Hm, last I checked my passport said German - still think I can make lots of fun of myself. Some Germans are epigenetically marked with humor-suppressor genes others not.
Jürgen On Apr 2, 2012, at 11:03 AM, Gerard DVD Kleywegt wrote: 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<mailto: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<mailto: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: Hahn-Meitner-Platz 1 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 ****************************************************************** The opinions in this message are fictional. Any similarity to actual opinions, living or dead, is purely coincidental. ****************************************************************** 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 ! ****************************************************************** ...................... Jürgen Bosch Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute 615 North Wolfe Street, W8708 Baltimore, MD 21205 Office: +1-410-614-4742 Lab: +1-410-614-4894 Fax: +1-410-955-2926 http://web.mac.com/bosch_lab/
