Harmonic

Harmonic (pronounced hahr-mon-ik)

(1) In music, pertaining to harmony, as distinguished from melody and rhythm.  A harmonic is a periodic motion, the frequency of which is a whole-number multiple of some fundamental frequency. The motion of objects or substances that vibrate or oscillate in a regular fashion, such as the strings of musical instruments, can be analyzed as a combination of a fundamental frequency and higher harmonics.  Harmonics above the first harmonic (the fundamental frequency) in sound waves are called overtones. The first overtone is the second harmonic, the second overtone is the third harmonic, and so on.

(2) In music, marked by harmony; in harmony; concordant; consonant; pleasant to hear; harmonious; melodious.

(3) In music, the place where, on a bowed string instrument, a note in the harmonic series of a particular string can be played without the fundamental present.

(4) In physics, of, relating to, or noting a series of oscillations in which each oscillation has a frequency that is an integral multiple of the same basic frequency.

(5) In mathematics (1) (of a set of values), related in a manner analogous to the frequencies of tones that are consonant, (2) capable of being represented by sine and cosine functions and (3) (of a function) satisfying the Laplace equation; used to characterize various mathematical entities or relationships supposed to bear some resemblance to musical consonance; the harmonic polar line of an inflection point of a cubic curve is the component of the polar conic other than the tangent line.

(6) In Australianist linguistics, a technical term, of or relating to a generation an even number of generations distant from a particular person.

(7) In phonology, exhibiting or applying constraints on what vowels (eg front/back vowels only) may be found near each other and sometimes in the entire word.

(8) In many contexts, something recurring periodically

(9) In the slang of CB radio, one's child.

1560–1570: From the Latin harmonicus (relating to harmony) from the Ancient Greek ἁρμονικός (harmonikós) (harmonic, musical, skilled in music), from ἁρμονία (harmonía & harmonie).  From the 1660s it acquired the meaning "tuneful, harmonious; relating to harmony", synonymous with the earlier (circa 1500) armonical (tuneful, harmonious), the noun, short for harmonic tone, dating from 1777.  Harmony was first attested in 1602 and was from the Middle English armonye, from Old French harmonie & armonie, from the Latin harmonia, from the Ancient Greek ἁρμονία (harmonía) (joint, union, agreement, concord of sounds).  Related forms are the adverb harmonically and the unfortunate noun harmonicalness.  The old alternative spelling, harmonick, although still in use in the nineteenth century, is wholly obsolete.  Harmonic is a noun & adjective, harmonica & harmonicist are nouns and harmonically is an adverb; the noun plural is harmonics.

Harmonica was coined in 1762 by Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) as the name for a glass harmonica, from the feminine of the Latin harmonicus.  The use to describe a "reeded mouth organ" is a creation of American English from 1873, displacing the earlier (1825) harmonicon.  The adjective enharmonic (referencing Greek music) is from the Late Latin enharmonicus, from the Ancient Greek enharmonikos, the construct being en- (the intensive prefix) + harmonikos.  From 1794 it picked up a technical use in music criticism to refer to reference to a modern music note that can be indicated in different ways (G sharp/A flat).  The adjective philharmonic (loving harmony or music) was invented in 1813 as the name of a London society founded for the purpose of promoting instrumental music and was from the 1739 French philharmonique, from the Italian filarmonico (literally "loving harmony") the construct being the Ancient Greek philos (loving) + harmonika (theory of harmony, music) from the neuter plural of harmonikos.  Over the centuries, the word philharmonic was adopted by many symphony orchestras and organisations devoted to fine music.

Engine harmony

Harmonic balancers are circular devices, made of rubber and metal, attached to the front-end of the crankshafts of internal combustion engines to help absorb vibrations.  During the combustion process, each piston is forced down the cylinder as a result of a pressure rise (induced by the explosion of the fuel-air mix) within the combustion chamber, the stroke imparting a sudden rotational force to the crankshaft which, although (hopefully) stiff and robust, is not perfectly rigid.  During these events, which happen thousands of times per minute, the crankshaft (in a process called torsional vibration) will twist slightly in response to each application of pressure which can be several tons.  The force of the combustion process causes the crankshaft slightly to deflect in the direction of the force and when that force ceases, the crankshaft springs back.  At certain frequencies the crank can resonate, worsening the vibration.  The harmonic balancer is the dampener which absorbs these forces.

ATI Performance part number 917562 (Super Damper, Standard Harmonic Balancer) for Ford 335 series (370/429/460/514 cubic inch V8).

The name harmonic balancer can be misleading in that most do not balance an engine, rather they absorb and remove unwanted vibration due to torsional twisting of the crankshaft and are thus vibration dampeners which is why some engineers prefer to call them dampeners.  In some engines though, a harmonic balancer can be part of the engine balancing strategy with weights added to the balancer to offset the weight of the pistons and conrods.  This is called external balancing, whereas internal balancing refers to the weight distribution of the crankshaft.

eHarmony

In 2009, a video surfaced of Lindsay Lohan which appeared to be a profile piece for the on-line dating site eHarmony.  Unfortunately, it was a spoof video for the site FunnyorDie.com but delivered with her usual comedic sense, the script included the lines:

Hi. I'm Lindsay and I'm recently single... I think... and I’m looking for someone with whom I can spend the rest of my life with, or at least the rest of my probation.

