Palindrome

Palindrome (pronounced pal-in-drohm)

(1) A word, line, verse, number, sentence etc, reading the same backward as forward.

(2) In biochemistry, a region of DNA in which the sequence of nucleotides is identical with an inverted sequence in the complementary strand.

1638: From the Ancient Greek παλίνδρομος (palindromos) (running back again; recurring, literally “literally "a running back”) the construct being πάλιν (pálin) (again, back) + δρόμος (dromos) (direction, running, race, racecourse).  Pálin was from the primitive Indo-European kwle-i-, a suffixed form of the root kwel- (revolve, move round) (kw- becomes the Greek p- before some vowels.  The word palindrome was first published by Henry Peacham (1578-circa 1645) in The Truth of Our Times (1638).  Although derived from the Greek root palin + dromos, the Greek language uses καρκινικός (carcinic, literally “crab-like”) to refer to letter-by-letter reversible writing.  The related palinal (directed or moved backward, characterized by or involving backward motion) dates from 1888.  The noun palinode (poetical recantation, poem in which the poet retracts invective contained in a former satire) dates from the 1590s and was from either the sixteenth century French palinod or the Late Latin palinodia, from the Greek palinōidia (poetic retraction), again from pálin; the related form were palinodical & palinodial.  The word palinode was sometimes applied to the apologies artists and others in the Soviet Union were compelled to publish, often after being accused of formalism or something just as heinous.  Palindrome & palindromist are nouns, palindromically is an adverb and palindromic an adjective.

Pierre Laval (1883–1945; Prime Minister of France 1931-1932, 1935-1936 & de facto prime minister in the Vichy Government 1942-1944).

Even before he spent the final years of his political career as a senior official in the collaborationist regime of Vichy France under Marshal Philippe Pétain (1856-1951), the palindromic Laval was already notorious for his dubious financial dealings while in government and being a party to the Hoare–Laval Pact (1935), concocted with the then British Foreign Secretary Samuel “Slippery Sam” Hoare (1880-1959) with which the pair sought to end the tiresome Second Italo-Ethiopian War (the last of the colonial land-grabs in the era of European colonization) because it was “bad for business”.  Something of a precursor to the 1938 Munich Agreement in which the UK and France acquiesced to the Nazi’s dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in exchange for what, delusionally, they believed would be Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) final territorial claim in Europe, what the Hoare–Laval Pact offered was a partition of Abyssinia, something which in retrospect would have been merely the first step to Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) absorbing the whole country as a colony of Imperial Italy.  Even for the, by then jaded, people of France and the UK the cynicism was too blatant and the reaction when the details were made public ensured both ministers were dismissed.

Otto Abetz (1903-1958; de facto German ambassador to Paris 1940-1944, left) shaking hands with Marshal Pétain (right), Paris, November 1941.

Pétain had little faith in the arrangements his regime negotiated with the Germans honored, telling colleagues after one meeting: "It will take six weeks to work out all the details and six months for the Germans to forget all about them."  Because Berlin didn't formerly created diplomatic relations with France after the defeat in 1940, Otto Abetz was never properly credentialed as ambassador but wholly he discharged the duties.  His great nephew is Eric Abetz (b 1958; Liberal Party senator for Tasmania, Australia 1994-2022, Treasurer of Tasmania since 2024).

Hoare was an accomplished ice-skater and made a political comeback as did Laval who, sniffing the winds of French defeat in 1940, became a convinced fascist, serving in the Vichy regime between July 1940-August 1944 variously as vice-president of the Council of Ministers and head of government.  He fled to Spain after the Liberation of France but was extradited and put on trial for plotting against the security of the state and collaborating with the Nazis; found guilty, he was executed by firing squad in October 1945.  Old Marshal Pétain fared a little better.  Although also sentenced to death for his role during the occupation, Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970; President of France 1959-1969), then serving as Chairman of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, couldn’t bring himself to sign the death warrant for one of the country’s heroes of World War I and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, officially on the grounds of “age”.

Perhaps surprisingly, the longest known palindromic word is not German despite their fondness for lengthy compounds.  According to the Guinness Book of World Records the record is held by the 19 character saippuakivikauppias which is Finnish for “a travelling salesman who sells lye (caustic soda)”.  It’s said not often to come up in conversation and seems to exist only a curiosity used in lists of long palindromes where it's the undisputed number one.  In English, palindromes of a few characters are common but examples with more than seven letters are rare.  Tattarrattat (the sound made by knocking on a door), as it’s usually spelled, has 12 characters but is a bit of a fudge because it’s also an onomatopoeia so some lexicographers insist it doesn’t count.  Also cheating but clever is the 11 letter aibohphobia meaning a fear of palindromes, the construct being the suffix -phobia + its reverse.  Adding to the charm is that it’s doubtless a non-existent condition, but it’s suspected there are anyway a few of those in the literature of psychiatry.  From India, there's kinnikinnik, a smoking mixture of bark & leaves (but no tobacco).  English’s longest “real” palindrome appears to be detartrated, the past participle of detartrate (to remove tartrates (salts of tartaric acid)), especially from fruit juices and wines, in order to reduce tartness or sourness).  Not only is it a real word but it describes a common process in the industrial production of foods and beverages.

