Dear Manfred,
Outside Germany, such excursions are called "humour". If you are interested,
here is the Wikipedia page for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humour
--Gerard
PS: It was on a Sunday so all levity was perpetrated in people's own time.
Today we'll all be serious again and frown and tut-tut appropriately.
On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Manfred S. Weiss wrote:
Dear all,
I find this discussion most amazing. Here, we are dealing with the most
serious issue
that happened to Macromolecular Crystallography since the Alabama case,
and the
whole discussion is centered around singular and plural and Greek and
Latin words
and what not.
In psychology such phenomenon is referred to as displacement activity.
If you are interested, here is the MacMillon definition of it:
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/displacement-activity
Cheers,
Manfred
On 01.04.2012 19:35, Gerard Bricogne wrote:
On Sun, Apr 01, 2012 at 01:18:15PM -0400, David Schuller wrote:
On 04/01/12 10:18, Gerard Bricogne wrote:
Dear Paul,
May I join the mostly silent chorus of Greek/Latin-aware grumps
who
wince when seeing "data" treated as singular when it is plural.
When it are plural?
Good nit-picking :-) . In my mind the quotes around "data" would have
had the same effect as writing 'the word "data"', and referring to that
word
by the 'it'. So there is only one word, while its grammatical number is
plural.
At any rate, I heard a Nobel laureate use it incorrectly just two days
ago.
We shouldn't learn to write by imitating Nobel laureates, then.
With best wishes,
Gerard.
--
=======================================================================
All Things Serve the Beam
=======================================================================
David J. Schuller
modern man in a post-modern world
MacCHESS, Cornell University
schul...@cornell.edu
--
Dr. Manfred. S. Weiss
Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin f?r Materialien und Energie
Macromolecular Crystallography (HZB-MX)
Albert-Einstein-Str. 15
D-12489 Berlin
GERMANY
Fon: +49-30-806213149
Fax: +49-30-806214975
Web: http://www.helmholtz-berlin.de/bessy-mx
Email: mswe...@helmholtz-berlin.de
________________________________
Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin f?r Materialien und Energie GmbH
Mitglied der Hermann von Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren
e.V.
Aufsichtsrat: Vorsitzender Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Joachim Treusch, stv.
Vorsitzende Dr. Beatrix Vierkorn-Rudolph
Gesch?ftsf?hrerin: Prof. Dr. Anke Rita Kaysser-Pyzalla
Sitz Berlin, AG Charlottenburg, 89 HRB 5583
Postadresse:
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D-14109 Berlin
http://www.helmholtz-berlin.de
Best wishes,
--Gerard
******************************************************************
Gerard J. Kleywegt
http://xray.bmc.uu.se/gerard mailto:ger...@xray.bmc.uu.se
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The opinions in this message are fictional. Any similarity
to actual opinions, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Little known gastromathematical curiosity: let "z" be the
radius and "a" the thickness of a pizza. Then the volume
of that pizza is equal to pi*z*z*a !
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