I’m an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur, and I have single-handedly kept 90 per cent of all gossip web sites in business.

I’m a workaholic, a shopaholic and, according to the state of California, an alcoholic, as well as a threat to all security guards if they work at hotels.  And to put all those rumors to rest, I am not broke.  I actually have over $400 in the bank and 20,000 Marlboro Miles, which I’m very proud of.

I'm looking for a compatible mate who likes a night out on the town (as long as he or she is driving), ankle monitoring bracelets and doesn’t have family members quick to issue restraining orders.

My dream date likes long walks on the beach, car chases on the Pacific Coast Highway, antiquing and passing out in Cadillac Escalades.

So, if you think you can handle a redhead with a little bit of sass, and by that I mean a redhead that’s crazy, we’ll crash a few parties, a car or two, but at the end of the day, I promise you I never lose my Google hits … just my underwear.

Appoggiatura

Appoggiatura (pronounced uh-poj-uh-too-r-uh or uh-poj-uh-tyoo- r-uh or ahp-pawd-jah-too-rah (Italian))

In musical composition, an ornament consisting of a non-harmonic note (short or long) preceding a harmonic one either before or on the stress (a note of embellishment preceding another note and taking a portion of its time).

1745-1755: From the Italian appoggiatura, from appoggiare (to lean; to prop; to support) from the Vulgar Latin appodiāre (present active infinitive of appodiō, from the Classical Latin podium) and related to the French appuyer, the Spanish apoyar and the Portuguese apoiar.  The meaning in music is for the sense of one note “propping up” another.

The Appoggiatura

As in many fields, fashions in music change.  There was a period, during the sixteenth century, when the rules of counterpoint were strict and discords permissible only if they were prepared and resolved in ways used in the previous sections; the only discord normally allowed on the strong beat was the suspension.  There the discord is prepared by the note being tied across from a weak to a strong beat and resolved onto the next weak beat; a type of syncopation.  In the mid-century however, there was a relaxation of the rules of voice leading which included experimentation with unprepared discords, the most important of which was the appoggiatura.  The appoggiatura started as a decorative note which displaced the first part of a note of a melody.  It occurred on the strong beat of the bar and could be either dissonant or consonant but in either case, the appoggiatura resolved (upwards or downwards) onto a consonance but, unlike the suspension, did not require to be prepared or tied from a previous note.  In order to overcome the earlier rule that all discords had to be prepared, the appoggiatura was originally shown as an ornament but later was written out in full.

An ornament: Bach, Orchestral Suite in B minor for flute and strings: Menuet.

That was just a fudge, a composer paying respect to a rule while breaking it because, as played, an appoggiatura is not a short ornament, it takes usually up a full half of the length of the note that it resolves onto and if resolved onto a note three beats long, it takes up a third or two thirds the length.  The appoggiatura is usually connected with the main harmony note by a slur and is normally played with a small degree of emphasis.

Haydn: Sonata in G major XVI:27 Allegro con Brio.

Haydn shows appoggiaturas at *1, *2 and *3, now written out in-full as was normal practice in the classical period. Their identity as elaborating notes is given away by the presence of the slurs.

The two superstars of the 1950s.  Maria Callas (1923-1977)  and Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962), back-stage after the "Happy Birthday Mr President" performance, Madison Square Garden, New York, 19 May 1962.  Within three months, Marilyn Monroe would be dead.

December 2 2023 marked the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the singer Maria Callas, the soprano who remains still more famous than any other and the subject of a cult, something attributable certainly to her art but the tempestuous life she led off the stage attracted many; in the very modern sense of the word, Callas was a celebrity.  What Callas is in 2023 is thus a construct, a mix of myth, discography, and public persona although it’s more correct to say she’s a number of constructs; the criteria of trained musicians and critics likely to differ from those who just listen.  She was neither the most technically accomplished nor the most refined singer and yet, as Sir Rudolf Bing (1902–1997; General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York (the Met)) famously noted, “having once heard Callas, it was difficult to listen to anyone else sing the same music”.  That was because whatever the technical flaws or deliberate departures from what had become the accepted techniques of the mid-twentieth century, Callas brought to every performance a thrilling intensity which made the characters come alive in a way even the most virtuosic of her contemporaries couldn’t quite match.

The critics impressed only by technical ecstasy liked to label Callas a “singing actress” and there’s something in that but not in the way they mean; the “acting” wasn’t there to compensate for the voice, it was a part of the voice.  There are several recordings of the “madness” scene in Gaetano Donizetti's (1797–1848) Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) in which, as an exercise in singing, the performances are more accomplished yet it’s the Callas version which is the definitive because only she can send a shiver down the spine.  It was in the interpretation, just as it was when, in Giuseppe Verdi’s (1813–1901) Otello (1886), she played with layers of vocal tones variously to convey feelings of warm nostalgia, paranoia, depression and impending death.  Whatever was in the score to be expressed, it’s there but it wasn’t done with vocal pyrotechnics, indeed Callas, in both studio recordings and live performances often eschewed the cadential trills and appoggiature which, although unwritten, had entered Opera in the seventeenth century and become a signature of sopranos since at least the early nineteenth.  What she did with her voice has been called a kind of “operatic word-painting”, a lending of emotional depth which enabled her, more than any other to transcend the theatrical artificiality of opera and it’s this quality which means even roles for which she seemed an improbable choice (such as Giacomo Puccini’s (1858–1924) Madam Butterfly (1904)) demand attention.

