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Some of our editorial staff are very active on various work-related bulletin boards. But sometimes their contributions are less than helpful. One famous example is the (first-ever ?) protein crystallography April fool's day joke about a wonderful program called APRIL. Others are listed on this page.
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- Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Python 3.0 breakage > Python 3.0 should have just been named something like "Anaconda" or "Boa" so Actually (and etymologically), Python is an eponym, named after Monty. Hence, any spin-off should be called Basil or Brian or, a trifle presumptuously perchance, Holy Grail or Meaning of Life. --Bruce Professor of Hegelian Philosophy (and in charge of the sheep dip) University of Woolamaloo Australia
- Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Python 3.0 breakage > > > Python 3.0 should have just been named something like "Anaconda" or "Boa" > > > > Actually (and etymologically), Python is an eponym, named after Monty. Hence, any spin-off > > should be called Basil or Brian or, a trifle presumptuously perchance, Holy Grail or Meaning > > of Life. > > > > --Bruce > > Professor of Hegelian Philosophy (and in charge of the sheep dip) > > University of Woolamaloo > > Australia > > Considering Python 3.0 is supposed to be an *improvement* over previous Pythons, I think a more > appropriate name would be "Benny Hill" or "Chris Rock". Do you mind if we call you Bruce, just to keep it clear? Okay then - I'm assuming that your reply (being the Mother of all Non Sequiturs) is intended facetiously, rather than being the epitome of your humour-appreciation standards. If this is not the case, then I would argue that "Brian" is the more appropriate name, since his fame and reputation were also based on delusions and misunderstandings. --Bruce Professor of Cartesian Philosophy Bossfella, Department of Philosophy University of Woolamaloo (Not to be confused, as some Sheilas apparently do, with the University of Woolloomooloo) Australia, Australia, Australia
- Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Fwd: [ccp4bb] Occupancy refinement of substrate using refmac5 > I thought that I would never have to disagree with both Eleanor and > Tassos in the same email, let alone risk being burnt at a stake as a > heretic for doubting the Gospel according to Kleywegt, but in my but ... but ... i haven't even said anything! i'm innocent! my name is being used in vain! okay, George & Tassos, you asked for it: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DVD's packing list for his trip to Leeds, CCP4 meeting, January, 2008: ********************************************************************** o toothpaste ... check! o slides showing darts on a darts board to illustrate the difference between precision and accuracy ... check! o one stere of veeeery dry wood ... check! o matches ... check! o 400 copies of the Gospel according to Kleywegt to be put in every hotel room occupied by people who attend the meeting ... check! o autographed copy of said Gospel for each of the 10,000 members (*) of the DVD Fanclub on Facebook (**) ... check! o framed picture of Mum ... errrm, no, forget that. I'm not Greek! o one pair of clean underwear ... only if room left in suitcase ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (*) "10,000" in binary notation (**) http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7408581677 (***) (***) honorary chairwoman: Prof E.J. Dodson, FRS (****) (****) yes, really! --dvd (note to self: write something gospelish during the Christmas break)
- To: e.dodson@ysbl.york.ac.uk Subject: Re: [ccp4-dev]: LABIN question > But it is a potential disaster.. > > Best avoided! by the user, you mean? then i agree. users can avoid such ambiguities themselves by using more imaginative column labels such as FRED, PHIL or, in this particular case: LABIN COLA=PEPSI
Once again, our intrepid CEO applied his linguistic skills to offer an English translation for the Portuguesely-challenged:
- video zueras do tooby video de pessoas famosas em cada situa?ao!!! clika o lik p/ ver o video se nao der disite a url em outra janela
- hahaha! brazilian humour - always cracks me up! for those of you whose portuguese is a bit rusty, let me provide a quick and dirty translation: > video de pessoas famosas em cada situa?ao!!! "videos of famous pessaries in situation comedy" > clika o lik p/ ver o video se nao der disite a url em outra janela "click and lick on the video and let your nose decide the url of the outer janela" priceless! --bixo do coco (previously known as "o fenomeno")
