Courtesy

Courtesy (pronounced kur-tuh-see or kurt-see (now rare))

(1) Excellence of manners or social conduct; polite behaviour.

(2) A respectful or considerate act or expression.

(3) Indulgence, consent, or acquiescence; something granted or extended in the absence of any specific right.

(4) Favor, consent, help, or generosity.

(5) An alternative spelling of curtsy (archaic and probably obsolete).

(6) Something done or performed as a matter of politeness or protocol.

(7) Something offered or provided free by the management.

(8) In law, the life interest that the surviving husband has in the real or heritable estate of his wife.

1175–1225: From the Middle English curteisie (courtly ideals; chivalry, chivalrous conduct; elegance of manners, politeness (also “a courteous act, act of civility or respect”)), from the Old French curteisie & cortoisie (courtliness, noble sentiments; courteousness; generosity) (which in modern French endures as courtoisie), from curteis (courteous).  The construct was courteo(u)s +‎ -y (the abstract noun suffix).  From the late thirteenth century the word was used and understood as “good will, kindness” but it gained the sense of “a reward, a gift” an echo of that enduring in the modern term “by courtesy of” (something received without payment or other consideration).  By the mid-fourteenth century courtesy was part of etiquette in the sense of “refinement, gentlemanly conduct” and related to that is the development of curteisie (source of the English “curtsy”.  The noun discourtesy (incivility, bad manners, rudeness) was in use by at least the 1550s and may have been influenced by the fifteenth century Old French discourtoisie, from discourtois although other forces in English construction were anyway by then prevalent.  The idea of a discourtesy being an “an act of disrespect” emerged late in the sixteenth century.  There is in polite society the notion of “common courtesy” which means the obligation to afford a certain respect to all, regardless of their status and courtesy is thought a good quality and a marker of civilization.  Clearly however, one can have “too much of a good thing” because some style and etiquette guides note the rare noun “overcourtesy” (excessive courtesy) which can suggest obsequiousness, sycophancy, or needless, time-consuming formalism.  Courtesy is a noun, verb & adjective, courtesying is a noun & verb, courtesied is a verb; the noun plural is courtesies.

The noun curtsy seems to have appeared in the 1540s with the sense of “an expression of respect (ie a variant of courtesy) while the specific meaning “a bending the knee and lowering the body as a gesture of respect” dates from the 1570s and the gesture was not then exclusive to women, the convention “men bow; women curtsy” not (more or less) standardized in England until the 1620s.  Predictably, it was the Victorians who coined “courtesy call” to refer to “a visit made for the sake of politeness”, in use by at least 1898.  The term was adopted as part of the language of diplomacy, describing the (usually symbolic) formal visits an ambassador or other emissary of a state makes to a head of state or other local official “out of courtesy” (ie with no substantive purpose).  That notion vaguely was related to the admiralty practice of the “courtesy flag”; a visiting vessel by convention and as a mark of respect flying the flag of the host nation (as well as that of her own) when entering port.  Perhaps opportunistically, in commerce, “courtesy card” is used as the alternative name for the “customer loyalty card” while the “courtesy clerk” was the employee who “bagged customers' purchases”; they were also called the “bagger” and the species is believed now functionally extinct, even in Japan where, until the “lost decade” (the 1990s although many economists claim that epoch has yet to end), they were once an established part of “shop culture”.  Probably the most memorable use of the word is in the term “courtesy flush” which is the “mid-sitting flush” (of a toilet) performed by men thoughtful enough to wish to avoid inflicting on others: “unpleasant odours”.

1973 Imperial LeBaron Four-Door Hardtop (left) and 1978 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham Coupe (right).  In cars, courtesy lamps (or lights, seen illuminated in the left-rear door kick panel (left)) are located where light may be needed (start buttons, where a passenger is about to put their feet etc) and they differ from “specific purpose” lights such as “map reading” lights (seen illuminated, right).  The significance of the name was in the “courtesy” the fittings exercised by automatically switching on when a door was opened.  By contrast, a map-reading light manually was activated as required.  Map-reading lights were fitted on more expensive vehicles because before maps migrated to glowing screens, they were on paper and to be read in a low-light environment, an external light source was needed.  