Vermiculate

Vermiculate pronounced ver-mik-yuh-leyt (verb) & ver-mik-yuh-lit or ver-mik-yuh-leyt (adjective)

(1) To work or ornament with wavy lines or markings resembling the form or tracks of a worm.

(2) Worm-eaten, or appearing as if worm-eaten.

(3) Figuratively, of thoughts, insinuating; subtly tortuous.

1595–1605: From the French vermiculaire (plural vermiculaires), from the Latin vermiculātus (in the form of worms; inlaid in wavy lines), past participle of vermiculor (I am full of worms; wormy) & vermiculārī (to be worm-eaten), from vermiculus (little worm; grub; wormlet), from vermis (worm), from the primitive Indo-European root wer (to turn; to bend.  The noun vermiculite describes the micaceous, hydrated silicate mineral and was named in 1814, based on its fibrous nature and the reaction observed when heated, the tendency being to expand into worm-like shapes; vermiculite is used in insulation and as a medium for planting.  Vermiculate, vermiculate & vermiculated are verbs & adjectives, vermiculation & vermiculite is a noun, vermicular & vermiculous are adjectives and vermiculating is a verb; the noun plural is vermiculations.

Lindsay Lohan in Vermiculated Rustication Architecture Socks, rendered by Vovsoft as pen drawing.

The socks (US$18.00) were sold by the UK’s Architecture Foundation to raise money to support ongoing work with comfort, durability and designs referencing architectural details.  The crew length socks (one size fits all) were made by Cooper of Huddersfield.

The adjective vermiculative (tending towards being vermiculated) is non-standard; when vermiculate & vermicular are used to refer to thought processes, the suggestion is of something tortuous, intricate or convoluted.  Other terms often used in this context include circuitous, convoluted, indirect, labyrinthine, meandering, serpentine, twisting, winding, coiled, curly, curved, sinuous, anfractuous, bent, crooked, flexuous, involute, mazy, meandrous & roundabout, all based on the picture of the irregular tunnels worms burrow in soil, the idea being of paths which are far from the shortest distance between the beginning and end of travel.  This is a figurative application of zoological behavior and not a slight on worms which have their own agenda.  Because it's so often used as a slight, it should probably not be used to describe deep or complex thoughts, however vermiculous they might appear.

Vermiculated terracotta block, Standard Oil Company Building, Jackson, Mississippi.

Although most associated with the vermiculated work seen in decorative stone masonry, the irregular grooves intended to resemble worm tracks have interested others including mathematicians and chaos theorists.  Engineers have also explored the idea and during the 1970s, tyres were developed with grooves cut in a random pattern (not to be confused with the asymmetric tread pattern Michelin introduced in (1965) on their XAS) rather than the usual structured geometric layout.  The idea was to lower the harmonic resonances created by the tendency of sound waves to be intensified by the recurring patterns; it was about reducing the noise generated and the theory proved sound, the acoustic difference detectable with the sensitive equipment used in laboratories but in real-world use the difference proved imperceptible.  The tyres were briefly available but, offering no advantage, the concept wasn’t pursued.

York Water Gate, England.

In architectural detailing, vermiculation is a form of surface rustication, used usually to create a decorative contrast between the rusticated work, ordinarily confined to the street level of a building (ie within the usual human field of vision) and the less finely dressed work above.  The effect is created with irregular holes and tracts being carved onto a façade, the purpose inherently decorative although some architects do like the idea of representing worms eating their way through the stone, collapsing a building into rubble and ruin, an allusion to the impermanence of architecture, conveying the message that all that is built must eventually crumble and fall.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

This notion of unavoidable impermanence has disturbed the minds of the more megalomaniacal in the profession, Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; later, as Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945 turning to war crimes & crimes against humanity) even presenting what he called Die Ruinenwerttheorie (a theory of ruin value) in which he argued it was important the monumental structures then being planned were designed in such as way that, thousands of years hence, as inevitability gradually they collapsed, what remained would be still aesthetically impressive and endure in this form even without maintenance.  Speer’s theory wasn’t new although the spin he felt compelled to attach was inventive.  What he stressed was that buildings designed in accordance with Ruinenwerttheorie were inherently finer works and more imposing during their period of use, an wise thing to emphasize because many less sophisticated types (and there were quite a few) the Führer’s entourage thought appalling the suggestion that anything in their “thousand year Reich” might one day crumble and fall.  Speer however was imagining his reputation surviving well beyond a single millennium and understood the mind of Hitler in such matters, appealing to his vision of what they were creating enduring as monuments to the greatness of the Third Reich, just as the ruins from Ancient Greek and Rome were symbolic of those civilizations.  Hitler concurred with Ruinenwerttheorie after Speer showed him a sketch of one of the gigantic works they planned as an ivy-covered ruin, the drawing very much in the vein of the pictures of Roman ruins well-known to the Führer.  What had scandalized his acolytes, pleased Hitler.

