Monday, July 16, 2007

cheers, quark, fuschia

"Cheers, bruv," says the guard on the train when I show him my ticket.

The word quark signifies two very different things: a low fat curd cheese, and a sub atomic or elementary particle, hypothetical rather than directly observable. Setting aside the cheese, I learn today that the quark is linguistically rich. Six kinds of quark have been named. They are: up quark, down quark, charmed quark, strange quark, bottom quark and top quark. Bottom quark is sometimes also known as beauty and top quark as truth.

Two fuschias are in full flower in the garden just now. Lineaus would have enjoyed the sight. He compared the sexual parts of flowers to complicated human relationships. The fuschia, which usually has eight stamens, he described, "as eight men in the same bridal suite with one woman."

2 comments:

Lucy said...

4 days absence, 4 x NTT, feasting!

Unknown said...

Ah, Lucy. I missed you. Sounds as though you had a good time.