- > May be too trivial, I was just wondering > what "B" stands for in the term "B-factor". i don't really know, but i do have some wild theories, none of which are necessarily based in fact: - the B-factor is also called the Debye-Waller factor. now, someone assumed that peter debye was french (instead of dutch) and that his name should be written "de Bye"; hence the B as the "first" letter in his name (something similar happened to monsieur luzzati whose oft-abused 1952 paper is headed "Par V. Luzzati" which probably led some people to believe he was swedish and that "Par" was his first name. once "P.V. Luzzati" made it into the x-plor manual (e.g., http://nmr.cit.nih.gov/xplor-nih/xplorMan/node484.html) mis-citations of this kind mushroomed, mostly by people who couldn't read the original paper because it was in french, in which language "par" means (written) "by") - there was a lot of buzz when the concept was first introduced which led to associations with bees; hence "bee-factor" or, shortened, "B-factor" - they wanted to call it "A-factor" first, but realised that the A could be mistaken for the indefinite article which they definitively didn't want. i mean, how cool is "a factor" ? hence the B-factor - the name follows the same path as that of the programming language "C" (which was simply the third version of a draft, where the earlier versions had been called "A" and "B"), but they got it right in only two tries. the first draft ("A-factor") was correct down to a factor of pi. once the bug had been removed, the second version (that we still use today) was called the "B-factor" - around 1920, there was a heated debate as to whether or not a thermal factor was really necessary or merely a modernistic luxury. this discussion was held in the carrier-pigeon-based predecessor of the ccp4 bulletin board (little-known fact: a lot of carrier pigeons had been bred by the british for communication duties during world war I and they found good jobs after the war in operating various bulletin boards) where a classically trained crystallographer semi-facetiously titled the thread "thermal factors - to be or not to be ?". When the debate subsided and the need for a new factor was agreed upon, it was only logical to call it the "B-factor" (actually, it was first called the "2B-factor" which differed from the modern B-factor by a factor of 2, but this was deemed too confusing) - the name "B-factor" was first coined by george sheldrick. by coincidence, he had just exhausted all the possible Fortran variable names starting with A (A, A1, A2, A3, ...) when he was about to implement isotropic thermal factor refinement in SHELX53. so the logical (and bold, if painful) step george took was to make this parameter the first in a (for him) whole new universe of Fortran variable names: B - it was invented by sacha baron cohen's great-grandfather. indeed, "B-factor" is an anagram of "Borat FC" ("fc" meaning "football club") i'm sure other ccp4bb-ers can come up with better explanations
- > This sounds like voodoo statistics to me. Can you suggest any mathematical basis for choosing an > I/sig(I) limit of 2 rather than some other number? funny you should say that, as the mathematical procedure does indeed involve some voodoo-mathics ! it goes roughly as follows: * take your age * stick this number of pins into a doll made to look like the referee of your paper * multiply by the number of legs that a goat has (mode, not average !) * slit the goat's throat and wash yourself in the blood * utter some incantations (preferably in pidgin, although french will do) * divide by the number of legs that a chicken has (mode again) * bite the chicken's head off (but don't swallow it !) * divide by your age if you have some pins, a goat and a chicken handy, you can easily verify the calculations for yourself ! (if you don't have any pins, you can probably skip that step, although you might end up with a purple pine-apple growing out of your head)
- > > A test by E Dodson - please ignore > > OK, this once. We don't normally like to ignore you, Eleanor. actually, it's a logical impossibility to ignore eleanor's mail. by the time you read the admonition "please ignore" it's already too late as you've already opened and read the mail --gerard ps: if you find this posting annoying, please ignore it before reading it
- Yoram ! Let me be unsel-fish for once and give you my number one blasphe-mouse crystallisation tip: Don't be too dog-matic and rat-ional - try adding some cat-ions or pet-roleum or unusual pig-ments (if budgy-tarily feasible, of course) ! Please feel free to pass it on to your cow-orkers ! --dvd P.S.: Remember that Hampton poster full of cute crystals ? Well, this is the equivalent for feline samples: http://www.ratemykitten.com/bestof.html A fine cat-alogue indeed !
The attached picture looked like this:
- Yoram ! Being the modest person that I am, I wouldn't dream of calling myself a prescient visionary or a profetic guru (although others may choose to do so of course). I would like to remind you, though, that more than 7 years ago I constructed a MAMA macro that produces a mask that can be used for solvent-flattening of an electron-density map of a cat (in P1 no less !). See the Uppsala Software News of 5 December 1997 (if you don't have that one handy, you can find it at http://xray.bmc.uu.se/usf/news/news.971205). The macro has been in OMAC ever since and still works with today's versions of MAMA (ftp://xray.bmc.uu.se/pub/gerard/omac/cat.mamac - you'll want to run MAMA with the "-b" flag so you don't have to confirm all the mask-deletion steps). The result is a mask that I imagine will be eminently suitable for improving your phases by solvent flattening (see the attached GIF image [if it gets through the CPPP bulletin board restriction of 10 KB postings, that is]). I hope you will remember me and my mask when you pick up your prize in Stockholm this December (how about a 50-50 split ?). With warm wishes and congratulations, --Gerard "USF - Serving the community and facilitating Nobel Prizes since 1836 !"