Red carpet vermiculation: Catherine O'Hara (b 1954), Venice International Film Festival, Venice, September 2024 (left) and Emmy Awards, Los Angeles, September 2024.  For red carpet (and related) purposes, the advantage of vermiculated fabric is it can be revealing or demure and, if need be, both within the same garment, the "look" defined merely by adjusting the channel widths.  The fabric used for the dress on the right is a "true vermiculation" in the sense that although an analysis would reveal a repeating pattern, to the naked eye it suggests the irregular tunnels worms burrow in soil.  The one on the left is too regular a pattern to be in the vermiculate class.  

40 Bedford Square, London.

As a form of detailing, vermiculation became prevalent in the mid nineteenth century and in the technical language of architecture is often called vermicelli russification, the patterns typically deployed in stucco on cornerstones or keystones around a doorway, lending a bold textural interest to otherwise unrelentingly standardized surfaces, offering a juxtaposition with forms and lines derived from classical principles.  Although not popular as an embellishment until relatively recent times, the origin of the motif is ancient.  One of the first forms of formal architecture was the clay hut in which wormtracts were visible on the surface, made as the industrious little creatures weaved their way in and out of the earth that made up the structure.  Under the heat of the sun, the clay dried and the patterns set, creating what came to be thought an ornamental effect.  It’s from these modest structures that western architecture picked up the idea while constructing ever larger edifices, the vermiculation contrasting with the smooth, sanitized stone surfaces and becoming part of the grammar of classical buildings.

Irish Stock Exchange, Dublin.

Deconstructionists too have provided their own analysis of vermiculation beyond the relief provided from what can be an austere streetscape, claiming it “…represents a valuable counterpoint to symbolic representations of power and authority that pervade the architecture of many western cities”, one case-study focusing on the Irish Stock Exchange (1859) on Angelsea Street, Dublin which has strips of vermiculation on its granite façade.  That site was said to be a place “...where speculation of financial markets is the day’s work, the pattern might be cast as an unnoticed omen of the neoliberal collapse and loss of Irish economic sovereignty in late 2010”.  That’s probably about as abstract as anthropomorphism in stonework gets but there were in the early twentieth century those who devoted some effort to finding hidden meanings in the vermiculated patterns on the facades on Masonic lodges.  The findings were either never published or suppressed by the Freemasons.

Asymmetric

Asymmetric (pronounced a-sim-et-rick)

(1) Not identical on both sides of a central line; unsymmetrical; lacking symmetry.

(2) An asymmetric shape.

(3) In logic or mathematics, holding true of members of a class in one order but not in the opposite order, as in the relation “being an ancestor of”.

(4) In chemistry, having an unsymmetrical arrangement of atoms in a molecule.

(5) In chemistry, noting a carbon atom bonded to four different atoms or groups.

(6) In chemistry (of a polymer), noting an atom or group that is within a polymer chain and is bonded to two different atoms or groups that are external to the chain.

(7) In electrical engineering, of conductors having different conductivities depending on the direction of current flow, as of diodes

(8) In aeronautics, having unequal thrust, as caused by an inoperative engine in a twin-engined aircraft.

(9) In military theory, a conflict where the parties are vastly different in terms of military capacity.  This situation is not in all circumstances disadvantageous to the nominally inferior party.

(10) In gameplay, where different players have different experiences

(11) In cryptography, not involving a mutual exchange of keys between sender a7 receiver.

(12) In set theory, of a relation R on a set S: having the property that for any two elements of S (not necessarily distinct), at least one is not related to the other via R.

1870–1875: The construct was a- + symmetric.  The a- prefix was from the Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-) (ἀν-) (an- if immediately preceding a vowel) and was added to stems to created the sense of "not, without, opposite of".  The prefix is referred to as an alpha privative and is used with stems beginning with consonants (except sometimes “h”); “an-“ is synonymous and is used in front of words that start with vowels and sometimes “h”.  Symmetric was from the Latin symmetria from Ancient Greek συμμετρία (summetría).  Symmetry was from the 1560s in the sense of "relation of parts, proportion", from the sixteenth century French symmétrie and directly from the Latin symmetria, from the Greek symmetria (agreement in dimensions, due proportion, arrangement", from symmetros (having a common measure, even, proportionate), an assimilated form of syn- (together) + metron (measure) from the primitive Indo-European me- (to measure).  The meaning "harmonic arrangement of parts" dates from the 1590s.  The suffix -ic was from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos & -ḱos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos & -ḱos.  The form existed also in Ancient Greek as -ικός (-ikós), in Sanskrit as -इक (-ika) and the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); A doublet of -y.  In European languages, adding -kos to noun stems carried the meaning "characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to" while on adjectival stems it acted emphatically.  In English it's always been used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning “of or pertaining to”.  A precise technical use exists in physical chemistry where it's used to denote certain chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a higher oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ous; (eg sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃).  Asymmetric & asymmetrical are adjectives, asymmetricity, asymmetricality, asymmetricalness & asymmetry are nouns and asymmetrically is an adverb; the noun plural is asymmetries.