Announced on an auspicious date.

On 2 February 2020, Lindsay Lohan (b 1986), in a now deleted Instagram post, for the first time publicly acknowledged her relationship with Bader Shammas (b 1987), a group photograph from Dubai, including the couple and her sister Aliana (b 1993), captioned: "@aliana lovely night with sister and my boyfriend bader💗".  The couple would later marry.  2 February 2020 (02-02-2020) was the twenty-first century’s only eight-digit global palindrome (ie it works with either the MM-DD-YYYY or DD-MM-YYYY convention).  The last eight-digit global palindrome happened 908 years earlier on the even more numerically symmetrical 11 November 1111 (11-11-1111) and the next one will be 908 years hence on 3 March 3030 (03-03-3030).  Six and seven digit palindromes are more common.

Palindromic sentences are often created and these are judged not by length but by their elegance which is why “never odd or even” often is cited as an example.  Leigh Mercer (1893–1977) was a word nerd and recreational mathematician who devised the classic "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!" and this approach was in the 1980s taken to its logical extreme in two novels, Satire: Veritas (1980, 58,795 letters) by David Stephens and Dr Awkward & Olson in Oslo (1986, 31,954 words) by Lawrence Levine, both said to be palindromically perfect and wholly nonsensical.  Shorter, but of admirable clarity, are the many baptismal fonts in Greece and Turkey which bear the circular 25-letter inscription NIYON ANOMHMATA MH MONAN OYIN (Wash (my) sins, not only (my) face).  This appears also in several English churches.

Sixteenth century German "oath skull" on which defendants swore their oaths in the Vehmic courts (the Vehmgericht, Holy Vehme or Vehm, the alternative spellings being Feme, Vehmegericht & Fehmgericht), a tribunal system established in Westphalia during the late Middle Ages.

Created essentially because of the inadequacies of the official justice system, they're now often referred to as "proto-vigilante" courts but for centuries they filled a niche before they came increasingly to be associated with injustice and corruption before finally being abolished in 1811, a half-decade after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the source of their original authority.

In linguistics, these “grid of letters” are called “acrostics”.  Acrostic was from the Middle French acrostiche & acrostique (persisting in modern French as acrostiche) and its etymon the Late Latin acrostichis, from the Ancient Greek ἀκροστιχίς (akrostikhís), the construct being ἄκρο- (ákro-) (the prefix indicating, inter alia, the extremity or tip of something) + στῐ́χος (stĭ́khos) (row or file of soldiers; line of poetry, verse) (ultimately from the primitive Indo-European steyg- (to climb, go)).  They remain still a popular form for the “word puzzles” appearing in the surviving newspapers and magazines.  In verse, an acrostic is a poem in which the initial letters of each line make a word or words when read downwards (the mesostich (middle) or telestich (final) letter of each line might also be used) whereas in prose the first letter of each paragraph or sentence might make up a word.  It’s speculated the earliest acrostic may have been created as a mnemonic device and used as a tool to aid oral transmission and most of the acrostics in the Old Testament are of the alphabetical or abecedarian (in this context “a work which uses words or lines in alphabetical order”) kind.  For poets however it may have been just an intellectual exercise (or perhaps “a gimmick” if not well-received by certain critics).  Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400) used a simple acrostic device in ABC, a twenty-four stanza poem in which the first letter of the first word in each stanza is the appropriate letter of the alphabet, from A to Z.  The dramatist Benjamin Jonson (circa 1572–circa 1637) in his Argument (prefacing The Alchemist (1610)) used an acrostic verse (“argument” a technical term meaning “the abstract” or “plot summary”).

The palindromic (or “all-round”) acrostic seen on the oath skull is known as the “Sator square” or the “Cirencester word square” because a copy was in 1868 discovered on a painted wall plaster in what is now Victoria Road in the English town of Cirencester in the Cotswold District of Gloucestershire.  At the time of the inscription, during the Roman occupation of Britain, the settlement was called Corinium.  The best documented of the early examples was one etched onto a wall in the doomed city of Herculaneum, the conclusion of most being Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas should be understood as “The sower, Arepo, makes the wheel work”), the trick being it can be read vertically, horizontally, or in the diagonal.  Known also as pentacles, the “SATOR” was the most commonly found in the Western Esotericism of late antiquity, used by Kabbalists, Gnostics, alchemists and other pre-medieval mystics in the creation of magic spells, amulets, potions etc and were thus often seen in the shops of apothecaries.  For deconstructionists, the translations are:

sator: sower/planter
tenet: he/she/they/it holds/has/grasps/possesses
opera: work/exertion/service
rotās: wheels

There has been speculation about the meaning of this pentacle, some a little fanciful and it’s not impossible things were made up just to fit, rather as "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" was coined to use each letter in the alphabet and "DICK HOOD DID EXCEED" serves no purpose other than to appear the same if inverted and viewed in a looking glass.