Both “uncourtesy” and “discourtesy” have at times been in use and the difference primarily is one of usage frequency, historical development, and semantic nuance.  Discourtesy is the established, idiomatic noun in modern English and is used variously to denote rudeness, a lack of courtesy, an impolite act and such.  The form emulated a use in the Old French and it has been in continuous, standard usage since the Middle English period; in contemporary English, it remains the correct and expected form.  Uncourtesy literally means “absence of courtesy” but has for centuries been rare and now is close to obsolete, appearing only in historic references or as a literary device.  That reflects the way English evolves because although the word adhered to the use of the un- prefix pattern (as in unkindness), people for whatever reason settled on the dis- form for this lexeme.  In structural linguistics, it’s true that because of the Latin origin of the “dis-” prefix, that would imply “reversal-negation-deprivation” whereas the Germanic “un-” would suggest “simple negation, but English lexical convention matters more than morphology and the pattern of use has made “discourtesy” the standard noun.  Probably that was a consequence of the Latin-influenced forms gaining sociolinguistic prestige over those words with a Germanic core from the native, Old English vocabulary.  After the Norman Conquest (1066 and all that), what came later to be known as the “Romance superstratum” (the massive influx of words and elements from Norman French and Latin) rapidly undertook a form of linguistic colonialism and words which entered English through French or Latin often arrived morphologically pre-packaged with Romance affixes; English did not build discourtesy from scratch; either it was inherited or imposed, depending on one’s views of such processes and that history is the reason disloyal & dishonest emerged and endured while unloyal & unhonest did not.  Pragmatically though, speakers settled, on a case-by-case-basis on whichever worked best: thus untruth, unlikely and such prevailing because they were the most pleasing pure negations, something more significant than the tendency for native Germanic bases to take “un-”, however a robust morphological bias this may describe.

Prelude to a handover: Donald Trump (left) and Barak Obama (right) shaking hands, the White House, November, 2016.  The handshake is one one of humanity's oldest courtesies. 

Barack Obama (b 1961; POTUS 2009-2017) was known carefully to choose his words (indeed, he’d complain he thought himself a better speech-writer than those hired to do the job) and he used “courtesy” when issuing something of a lament at the depiction of him and his wife (Michelle Obama (b 1964; FLOTUS 2009-2017) as “digitally altered” apes in a video shared by Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) on his Truth Social platform.  Although President Obama’s artful text only “indirectly addressed the racist video”, few would have failed to draw the connection between the two and for students of the technique, his response was a fine example of Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high” school of thought.  While not mentioning the president, Obama observed there seemed no longer “…any shame about this among people who used to feel like you had to have some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety and respect for the office” but “that’s been lost”, adding “there's this sort of clown show that's happening in social media and on television.”  While he understood the political value in such a post because “it gets attention” and is “a distraction”, his feeling was “it's important to recognise that the majority of the American people find this behaviour deeply troubling” and that when travelling around the nation, he would meet people who “still believe in decency, courtesy, kindness.”

Behind the famous lectern: Karoline Leavitt (b 1997; White House press secretary since 2025) who also has retreated a little from previously well-established standards of courtesy.

For a president to have reposted such an obviously racist trope would even a year ago have been unthinkable and a major political scandal but so rapidly has the culture shifted that within barely 48 hours, it had fallen from the news cycle, relegated to just another footnote in the history of Trump 2.0 (which definitely is not Trump 1.1).  Although there was widespread, if remarkably muted criticism from both Republicans and Democrats, the White House initially defended the video, calling the backlash “fake outrage” before noting the volume and deleting the video, blaming the sharing on an (unnamed) member of staff.  Citing the actions by the staffer, Mr Trump said “I didn't make a mistake” and thus would not be issuing an apology, adding he’d not watched the whole clip so didn’t see the offensive image.  Analysts of such things were divided on whether the fact the posting happened “in the middle of the night” made the “staffer cover story” less or more plausible but all that information attracted renewed interest when, a couple of days, from the famous lectern, Karoline Leavitt asserted everything posted on President Trump’s social media account comes “directly” from him: “It’s coming straight from the horse’s mouth” as she put it.  “When you see it on Truth Social, you know it’s directly from President Trump. That’s the beauty of this president, his transparency in relaying the administration’s policies to the rest of you and the world.”  Trumpologists were left to make of that what they could.

In literature, the “courtesy book” was a “book of etiquette” but many of the early editions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries went beyond the merely prescriptive in that they embodied a philosophy of the art of living (elegantly and with virtù (Italian for “virtue)) and provided a guide to help.  The ones which survive are noted for their high literary standard and are of great interest to historians because they’re an invaluable source for the history of education, ideas, customs and social behaviour of certain classes.  While the readership of some originally would have been the “upper middle class” or those who aspired to attain that status or at least emulate their manners, there were also courtesy books written for servants going to work in the houses or on the estates of the gentry; these existed so they’d know “how to behave”.  From the fifteenth century, changes in society were profound as the mass production of gunpowder and books exerted their respective influences and it was in this era the concept of “the gentleman” can be said to have emerged in a recognizably modern form, best understood in the most refined version in the term “Renaissance man”; from this point, culture and education really became courtesy's companion terms.  In earlier times, there had been what were known as “conduct books” but the emphasis in these was on morality deportment, manners and religion; they were very much in the “thou shall not” tradition of repressive Christianity.  Reflecting the way the Renaissance spread north and west, among the most influential of the courtesy books were those publish in Venice in the 1520s & 1530s, some of which began to appear in English translation by the mid-1570s.

Woodcut illustration for Book II (Cantos VII-XII) of The Faerie Queene (1590) by Edmund Spenser (circa 1552-1599).