The usually symmetrically attired Lindsay Lohan demonstrates the possibilities of asymmetry.

1975 Kawasaki 750 H2 Mach IV.

Manufacturers of triple-cylinder motorcycles traditionally used single (3 into 1) or symmetrical (3 into 2) exhaust systems (although, during the 1970s, Suzuki offered some of their "Ram-Air" models with a bizarre 3 into 4 setup (the centre cylinder’s header bifurcated) but in 1969 Kawasaki adopted an asymmetric addition for one of the memorable machines of the time.  The Kawasaki 500 H1 Mach III had two outlets to the right, one to the left and was a fast, lethally unstable thing which was soon dubbed the "widow maker".  Improvements to the Mach III made it a little more manageable and its successor, the 750 H2 Mach IV was claimed to be better behaved but was faster still and best enjoyed by experts, preferably in a straight line although, with a narrow power band which peaked with a sudden rush, even that could be a challenge.  The Kawasaki triples remain the most charismatic of the Japanese motorcycles but the prototype had been even more intriguing, using an "asymmetric V" with the two outer cylinders upright while the central barrel was at 90^o so, viewed in profile it appeared a conventional 90^o vee engine, the novelty obvious only from other aspects.  There were genuine advantages in cooling and weight distribution but ultimately the complexity was thought unjustified and the project was cancelled when doubts were expressed about market-acceptance. 

1973 Triumph X-75 Hurricane.

Available only during 1972-1973 and produced in small numbers, the Triumph X75 Hurricane was typical of the motorcycles being produced by the British manufacturers which had neglected development and re-investment and consequently were unable adequately to respond to the offerings of the Japanese industry which had done both aplenty.  Whatever their charms, models like the X75 were being rendered obsolescent, some of the underlying technology dating back decades yet, without the capital to invest, this was as good as it got and some of the fudges of the era were worse.  The X-75 was however ahead of its time in one way, it was a “factory special”, a design influenced by what custom shops in the US had been doing as one-offs for customers and in the years ahead, many manufacturers would be attracted by the concept and its healthy profit margins.  The X-75 is remembered also for the distinctive asymmetric stack of three exhaust pipes on the right-hand side a look adopted in the twenty-first century by MV Agusta and others.

1985 Ferrari Testarossa (1984-1991) “monospecchio-monodado”.

Some of Ferrari's early-production Testarossas were fitted with a single high-mounted external mirror, on the left or right depending on the market into which it was sold and although the preferred term was the Italian “monospecchio” (one mirror), in the English speaking-world it was quickly dubbed the “flying mirror" (rendered sometimes in Italian as “specchio volante” (a ordinary wing mirror being a “specchietto laterale esterno”, proving everything sounds better in Italian)).  The unusual placement and blatant asymmetry troubled some and delighted others, the unhappy more disgruntled still if they noticed the vent on right of the front spoiler not being matched by one to the left.  It was there to feed the air-conditioning’s radiator and while such offset singularities are not unusual in cars, many manufacturers create a matching fake as an aesthetic device: Ferrari did not.  The mirror’s curious placement was an unintended consequence of a European Union regulation (and it doubtful many institutions have in a relatively short time created as many regulations of such collective length as the EU) regarding the devices and this was interpreted by the designers as having to provide 100% rearward visibility.  Because of the sheer size of the rear bodywork necessitated by the twin radiators which sat behind the side-strakes (another distinctive Testarossa feature), the elevation was the only way this could be done but it later transpired the interpretation of the law was wrong, a perhaps forgivable mistake given the turgidity of EU legalese.

The Blohm & Voss BV 141

Focke-Wulf Fw 189 Eurl (Owl).

In aircraft, designs have for very good reason (aerodynamics, weight distribution, flying characteristics, ease of manufacture etc) tended to be symmetrical, sometimes as an engineering necessity such as the use of contra-rotating propellers on some twin-engined airframes, a trick to offset the destabilizing effects of the torque when very potent power-plants are fitted.  There has though been the odd bizarre venture into structural asymmetry, one of the most intriguing being the Blohm & Voss BV 141, the most distinctive feature of which was an offset crew-capsule.  The BV 141 was tactical reconnaissance aircraft built in small numbers and used in a desultory manner by the Luftwaffe (the German air force) during World War II (1939-1945) and although it was studied by engineers from many countries with some prototypes built, the layout never entered mainstream use. The origin of the curious craft lay in a specification issued in 1937 by the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM; the German Air Ministry) which called for a single-engine reconnaissance aircraft, optimized for visual observation and, in response, Focke-Wulf responded with their Fw 189 Eurl (Owl) which, because of the then still novel twin-boomed layout, encountered some resistance from the RLM bureaucrats but it found much favor with the Luftwaffe; over the course of the war, some nine-hundred entered service and it was used almost exclusively as the German's standard battlefield reconnaissance aircraft.  In fact, so successful did it prove in this role that the other configurations it was designed to accommodate (liaison and close-support ground-attack) were never pursued.  Although its performance was modest, it was a fine airframe with superb flying qualities and an ability to absorb punishment which, on the Russian front where extensively it was deployed, became famous and captured examples provided Russian aeronautical engineers with ideas which would for years influence their designs.

