  We argue that one has to distinguish between the Harari-Shupe model (HSM) and
the Harari-Shupe observation (HSO). The former - in which quarks and leptons
are viewed as composite objects built from confined fermionic subparticles
(`rishons') - is known to be beset with many difficulties. The latter may be
roughly defined as this part of the HSM that really works. We recall that the
phase-space Clifford-algebra approach leads to the HSO without any of the HSM
problems and discuss in some detail how this is achieved. The light which the
phase-space-based view sheds on the HSO sets then a new direction along which
the connection between space and particle properties could be studied and
offers a glimpse into weird physics that probably lurks much deeper than the
field-theoretical approach of the Standard Model.