Although The Faerie Queene was an epic-length poem recounting tales of knightly exploits and written in a deliberately archaic style, it merged history and myth, drawing especially on the Arthurian legends with each of the books an allegorical following of a knight who represents a particular virtue (holiness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice and courtesy) which will be tested by the plot.  It’s long been of interest to scholars of the work of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) because Book Two appears to be a source for much of King Lear (circa 1605) (and has drawn the ire of some feminists) but some critics have suggest it can (almost) be described as the “Bible of Renaissance anthropocentric humanism, which, in its most idealistic form, was a sort of apotheosis of man.”  That may seem a little “purple” but in The Faerie Queene, with its depictions of the Renaissance conceptions of knightly and chivalrous conduct, the author’s purpose was clear.  Indeed, in the dedication he wrote: “The generall end therefore of all the booke is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline.”  In scope and literary form, it’s regarded still the “most ambitious courtesy book of all.”

Mandy all dressed up but now with no place to go: The Right Honourable Peter “Mandy” Mandelson PC, Baron Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool (b 1953) in the scarlet robes (the white trim now miniver or even faux fur rather than the traditional ermine) worn on certain ceremonial occasions in the House of Lords.

In 2008, Gordon Brown (b 1951; UK prime-minister 2007-2010), for reasons understandable if not admirable, granted Mandy a barony (the lowest step on the UK's five-rung peerage system), thereby "ennobling" him with a seat in the House of Lords.  The peerage entitled him (for life) to use the title "Lord" and, as one of His Majesty's privy counsellors (appointed in 1998), he may (again for life) add a post-nominal "PC" and be styled "the Right Honourable".  The membership of the Privy Council (essentially, members of the UK cabinet and a select few others) is unusual in that even if members cease to hold the role which justified their appointment, they don't cease to be a member; they just are "not summoned".

However, unlike the removal of a peerage (which requires an act of parliament), any member may at any time resign from the council as would be expected in the case of a scandal which can't be "swept under the mat" as in the preferred practice in Westminster, one famous example being John Profumo (1915–2006) who in 1963 (while aged 56, "happily married" and serving as Secretary of State for War (ie minister of defence)) was found to be having an affair with a young lady of 19 who simultaneously also was enjoying the affections of a KGB spy attached to the Soviet embassy in London.  That scandal played a part in dooming a Tory (Conservative Party) government which had been in office 13 years but never has Mandy been accused of sleeping with women who are in some state of concubinage with the Kremlin's spies so that's one transgression of which he'll never be accused.  Mandy since 2008 has for most purposes been styled as “Lord Mandelson” and that is not a courtesy title because as a “life peer” Mandy enjoys the same privileges (other than not being able to pass the barony to an eldest son) as one who inherited his barony and were he to have children, they would be entitled to style themselves “the honourable”.  It’s believed he does not plan to have children.

As a footnote, for everyone except royalty, some of the the five notches in the UK's peerage system now exist only for historic reference or to keep track of the still extant holders of the titles no longer or rarely created.  All the life peers are barons while since the mid-1960s the creation of viscounts (rung 2) & earls (rung 3) as hereditary titles has been rare and restricted to a handful of (mostly Tory) political party grandees.  No marquess (rung 4) has been created since 1936 and that may be symbolic because while it had become something of a convention to grant retiring prime ministers an earldom, a returning Viceroy of India had come to expect a marquessate.  Dukedoms (rung 5) have not been awarded to non-royal personages since the nineteenth century and the last recipient with no connection to a royal household by marriage enjoyed their elevation in 1874.  Within the family, the palace continues to dole-out dukedoms, earldoms & viscountcies to themselves, none of which appear to be merit-based awards but merit is hardly a concept the royal family would much like to intrude into any conversation involving them.  In truth, for those few who ponder such things, the practice probably is thought a harmless quaintness with even the most ardent monarchist likely to struggle to suggest exactly what Prince Edward (b 1964) has achieved to deserve being also Earl of Wessex (created 1999), Earl of Forfar (created 2019) and Duke of Edinburgh (granted 2023) although he might point out he’s not as bad as his brother Andrew so there’s that. 

Mandy in underpants (presumably his but who knows?).  There is no suggestion Mandy engaged in inappropriate or improper conduct with this unidentified young lady.

The photograph was released by the US DoJ (Department of Justice) in one of the tranches of files related to convicted paedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein (1953–2019).  It was shot in Epstein's New York City apartment when asked about the circumstances, his lordship responded by saying he “did not recall”.  About that (lack of) recollection, some were uncharitably cynical but it does seem plausible given (1) Mandy doubtless spent much time meeting folk while wandering Epstein’s apartment in his underpants and (2) because Epstein had so many “acquaintances”, Mandy could hardly be expected to remember them all.

