h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Referring to your second footnote:
if quarks are the most fundamental particles, how can they be made up of even smaller particles? Would not those be the smallest particles then? The answer is pure semantics: if something is the smallest, there cannot be anything smaller.

I was just trying to poke fun at infinity...

Besides, they may come up with what makes up quarks in a few years, anyway... and then tackle what makes up sub-quarks and so on. We think of quarks as fundamental now, but as time goes on...

Relevancy to present time is so overrated.

Well, I actually believe that there are limits to how far we can go. And the substructure of quarks is one of them. Theoretically, yes. Theorists can concoct new theories involving substructures of quarks to explain the data we have these days, or those to come. But there are other, QCD-based models which do the same job and are more simple.
A strong signal for a substructure of quarks would be the establishment of scaling behaviour at much higher energies, and with much higher I mean something that we are not going to achieve in a matter of a few years.
If this sounds nit-picky, I am deeply sorry, but I really like this line of thought!

Now MY brain hurts! (Please excuse me, I'm terminally right-brained.)

There are limits, of course, I totally agree. We may not find out what those limits are within the next few years, but, eh, who knows? I'm outta my league.

(The footnote doesn't screw things up that much, does it? I sort of meant it as sort of an everyman question or something that a young child would ask. Should I cut it out completely?)

Naaahhh, don't cut it out. It ends with a statement that shows very nicely how confused the whole footnote is. So, yeah, leave it in!
Just my 2 cents worth.

Okay.

<--- me being happy and rather untroubled, for the moment.