- hmmmmm - i am the last protein crystallographer to use overheads, and now all of a sudden it looks like i will be the last one to use silicon graphics machines too. by the way, is anyone other than i still using fortran ? --dvdinosaur p.s.: does anyone have an old punch-card reader they would like to get rid of?
- > Dear all - > > Greek lesson of the day; > > Eponymous == Non-anonymous > > non-an-onymous is a double negation and sounds horrible ... ;-) > > So, now lets clarify, that I prefer eponymous reviewers over anonymous authors, > like most people suggested. > > Tassos > > PS I don't sign my reviews, but i am sometimes worried that my > rather annoyingly sarcastic style of > commenting is recognizable by now, thanks to CCP4bb ;-) The author describes an interesting new word in the English language (or so he thinks). Unfortunately, he has not studied the existing literature very carefully. In particular, if the author had consulted some of the work carried out by Kleywegt et al. in Uppsala (*) he would have known that Greek is not the same as English. In the latter language, a perfectly fine antonym of the word "anonymous" exists in "onymous", which is formed in a simple reaction (the same way a "hydride" is formed from an "anhydride"). Evidence is omnipresent, e.g. in Google Rev Lett and at http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=onymous . Actually, the English language has usurped the word "eponymous" much like its progenitors did with the Elgin Marbles. However, in English this word refers to an eponym, i.e. a name for something that derives from a person's name (as in "wellies" (boots named after Lord Wellington), "Alzheimer" (disease named after Dr A), "Patterson" (map named after Dr P), "Ray-tracing" (technique named after some chap called Ray), or "to dodson" (overhead-presentation technique named after Dr D)). Apart from being poorly researched, the manuscript also suffers from an abundance of value judgements ("horrible", "annoyingly") and emoticons, poor lay-out, and interpunction that leaves something to be desired. In terms of adhering (or not) to the guidelines for authors, the manuscript lacks an abtract, a clear division into sections ("Introduction", "Methods", etc.) and cites only the author's own previous (largely anonymous) work. In all, I'm afraid that I cannot recommend that this manuscript be published in CCP4 Bull Board. (*) Published over many years in Dombo Journal (http://xray.bmc.uu.se/dombo) and CCP4 Bull Board (e.g. http://xray.bmc.uu.se/dombo/ccpbore.html). --A.N. Onymous
- well, my favourite "CD" would include classics such as: - David Bowie - Spacegroup Oddity - Rolling Jones - I can get no good diffraction - Interactive - Who is Alwyn ? - Rolling Bones - Back in the CCP4 - Talking Heads - Making peptides flippy floppy - Roxy Music - Do the beta-strand - INXS - Need "O" tonight - Bronski Beat - It ain't necessarily "O" - Soft Cell - Say 'Hell-"O" !', wave goodbye - Howard Jones - Like to get to know "O" well - Simple Minds - Somebody up there likes "O" - Clash - Should I stay or should I "O" ? - UB40 - I got "O" babe - Skinhead O'Connor - Nothing compares to "O" - Erasure - I love to hate "O" - Cure - Why can't I be "O" ? - Boomtown Rats - Someone's looking at "O" - Meat Loaf - "O" took the words right out of my mouth - Simple Minds - Promised "O" a miracle - Smiths - Never had no bone ever - Elvis Costell'O - This year's model - Smiths - What difference Fourier does it make ? - Pink Floyd - Another brick in the map - Le Club - Un Phe divers et rien de Glu - Afrika Bambaataa - Looking for the perfect fit - Smokey - Needles and twins - Smokey - Living next door to Alwyn - Smiths - I want the bone I can't have - Byrds - b-Turn b-Turn b-Turn - Joe Jackson - It's difference Fourier for girls - Police - Synchrotronicity - John Travolta & Olivia Newton John - You're the bone that I want - Beatles - She loves "O" - Ramones - Glad to see "O" go - Wham - Wake me up before you "O", "O" - Abba - Does your mother "O" ? - Chiffons - He's "O", fine - Yazoo - Don't "O" - Hot Chocolate - "O", you win again etc. etc. --cd
Swedish charity organisations responded immediately:
- OK. I admit that I am a largely unrepentent sinner and am possibly deserving of some slight come-uppance but this is unconsciencable. one lousy space. its nothing really. certainly omitting it shouldn't cause all my work to get flushed. omit that space and hit return and returned you are; to the UNIX prompt. thats it no hope of recovery no "you naughty boy" message its gone . period. in this case its " select_property ATOM_NAME =CA on" this missing space does it ^ its not even that obvious. oh well, swords were made to fall on in such cases. farewell Steve Ernst
- Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 16:43:22 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Spaces Without Borders - an international relief effort (Re: [o-info] harsh punishment) okay, folks - let's all chip in and dust off some of the spaces that have been sitting in old and forgotten files for years and send them to steve, citizen of a war-plagued and obviously space-deprived nation. steve, here's the first batch, from the good people of sweden (that's sweden, europe), separated by |-signs for easy dosing (i realise this is but a small set, but consuming too many spaces in a short time could leave you spaced out): | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (for the curious, these particular spaces were extracted from ancient x-plor-formatted reflection files which proved to be an extremely rich source of redundant and forgotten spaces) --spaceman dvd ps: if you have so many extra spaces that it would be too much to send just to steve, send them to the international space station instead and they will be distributed fairly among the space-deprived denizens of planet earth (so-called space shuttles will transport them to special distribution centres, called space bars) pps: please don't send any backspaces - that's just plain cruel ! and please make sure that you only send whole spaces (i.e., no subspaces) ppps: even if you don't have any spaces to spare yourself, you could organise charity events to raise spaces, e.g. a space walk (where people or companies pledge to sponsor every mile that you walk with one or more spaces)
- Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 18:50:36 +0200 (CEST) Subject: SAFETY WARNING !!! Re: Fwd: [ccp4bb]: heavy atom derivative > >we have had much luck making uranyl derivatives of a protein we are trying > >to phase. > >We thought we'd try Pu derivatives. Anyone know a good source for Pu OAc2? > > Have you tried the US gov or the black market? :-) but seriously, folks - if you use uranium sulfide, US, or boron-uranium sulfhydryl, BUSH, please make sure never ever to mix it with aqueous iridium, Ir(aq), since this mixture is highly explosive !!! --dvd
- > Robots are artists in the brute-force way that a monkey hitting > random keys on a typewriter from now until eternity will > eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare (or how > does that quote go?). The critical thing is the robot has to be > enough of an art critic to know when he has produced a masterpiece, > so some human doesn't have to screen all those trays. > > Or better- the artist is the one who programs the robot- the > robot is just a glorified paintbrush. see: A.M. Turing. "Computing machinery and intelligence". Mind, A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy, Vol. LIX, No. 236, pp. 433-460 (October, 1950). [yes, i really have a copy of that paper] we can easily devise a Turing test for crystallisation - if i show you a crystal and you cannot tell whether it was made by man or a machine, then the machine (if it was made by a machine) has done something artistic (if you subscribe to the premise that crystallisation is an art in the first place, obviously) of course, personally, i think that anything that can be programmed is not art - the person who does the programming is the artist. (and, to inspire them to further art, you should always offer such people loads of free beers when you meet them at conferences and workshops !) anyway - as someone once said: "everything can be automated, up to, but not including, what i do" ... --dvd [dvd is not in the lab right now and cannot answer his e-mail personally. this message was generated by dvd_auto_reply.pl v 0.1 with the following command-line options: --include_entry_from_literature_database --plug_for_free_beer --end_with_semi_relevant_quote --mostly_lower_case]
- > Not meaning a flame, but... > > > sulfate (NOT sulphate !!!!!) > > The British spell it Sulphate (Sulphur), and they (and also Americans) > spelled it that way long before we decided (in the 1970¹s?) to spell it > exclusively the other way. In reverence for the British roots of > crystallography and chemistry, and in light of the actual physical location > of CCP4, we should tolerate the flavour of their spelling as much as they > tolerate ours. actually, since a number of years (10 or 20 or so ?) the Royal Society of Chemistry (very british and very chemistry) prefers the spelling with an 'f'. looks like you're trying to be more british than the british ? i hope this posting doesn't cause any ufeaval. i'm merely trying to ufold the law. i know - it's an ufill struggle. perhaps we should allow for some loofoles ? (i said loofoles, *not* peefoles ! and not sapfire, sheferd or ufolstery either !) what does alex mcferson, f.d., have to say about this ? --dvd "Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur"
- Dies irae, Anno Domini 2003. Lectoribus salutem ! Primo, as amicus curiae, I (et alia) must hic et nunc express my ad lib agreement with the ex cathedra dictum of the other Gerard (the emeritus locus classicus, sui generis, and in toto not my alter ego, by the way), mutatis mutandis. And vice versa too, I presume (but as always: caveat emptor !), et cetera, ad infinitum (nauseam ?). Clearly, this is de facto a casus belli - pro bono publico (vide infra) ! Alea iacta est ! Quod erat demonstrandum. Secundo, the ex officio abuse of the expression 'ab initio' is, prima facie, reminiscent of that of the word 'novel' (sic!) in the title of scientific papers, inter alia. Surely, ad fundum, novelty is a conditio sine qua non for scientific papers ? Or is this not the communis opinio ? Mea culpa - I think I may, nota bene, have done this myself once, back in the dark 1980s (not something to put in one's curriculum vitae). On the other hand, it is not my modus operandi and, as my grandmother used to say: mei capilli sunt flagrantes (ipse dixit) ! Ex post facto, things are always easier a posteriori than a priori. Luctor et emergo (vide supra) ! In vino veritas (cum grano salis; vita brevis after all). Sic transit gloria CCP4-bulletin-boardi ! --Deo Volente Disco (persona non grata) Post scriptum: if your lingua franca is rusty, check out: - http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/classics/englatin.htm - http://www.les.aston.ac.uk/latin.html - http://educ2.hku.hk/~jsachs/latin.htm - http://www.ptloma.edu/ljml/hwood/Class/LATIN/expressions.htm PPS: I hope Tassos will not respond - timeo Danaos et dona ferentes !
