The under-resourced individuals ye always have with you

The newest way not to say "poor" (new to me, anyway) is "under-resourced individual". Why do you suppose this has replaced the equally annoying "underprivileged"? According to yourdictionary.com, "privilege" means "a special advantage, immunity, permission, right, or benefit granted to or enjoyed by an individual, class, or caste." This suggests, then, that money and the things it can buy are privileges, not rights. Not good enough, if you think everybody has a right to everything. "Resources" are things we can all draw on for our use, as in natural resources, and the egregiously renamed "human resources," which used to be "personnel".

"Poor" is a comparatively neutral term. It just means you don't have much, and that may or may not be your fault. It's just a fact. You can even be poor in spirit and still have the kingdom of heaven, according to some authorities. Of course we know the difference, too, between being broke and being poor.

Sociologists probably invented "underprivileged" and "under-resourced" to do away with the ubiquity and the inevitability of the poor, who, we are also informed, will always be with us. At least in the USA, the individuals who are poor can rotate. The poor will always be with us, but John Doe may not always be poor; he might take a turn at being rich, or at least not poor.

But what about inner resources? Do some people have more of those than others, and if so, is it fair? And whose fault is that?

NIFTY BITS

A couple of nifty bits from Dave DaBee (out of so many from him):

Good Advice for All of Us

While looking through Dad's bookshelf in his final week, I came across a wonderful "little book" called The Elements of Seamanship [Roger C. Taylor]. It made no attempt to parallel Strunk & White's whole book, but the author clearly honors its advice. (See the lone reader review*.)

As I recall, its (five?) chapters start like this:

1. Keeping the water out

2. Keeping from hitting things

3. Getting where you want to go

Those may seem simple and obvious, but believe me, each chapter honors the mandate that "every word tell." (And, splendidly, the final chapter is "Keeping your reputation.")

If only everyone would be so simple and direct. By the way, when Dave mentioned the "lone reader review," I automatically assumed it was a review on Amazon.com. Amazing.

N.B.*

Did you know that in international standards documents, it's now forbidden to use "e.g." and "i.e." because they're so commonly misconstrued for each other? A standards document submitted to ISO containing those abbreviations will be edited to say "for example" or "that is."

To me this was a pretty scary discovery, considering that such documents are only intended to be read by analytically-trained college graduates (engineers).

Well, as the cynic said to the farmhand, "Weed it and reap."

Certainly engineers ought to know these common abbreviations for the Latin expressions:

e.g. = exempli gratia (for example)

i.e. = id est (that is)

But when in doubt, stick with English.

*N.B. = Nota Bene (note well, not nifty bits)

HATS OFF

Jan asked why we say "hats off" in congratulations. As far as I know, it comes from men's practice of removing their hats indoors as a sign of respect or courtesy. This supposedly dates back to the days when knights wore helmets. When they entered the house (or castle) of a friend, they removed their helmets to reveal their identity and to show they were not there to fight. Of course, etiquette does not require women to remove their hats indoors. They so seldom wore armor and helmets. Same with gloves. Men are to remove their gloves when shaking hands, ladies don't have to. The man is showing that he isn't armored or armed, doesn't have a weapon.

THE BRITISH CORNER

I found a couple of words new to me in Robert Barnard's novel The Graveyard Position:

# gyratory: Which means what you might think

# fissiparousness: Let me know if you think anything at all about it, but I looked it up. It means reproducing by spontaneous fission (biological) or splitting into parts; factious (as in factions).

# pleased as Punch: I've used this phrase assuming it refers to the puppet Punch from the ancient Punch and Judy puppet shows.

I also noticed in Barnard's book something I'd been noticing elsewhere recently: they say "different to" instead of "different than" or "different from", these last two being minutely distinguished in American usage tomes. I can never remember how or why they're different (from each other) and when to use one or the other. So if the British are saying something different (than we do), I'm not going to bother trying to learn any more about those prepositions following "different".

I've also heard lately that the BBC doesn't want the term "terrorist" to be used. I don't know if that policy has been changed since the recent bombings. What should they be called? What would we call them in the U.S.? Terrorist-Americans? Persons of terrorist extraction. Persons of the terrorist persuasion. Well, we don't want to be too judgmental. We've been good at inventing terms for our own war activities, like "collateral damage" for civilian casualties, for instance. We can do as much for enemies. ("Enemy" is such a judgmental word, isn't it?) How about, "persons deploying physically or chemically unstable hand-crafted devices in densely populated areas". It's really hard to use words that are completely without connotation, affect, opinion, judgment. And once you find one, that word takes on the value of the word you've replaced, because everyone really knows what you're talking about.

PDF HELP WANTED

Bob O. is asking "to find someone who could take a song written by hand and put it into a computer format from which a good-looking PDF file could be created." Bob is willing to pay (moderately). If you can help him, get in touch with me.

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