> Rui - you are surely not being so unthinking nor, indeed,
> discourteous to suggest that either Alasdair or Sheep are unaware of
> the origins of the above algorithms or that they would even think of
> attempting to pass them off as space syntax algorithms?
>
Dear Ruth,
I was simply cutting through the nonsense. That's part of doing science, I'm
afraid.
I used rational arguments: the question was being avoided. Nine (sorry, ten)
messages later, it still hasn't been answered. I pointed this clearly.
I obeyed the etiquette of jiscmail, our host. I was not sarcastic, nor did I
post irrelevant material, nor did I waffle.
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/help/policy/etiquette.htm
Plus, I did not use smileys. I was rational, not emotive.
Would you like me to compile a list of messages to this list that have
violated jiscmail's etiquette?
Or would a quotation from Francis Crick sort the discussion, perhaps:
"Politeness, Francis Crick said over the BBC at the time he got the Nobel
prize, is the poison of all good collaboration in science. The soul of
collaboration is perfect candor, rudeness if need be. Its prerequisite,
Crick said, is parity of standing in science, for if one figure is too much
senior to the other, that's when the serpent politeness creeps in. A good
scientist values criticism almost higher than friendship: no, in science
criticism is the height and measure of friendship. The collaborator points
out the obvious, with due impatience. He stops the nonsense, Crick said
-speaking of James Watson. Rosalind Franklin, in the eighteen months or so
from the fall of 1951 to the spring of 1953 when she was working at King's
College London on the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, had no such
collaborator. It is evident from her notebooks that she needed one, and
clear from what we know of her character that she would have worked well
-candidly, rudely, if need be- with the right one."
[From 'At the Helm', by Kathy Barker]
All the best,
Rui
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