Thumbnail (pronounced thuhm-neyl)
(1) The (finger)nail of the thumb.
(2) As thumbnail sketch, anything quite small or brief,
as a small drawing or short essay, a précis or summary.
(3) In printing, a small, rough dummy.
(4) In journalism, a half-column portrait in a newspaper
(also called the porkchop).
(5) Something quite small or brief; concise.
(6) Concisely to describe (something or someone).
(7) In computing (on the graphical user interfaces (GUI) of
operating systems), a small image used as
a preview of the original which loads upon clicking the thumbnail. Unlike an icon, which is (Usually)
a representative symbol, a thumbnail is a smaller copy of the original larger
image (although technically, a thumbnail can be constructed which reports a smaller
file size than the original).
1595–1605: The construct was thumb + nail. Thumb was from the Middle English thombe, thoume & thoumbe, from the Old English þūma, from the Proto-West Germanic þūmō, from the Proto-Germanic þūmô from Proto-Indo-European tūm- (to grow). The spellings thum, thume & thumbe were
still in use in the late seventeenth century but are all long obsolete. Nail was from the Middle English nail & nayl, from the Old English næġl,
from the Proto-West Germanic nagl,
from the Proto-Germanic naglaz, from the
primitive Indo-European hnogh- (nail). The earliest
known instance of the phrase “thumbnail sketch” in the sense of "drawing or sketch of a small size" (though
usually not literally the size of a thumbnail) dates from 1852, the verb usage
adopted in the 1930s. Thumbnail is a noun &
adjective; thumbnailer is a noun, thumbnailed is a verb & adjective and
thumbnailing is a verb; the noun plural is thumbnails.
Fifteen images of Lindsay Lohan’s thumbnails.
The term "thumbnail sketch" began with architects,
designers and artists who quickly would create small, conceptual sketches of
their ideas so they could be tested without the time or effort required to render
at full-scale. While it’s possible some
may literally have been the size of a actual thumbnail, most would have been
larger and the term was chosen just as something indicative of “smallness”. The practice or architects and others creating
small sketches was of course ancient and may even have been associated with
prehistoric cave painting but it was in the mid-nineteenth century the term “thumbnail
sketch” came to be used. The use of the thumbnail
sketch (including the companion “pencil test” in graphic design) is now
universal in industries where images need to be created and the techniques learned
proved useful in the 1980s when icons became widely used in the on were used on
graphical user interfaces (GUI) of operating systems. In text, in the 1950s, the thumbnail sketch
came to be applied to any a précis or summary and has always been prevalent in
publishing and criticism (as brief plot summaries, reviews etc) and as
short-form biographical data, especially when assembled in a list of those so profiled.
Thumbnail sketches of recent Australian administrations
Kevin Rudd (right) & Cardinal Pell (left), 2010.
Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010
& 2013): There have been few Australian prime-ministers who entered office
with such goodwill as that enjoyed by Kevin Rudd and none who have so quickly
squandered it all. Mr Rudd’s win in 2007
was a testament to his personal popularity and a reasonable achievement given
that, by any standards, on paper, the previous government shouldn’t have lost
office, there being no crisis, an outstandingly good fiscal position, low
unemployment and no serious scandals.
Essentially, the electorate seemed bored by a decade-odd of dull
competence and Mr Rudd was new, presentable and in his nerdy, weird way,
appealing and thus the country voted. His
honeymoon wasn’t noticeably short but he had the misfortune to be prime-minister
when the global financial crisis (GFC) hit and while for many reasons,
Australia was relatively unaffected, the stresses it induced revealed tensions in his
government and his background as a public servant wasn’t useful whenever decisiveness
was required; long used to providing advice to others who made decisions, his
government stuttered under the weight of committees and boards of enquiry. A contrast with this intellectual timidity
was his reputation for arrogance and abrasiveness when dealing with his
colleagues and this didn’t help him maintain their support; he lost an internal
party vote in 2010 and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) choose another leader. In 2023, it was announced Dr Rudd would be
Australia’s next ambassador to the United States and there are rumors he’s negotiated
a secret, back-channel deal whereby he reports directly to the prime-minister
and not, as is usual, to the foreign minister.
Julia Gillard (left) & Kevin Rudd (right), 2013.
Julia Gillard (b 1961; Australian prime minister
2010-2013): Julia Gillard is thus far
the only woman to become Australia’s prime-minister and some of the treatment
she endured in office might make a few women wonder if reaching the top of the
greasy pole is worth the price to be paid.
