29 MAY 2012 by ideonexus

 On Naming the Quark

In 1963, when I assigned the name 'quark' to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been 'kwork.' Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word 'quark' in the phrase 'Three quarks for Muster Mark.' Since 'quark' (meaning, for one thing, the cry of a gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with 'Mark,' as well as 'bark' and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it...
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It comes from "Finnegans Wake" and occurs in threes.

01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus

 Cyberspace as a State of Mind

Occasionally, the metaphoric location of the mind of a person in hack mode. Some hackers report experiencing strong synesthetic imagery when in hack mode, interestingly, independent reports from multiple sources suggest that there are common features to the experience. In particular, the dominant colors of this subjective cyberspace are often gray and silver, and the imagery often involves constellations of marching dots, elaborate shifting patterns of lines and angles, or moir
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A mental place hackers go to when focused in hack mode.