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Comment Board Trivia | by SaleGamine | 2002-01-03 00:00:31 |
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deleveled | by Hektor | 2002-01-03 00:12:03 |
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I find two (15 letters) | by SaleGamine | 2002-01-03 00:17:20 |
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Probably right ... question? (n/t) | by Hektor | 2002-01-03 00:33:10 |
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Sorry, I thought I'd put it in.. | by SaleGamine | 2002-01-03 00:43:52 |
| James Joyce |
by Hektor |
2002-01-03 00:52:45 |
Word history:
"Three quarks for Muster Mark!/Sure he hasn't got much of a bark/And sure any he has it's all beside the mark." This passage from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, part of a scurrilous 13-line poem directed against King Mark, the cuckolded husband in the Tristan legend, has left its mark on modern physics. The poem and the accompanying prose are packed with names of birds and words suggestive of birds, and the poem is a squawk against the king that suggests the cawing of a crow. The word quark comes from the standard English verb quark, meaning ?to caw, croak,? and also from the dialectal verb quawk, meaning ?to caw, screech like a bird.? It is easy to see why Joyce chose the word, but why should it have become the name for a group of hypothetical subatomic particles proposed as the fundamental units of matter? Murray Gell-Mann, the physicist who proposed this name for these particles, said in a private letter of June 27, 1978, to the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary that he had been influenced by Joyce's words: ?The allusion to three quarks seemed perfect? (originally there were only three subatomic quarks). Gell-Mann, however, wanted to pronounce the word with (ô) not (ä), as Joyce seemed to indicate by rhyming words in the vicinity such as Mark. Gell-Mann got around that ?by supposing that one ingredient of the line ?Three quarks for Muster Mark? was a cry of ?Three quarts for Mister . . . ? heard in H.C. Earwicker's pub,? a plausible suggestion given the complex punning in Joyce's novel. It seems appropriate that this perplexing and humorous novel should have supplied the term for particles that come in six ?flavors? and three ?colors.?
And the killer question from yesterday:
"Why was the (now former) danish prime minister in the Guinness Book of Records in the last edition (2002?)?"
He was the only head of state who could be found in a regular phonebook.
Who got the very first post on userfriendly's commentboard? |
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[ Reply ] |
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But that's not who the credited it to. (n/t) | by SaleGamine | 2002-01-03 00:54:30 |
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Also the one I had in mind used the term first. (n/t) | by SaleGamine | 2002-01-03 00:57:14 |
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And you killer question was finally | by SaleGamine | 2002-01-03 00:59:47 |
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Didn't see that one... | by Hektor | 2002-01-03 01:03:20 |
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It still isn't James Joyce... (n/t) | by SaleGamine | 2002-01-03 01:10:48 |
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okies prolly wrong but - didn't Arthur C Clarke | by Samsara | 2002-01-03 01:19:43 |
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Not Clarke, I thought this would be a very easy on | by SaleGamine | 2002-01-03 01:32:42 |
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Dr*t! My apologies, Google | by SaleGamine | 2002-01-03 01:37:24 |
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okies we go with Hector... but what was the other | by Samsara | 2002-01-03 01:40:13 |
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The one who created lots of silly words | by SaleGamine | 2002-01-03 01:42:01 |
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lazy sams decides to guess instead of checking | by Samsara | 2002-01-03 01:42:03 |
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I dunno if you are right, but if so, | by Blackbyrd2 | 2002-01-03 01:51:17 |
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HEKTOR!!! COOOOEEEE????? | by Samsara | 2002-01-03 02:04:35 |
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I have no idea .. haven't checked :-) | by Hektor | 2002-01-03 02:07:43 |
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*waps Hektor round the head with a herring* | by Samsara | 2002-01-03 02:22:00 |
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I thought somone like Kickstart could see | by Hektor | 2002-01-03 02:38:00 |
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heh ok so we'll just go with BlackByrd2's q then! | by Samsara | 2002-01-03 02:43:01 |
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AHEM! Eddie Fleegerbeeger with the Society for the | by adiplomat | 2002-01-03 02:45:18 |
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aargh - apparently i've been in gaol for a while | by Samsara | 2002-01-03 07:16:57 |
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Somebody choose a new question... | by Blackbyrd2 | 2002-01-03 03:38:43 |
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You just ask another question :-) (n/t) | by Hektor | 2002-01-03 03:40:49 |
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Allright - I'll ask another question | by Hektor | 2002-01-03 04:25:51 |
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Svend_Auken AT socialdemokratiet.dk | by Blackbyrd2 | 2002-01-03 04:35:34 |
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I mean his physical postal address | by Hektor | 2002-01-03 04:37:32 |
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Nu uh, you didn't specify. :P (n/t) | by Blackbyrd2 | 2002-01-03 04:38:52 |
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How's this? | by Blackbyrd2 | 2002-01-03 04:40:30 |
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Correct. Now ask a question. (n/t) | by Hektor | 2002-01-03 04:41:20 |
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It's on top..new thread. (n/t) | by Blackbyrd2 | 2002-01-03 04:44:34 |
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Correct. Now ask a question. (n/t) | by Hektor | 2002-01-03 04:41:21 |