There are many “courtesy titles”, a class of address loosely defined as those governed by social convention, long-established practice or even administrative convenience.  In the UK’s intricate peerage system, courtesy titles are those used by certain relatives of peers, even though they do not themselves hold a substantive peerage and are not in law members of the peerage so thus never conferred with any right to sit in the House of Lords.  Although almost universally acknowledged, the courtesy titles are sustained only by convention rather than letters patent.  The interaction of the multi-tiered structure of the UK’s peerage system and the distinctions between (1) elder & younger sons and (2) daughters means there are a number of “rules” for courtesy titles but collectively they mean, for most purposes, depending on which rung on the peerage their father stands, sons commonly are styled either “Lord” or “The Honourable” and daughters “Lady” or “The Honourable”.  Wives also gain a honorific with them being granted a style based on the peerage held by their husband although other than the wives of dukes (who are “duchesses”), for most purposes, the convention follows calling non-ducal male peers “Lord” in that the wives are styled “Lady”.  Complicating all this is there are now also female peers so while, for example, the wife of a baron usually would be styled “Lady”, if a woman in her own right holds a barony, the most pedantic would use “baroness”.  All this may sound arcane but when moving in certain circles the official Order of Precedence can be socially consequential because, when attending events, it can dictate things like where one gets to sit and (more significantly), with whom.  So, the significance of the element “courtesy” in “courtesy title” is that use is “a courtesy extended” and not “a right acknowledged”.  That’s why Mr Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (b 1960, formerly Prince Andrew, Duke of York, Admiral etc) was not deprived of being styled “Lord” (something usually attached to the younger son of a duke) because, in the legal sense, the title never existed, such use a mere (though widely observed) convention.  Of course, anyone can if they wish call him “Lord Andrew” though it seems unlikely many will bother.  Maybe his ex-wife will grant him that one final courtesy.

Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) coveted medals and decorations but had little interest in titles; although the grandson of a Duke of Marlborough, his self-image was that of “a great House of Commons man” and one peer once lamented: “The House of Lords means nothing to him”, another noble noting: “he thinks us a collection of disreputable old gentlemen”.  In opposition in 1946 he’d been offered a KG (Knight The Most Noble Order of the Garter (1348), the oldest and most senor knighthood in the UK’s orders of chivalry) but declined because he didn’t like the idea of receiving something recommended by a socialist prime minister.  In 1953, back in office, he accepted because “now only the queen decides” but did regret having to become “Sir Winston” rather than the plain “Mr Churchill” he claimed to prefer, observing to the cabinet secretary: “I don’t see why I should not have the Garter but continue to be known as Mr Churchill.  After all, my father was known as Lord Randolph Churchill, but he was not a lord.  That was only a courtesy title.  Why should I not continue to be called Mr Churchill as a discourtesy title?”  Sir Winston he became although his wife (1885-1977) would have preferred he not accept.  Other wives have been keener, the New Zealand trade union leader Sir Tom Skinner (1909–1991; President of the NZ FoL (Federation of Labour) 1959-1979) explaining to colleagues that while he had no wish to be Sir Tom, he didn’t fancy going home to tell his wife she wouldn’t soon be “Lady Skinner” although, given the darkly comic possibilities in that moniker, some women might have had second thoughts.

Woodrow Wilson (left) and Colonel House (right), New York City, 1916.

In the US, south of the Mason-Dixon Line, there have been many “captains” and “colonels” who had little or no military experience and some became well known including the Dutch-born impresario Colonel Tom Parker (1909–1997) who managed the singer Elvis Presley (1935-1977) and Colonel Edward House (1858–1938) who was for years the most influential of the camarilla in the White House of Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924; POTUS 1913-1921).  Colonel House had been a king-maker in Texas politics but during World War I (1914-1918) it was his advice in international relations Wilson often preferred and, despite lacking any background in matters of European politics, was appointed the US’s senior diplomat at the Paris Peace Conference (1919).  Disappointed by the outcome of the conference and feeling deceived by House who had, during the president’s absence in Washington DC, made certain decisions on his behalf, Wilson sundered their relationship; after House returned to the US, they would never meet again.  To the president it had been simply a matter of the colonel “getting ideas above his station” but, to his dying day, House believed the estrangement was engineered at least in part by the second Mrs Wilson (1872-1961), the “blame the wife” theory a recurrent theme in dynastic and political history.  There was of course also Colonel Harland Sanders (1890–1980) who was 1935 was created a member of the HOKC (Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels) by Ruby Laffoon (1869–1941; governor of Kentucky 1931-1935) and his memory lives on in the fast food KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken), a culinary institution now with more international recognition than the HOKC despite “Kentucky Colonel” being the highest honor bestowed by the state and the nation’s best-known colonelcy.

Colonel Sanders outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken store.  The latte-day name change to "KFC" was effected because the word "fried" had gained negative connotations.