ROTAS
OPERA
TENET
AREPO
SATOR

The one on the skull was a second form, copied from an Egyptian papyrus of the late fourth or early fifth century AD:

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

Among professionals and amateurs alike, there has been much debate about the possible meaning(s) and although there are a number of permutations, most hint at something like “the sower Arepo holds the wheels carefully”, indicating the care required when sowing the seeds for next season’s crop.  The form may however in some places have been vested with magical or religious significance.  In sixth century Ethiopia, the five words (corrupted to Sador, Alador, Danet, Adera and Rodas), were used as the names of the five nails of Christ's Cross.  In France, the word square was known to have been used as a form of lucky charm and reputedly, one fortunate inhabitant of Lyon was cured of madness by eating three crusts of bread (each inscribed with the square) while making five recitations of the Pater Noster in remembrance of the five wounds of Christ and the five nails.  Presumably encouraged by such an event, Spanish and Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries took these charms to South America where they were said variously to protect folk from snake bites and aid childbirth.

Chopstick

Chopstick (pronounced chop-stik)

(1) A harmonically and melodically simple waltz for piano played typically with the forefinger of each hand and sometimes having an accompanying part for a second player.  Originally, it was called The Celebrated Chop Waltz, written in 1877 by British composer Arthur de Lulli (the pen name of Euphemia Allen (1861-1949)); it’s used often as a two-finger exercise for those learning the piano and then name comes from the idea of the two fingers being arrayed in a chopstickesque way (should be used with an initial capital).

(2) In hand games, a game in which players hold up a number of fingers on each hand and try, through certain moves, to eliminate their opponent's hands.

(3) A pair of thin sticks (of ivory, wood, plastic etc), typically some 10 inches (230 mm) in length, used as eating utensils by the Chinese, Japanese, and others in East Asia as well as by those anywhere in the world eating food associated with these places.

(4) As an ethnic slur, a person of East Asian appearance.

(5) In fishing gear, a long straight stick forming part of various fishing tackle arrangements (obsolete).

(6) In parts of Australia where individuals are subject to “attack” by “swooping” magpies, the use of cable ties on bicycle helmets to produce long, thin (ie chopstickish) protrusions which act as a “bird deterrent”.

(7) In automotive slang, the “parking guides” (in some places known as “gutter scrapers”) mounted at a vehicle’s extremities to assist when parking or navigating tight spaces.  They have been replaced by sensors and cameras but were at the time an impressively effective low-tech solution.

1590s (contested): The construct was chop + stick.  The use to describe the eating utensil was first documented in 1637 and may have been a transfer of the sense from the earlier use to describe fishing tackle (in use since at least 1615) which was based on the physical resemblance (ie long & thin).  The “chop” element was long listed by dictionaries as being from the Chinese Pidgin English chop (-chop) (quick), a calque from the Chinese 筷子 (kuàizi) (chopstick”), from 快 (kuài) (quick) but this is now thought improbable because there is no record of Chinese Pidgin English until the eighteenth century.  The notion of the link with Chinese Pidgin English appeared first in the 1880s with the rationale: “The Chinese name of the article is ‘kwai-tsz (speedy-ones)” which was a decade later refined with the explanation “Possibly the inventor of the present word, hearing that the Chinese name had this meaning, and accustomed to the phrase chop-chop for ‘speedily,’ used chop as a translation.”  This became orthodoxy after being picked-up for inclusion in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary (1893)), a publication so authoritative it spread to most until English language dictionaries from the late 19th century onwards.  The chronological impossibility of the Pidgin English theory was first noted by Kingsley Bolton (b 1947) in Chinese English: A Sociolinguistic History (2003).  The English form is now thought to come simply from the use of the Chinese, modified over time and oral transmission.  The current orthodoxy is the Pidgin English chop (quick; fast) was from the Cantonese word chāu (快) (quick).  The construct of the Chinese kuàizi (筷子) was kuài (筷) (quick) + zi (子) (a diminutive suffix).  Stick was from the Middle English stikke (stick, rod, twig), from the Old English sticca (twig or slender branch from a tree or shrub (also “rod, peg, spoon”), from the Proto-West Germanic stikkō, from the Proto-Germanic stikkô (pierce, prick), from the primitive Indo-European verb stig, steyg & teyg- (to pierce, prick, be sharp).  It was cognate with the Old Norse stik, the Middle Dutch stecke & stec, the Old High German stehho, the German Stecken (stick, staff), the Saterland Frisian Stikke (stick) and the West Flemish stik (stick).  The word stick was applied to many long, slender objects closely or vaguely resembling twigs or sticks including by the early eighteenth century candles, dynamite by 1869, cigarettes by 1919 (the slang later extended to “death sticks” & “cancer sticks).  Chopstick, chopstickful, chopstickery & chopsticker are nouns, chopsticking & chopsticked are verbs and chopstickish & chopstick-like are adjectives; the noun plural is chopsticks and the word is almost always used in the plural (sometimes as “a pair of chopsticks”).  The adjective chopstickesque is non-standard.

Niche market: a pair of chopsticks in 18-carat gold, diamonds, pearls, and ebony by Erotic Jewellery, Gold Coast, Australia.  The chopsticks were listed at Aus$139,000 and have the environmental benefit being of endlessly reusable and are also dual-purpose, the pearl mounted at the end of one chopstick detachable and able to be worn as a necklace.