(For more information about the proper use of apostrophes in the English language, see the site of a recent Ig Nobel Prize winner, the Apostrophe Protection Society.)
- > If your looking for a faculty position that combines scientific excellence > and a high quality of life, MSU-Bozeman is perfect for you. but what if "your" looking for a place where "you're" english language skills are appreciated ... ?
Some of the responses received:
- OK, your last post caught me at a particularly grouchy moment, but its a good example of why I almost never post things to CCP4BB, and why my colleague down the hall just unsubscribed.
Reply:
- Then, quickly delete the email and go read the letter-perfect add in Science. Can't we be a little relaxed in the email medium? With you setting the standards, I'll be afraid to post anything! (Tho' that mite not be two bad of a thing for the quality of the BB). You know americans cant spell!
Reply to the reply:
- funny spelling of the word "ad" there [...] but it's their own language !? and these are academics (well, if you count MSU, of course ;-)
- Oops- I thought that was a standard abbreviation for addvertisement. All the rest of the errors I threw in intentionally. [...] MSU in East Lansing is a fine school - home to Sheila Ferguson-Miller and (previously) Gerry Babcock. Maybe not quite as prestigious as U. of M. in Ann Arbor. But wait a minute- This is Montana, not Michigan. Never heard of the place!
And with friends like these who needs enemies:
- Give this man a break will you ? Even British people make mistakes - take a look at http://www.ccp4.ac.uk/reportaprob.html#whyanon (I counted 3 silly mistakes.)
- gerard, what does this prove? is the ccp4 bb really a place to show off language skills?
Reply:
- Man, is it hot in here, or is it just me ;) BTW, if people want to be anonymous, they can simply sign up for a free web-based email a-la-hotmail, or even better is hushmail.
- From: Not DeeVeeDee-AtAll-Honest <absolutely_not_dvd@hotmail.com> Subject: Re: [ccp4bb]: Faculty Position in Structural Biology at MSU great idea, jp ! --nn
Reply:
- Isn't ccp4 message board is a perfect place to learn and exhibit language skills? Only now we shall call it Coaching Crystallographers Correct Punctuation 4 free.
- errrrr, don't you mean "Crystallographers'" ?
- Speaking from the perspective of someone who can't spell a lick, I hope for a little latitude should a few errors creep in to my postings. On the other hand I find G DVD K's comments refreshing and entertaining. I hope people aren't put off by these remarks such that they would be disinclined to contribute to the bulletin bored. p.s. I use spell check.
Reply:
- And this is not comp.lang.anal.retentive, either. Stick to crystallography, it's more relevent.
- 'relevant' you mean ?
Reply:
- I seem to remember being punished, when I was an 8-year-old, for not using a capital letter at the begining of a sentence.
- capital punishment ?
Finally, CAPS forces retaliated:
- > Your comments are probably the reason why people > vote for anonymous postings to the ccp4bb. This is exactly not the case for me. I am strongly opposed to the idea of anonymous postings, and I imagine that flame wars would become much worse if they were allowed. For example, a week ago when someone asked how to get rid of water rings, no one had the nerve to suggest Lemon Pledge. That might not be the case if it could be suggested anonymously. For the current case, someone would undoubtedly note that the posting was from Montana State, and then we'd be off on the sheep jokes. But you're certainly not going to get any sheep jokes out of me today, for I am signing my name to this.