The title became much associated with Texas and many of the Southern States. It was Texas Governor Jim Hogg (1851–1906; governor of Texas 1891-1895) who in 1893 appointed Edward House as a member of his gubernatorial staff, granting him the honorary rank which recipients were entitled to keep for life.  It was something that carried no military command or responsibilities and no federal commission, operating at the “social and political” level something like a Rotary Club membership in that while it conferred a certain perception of status, there was also an expectation (sometimes honoured, sometimes not) the member would fulfil some philanthropic or other worthy public services.  Legally, the basis for the practice dated from the historic rights of governors to appoint officers in their state’s militias and after federation, as the US evolved, the use was extended to non-military use, titles there quite sought after because with no honors systems granting them (knighthoods, peerages and such), those who attain some elected or appointed office (governor, admiral, judge, mayor, senator, ambassador etc), tend for life so to be styled; those who have several get to choose which they prefer.  South of the Mason-Dixon Line, there was an attachment to the tradition because of the cultural significance of the Antebellum Militias which, before the US Civil War (1861-1865) had enjoyed great social prestige, officers drawn often from the (obviously white) elites, plantation owners, lawyers, merchants and such; the granting of a colonelcy didn’t confer community authority: it acknowledged it.  Although much of what was “Southern culture” passed into history, the system remained and proved handy in the way knighthoods and peerages fulfil the function in the UK: (1) rewarding political supporters, (2) providing a quid pro quo to party donors, (3) cementing patronage networks and (4) “paying off” debts or “hushing up” those with troublesome knowledge.  By the early twentieth century, so numerous and associated with unsavoury politics had the colonelcies become that the title became a popular device for satirists.

Jaguar Nashville’s page listing its retired courtesy vehicles available for purchase, the concept much the same as the way “dealer demo cars” are sold.

While in the last decade-odd the engineering has mostly been good, Jaguar has yet to find a way to create a design language to match the distinctive “look” which for more than half-a-century underpinned its success after World War II (1939-1945).  The most recent attempt met with derision although that was a reaction more to the unsubtle DEI (diversity, equity & inclusion) “messaging” in the images used, the approach about as heavy-handed as the lines of the “concept EV” (electric vehicle) later shown.  Because what came to be understood as “a Jaguar” was so defined by what was done in the post-war years, there seems no obvious path for the designers so the company is left in a crowded field, competing on the basis of dynamic qualities and price-breakdown, able no longer to summon the intangible (but real) emotional appeal of old. 

In the US, the medical degree qualifying a graduate to seek to practice the profession is the MD (Doctor of Medicine) but elsewhere in the English speaking world the standard award is MB BS (Bachelor of Medicine & Bachelor or Surgery).  Despite that, most of the latter routinely are styled “doctor” despite not holding a doctorate (MD in the UK and Commonwealth (like a PhD (doctor of philosophy)) awarded as a higher degree after submission of a thesis rather than a course of instruction).  Historically, for medical practitioners, the use of the title “doctor” comes from many layers, dating from antiquity, medieval university practice, professional licensing traditions and later social conventions.  “Doctor” did originally denote “a doctorate” though not in the modern academic sense.  So, for those appropriately qualified in medicine (whether MD or MB BS) “doctor” really isn’t a “courtesy title” but a job title although, of late it’s been adopted also by dentists and vets and some insist that in such cases it should be thought of exactly that.  Doctor was from the Middle English doctor & doctour (an expert, authority on a subject), from the Anglo-Norman doctour, from the Latin doctor (teacher), from doceō (to teach).  It displaced the native Middle English lerare (teacher), from the Middle English leren (to teach, instruct) from the Old English lǣran & lēran (to teach, instruct, guide) which may be compared with the Old English lārēow (teacher, master) and lǣċe (doctor, physician).  In the US the MD evolved into a professional doctorate and the title “Dr” thus followed yet among US lawyers, although many qualify with the analogous JD (Doctor of Jurisprudence), not only is it though bad form for such graduates to use the title “doctor”, professional associations actively discourage use although the legal basis of any attempt at enforcement may be dubious.  As a general principle, the only lawyers in the US styled as “Dr” are those with a doctorate in law (which may be a PhD, DPhil etc).

The Barber Surgeon (1524), engraving by Lucas van Leyden (1494–1533), The Met, New York.

In the great Medieval universities (Bologna, Paris etc), the three higher faculties were Theology, Law and Medicine, graduates of each receiving the degree of Doctor which meant one was a licensed teacher of their discipline.  Thus, a “Doctor of Medicine” was someone qualified to teach medicine at a university, not merely practice it.  In pre-modern medicine (often a gruesome business) there was also distinct social and educational difference between physician and surgeons, especially in England where things became institutionalized.  The physicians were university-trained, held an MD and thus correctly were styled “Dr” whereas the origins of the surgeons lay in the old trade of barber-surgeons; trained by apprenticeship, they did not hold degrees and were styled “Mr”.  In the pre-anaesthetic age, surgical techniques tended to be primitive, often involving cutting or sawing off body parts so for the barbers, skilled in the use of razors and scissors, it was a natural evolution.  This division was in England institutionalized by the formation of the RCP (Royal College of Physicians (1518)) and RCS (Royal College of Surgeons (1843)).

