To get you started (in case you really want to know more), there are:

• Fermions (which are either quarks or leptons (from the Greek for “thin”))
• Bosons
• Hadrons (which are either mesons (from the Greek for “intermediate”) or baryons (from the Greek for “heavy”))

There are more, and my head is swimming. You figure it out from there?

There is also such thing in physics (and therefore the world) as strange quarks and charm quarks, which sound, dare I say it, charmingly quirky.

[p.s. and now that you know what a "hadron" is, see what the large hadron collider will do, starting Sept. 10...]

Some people’s bodies are never identified or claimed. The people whose jobs are to track down the bodies’ families sometimes can’t. (Or sometimes the family can’t afford a funeral, which is another issue.) I’m not sure what happens elsewhere, but Los Angeles County cremates these bodies, stores the ashes in plastic bags for four years, then buries the remains in one mass ceremony.

I’m curious to attend one of these burials. People have so many various beliefs about death and the body, even within the same religion—how do you reconcile these into one?—one right thing to say over the remains of all of these people whose religious and spiritual preferences are unknown. And how do you say the right thing when no one’s there to listen? Who are you comforting? Someone four years gone? Someone living who believes this compensates for something? What do you say over the remains of hundreds/thousands of people you don’t know, many of whom nobody seems to know or nobody knows well enough to care? Some of whom probably chose this course—life and death alone. I fascinated that it’s still important to say something because it really might be.

Relatedly: unclaimed ashes at funeral homes

[p.s., 9/4/08: Today (in a tidy package connecting my current job to my last job, to one of my favorite books, to this post from yesterday) I found this article  about David Maisel's new photography book Library of Dust. His photos are of metal canisters containing unclaimed cremains from an Oregon psychiatric hospital from the 20th century.]

i sometimes wonder whether my clumsiness is just a physical expression of a psychological fact: i am not very self-aware. yes, in the most basic sense i am, of course, self-aware. i am sentient; i am thinking therefore being. and on a deeper level i am overly self-aware—constant appraisal of future and past action or inaction. i obsess over myself (because i’m the world i know). however, on a further level, a different plane, i’m a stranger to myself. my friends will bring up some facial expression i make repeatedly or some odd, habitual pattern of speech, and it’s like looking in a mirror too long—i don’t see me in their words. there’s a chance i consistently pick friends who lie to me about me, but that seems unlikely, or, at the very least, another example of self-unawareness. and so i trip, stutter, as stub, while my flaws arrive like epiphanies from the mouths of people who don’t know me at all but know me better than i know myself.

apocryphal—of doubtful authenticity; spurious [another good word]; of, or pertaining to, the Apocrypha (from Greek word meaning “those having been hidden away”)

commensurate—equal in extent; corresponding in size/amount

inexorable—not to be persuaded or stopped; relentless;

intimation—hint; implication

polysemy—(from the Greek for “multiple meaning”) diversity of meanings; from Wikipedia: “The difference between homonyms and polysemes is subtle. Lexicographers define polysemes within a single dictionary lemma, numbering different meanings, while homonyms are treated in separate lemmata.”

ratiocination—the process of reasoning

untenable—not able to be defended

as in:

Despite all of her powers of ratiocination, her argument was untenable due to the apocryphal nature of her sources and the polysemy of their word choices. Her detractors were inexorable and, with an intimation about her waning powers of logic, launched a campaign commensurate with Sherman’s to prove once and for all that moles are not “people too.”

“Found photographs are media artifacts of a peculiar kind because they were never meant to be viewed and interpreted by total strangers. Because the original contexts that anchored their meaning have been severed from them, found photographs foster a new and valuable ‘reading’ disposition, one that sharpens our inferential skills and reflects upon our ordinary habits of perception. The best conclusions we can draw from found photographs are conclusions about ourselves; when we interpret and react to found photographs, we reveal our own perceptual processes.” (4)

found photo finder as “voyeur, detective, Surrealist, and social scientist” (12)

“He was thinking about automatic teller machines. The term was aged and burdened by its own historical memory.” p. 54

“It is what people think they see in another person that makes his reality. If they think he walks at a slant, then he walks at a slant, uncoordinated, because that is his role in the lives around him.” p. 57

p. 180 (backwards)

“How could he take a step in any direction if all directions were the same?”

“There was nowhere he wanted to go, nothing to think about, no one waiting.”

“He hadn’t planned on this. Where was the life he’d always led?”

“He hadn’t realized this could happen to him. The moment was empty of urgency and purpose.”

“He stood in the street. There was nothing to do.”

acclimation neuromast philocatholic patio miniver extemporarily pantothenic typer

And though I’m sure it’s some kind of program that randomly generates these word lists to trick spam-catchers, I do like imagining some actual person taking such pride in his/her spam that he/she individually comes up with a word lists for each post… or someone at least who carefully constructed a computer program that would write the phrases to perfection. (I’m thinking along the lines of David Cope’s EMI program composing music.)

(from various online dictionaries and my brain:)

• acclimation—the process of acclimating or of becoming acclimated
• neuromast—one of a small cluster of sensory cells that are part of the lateral line system of fish and larval amphibians
• philocatholic—Catholic loving (?)
• patio—an outdoor space generally used for dining or recreation
• miniver—a white or light gray fur used as a trim on medieval robes
• extemporarily—performed with little or no preparation; extemporaneously
• pantothenic—pantothenic acid = vitamin B5
• typer—typist (?)

or “They Don’t Make ‘em Like They Used To”

Some Came Running trailer:

“Look forward to a new dramatic experience”

“This is Parkman the setting for a bold panorama of adult emotions”

“Some Came Running reveals with startling force the innermost secrets of a town and its people, boldly played by a cast as big as its story.”

The Persistence of Memory

The Treachery of Images

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

that’s right: “the” and “of” in their titles. obviously.

lotsa similar scenes:

nice sky

a place to sit

oasis from afar

oasis from anear