- Subject: CNN Breaking News (SUMMARY OF: [ccp4bb]: Faculty Position in Structural Biology at MSU) CNN Breaking News: Americka Strikez Beck ---------------------------------------- In retalliation for a cowardly attack on the American educational system (if not on the entire civilised world), American Anti-Grammar planes have begun E-mail bombing certain strategic targets in Uppsala (Sweden). In a first raid, the site of an alleged software factory (suspected of housing the headquarters of an extremist network of spelling fundamentalists and ANTI-CAPITAL-ISTS) was targeted, sources tell CNN. A train of (missspelled) amtrek-infected E-mails were allegedly intercepted by undercover Swedish spell-checking forces. The UN Security Council, meanwhile, unanimously accepted a resolution which gives the US-led Coalition Against Proper Spelling (CAPS) "da rite 2 self-d-fenz". The government of Sweden has been given an ultimatum. If they refuse to hand over the leader of the extremist network (identified only as /bin/dvd) within 48 hours, US Army Special Spelling Forces will be deployed (including the 15th Airborne Apostrophe Division). When captured, /bin/dvd can look forward to a sentence involving capital punishment (since he steadfastedly refuses to capitalise his sentences). In addition, American senators are calling for legislation that would force /bin/dvd to write 1000 times: "I WILL NEVER BE A WISE@SS AGAIN", according to CNN sources on the Hill. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, that's the consensus so far, anyway. Any further reactions only to /bin/dvd please - not to the entire mailing list. Well, I'm off - heading for my cave up in the mountains. Maybe I'll read a nice bed-time dictionary. --dvd
Reply:
- Eye, four one, agree width ewe -8track
Reply to the reply:
- thanks ! but do you realise that this makes you the richard gere of the spelling wars ? ;-) --/bin/dvd
- ooooo - OUCH! :) I think I've got "Shampoo" in my eyes......that stings!
- You have a good eye.
Reply:
- hehehe, i vote for yer funny!
Reply to the reply:
- thank you ! [...] by the way - on your puppy page, 'pasttime' should be 'pastime', and 'harrass' should be 'harass' you're welcome
Reply to the reply to the reply:
- strange how those words look better to me with more letters in themm! you're a bale of energy. . . a glowing bacon. . . solecist in
- glowing bacon ? are you calling me radio-active pigfat ? and why am i a solecist ? i'm opposed to nonstandard usage or grammatical construction ! or did you mean 'solepsist' ? ;-)
- thanks mate! That is the first time I have laughed out loud at the ccp4bb! It seems they may have misunderestimated you?
- Another favor- could you help us track down this miscreant who is anonymously spamming the CCP4 BB from a node at your University? Since the bulletin board accepts messages only from subscribers, he must have signed up under a frivolous assumed name, and it may be necessary to cancel his frivolous assumed subscription if the spam gets any worse.
- Just to let you know - some of us love this stuff. It saves us from being buried by the oppressive seriousness of our earnest little lives.
Reply:
- PS. My apologies in advance to G."DVD"K. for any spelling, typos, and grammatical errors which may appear in the above. Please understand that my native language is Z80 assembly, and that I tend to have trouble with words larger than 8 bits.
- cool ! does this mean we'll have a ZX81 version of pymol soon ? i have one with 1 kB of ram, plus a 16 kB expansion pack - will that suffice ?
- Great, (seriously) I'll always be grateful to any volunteers wishing to improve my grammar in any language. But I'd rather prefer a limited group conversation then BB. :-)
- I'm afraid we Americans have been a bit hard on poor Gerard, in our righteous outrage over his cowardly attack on our right to abuse the King's English. Especially devastating was the train of (missspelled) amtrek-infected E-mails (most of which did not go via CCP4BB, by the way). He seems to have fallen into a state of deep depression and sought refuge in the anonymity of hotmail.com (accessed via HTML from 130.238.37.79). What can we do to cheer him up? Don't send more mail via CCP4BB (I should be unsubscribed for this off-topic message!), and definitely don't send him personal email (It'll just look like more of the email bomber attack, especially if your american and cant spell). I suggest we all make a few visits to his personal web site, of which he is justly proud, and get his web counter to register a record number of visits. This will show that we are interested in his thoughts and creativity and not just his punctilious, perfectly spelled and syntaxed, bug-free programs (that would be http://alpha2.bmc.uu.se/~gerard/manuals/gerard_manuals.html) I've attached a mirror of his web counter to this email. If it is still stuck in the low 27000's when you receive this, click on over to: http://xray.bmc.uu.se/gerard/ and check out the DOMBO Journal or something. Let's see what the awesome power of sheer numbers of the CCP4 subscribers (including archive lurkers and anonymous hotmail subscribers) can do to brighten a displaced Dutchman's day! Anonymous PS - Apologies for the attachment. If you're reading this in unix or vms mail and have to save the attachment and open it in another application, don't bother. Just cut-and-paste the above URL to check the counter at the source.