That said, it’s still a good gig and many will try. Metaphorically knifing her predecessor in the
back meant her premiership didn’t start in the happiest of circumstances and it
didn’t help and he made little attempt to conceal his thoughts on recent
events. The poison spread through the party
and the healthy majority gained in 2007 was lost in the 2010 election, the
Gillard government surviving only with the support of three independents, all
of whom extracted their own price.
Bizarrely as it might seem to some, Rudd returned for a while as foreign
minister, an unhappy experience for many.
It couldn’t last and it didn’t, Mr Rudd resigning and unsuccessfully
contesting the leadership. Still despite
it all, on paper, the Gillard government managed things successfully in a tight
parliament and although the actual achievements were slight, they probably exceed
expectations. Ms Gillard is probably
best remembered for her “misogyny” speech which deservedly went viral because
it was highly entertaining although it did reveal someone sensitive to
criticism and one wonders if she’d ever reviewed some of things said about male
politicians over the centuries. It’s
clearly a more sensitive age but nor did she appear to see any inconsistencies
between the words spat at her and her use of “poodle” and “mincing” (with all
that they imply) when decrying one of her male opponents. As it was, Mr Rudd got his revenge, toppling her
in 2013 although his victory may have seemed pyrrhic (his second coming lasting
three months-odd), he was probably content.
Tony Abbott (left) & Vladimir Putin (right) with koalas, 2014.
Tony Abbott (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2013-2015):
One probably disappointed that Ms Gillard was in 2013 replaced was Mr
Abbott because all the indications were the Liberal-National coalition’s victory
in the 2013 election would have produced a landslide-scale majority rather than
the merely comfortable one achieved against Mr Rudd. Still, the majority was sufficient for Mr
Abbott easily to purse his objectives and he immediately set to reducing expenditure,
cutting taxes, stopping irregular immigration (his famous “stop the boats”
campaign lent three word slogans (3WS) a new popularity which endures to this
day) and attacking trade unions. He was
a very different character from Mr Rudd but similarly inept in managing public
perception of his government. In his
thoughts, there was a certainly of purpose Mr Rudd lacked but the core problem
was that his world view seemed to have been set in stone by the Jesuits who taught
him while he was training for the priesthood and while much had changed since
the fourteenth century, he’d not moved on.
Thus created were the tensions which marked his government which was split
between technocratic realists, right-wing fanatics, a genuinely liberal wing
and his coalition partners, the National Party which was devoted to the horse trading
necessary to extract the money required to pork-barrel their
electorates. Presiding over this lot as
a leader with thoughts were more akin to the old Democratic Labor Party (DLP)
than anything from the third millennium, it’s probably remarkable Mr Abbott lasted
as long as he did. The 2014 budget which
made big cuts was blamed by many for his demise and while it’s true it was
badly designed and poorly explained, it does appear Mr Abbott, while one of the most formidably focused and effective oppositions leaders, simply
lacked the skills needed to be prime-minister.
In 2013, he lost an internal party ballot to the man he’d replaced in a
similar vote in 2009.
Malcolm Turnbull (right) & Peter Dutton (left) roadside billboard (2016).
Malcolm Turnbull (b 1954; Australian prime minister 2015-2018): There was an unusually great public optimism
which immediately surrounded Mr Turnbull’s accession to office. So encouraging were the polls that he
probably should have gone to an early election as Anthony Eden (1897-1977; UK
prime-minister 1955-1957) did in 1955, thus avoiding the grinding down of energy
inevitable in “fag-end” administrations.
Instead he delayed, making the same mistake as Gordon Brown (b 1951; UK
prime-minister 2007-2010) and John Gorton (1911-2002; Australian prime-minister
1968-1971) and the early support evaporated, the government surviving the 2016
election with only a slender majority. Being
from the liberal wing, Mr Turnbull really wasn’t a good fit as leader of the modern Liberal Party he’d been accepted only because he was rich, a virtue which in the party tends to mean other vices are overlooked (if not forgiven). This allowed him sometimes to prevail but ultimately
it was the corrosive and related issues of energy and an emissions reduction
policy which proved his nemesis. Even if
the public didn’t fully understand the intricacies of the issue (and the especially
complex mechanisms in the associated legislation), increasingly they were being
persuaded by the science underlying climate change and just wanted the matter
resolved. The factions in the Liberal-National
coalition had for more than a decade been torn asunder by climate policy and
the divisions poisoned public perception of the government; Mr Abbott may have been wrong in how he
handled the matter in 2013 but he was at least certain and decisive and was
accordingly rewarded. Support for Mr
Turnbull eroded and in an amusingly chaotic leadership coup in 2018, he lost
the leadership. In retirement, he found
common cause with Mr Rudd as they joined to complain about the undue influence
Rupert Murdoch’s (b 1931) News Corporation exerts in Australian politics,
especially the national daily The Australian
which, despite a notionally small distribution, is highly effective in setting
agendas, forcing other outlets to pursue News Corp's pet issues.