In English, chopstick has proved productive.  A chopsticker is one who uses chopsticks, chopstickery describes the skill or art of using chopsticks, a chopstickful describes the maximum quantity of food which can be held in one pair of chopsticks (a la “mouthful”), chopstick land was a slang term for China (used sometimes of East Asia generally) but is now listed as a microaggression, chopstick legs (always in the plural) is a fashion industry term describing long, thin legs (a usually desirable trait), chopstickology is a humorous term used by those teaching others the art of using chopsticks (on the model of “mixology” (the art of making cocktails), “Lohanology” (the study of Lindsay Lohan and all things Lohanic), “sockology” (the study of socks) etc), a chopstick rest is a small device upon which one's chopsticks may be placed while not in use (known also as a chopstick stand), chopstickless means lacking or not using, chopsticks, chopsticky is a adjective (the comparative “more chopsticky”, the superlative “most chopsticky”) meaning (1) resembling a chopstick (ie “long and thin”) (chopstick-like & chopstickish the alternative adjectives in this context), (2) suitable for the use of chopsticks or (3) characterized by the use of chopsticks (the companion noun chopsticky meaning “the state of being chopstickish”.  Chopstickism was once used of things considered Chinese or Asian in character but is now regarded as a racist slur (the non-standard chopstickistic similarly now proscribed).

They may be slender and light but because annual use is measured in the millions, there is a significant environmental impact associated with chopsticks including deforestation, waste and carbon emissions.  Beginning in the early twenty-first century, a number of countries in East Asia have taken measures designed to reduce the extent of the problem including regulatory impositions, technological innovation and public awareness campaigns.  In 2006, the Chinese government levied a 5% consumption tax on disposable wooden chopsticks and later began a “Clean Your Plate” publicity campaign to encourage sustainable dining practices.  In Japan, although disposable chopsticks (waribashi) remain common, some local governments (responsible for waste management) promote reusable options and businesses have been encouraged to offer reusable or bamboo-based alternatives although the RoK (Republic of Korea (South Korea)) went further and promoted reusable metal chopsticks, devices which could last a lifetime.

The Chork

Although the materials used in construction and the possibilities of recycling have attracted some interest, there has in hundreds of years been no fundamental change in the chopstick’s design, simply because it long ago was (in its core function) perfected and can’t be improved upon.  However, in 2016, the US fast food chain Panda Express (which specializes what it describes as “American Chinese cuisine”) displayed the chork (the construct being ch(opstick) + (f)ork).  Designed presumably for the benefit of barbaric Westerners unable to master a pair of chopsticks (one of the planet’s most simple machines) the chork had been developed by Brown Innovation Group (BIG) which first revealed its existence in 2010.  BIG has created a website for the chork which explains the three correct ways to use the utensil: (1) Employ the fork end as one might a conventional fork, (2) break the chork in two and use like traditional chopsticks or (3) use what BIG call cheater/training mode in which the chopstick component is used with the fork part still attached.  Unfortunately for potential chorkers, Panda Express used the chork only as a promotional tool for the "General Tso's Chicken" launch but they remain available from BIG in packs of 12 & 24, both manufactured in the PRC (People's Republic of China).

Richard Nixon, détente and soupgate

Comrade Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964, left) and (then vice president) Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974, right)during the Кухонные дебаты (Kukhonnye debaty) (kitchen debate), conducted in a “model American kitchen” built for the American National Exhibition, Sokolniki Park, Moscow, 24 July 1959.  The pair (through interpreters) debated the respective virtues of communism verses capitalism, the backdrop being what was said to be a model of a “typical American kitchen”, packed with labor-saving appliances and recreational stuff “able to be afforded by the typical American family”.  Neither party persuaded the other but when finally able to choose between dialectical materialism and consumer materialism, most former Soviet comrades opted for the latter.

Richard Nixon (right) and HR Haldeman (1926–1993; White House chief of staff 1969-1973, left), the White House, 1 January 1972.

Although this photograph is sometimes captioned as being taken in the Oval Office, Nixon used that room only for formal meetings or ceremonial events and usually worked from this smaller, adjoining office.  The stacks of paper are not untypical examples of what workplaces often were like before personal computers transformed things and although the printed page has proved remarkably enduring, the days of the stacks mostly are done.  There was though one exception to that.  When in 2014 the House Select Committee on Benghazi (one of the many scandals involving crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) was sitting, the State Department requested crooked Hillary provide all the emails stored on her “personal mail server” which, controversially, she’d used for official US government business and "other purposes".  A period of negotiations with her legal team ensued (given crooked Hillary’s past, it was a busy team) and what ended up being provided was a dozen file boxes filled with print-outs of over 30,000 emails (calculated to be around 64 reams of paper or a stack some 10½ feet (3.25 metres) high).  The reason crooked Hillary refused to provide the material in digital form was presumed to be (1) in digital form it would have been easier for analysts to search for data and (2) concerns that even though she’d had her staff delete from the server some 32,000 messages (claimed to be “personal”), a forensic analysis of a granular message file might have revealed all or some of what had been deleted.  Crooked Hillary’s use of her so called "home-brew" mail server has never satisfactorily been explained and the contents of the deleted emails may never be known.