- Hi Gerard, One of your best! Hope all is well in sunny Uppsala!
- I very much hope that you won't write the kind of e-mails again. It's simply completely impolite - and after all you are ruining your own name. At least in our department you are a well known ... ! So please think before you press the return button the next time - and maybe if you have the greatness to apologize for your offending e-mail.
- I agree with Brent Segelke. If I feel tired someday, I just have to read my ccp4bb and hope for refreshing comments from Gerard. It's refreshing, entertaining and often very informative.
Reply:
- As a victim of Gerard's language corrections in the past - I don't care :). As a Welshman - English is my second language and I've never got the hang of ' (every day I'm getting better and better....) - but sheep jokes - that's going too far - NO! (Montana sounds nice though...)
- wales ? where men are men ... and sheep are nervous ?
- In the last two days I've got 10 foolish messages which have nothing to do with crystallography. In my opinion, everyone deserves respect. It is not funny.
Reply:
- > CNN Breaking News: Americka Strikez Beck One relevant issue being covered up by the media: American ammunition stores for the grammar wars are believed to be low after the highly successful "vowel drop on Bosnia" in the previous century; many of the spelling errors seen since may be deliberate attempts at conservation. http://www.theonion.com/onion2816/vowels2816.html
Reply to the reply:
- actually, i suspect that this is just misinformation as part of the phi/psi-ops. the norwegian tv station Al-Fabeta reports that satellite images reveal major US vowel movements !
- the substitution of "your" for "you're" not only save a vowel, it also saves a punctuation mark for those europeans who can't distinguish between the two. did you ever hear about the scandinavian version of of the popular TV game show Wheel of Fortune, in which players are asked to "spin again, or cross out a vowel"?
- Actually, I think a few of the emails were pretty entertaining, except DVD's, which was actually hilarious.
- That said, I agree with you. My wife teaches sixth grade English and would have been horrified at this job posting.
- Okay, let's call it a day, folks. A selection of replies can be found at http://xray.bmc.uu.se/dombo/ccpbore.html --/bin/dvd PS: HBO have approached me today. They want to turn the whole episode into a mini-series. Rumour has it that the leading roles will be played by Kelsey Grammer and Tori Spelling.
- Last but one mail for the serious buffs :) There is an e-mail service called 'A word a day' (wordsmith). So, it may be worth popularizing it with a free publication in the DUMBO journal - A.Word.A.Day : http://wordsmith.org/awad/
- > That isnt necessarily true - Rmerge will increase with the number of > observations whilst Ranom will probably get smaller as your data > improves. what would Gerard say? this should be "as your data improve"
- I expect you saw the IgNobel award this year was won by the founder of the campaign to preserve the apostrophe. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1581000/1581086.stm
- thanks gerard. ive been kept amused these past few days and for that i'm profoundly grateful. but i just dont know how you have the energy !!!
- E = mc2 ... you'd be amazed how little mass you need to convert to generate enough energy to antagonise 250 milion (minus 10 or so) americans, and a couple of million swiss (99% of the complaints came from these two countries)
- Just wanted you to know that your name is still in good standing in my department!* [...] *With those who know who you are - I think there is one other besides me.
Reply:
- As I am sure others have commented.... >PS: HBO have approached me today. They want to turn the whole ^- has
- aaah, but i use "HBO" as shorthand for "the fine folks of the Home Box Office satellite channel's mini-series production department", you see
About a month later, on 20 November 2001, the following appeared as a post scriptum to a posting on the O-info mailing list:
- Thank you for a good laugh on an otherwise rather dull day.