The surgeons had anyway been schematic, guilds existing in London as early as the 1360s and a demarcation dispute between the “surgeons” and “barber surgeons” dragged on until 1540 when a “coming-together” between the “Worshipful Company of Barbers” and the “Guild of Surgeons” was engineered, creating the “Company of Barbers and Surgeons of London”.  However, while papering over the cracks (perhaps “bandaging the wound” might work better), the tensions remained and in 1745 the surgeons departed to form “Company of Surgeons” a royal charter (as Royal College of Surgeons in London) granted in 1800, extended in 1843 to become the “Royal College of Surgeons of England”.  Through all that, even after the early nineteenth century when a university education was made a condition of a licence to practice as a surgeon, the tradition endured and doctors, upon qualifying as members or fellows of the RCS revert from Dr to Mr.  In that context, “Mr” really is not a courtesy title but a professional equivalent and the because of the long history, the field is littered with linguistic quirks, “physician” both a generic term for all qualified to practice medicine and a specialist in internal medicine.  One perhaps once unexpected twist in the history of the history of the barber surgeon is that to this day there appear to be people who get medical advice (or at least a “second opinion”) from their hairdresser, presumably on the basis they’re a proven good source for fashion tips, relationship counselling and such.

Three galleries at the Lindsay Lohan Retrospective by Richard Phillips (b 1962), Gagosian Gallery, 555 West 24th Street, New York, 11 September-20 October 2012.

Described by the artist as an installation, the exhibition was said to be "an example of the way Phillips uses collaborative forms of image production to reorder the relationship of Pop Art to its subjects, the staging and format of these lush, large-scale works said to render them realist portraits of the place-holders of their own mediated existence."  The curator explained the retrospective was conducted as an example of the way collaborative forms of image production can reorder the relationship of Pop Art to its subjects, the staging and format used to render them realist portraits of "...the place-holders of their own mediated existence."  That seemed to explain things.

Vimeo's hosting of Lindsay Lohan, courtesy of Richard Phillips and Gagosian Gallery.

Historically, the term “courtesy of” implied “something provided by its owner to another party without payment or other consideration” and that’s presumably the way Vimeo is using the phrase although it’s likely the file was provided with certain limitations of use (such as “may not be edited”).  However, although for generations used in that way by the print media, on the internet “courtesy of” appears often to be used as a synonym of “attributed to” in cases where explicit permission for use has being neither sought or granted.  Owners of the rights (which may include copyright) can of course seek to have such content “taken down” regardless of any baseless assertion the use is by their “courtesy” but because of the volumes, such actions are by necessity limited and were, for example, some nihilistic psychopath to use on their blog an image of a 1961 Jaguar from the company’s website to illustrate some arcane aspect of a word’s etymology, JLR (Jaguar Land Rover, the corporate identity since 2013 when JLR was created by Tata Motors) likely would neither notice nor care.

Lindsay Lohan (2011) by Richard Phillips, hosted by Vimeo by courtesy of Richard Phillips and Gagosian Gallery.

Screened in conjunction with the 54^th international exhibition of the Venice Biennale (June 2011), Lindsay Lohan was a short film the director said represented a “new kind of portraiture.”  Filmed in Malibu, California, the piece was included in the Commercial Break series, presented by Venice’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture and although the promotional notes indicated it would include footage of the ankle monitor she helped make famous, the device doesn't appear in the final cut.

Directed by: Richard Phillips & Taylor Steele
Director of Photography: Todd Heater
Costume Designer: Ellen Mirojnick
Creative Director: Dominic Sidhu
Art Director: Kyra Griffin
Editor: Haines Hall
Color mastering: Pascal Dangin for Boxmotion
Music: Tamaryn & Rex John Shelverton

A variant on the idea is when an owner provides something “as a courtesy” and there are neither rules nor conventions governing this aspect of use.  First appearing in version 1.1 (1982) of PC-DOS (1980-1995), the obscure file EXE2BIN.exe was a command-line utility (it appeared also in other DOS (disk operating system) forks) that could be used to convert .EXE (executable) files into .COM or BIN (binary executables) files.  In the manuals, Microsoft noted “EXE2BIN is included with MS-DOS as a courtesy to software developers. It is not useful for general users.”  So it was a thoughtful gesture but MS-DOS grew at a faster rate than the capacity of the floppy diskettes which were then the only generally available medium for software distribution.  So, needing space for the essential stuff, when in 1987 MS-DOS 3.3 was released, EXE2BIN was no longer included, relegated to the Technical Reference Pack (available at extra cost).  That didn’t mean the decision was a discourtesy, just that space was needed and it was almost certain anyone likely to use EXE2BIN for its intended purpose anyway purchased the pack.  By the time MS-DOS v6.00 was released in 1991, EXE2BIN was thus no longer described as “a courtesy” and was included on one of the “Supplemental Disks” (US$5.00), which were also part of the “Resource Kit” (US$19.95).

Kitsch

Kitsch (pronounced kich)

(1) Something though tawdry in design or appearance; an object created to appeal to popular sentiment or undiscriminating tastes, especially if cheap (and thus thought a vulgarity).

(2) Art, decorative objects and other forms of representation of dubious artistic or aesthetic value (many consider this definition too wide).