1982 Ford (Australia) XE Fairmont Ghia 5.8 (351) ESP.  Finding asymmetry in unexpected places brings joy to some and annoys others.

The RLM had also invited Arado to tender but their Ar 198, although featuring an unusual under-slung and elongated cupola which afforded for the observer a uniquely panoramic view, proved unsatisfactory in test-flights and development ceased.  Blohm and Voss hadn't been included in the RLM's invitation but anyway chose to offer a design which was radically different even by the standards of the innovative Fw 189.  The asymmetric BV 141 design was eye-catching with the crew housed in an extensively glazed capsule, offset to starboard of the centre-line with a boom offset to the left which housed the single-engine in front with the tail to the rear.  Prototypes were built as early as 1938 and the Luftwaffe conducted operational trials over both the UK and USSR between 1939-1941 but, despite being satisfactory in most respects, the Bv 141 was hampered by poor performance, a consequence of using an under-powered engine.  A re-design of the structure to accommodate more powerful units was begun but delays in development and the urgent need for the up-rated engines for machines already in production doomed the project and the Bv 141 was in 1943 abandoned.

Blohm & Voss BV 141 prototype with full-width rear elevators & stabilizers.

Production Blohm & Voss BV 141 with port-only rear elevator & stabilizer.

Despite the ungainly appearance, test-pilots reported the Fw 141 was a nicely balanced airframe, the seemingly strange weight distribution well compensated by (1) component placement, (2) the specific lift characteristics of the wing design and (3) the choice of opposite rotational direction for crankshaft and propeller, the torque generated used as a counter-balance.  Nor, despite the expectation of some, were there difficulties in handling whatever behavior was induced by the thrust versus drag asymmetry and pilots all indicated some intuitive trimming was all that was needed to compensate for any induced yaw.  The asymmetry extended even to the tail-plane, the starboard elevator and horizontal stabilizer removed (to afford the tail-gunner a wider field of fire) after the first three prototypes were built; surprisingly, this was said barely to affect the flying characteristics.  Focke-Wolf pursued the concept, a number of design-studies (including a piston & turbojet-engine hybrid) initiated but none progressed beyond the drawing-board.

Asymmetric warfare

In the twenty-first century, the term “asymmetric warfare” became widely used.  The concept describes conflicts in which there are significant disparities in power, capability and strategies between opposing forces and although the phrase has become recently fashionable, the idea is ancient, based often on the successes which could be exploited by small, mobile and agile (often irregular) forces against larger, conventionally assembled formations.  Reports of such tactics are found in accounts of conflicts in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe from as early as reliable written records have been found.  The classic example is what came later to be called “guerrilla warfare”, hit-and-run tactics which probe and attack a weak spots as they are detected, the ancestor of insurgencies, “conventional” modern terrorism and cyber-attacks.  However, even between conventional national militaries there have long been examples of the asymmetric such as the use of small, cheap weapons like torpedo boats and mines which early in the twentieth century proved effective against the big, ruinously expensive Dreadnoughts.  To some extent, the spike in use of the phrase in the post-Cold War era happened because it provided such a contrast between the nuclear weapon states which, although having a capacity to destroy entire countries without having one soldier step foot on their territory, found themselves vulnerable to low-tech, cleverly planned attacks.

Although the term “asymmetric warfare” encompasses a wide vista, one increasingly consistent thread is that it can be a difficult thing for "conventional" military formations to counter insurgencies conducted by irregular combatants who, in many places and for much of the time, are visually indistinguishable from the civilian population.  The difficulty lies not in achieving the desired result (destruction of the enemy) but managing to do so without causing an “excessive” number of civilian causalities; although public disapproval has meant the awful phrase “collateral damage” is now rarely heard, civilians (many of them women & children) continue greatly to suffer in such conflicts, the death toll high.  Thus the critique of the retaliatory strategy of the Israel Defence Force (IDF) in response to the attack by the Hamas on 7 October 2023, Palestinian deaths now claimed to exceed 20,000; that number is unverified and will include an unknown number of Hamas combatants but there is no doubt the percentage of civilian deaths will be high, the total casualty count estimated early in January 2024 at some 60,000.  What the IDF appear to have done is settle on the strategy adopted by Ulysses S Grant (1822–1885; US president 1869-1877) in 1863 when appointed head of the Union armies: the total destruction of the opposing forces.  That decision was a reaction to the realization the previous approach (skirmishes and the temporary taking of enemy territory which was soon re-taken) was ineffectual and war would continue as long as the other side retained even a defensive military capacity.  Grant’s strategy was, in effect: destroy the secessionist army and the secessionist cause dies out.

