Yes, bless you, Julie, and bless Jenn and her inspirational professor. May they make science sing and may thousands join the chorus.
Oh, Mark, I laughed too - but I understood your "never at the time". My sister rang me last night to share this. She works as a classroom assistant and has been undertaking assessments of very small children about to be admitted to the reception class. One of the "tests" is to see whether they can "listen and repeat" words to which they are unlikely to have been exposed hitherto. One of the words is "heliotrope".
One of the children listened to my sister and stared at her with a frown, obviously desperate to make sense of what he was hearing. She repeated the word slowly and clearly. He thought a little longer, then said, tentatively, "HillaryTrump?"
When we had finished drumming our heels on the floor and I had expressed my admiration for the child, we fell to speculating. After all, this was a four-year-old. In England.
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