The Turnbull administration is remembered also for imposing the "bonk ban", a consequence of one of the many extra-parliamentary antics of "bonking Barnaby" (Barnaby Joyce, b 1967; thrice (between local difficulties) deputy prime minister of Australia 2016-2022 and known also within the beltway as "the beetrooter", a nicknamed explained as (1) an allusion to this often florid complexion and (2) the use of "root" in Australia to refer to sexual intercourse). Mr Turnbull was a keen student of etymology and having once worked as a journalist was fond of the alliterative phrase so when writing his memoir (A Bigger Picture (2020)) he included a short chapter entitled "Barnaby and the bonk ban". As well as the events which lent the text it's title, the chapter was memorable for his inclusion of perhaps the most vivid thumbnail sketch of Barnaby Joyce yet penned:
"Barnaby is a complex, intense, furious personality. Red-faced, in full flight he gives the impression he's about to explode. He's highly intelligent, often good-humoured but also has a dark and almost menacing side - not unlike Abbott (Tony Abbott (b 1957; prime-minister of Australia 2013-2015)) - that seems to indicate he wrestles with inner troubles and torments."
Mr Turnbull and Mr Joyce in parliament, House of Representatives, Canberra, ACT.
The substantive matter was the revelation in mid-2017 the press had become aware Mr Joyce (a married man with four daughters) was (1) conducting an affair with a member of his staff and (2) that the young lady was with child. Mr Turnbull recorded that when asked, Mr Joyce denied both "rumors", which does sound like a lie but in the narrow sense may have verged on "the not wholly implausible" on the basis that, as he pointed out in a later television interview, the question of paternity was at the time “...a bit of a grey area”. Mr Joyce and his mistress later married and now have two children so all's well that end's well (at least for them) and Mr Turnbull didn't so much shut the gate after the horse had bolted as install inter-connecting doors in the stables. His amendments to the Australian Ministerial Code of Conduct (an accommodating document very much in the spirit of Lord Castlereagh's (1769–1822; UK foreign secretary 1812-1822) critique of the Holy Alliance) banned ministers from bonking their staff which sounds uncontroversial but was silent on them bonking the staff of the minister in the office down the corridor. So the net effect was probably positive in that staff having affairs with their ministerial boss would gain experience through cross-exposure to other portfolio areas although there's the obvious moral hazard in that they might be tempted to conduct trysts just to engineer a transfer in the hope of career advancement. There are worse reasons for having an affair and a bonk for a new job seems a small price to pay. It's been done before.
Scott Morrison (left) & Grace Tame (right), 2022.
Scott Morrison (b 1968; prime-minister 2018-2022): There are a few
candidates who deserve to be regarded as Australia’s worst prime-minister (some of them
quite recent) but the uniquely distinguishing feature of assessments of Mr
Morrison’s term is that so many view it with such distaste. His narrow victory in the 2018 election was a
remarkable personal achievement but that proved the high-water mark of his
administration. Many critiques noted his
lack of background, his experience limited to sales, marketing and slogans
which has its place but did seem to result in him viewing a democracy rather as
a sales manager views his employer’s customer loyalty programmes: Just as only
good customers are entitled to the benefits of membership, in the Morrison
government it seemed only electorates which returned coalition members were
deserving of funding. That did change in
the run-up to an election; then marginal electorates which might elect
coalition members attracted largess and while all parties do this, few have been so so blatant or extreme as Mr Morrison. He also blundered in
foreign affairs, publicly and pugnaciously calling for an international
enquiry into the origins of the SARS-COV-2 virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. That was a good idea but it
should have been handled through the usual channels, not as foghorn diplomacy
and the assumption of most was he was looking forward to going to his church
(one where they clap, sing, strum guitars and the preacher assures
the congregation God approves of surf-skis and big TVs) and telling everyone he’d
stood up to the Godless atheists in the Chinese Communist Party. Then there was the matters like the way a
submarine contract was cancelled (costing the taxpayer a few hundred million)
and the “robodebt” scandal (which turned out to be unlawful) which cost an as
yet uncertain millions more. Robodebt
also exposed the contrast between his attitude to poor people who might be
entitled to small welfare payments and that towards corporations
which benefited from COVID-19 payments intended for those suffering certain defined losses in revenue. When it was pointed
out many companies which had received millions actually increased their revenue
during the pandemic, Mr Morrison made it clear they could keep the money. Maybe poor people should become Liberal Party
donors.
Thumbnails of Lindsay Lohan image files in a sub-directory.
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