In the US Civil War (1861-1965) that approach worked though at an appalling cost, the 1860s a period when ballistics had advanced to the point horrific injuries could be inflicted at scale but battlefield medical tools and techniques were barely advanced from Napoleonic times.  The bodies were piled high.  Grant’s success was influential on the development of the US military which eventually evolved into an organization which came to see problems as something not to be solved but overwhelmed by the massive application of force, an attitude which although now refined, permeates from the Pentagon down to platoon level.  As the US proved more than once, the strategy works as long as there’s little concern about “collateral damage”, an example of this approach being when the Sri Lankan military rejected the argument there was “no military solution” to the long running civil war (1983-2009) waged by the Tamil Tigers (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)).  What “no military solution” means is that a war cannot be won if the rules of war are followed so the government took the decision that if war crimes and crimes against humanity were what was required to win, they would be committed.

In the 1990s, a number of political and military theorists actually advanced the doctrine “give war a chance”, the rationale being that however awful conflicts may be, if allowed to continue to the point where one side gains an unambiguous victory, the dispute is at least resolved and peace can ensue, sometimes for generations.  For most of human history, such was the usual path of war but after the formation of the United Nations (UN) in 1945 things changed, the Security Council the tool of the great powers, all of which (despite their publicity) viewed wars as a part of whatever agenda they were at the time pursuing and depending on this and that, that meant their interests sometimes lay in ending conflicts and sometimes in prolonging them.  In isolation, such an arrangement probably could have worked (albeit with much “collateral damage”) but over the years, a roll-call of nations run by politicians appalled by the consequences of war began to become involved, intervening with peace plans,  offering mediation and urging the UN to deploy “peacekeeping” forces, something which became an international growth industry.  Added to that, for a number of reasons, a proliferation of non-government organizations (NGO) were formed, many of which concerned themselves with relief programmes in conflict zones and while these benefited may civilians, they also had the effect of allowing combatant forces to re-group and re-arm, meaning wars could drag on for a decade or more.

In the dreadful events in Gaza, war is certainly being given a chance and the public position of both the IDF and the Israeli government is that the strategy being pursued is one designed totally “to destroy” not merely the military capacity of Hamas but the organization itself.  Such an idea worked for Grant in the 1860s and, as the Sri Lankan military predicted they would, end-game there was achieved in 2009 on the basis of “total destruction”.  However, Gaza (and the wider Middle East) is a different time & place and even if the IDF succeeds in “neutralizing” the opposing fighters and destroying the now famous network of tunnels and ad-hoc weapons manufacturing centres, it can’t be predicted that Hamas in some form won’t survive and in that case, what seems most likely is that while the asymmetry of nominal capacity between the two sides will be more extreme than before, Hamas is more likely to hone the tactics than shift the objective.  The IDF high command are of course realists and understand there is nothing to suggest “the Hamas problem” can be solved and being practical military types, they know if a problem can’t be solved it must be managed.  In the awful calculations of asymmetric conflict, this means the IDF calculate that while future attacks will happen, the more destructive the response now, the longer will be the interval before the next event.

Ornamentalism

Ornamentalism (pronounced awr-nuh-men-tl-iz-uhm)

(1) The desire or tendency to feature (usually what’s judged an excess of) ornamentation in design or execution (buildings, interiors, furnishings, cars, artwork etc).

(2) Any artistic or architectural style characterised by ornamentation.

(3) In the pre-revolutionary Russian literary tradition, an intricate, mannered and ostentatious prose style most prevalent in the early twentieth century.

(4) In politics, something implemented to lend the appearance of being something substantive while in reality changing little (synonymous usually with “window dressing”).

1860s: The construct was ornament + -al + -ism.  Ornament (an element of decoration; that which embellishes or adorns) was from the Old French ornement, from the Latin ornamentum (equipment, apparatus, furniture, trappings, adornment, embellishment), from ornāre, the present active infinitive of ornō (I equip, adorn). The verb was derived from the noun.  The -al suffix was from the Middle English -al, from the Latin adjectival suffix -ālis, ((the third-declension two-termination suffix (neuter -āle) used to form adjectives of relationship from nouns or numerals) or the French, Middle French and Old French –el & -al.  It was use to denote the sense "of or pertaining to", an adjectival suffix appended (most often to nouns) originally most frequently to words of Latin origin, but since used variously and also was used to form nouns, especially of verbal action.  The alternative form in English remains -ual (-all being obsolete).  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Ornamentalism & ornamentalist are nouns; the noun plural is ornamentalisms.

Lindsay Lohan mug-shot Christmas tree ornament.  Even the blurb: “…handmade photo-fresco Ornament made with a hybrid Gypsum based polymer that has the crystaline structure of ceramics…” has about it the whiff of ornamentalism.  In some places, this ornament may be thought blasphemous.

The sense of the noun & adjective ornamental (the comparative “more ornamental”, the superlative “most ornamental”) differ from those of ornamentalism in that the former is almost always either positive or neutral.  In the narrow technical sense something ornamental has “no purpose beyond the decorative” although many “ornamental devices” often either can or do fulfill some function, thus the nuanced phrase “merely ornamental” to distinguish the pure forms.  As a noun, “ornamentals” are plants, fish and such bred or maintained for no purpose other than their aesthetic value (although obviously they also often a commercial product).