1926: From the German kitsch (literally “gaudy, trash”), from the dialectal kitschen (to coat; to smear) which in the nineteenth century was used (as a German word) in English in art criticism describe a work as “something thrown together”.  Among “progressive” critics, there was a revival in the 1930s to contrast anything thought conservative or derivative with the avant garde.  The adjective kitchy was first noted in 1965 though it may earlier have been in oral use; the noun kitchiness soon followed. Camp is sometimes used as a synonym and the two can be interchangeable but the core point of camp is that it attributes seriousness to the trivial and trivializes the serious.  Technically, the comparative is kitscher and the superlative kitschest but the more general kitschy is much more common.  The alternative spelling kitch is simply a mistake and was originally 1920s slang for “kitchen” the colloquial shortening dating from 1919.  Kitsch & kitchiness are nouns, kitschify, kitschifying & kitschified are verbs and kitschy & kitchlike are adjectives; the noun plural is kitsch (especially collectively) or kitsches.  Kitschesque is non-standard.

Kitsch can become ironic: a lava lamp in "hot dog stand" red & mustard.  Lava lamps were in the 1970s briefly fashionable as symbols of the modern but were soon re-classified kitsch.  In the twenty-first century, such was the demand that re-creations of the originals became available, bought because they were so kitsch; iconic can thus be ironic.

For something that lacks an exact definition, the concept of kitsch seems well-understood  although not all would agree on what objects are kitsch and what are not.  Nor is there always a sense about it of a self-imposed exclusionary rule; there are many who cherish objects they happily acknowledge are kitsch.  As a general principle, kitsch is used to describe art, objects or designs thought to be in poor taste or overly sentimental.  Objects condemned as kitsch are often mass-produced, clichéd, gaudy (the term “bling” might have been invented for the kitsch) or cheap imitations of something.  It can take some skill to adopt the approach but other items which can be part of the motif include rotary dial phones ("retro" can be a thing which transcends kitsch) and three ceramic ducks "flying" up the wall (although when lava lamps were in vogue, lava lamp buyers probably already thought them kitsch).  An application of physics of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics, the lava lamps once so admired by stoned hippies work by exploiting differences in density, thermal expansion, and buoyancy within two immiscible fluids (ie they do not mix), the dynamics driven by a localized heat source and the construction is simple; in a variously shaped glass vessel, there is a wax-based compound (the “lava”, which typically is paraffin wax mixed with additives to adjust density and melting point), floating in a liquid (usually water or a water-based solution with salts or alcohols to achieve the desired density).  At the base of the vessel there is a source of light and heat which traditionally was an incandescent bulb, the heat a product of the inefficiency with which the energy was converted into light; when the bulb is switched on, the liquid becomes heated and as the wax absorbs some of this heat, it melts and thermally expands, density thereby decreasing to the point it’s slightly less dense than the surrounding liquid.  Buoyant force then causes the wax to rise through the liquid in blobs, randomness meaning tiny variations in surface tension and viscosity create infinitely different shapes of the rounded forms which cool as they move away from the heat source, meaning the wax contracts, increasing its density beyond that of the liquid, causing it to sink back toward the bottom.  Because it’s a closed system working on a continuous cycle, the heating & cooling repeats continuously and, component failure and material decay aside, in theory a lava lamp could run forever.

Lindsay Lohan: Prom Queen scene in Mean Girls (2004).  If rendered in precious metal and studded with diamonds a tiara is not kitsch but something which is the same design but made with anodized plastic and acrylic rhinestones certainly is.

Führerkitsch: A painting attributed to Adolf Hitler.

The Nazi regime devoted much attention to spectacle and representational architecture & art was a particular interest of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).  Hitler in his early adulthood had been a working artist, earning a modest living from his brush while living in Vienna in the years before World War I (1914-1918) and his landscapes and buildings were, if lifeless and uninspired, executed competently enough to attract buyers.  He was rejected by the academy because he could never master a depiction of the human form, his faces especially lacking, something which has always intrigued psychoanalysts, professional and amateur.  Still, while his mind was completely closed to any art of which he didn’t approve, he was genuinely knowledgeable about many schools of art and better than many he knew what was kitsch.  However, the nature of the “Führer state” meant he had to see much of it because the personality cult built around him encouraged a deluge of Hitler themed pictures, statuettes, lampshades, bedspreads, cigarette lighters and dozens of other items.  A misocapnic non-smoker, he ordered a crackdown on things like ashtrays but generally the flow of kitsch continued unabated until the demands of the wartime economy prevailed.

To the Berghof, his alpine headquarters on the Bavarian Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden, Barvaria, there were constant deliveries of things likes cushions embroidered with swastikas in which would now be called designer colors and more than one of his contemporaries in their memoirs recorded that the gifts sometimes would be accompanied by suggestive photographs and offers of marriage.  Truly that was “working towards the Führer”.  At the aesthetic level he of course didn't approve but appreciated the gesture although they seem never to have appeared in photographs of the house’s principle rooms, banished to places like the many surrounding buildings including the conservatory of Hans Wichenfeld (the chalet on which the Berghof was based).

Hitler's study in the Berghof with only matched cushions (left) and the conservatory (centre & right) with some pillowshams (embroidered with swastikas and the initials A.H.).

