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
>>> [log in to unmask]
>
> --
> 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: [log in to unmask]
>
>
> ________________________________
>
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>
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> e.V.
>
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>
Best wishes,
--Gerard
******************************************************************
Gerard J. Kleywegt
http://xray.bmc.uu.se/gerard mailto:[log in to unmask]
******************************************************************
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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