Richard Nixon became famous for some things and infamous for others but one footnote in the history of his administration was that he banned soup.  In 1969, Nixon hosted a state dinner for Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000; prime minister of Canada 1968-1979 & 1980-1984) and the next day complained to HR Haldeman that formal dinners “take forever”, suggesting “Why don’t we just leave out the soup course?”, adding “Men don’t really like soup.” (other than wives & waitresses, state dinners were then substantially a male preserve).  Well-acquainted with the social ineptitude of his boss, Haldeman had his suspicions so called the president's valet and asked: “Was there anything wrong with the president’s suit after that dinner last night?”  “Why yes…”, the valet responded, “…he spilled soup down the vest.”  Not until Gerald Ford (1913–2006; US president 1974-1977) assumed the presidency was soup restored to White House menus to the relief of the chefs who couldn’t believe a dinner was really a dinner without a soup course.

Richard Nixon, détente and chopsticks

A chopstick neophyte in Beijing: Comrade Zhou Enlai (1898–1976; premier of the People's Republic of China (PRC) 1949-1976, left), Richard Nixon (centre) and comrade Zhang Chunqiao (1917–2005, right) at the welcome banquet for President Nixon's visit to the PRC, Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 26 February 1972.  After the death of comrade Chairman Mao (Mao Zedong 1893–1976; chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 1949-1976), in a CCP power struggle, Zhang (a prominent figure in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)) was arrested, becoming one of the “Gang of Four” (which included the late chairman’s last wife).  After a typically efficient CCP-approved trial, he was sentenced to death but was granted a two-year reprieve and his sentence was later commuted to life in prison before being reduced to 18 years.  Released on humanitarian grounds in 1998 to enable him to receive treatment for cancer, he died in 2005.

The event in Beijing was not a “state visit” because at the time no formal diplomatic relations existed between the two nations (the US still recognized the Taiwan-based RoC (Republic of China (which Beijing regards still as a “renegade province”)) as the legitimate government of China). For that reason, the trip was described as an “official visit”, a term not part of diplomatic protocol.  There are in history a few of these fine distinctions: technically, diplomatic relations were never re-established between Berlin and Paris after the fall of the Third Republic in 1940 so ambassadors were never accredited which means Otto Abetz (1903-1958), who fulfilled the role between 1940-1944, should be referred to as “de facto” German ambassador (as the letters patent made clear, he acted with full ambassadorial authority).  In July 1949, a French court handed Abetz a twenty-year sentence for crimes against humanity; released in 1954, he died in 1958 in a traffic accident on the Cologne-Ruhr autobahn and there are conspiracy theorists who suspect the death was “an assassination”.  The de facto ambassador was the great uncle of Eric Abetz (b 1958; Liberal Party senator for Tasmania, Australia 1994-2022, member of the Tasmanian House of assembly since 2024), noted in Australian legal history for being the first solicitor in the city of Hobart to include color on his firm's letterhead.

Longing for a chork.

Still, whatever the detail of the protocol, the PRC's hospitality was lavish and it certainly looked (and tasted) like a state visit.  Both the US and the PRC had their own reasons for wishing to emerge from the “diplomatic deep-freeze” (Moscow something of a pivot) and it was this event which was instrumental in beginning the process of integrating the PRC into the international system.  The “official visit” also introduced into English the idiomatic phrase “Nixon in China” (there are variations) which describes the ability of a politician with an impeccable reputation of upholding particular political values to perform an action in seeming defiance of them without jeopardizing his support or credibility.  For his whole political career Nixon had been a virulent anti-communist and was thus able to make the tentative approach to the PRC (and later détente with the Soviet Union) in a way which would not have been possible for someone without the same history.  In the same way the Democratic Party’s Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001) was able during the 1990s to embark on social welfare “reform” in a way no Republican administration could have achieved.

The chopstick as a hair accessory: Lindsay Lohan (b 1986, left) in The Parent Trap (1998) and Hilary Duff (b 1987, right) at Nickelodeon's 15th Annual Kids Choice Awards, Barker Hangar, Santa Monica, California, April, 2002.  These outfits might now be described as "cultural appropriation".

Following the visit, there was also a culinary ripple in the US.  Since the nineteenth century, Chinese restaurants had been a fixture in many US cities but the dishes they served were often very different from those familiar in China and some genuinely were local creations; fortune cookies began in San Francisco courtesy of a paperback edition of “Chinese Proverbs” and all the evidence suggests egg rolls were invented in New York.  The news media’s coverage of the visit attracted great interest and stimulated interest in “authentic” Chinese food after some of the menus were published.  Noting the banquet on the first night featured shark’s fin soup, steamed chicken with coconut and almond junket (a type of pudding), one enterprising chap was within 24 hours offering in his Manhattan Chinese restaurant recreation of each dish, a menu which remained popular for some months after the president’s return.  Mr Nixon’s favorite meal during the visit was later revealed to be Peking duck and around the US, there was a spike in demand for duck.

One of the menus from the official visit (not from a banquet but one of the "working dinners").  Clearly, the president's fondness for duck had been conveyed to the chef.