The same positive or neutral senses tend to be enjoyed by the noun & verb “ornament” which means usually “a decorative element or embellishment” (such as a ceramic piece displayed but never used for its nominal purpose).  In music it means specifically “a musical flourish not needed by the melodic or harmonic line, but which serves to decorate that line” while in the rituals of Christianity, ornaments (in this context always in the plural) are objects (crosses, altar candles, incense and such) used in church services.  So in musical and liturgical use, ornaments enjoy a duality in that they are both decorative and fulfill some function.  That is reflected in biology when the word is used to describe a characteristic that has a decorative function (typically in order to attract a mate) such as the peacock’s marvelously extravagant tail feathers.

Ornamentalism is best known in architecture and design and can been seen in styles ranging from the rococo ((Würzburg Residenz, Würzburg Bavaria, Germany; left), to the McMansion (Wildwood New Jersey, USA; right))

In literary theory, ornamentalism is used to describe a style of writing in the pre-revolutionary Russian literary tradition in which prose was constructed in an intricate, mannered and ostentatious way.  It’s most associated with the early twentieth century and the great exponents of the art were the now sadly neglected Andrei Bely (1880-1934), the symbolist Fyodor Sologub (1863–1927) and the monumentally bizarre Alexei Remizov (1877-1957); it was one of the many stylistic trends briefly to flourish within the Russian avant-garde early in the twentieth century.  It came to be of some interest to later deconstructionists and post-modernists (the latter debatably among the greatest (or worst, depending on one’s view) ornamentalists) because the writers focused not on the capacity of the text to convey narrative or ideological content but the aesthetic and formal qualities of language itself; they treated language as an autonomous artistic medium, focusing on its rhythm, sound, texture and visual patterns.  Even at the time, there was criticism that the style was one of self-indulgence and intended for an audience of fellow writers and those who followed developments in the avant-garde; what comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) would later condemn as “formalism”.

What the ornamentalists did was elevate the elements of language (words, sentences, paragraphs etc) to be artistic objects to be assembled and arranged, their interplay as important (some critics suggested more so) than any implied or discernible meaning, thus the fragmented, non-linear prose which was a complete rejection of traditional realism: the ornamentalists called their work “associative structures”, suggesting they really were the proto postmodernists.  In that sense, it wasn’t the textual devices (repetition, alliteration, assonance) or the unusual syntactic structures which was most striking but the often chaotic mixture of prose and poetry and the interpolation of visual and performative elements into the text.  Needless to say, there was much symbolism, presumably thought an adequate substitute for coherence.  Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) was a noted critic of some of the more wilfully obscure ornamentalists but in his early Russian works and later English novels, their influence is detectable in his sensitivity to language's aesthetic possibilities.  While ornamentalism never really became a formal “school” of literature, it did exert a pull on Russian modernism and the possibility of elements like language operating as autonomous artistic objects.

In the US car industry peak ornamentalism happened between 1957-1962: 1960 Chrysler 300F (left), 1958 Buick Limited (centre) and 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz (right).

An earlier Russian literary tradition which was later sometimes a part of ornamentalism was skaz (from the sleazat (to tell)), a genre of folk tales consisting usually of an eye-witness account of an episode in peasant or provincial life, distinguished by the narrative being related by a fictitious narrator rather than the author directly.  What that method did was afford an author some latitude in the use of speech forms such as dialect, slang, mispronunciations and, not infrequently, neologisms, all of which lent the texts a naturalistic vigour and colourfulness which usually wouldn’t appear in a naturalistic piece, told in the first person.

A Spanish literary tradition in the same vein as ornamentalism was plateresco (from platero (silversmith), most associated with sixteenth century romances (with most of what that implies).  The English version of the terms was “plateresque” (silversmith-like) and literary criticism borrowed the idea from architecture & design where it describes the ornate styles popular in Spain during the sixteenth century, the word applied in the same way as rococo (which can be thought of as “high ornamentalism”).  The more familiar Spanish term was Gongorism which described the style of writing typified by that of the poet Luis de Góngora y Argote (1561-1627), famous for his baroque and affected ways with the language which featured a Latinistic vocabulary & syntax, intricate use of metaphors, much hyperbole, mythological allusions and a general weirdness of diction.  In fairness, Góngora did not always write in this manner but so distinctive were his narratives when he did that a minor industry of imitators followed including Richard Crashaw (1613-1649) and the English polymath Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) who had great fun while Gongorising.  Gongorism as practiced was a deliberate exaggeration of technique, unlike the earlier aureate (from the Latin aureatus (adorned or decorated with gold), the construct being aure(us) (golden, gilded) +‎ -ate (the adjective-forming suffix).  Arueate language (characterized by the use of (excessively) ornamental or grandiose terms) was most generously described as a sort of poetic diction and it was much in vogue for English and Scottish and poets of the fifteenth century, the works of whom are characterized by the used of ornate & ornamental language, often studded with vernacular coinages from Latin words.