case, the stats package, the updated feature is mainly to do with general province information - if you wanted updated telephone, fax or email details, for example.  But, and I trust this will be useful too, the downloadable zip file includes a guide to good use of the stats package for anyone who is unaccustomed to finding his way through MSAccess.
    In the latter case, the downloadable zip file version of SELECT on Bosconet (not the link to sdb.org version, at least not yet) has minor changes.  How significant these are depends on your point of view.  The wonderful thing here is that more and more confreres have taken the effort to browse SELECT, and as a result, have been able to advise on a whole range of entries, either in terms of adjustments or additions.  Here is one example which is of interest because it demonstrates a trend with certain Salesian terms these days.  I refer to the common use of acronyms.  Acronyms are almost a plague in modern discourse! But an interesting feature here is that the reality may alter while the acronym doesn't.  Example 1: ANS.  What it used stand for it no longer does.  Today we speak of Agenzia Internazionale d'informazione Salesiana, and in anybody's book that is not ANS, which once stood simply for Agenzia Notizie Salesiane!  But we stay with ANS nevertheless, even though it confuses people in China who know it as the Amity News Service, or people in the US who know it as American National Standard or worse, the American Nuclear Society!  Example 2, and a much more recent one, is IUS, which until recently stood for Istituzioni Universitarie Salesiane or Salesian University Institutes, taken as a whole and linked under the direction of Fr Carlos Garulo, by appointment from the Rector Major.  But in the past several years, this entity has altered, become more all-embracing, and now refers to Salesian Institutes of Higher Education - but the 'acronym' remains IUS.  In fact, linguistically speaking, this trend to retain the acronym but change the underlying term is not common, and almost a peculiarly Salesian phenomenon!  What usually happens is that either a new acronym is adopted, or the underlying terms are played with to retain their acronymic association but alter the meaning.  See what I meant by 'it depends on your point of view?'!
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