The graphic is the National Emblem of the People's Republic of China and in a red circle depicts a representation of Tiananmen Gate, the entrance gate to the Forbidden City imperial palace complex, where in 1949 comrade Chairman Mao Zedong declared the foundation of the PRC (People's Republic of China) in 1949.  The five stars are those from the national flag, the largest representing the CCP, the others the four revolutionary social classes defined in Maoism (the peasantry, proletariat, petty bourgeoisie & national bourgeoisie).  Although Maoism was criticized by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) and others for being “ideologically primitive”, it has over the decades proved a practical and enduring textbook for insurgencies and revolutionary movements, especially where those involved substantially are rural-dwellers.  Although comrade Stalin may have been sceptical about comrade Mao's contribution to Marxist theory, Maoism has endured and its many (bloody) successes would have surprised Karl Marx (1818-1883) who saw the potential for revolution only in the urban proletariat slaving in factories, grumbling that peasants were impossible to harness as a movement because they: "...were like potatoes, all the same and yet all different."    

Coterminous

Coterminous (pronounced koh-tur-muh-nuhs)

(1) In geography, having the same border or covering the same area; bordering; contiguous; having matching boundaries; or, adjoining and sharing a boundary.

(2) Being the same in extent; coextensive in range, scope, time etc.

(3) Of objects or abstractions, meeting end to end or at the ends.

(4) By extension, anything having the same scope, range of meaning, or extent in time. 

(5) In the law of real property, linked or related property leases which expire together.

1790–1800: A re-formation of the earlier conterminous, from the Latin conterminus, the construct being con- (with) + terminus (border, end).  The con- prefix was from the Middle English con-, from the Latin con-, from the preposition cum (with), from the Old Latin com, from the Proto-Italic kom, from the primitive Indo- European ḱóm (next to, at, with, along).  It was cognate with the Proto-Germanic ga- (co-), the Proto-Slavic sъ(n) (with) and the Proto-Germanic hansō.  It was used with certain words to add a notion similar to those conveyed by with, together, or joint or with certain words to intensify their meaning.  Terminus was from the primitive Indo-European térmn̥ (boundary) of uncertain origin but perhaps from terh- (pass through).  It was cognate with the Ancient Greek τέρμα (térma) (a goal) and τέρμων (térmōn) (a border) and although contested, some etymologists suggest a relationship with the Sanskrit तरति (tar-) (to overcome), the Classical Latin trāns (through, across, over) and even possibly intrō (I enter, I go into).  Most dictionaries insist that despite having been in use since the 1630s, the hyphenated co-terminous is a malformation but, coterminous being a rare word, it’s not often disputes arise.  Purists who prefer always to stick to the classics reject both as needless formations and prefer the original Latin: conterminous.  Coterminous, coterminated & coterminal are adjectives, conterminousness is a noun, coterminal is a noun & adjective, coterminate & coterminating are verbs and coterminously & coterminally are adverbs; the noun plural is coterminals.

417 & 419 Venice Way, Venice Beach, Los Angeles, California where, during 2011, Lindsay Lohan lived (in 419 (right)).  This style of construction is sometimes called a “pigeon pair” but these two are only "semi-mirrored" because there are detail differences in the architecture.  Next door (417) lived Ms Lohan's former special friend Samantha Ronson.  Each four bedroom (3½ bathrooms) house included a floating stairway leading to a mezzanine which the property’s agent described as “ideal for a studio or office”.

In the law of real property, the term "coterminous" is used of a lease (or leases) which cover two properties with separate titles where the lease (or leases) expire simultaneously.  Whether the properties are geographically coterminous (or have any contiguous boundaries) is not relevant, indeed the two (or more) can be separated by great distances, the conterminousness of the relationship a product of the active lease(s), not the physical geography.  The land on which stands 417 & 419 Venice Way could be titled as a single entity and thus the two houses would sit on the one coterminous space or (as is more common), the land can have two separate titles and the two would sit contiguously.  At law, a coterminous lease of the houses could accommodate either arrangement and either 417 or 419 could also be part of a coterminous lease with one or more properties in another part of the state.        

The advantage of being original

The constitutions of some nations were written in the blood shed in war, revolutions or long struggles between sovereign and subjects so their foundation documents, their basic law, often contain stirring words, preambles especially sometimes even with literary merit.  The Constitution of Australia is not one of those documents.  While there were arguments during the eight-odd years it took for the six self-governing British colonies to agree on a draft, the matters in dispute mostly were procedural and mercantile rather than the rights of man and the pursuit of happiness.  Things were hammered-out in committees and smoke-filled rooms (the phrase then used literally), there were no mobs taking to the street or storming a parliament; apparently not even an effigy was burned.  The document which emerged has proved durable and adaptable but not a great read, befitting a nation which gained its independence (if originally incomplete until 1986) not through battle but bureaucracy.  The draft reached London in 1900 and was soon passed by the imperial parliament as the Constitution of Australia Act which effectively created the country, its executive, legislature and judiciary, empowering a parliament to meet.  Thus assembled, the Parliament of Australia passed the Constitution of Australia Act, becoming effective on 1 January 1901, the first day of the new century.

