CERN Love » cocky http://www.cernlove.org/blog where physics and life collide Wed, 07 Dec 2011 22:53:57 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Losing control http://www.cernlove.org/blog/2009/12/losing-control/ http://www.cernlove.org/blog/2009/12/losing-control/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:00:08 +0000 lovehurts http://www.cernlove.org/blog/?p=1135 Clearly, with all the excitement that comes along with proton beams and collisions, it’s easy for us to get a little ahead of ourselves.  In all honesty, we simply get a bit cocky when we’re setting world records on a weekly basis — in the context of high energy particle physics, of course.  As such, we feel it’s appropriate to push the limits, in many areas of our lives.

One such area in which the boundaries have recently become blurred is in electronic communication.  Now, CERN is no stranger to ridiculous e-mail incidents, but I feel like the past week has exposed a new and dangerous beast.

In the past two weeks, my inbox has exploded.  I’ve received over 2000 e-mails related to the naturally exciting developments we’ve been a part of recently.  As such, it’s reasonable that the authors of these many messages might have stopped paying attention to details.  The occasional mis-capitalization, excessive use of commas, and over-use of the phrase “in principle” are not new features to e-mails passed around CERN.  However, I saw something for the first time this week which truly stunned me.

In a salutation of an e-mail sent to one of the many e-mail lists of which I am a member, I saw something truly special.  Consider this e-mail:

Hi *,

I’m addressing everyone on the list, and I clearly have to say whatever it is I’m saying quickly.  I’ve demonstrated that in my salutation.

Regards,

Me

At first, I was baffled.  After an instant, though, I realized what he was doing.  I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from seeing this.

To my collaborators: please, don’t.  Don’t do that.  Stop.

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