- P.S.: Look what I found in an old file on my Mac: "It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs." Oxford University Press, Edpress News
- > I decided to try ccp4-Nt and 'O' NT. I run into a strange problem. > I know that 'O' cannot read ccp4 maps made in unix on the nt. It cannot > read ccp4 maps made by CCP4-NT too. And CCP4-NT does not run mapman to > make 'O' files (or am I wrong about this). It ends up being my running > ccp4 on NT, going to unix to run mapman to make a brix file and going back > to NT for 'O'. Essentially meaning I cannot get rid of my unix box. I am right, *but* ... the good news is that you *can* get rid of your windows box ! o, ccp4 and mapman all run under unix ;-)
- Subject: This desk could be yours ! Parts/Attachments: 1 Shown 68 lines Text 2 OK 36 KB Image, "" [...] Yes, we are giving away a fantastic desk, plus an NT/Linux box, a telephone and much, much more ! One lucky winner will get all this in return for working as a post-doc in structural bioinformatics for a period of at least one year (see below). The desk stands in beautiful Uppsala, Sweden, home of some of structural biology's most famous desks. --Gerard Kleywegt PS: If a winner is not identified by 31 March, I lose the grant *and* the desk. [...]
To which "Airlie" replied:
- errr, why is the word 'hierarchy' consistently spelled in an unconventional fashion on ccp4-dev ? > In this sense the pname refers to a "model" level of the heirarchy, above the word is not related to 'heir' or 'inheritance'. could it be a c++-related job injury that causes this ? --Det Sup Abe Cedarianism Scotland Yard, Spelling Squad Ob.Spell: "Spelling is a lossed art"
Kevin Cowtan replied:
- Good too sea your extending you're area of investigation, Superintendent.
After which it was pointed out that:
- > errr, why is the word 'hierarchy' consistently > spelled in an unconventional fashion on ccp4-dev ? I my case, I know just enough german to make a complete fool of myself, and so tend to spell any word on which I haven't been trained with -ei or -ie according to whether the sound is 'aye' or 'ee'!
Anastassis Perrakis replied (in a private mail):
- well kevin, we can blame germans for much, but not for giving us the word 'hierarchy' (although it's not exactly an un-german concept, of course). it derives from the greek 'hierarkhia' = 'rule of a high priest'. my thesaurus suggests that 'pecking order' might be a reasonable synonym. --abe Ob.Eng: "What's another word for 'thesaurus' ?"
To which he received the following reply:
- It seems that I am in constant (although mild) disagreement with Gerard's thesaurus, which is apparently written by a Dutchman descendant of Erasmus who noit only thinks he can pronounce Greek better than Greeks (resulting in a blind expression in my face when my literate Dutch collegues cite Homer in the prototype) but also think that Greek words mean something close but not what Greeks mean ... Iereas: Priest Arxi: 'Rule', but also 'Beginning' .. although these imply that 'rule of a high priest' is indeed the correct thing (... i.e. I am again confused) 'Ierarxia' is much more used to show the internal order in an organisational scheme, rather than the fact the 'the boss rules'. 'pecking order' is indeed a good synonym - as far as my English allow me to comment on that.
- kali nikta ! errrr, i was trying to explain the etymology going back to ancient greek, rather than its connotations in modern greek. and of course i didn't invent it myself - i found it in my battered copy of the american heritage dictionary. obviously, in modern-day parlance the word means the same in many languages (hierarchy in english, hierarchie in dutch, hierarki in swedish, ...) as for homer: his works are best read in the original dutch of course (just as shakespeare is best read in the original klingon) as for dutchmen: you should know that they are always right (or think they are). if the germans hadn't already invented the term 'Besserwisser', the dutch would have done so (but better !). this applies to anything from other people's languages to foreign policy (dutch politicians always know exactly what is wrong with the internal politics of other countries). perhaps the most famous exponent of this trait is johan cruijff who knows *everything* better. he once "explained" to raymond ceulemans (who has been european and world billiards champion many times) that he was holding his cue stick wrongly ... jc also once said: "i rarely make mistakes, because i find it very difficult to err" ... --abe Ob.Greek: what the rest of the world calls 'the Greek position' is called 'the Ottoman position' in Greece !
- > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Mykol Larvie mykol@mit.edu > > > "Few markets can ever have been as competitive as those that > flourished in Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century, > when infants became deformed as they toiled their way to an early > death in the pits and mills of the Black Country. And there is > no lack of examples today to confirm the fact also that well- > functioning markets have no innate tendency to promote excellence in > any form. They offer no resistance to forces making for a descent > into cultural barbarity or moral depravity." -- Robert Solo top 5 replies to this quotation: - 5 - did he think of that all by himself ? - 4 - is he han solo's brother ? - 3 - and 100 years from now they will talk similarly of the young crystallographers that became deformed as they toiled away in the pits and mills of the Structural Genomics Factories - 2 - hmm, the choice between cultural barbarity and moral depravity is a tough one ! - 1 - he's talking of moral depravity as if it's something negative !?