So Australia was born not on streets running with rivers of blood but by a grant of freedom from a colonial oppressor which had learned the lessons of 1776.  The constitution passed has since been little modified (a process technically simple but politically challenging) has accommodated some changes better to suit a place where things do change.  It tends to be forgotten that, even in 1901, anything like what’s now thought to be genuine democracy was rare anywhere and, where it existed to the extent it did, it was a recent and sometimes fragile thing.  The Australian constitution did however create a framework for one structural aspect of democracy now thought fundamental: the equality of the value of the individual citizen’s vote although, on that framework hung an imperfect skin and it wouldn't be for decades that something close to "one vote-one value" was achieved. 

That didn't however apply to the Australian Senate (the upper house) and that was one of the prices to pay for nationhood; the smaller states would never have agreed to federate had they not been afforded equality of representation in what they seemed genuinely to believe would be the place where their interests would be protected.  That illusion didn’t long last but the distortions, now actually worse, remain.  Regarding the lower house, Chapter I, Part III, Section 24 of the constitution provides (1) it shall have twice the number of members of the upper house and (2) the number of members in each of the six states shall be in proportion to the state’s population.  That, even today, is about as equitable as is possible but a further clause provided that (3) none of the original states can have fewer than five members, regardless of the math imposed by (1) & (2).

By the early twenty-first century, that meant in New South Wales, there was one senator for every 680,000-odd souls whereas one represented every 45,000 Tasmanians, a impressive imbalance around 85:15; in the lower house it was a much more democratic 62:38.  Better still, if ever Tasmanians feel somehow unrepresented, there’s also a state parliament with an upper and lower house and a generous layer of local government.  These distortions do happen in other countries (notably the United States Senate) but among those with some claim to free and fair electoral systems, the Tasmanian example is probably extreme.  In Australia, it pays to be an original state.

Electoral divisions, Tasmania, Australia.

In the state parliament, a feature of Tasmania’s mysterious Hare-Clark electoral system for the House of Assembly (state lower house) is its five electoral divisions are coterminous with the five House of Representatives (Commonwealth lower house) divisions (Bass, Braddon, Clark, Franklin and Lyons).  Although it may sound a rare example of bureaucratic efficiency, it’s dictated more by the practicalities of the multi-member Hare-Clark system in which each seat returns the same number of MHAs (Member of the House of Assembly although the modern practice is for them to be styled “MP” (Member of Parliament)); the number of seats in the legislative assembly is thus always divisible by five.  The House of Assembly first sat in 1856 when the bicameral parliament was established with the proclamation of responsible government and the Hare-Clark system was the co-creation of Thomas Hare (1806-1891), an English lawyer with an interest in political reform & Andrew Inglis Clark (1848–1907), an engineer & lawyer who served as attorney-general in Tasmania between 1887-1892 & 1894-1897.  Hare's original design dated from 1856 and was one of many systems of proportional representation explored during the nineteenth century and it was modified by Clark, becoming law in 1896 and has been used state-wide since 1909.

Eric Abetz MP (Liberal Party, Franklin), official ministerial photograph, Office of the Cabinet, Tasmania, Australia.

When other systems were in use, the number of seats varied several times between 32-38 but, after the Commonwealth's divisional boundaries were co-opted, the number of seats for decades remained relatively stable: set at 35 in 1900, 30 in 1906, & 35 in 1959.  In a rare moment of rationality, this was in 1998 reduced to 25 but in an unfortunate "triumph of politics" moment, this was restored to 35 for the 2024 general election.  So, the place is back to having too many politicians but however unpleasing the surplus, it may be thought a small price to pay for the return of Eric Abetz (b 1958) to politics.  Upon his election to the House of Assembly in 2024, Mr Abetz was immediately elevated to cabinet as Minister for Business, Industry and Resources, Minister for Transport & Leader of the House.  Having previously served as a senator (Liberal Party) for Tasmania between 1994-2022, it’s a remarkable resuscitation of a political career which had seemed terminal.  Having Eric Abetz back to represent the views of the eighteenth century has been welcomed by all political junkies.

Diversity

Diversity (pronounced dih-vur-si-tee (U) or dahy-vur-si-tee (non-U))

(1) The state or fact of being diverse; difference; unlikeness; nonuniformity.

(2) The inclusion of individuals representing more than one national origin, color, religion, socioeconomic stratum, sexual orientation etc.

(3) In mathematical logic, the relation that holds between two entities when and only when they are not identical; the property of being numerically distinct.

(4) In politics, the social policy of encouraging tolerance for people of different cultural and racial backgrounds

(5) In politics as multiculturalism or more specific legislation mandating diversity, an attempt to redress historic discrimination.

(6) In biology, as biodiversity, the degree of variation of life forms within an ecosystem.

(7) In zoological taxidermy, as species diversity, the effective number of species represented in a data set.

(8) In genetics, as genetic diversity, the total number of genetic characteristics in the genetic makeup of a species.

(9) In agriculture, as crop diversity, the variance in genetic and phenotypic characteristics of plants used in agriculture.

(10) In electronic communications, the principle of the deployment of multiple channels or devices to improve reliability.

(11) In electrical engineering, as diversity factor, the ratio of the sum of the maximum demands of the various part of a system to the coincident maximum demand of the whole system.

(12) In law, a term often used in equal-opportunity legislation when codifying specific metrics.

1300–1350: From the Middle English diversite (originally "variety; range of differences" and by the late fourteenth century "quality of being diverse, fact of difference between two or more things or kinds; variety; separateness; that in which two or more things differ" (usually in a technical or neutral sense), from the Old French diversité (difference, diversity, unique feature, oddness (and when used in a degoratory sense "wickedness, perversity; contradiction") (which survives in the Modern French as the twelfth century diversité), from the Latin diversitatem (nominative dīversitās) (contrariety, wickedness, perversity, disagreement (and in a secondary sense "difference, diversity")), the construct being  diversus (past particle of divertere) (contradiction, difference; turned different ways (and in Late Latin "various") +‎ tas.  The Latin tas suffix was from the primitive Indo-European tehts, from the Ancient Greek της (tēs) and Sanskrit ताति (tāti).  In English, the construct uses the suffix ity which is used to form abstract nouns indicating a state of being.  Suffix is from the Middle English ite, a borrowing from the Old French ité and directly from the Latin itatem (nominative itas).  As used as a suffix denoting state or condition, in Latin it was built with a connective i + tas.  Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1926) notes that in English, a word with the ity suffix usually means the quality of being what the adjective describes, or concretely an instance of the quality, or collectively all the instances whereas a word with an ism appended means the disposition, or collectively all those who feel it.  Diversity is a noun, diverse is an adjective (and collective a noun) and diversely is an adverb; the noun plural is diversities.

Diversity: The path to DEI

Diversity had the distinct negative meaning "perverseness, being contrary to what is agreeable or right; conflict, strife; perversity, evil" in English from late fourteenth century but was obsolete after the seventeenth (although the twenty-first century critiques of wokeness and political correctness has seen "diversity" again used in this way in certain quarters).  Diversity as a virtue in the political construction of nation-states was an idea which grew as modern democracies developed in the decades after the French Revolution (1789) because it was thought essential to prevent one faction from arrogating all power (and discussed in The Federalist (now usually called The Federalist Papers) 85 essays published in 1788 and written by some of the Founding Fathers of the United States to advocate ratification of the constitution).  The word however was also used under the Raj where many of the British colonial "fixes" (at which they excelled) used existing divisiveness (which they encouraged and sometimes even created) as part of the principle of "divide & rule".  Diversity under the Raj was real, cross-cutting and multi-layered but for from the modern sense in which ethnicity, gender and sexual identity are the typical determinates, this use emerging as now understood in the early 1990s, the original purpose being to provide for the "inclusion and visibility of persons of previously under-represented minority identities".

Projecting diversity: Lindsay Lohan in rainbow T-shirt, the T-shirt of the T-shirt created through Yoshirt's portal.

Although the use of diversity (in a positive sense) as applies to race, gender etc. appears to date only from 1992, the term "affirmative action", as government policy designed to promote or achieve diversity in various aspects of life, was first used in an executive order signed by US President Kennedy in 1961.  That was a decree which required that government contractors "…take affirmative action to ensure applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin".  Such policies have become widespread, especially since the 1980s and, in the west, are applied exclusively for the benefit of groups or individuals thought disadvantaged.  Beyond the west, other countries have adopted such policies although sometimes they’re applied for the benefit of a defined majority.  Increasingly, in the US, affirmative action policies are being challenged, sometimes by groups themselves defined as "diverse".

To demonstrate a corporate commitment to workplace DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), always include a brunette in photos. 

In the West, not all approve of diversity positive initiatives.  In March 2018, the University of Sydney Union issued a statement noting the application of an affirmative action policy to its debating team would promote diversity and prevent domination by “affluent, white, privately educated students”.  The union’s press release was prompted by a report in the Murdoch press that the new affirmative action policies will mean the university would be sending not necessarily its best team to the annual debating tournament, but one “…meeting quotas for women, people of colour, and others oppressed by the white male supremacy”.

Former senator Eric Abetz

Anxious always to expose conspiracies by communists, LGBTQQIAAOP agitators, Trotskyists, trade unionists and other malcontents, then Senator Eric Abetz (b 1958; senator for Tasmania (Liberal) 1994-2022) labelled the move “Stalinist dogma’’ dressed up as progressive thinking, adding the union’s move was evidence of “stifling political correctness’’ which threatened to “damage the future generations who are taught this nonsense as fact’’.  The former senator was perhaps not someone good at recognizing white privilege or understanding its implications for those from diverse backgrounds but he did take a Churchillian stand defending the nation when the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands declared war on Australia so there's that.

The young ladies of Alpha Gamma Delta: ἐννέα κόραι, ἑπτὰ αὐτῶν ξανθαί (ennéa kórai, heptà autôn xanthai).

Alpha Gamma Delta (ΑΓΔ and clipped usually to "Alpha Gam") decided to adopt “DEI best practice” in choosing their webpage banner, including not one but three brunettes.  Dating from 1904 when the first chapter was founded at New York’s Syracuse University, AGD is an international women's fraternity and social organization with over 200,000 members, some 200 collegiate chapters and over 250 alumnae groups.  There is an on-line shop (Alpha Gam Boutique) with lines of hats, T-shirts, stoles, tank-tops & such and there's the helpful facility of "custom chapter orders".