In the US, Life magazine in October 1939 (a few weeks after the Nazis had invaded Poland) published a lush color feature focused on Hitler’s paintings and the Berghof, the piece a curious mix of what even then were called “human-interest stories”, political commentary and artistic & architectural criticism.  One heading :“Paintings by Adolf Hitler: The Statesman Longs to Be an Artist and Helps Design His Mountain Home” illustrates the flavor but this was a time before the most awful aspects of Nazi rule were understood and Life’s editors were well-aware a significant proportion of its readership were well disposed towards Hitler’s regime.  Still, there was some wry humor in the text, assessing the Berghof as possessing the qualities of a “…combination of modern and Bavarian chalet” styles, something “awkward but interesting” while the interiors, “…designed and decorated with Hitler’s active collaboration, are the comfortable kind of rooms a man likes, furnished in simple, semi-modern, sometimes dramatic style. The furnishings are in very good taste, fashioned of rich materials and fine woods by the best craftsmen in the Reich.”  Life seemed to be most taken with the main stairway leading up from the ground floor which was judged “a striking bit of modern architecture.”  Whether or not the editors were aware Hitler thought “modern architecture” suitable only for factories, warehouses and such isn’t clear.  They also had fun with what hung on the walls, noting: “Like other Nazi leaders, Hitler likes pictures of nudes and ruins” but anyway concluded that “in a more settled Germany, Adolf Hitler might have done quite well as an interior decorator.”  There was no comment on the Führer’s pillows and cushions.

Lindsay Lohan themed pillowshams are available.

Whatever Life’s views on him as interior decorator, decades later, his architect was prepared to note the dictator’s “beginner’s mistakes” as designer.  In Erinnerungen (Memories or Reminiscences), published in English as Inside the Third Reich (1969)), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) recalled:

“A huge picture window in the living room, famous for its size and the fact that it could be lowered, was Hitler s pride.  It offered a view of the Untersberg, Berchtesgaden, and Salzburg. However, Hitler had been inspired to situate his garage underneath this window; when the wind was unfavorable, a strong smell of gasoline penetrated into the living room.  All in all, this was a ground plan that would have been graded D by any professor at an institute of technology. On the other hand, these very clumsinesses gave the Berghof a strongly personal note. The place was still geared to the simple activities of a former weekend cottage, merely expanded to vast proportions.”

He commented also on the pillowshams: “The furniture was bogus old- German peasant style and gave the house a comfortable petit-bourgeois look.  A brass canary cage, a cactus, and a rubber plant intensified this impression.  There were swastikas on knickknacks and pillows embroidered by admiring women, combined with, say, a rising sun or a vow of "eternal loyalty."  Hitler commented to me with some embarrassment: "I know these are not beautiful things, but many of them are presents.  I shouldn't like to part with them."

The gush was also trans-Atlantic.  William George Fitz-Gerald (circa 1870-1942) was a prolific Irish journalist who wrote under the pseudonym Ignatius Phayre and the English periodical Country Life published his account of a visit to the Berchtesgaden retreat on the invitation of his “personal friend” Adolf Hitler.  The idea of Hitler having a "friend" (as the word conventionally is understood) is not plausible but that an invitation was extended might in the circumstances have been though is unexceptional.  Although when younger, Fitz-Gerald’s writings had shown some liberal instincts, by the “difficult decade” of the 1930s, experience seems to have persuaded him the world's problems were caused by democracy and the solution was an authoritarian system, headed by what he called “the long looked for leader.”  Clearly taken by his contributor’s stance, in introducing the story, Country Life’s editor called Hitler “one of the most extraordinary geniuses of the century” and noted “the Führer is fond of painting in water-colours and is a devotee of Mozart.”

Country Life, March 1936 (both Hermann Göring (1893–1946) and Werner von Blomberg (1878–1946) were then generals and not field marshals).  General Göring wearing the traditional southern German Lederhosen (leather breeches) must have been a sight worth seeing.

Substantially, the piece in Country Life also appeared in the journal Current History with the title: Holiday with Hitler: A Personal Friend Tells of a Personal Visit with Der Führer — with a Minimum of Personal Bias”.  In hindsight it may seem a challenge for a journalist, two years on from the regime’s well-publicized murders of probably hundreds of political opponents (and some unfortunate bystanders who would now be classed as “collateral damage”) in the pre-emptive strike against the so-called “Röhm putsch”, to keep bias about the Nazis to a minimum although many in his profession did exactly that, some notoriously.  It’s doubtful Fitz-Gerald visited the Obersalzberg when he claimed or that he ever met Hitler because his story is littered with minor technical errors and absurdities such as Der Führer personally welcoming him upon touching down at Berchtesgaden’s (non-existent) aerodrome or the loveliness of the cherry orchid (not a species to survive in alpine regions).  Historians have concluded the piece was assembled with a mix of plagiarism and imagination, a combination increasingly familiar since the internet encouraged its proliferation.  Still, with the author assuring his readers Hitler was really more like the English country gentlemen with which they were familiar than the frightening and ranting “messianic” figure he was so often portrayed, it’s doubtful the Germans ever considered complaining about the odd deviation from the facts and just welcomed the favourable publicity.

As a "cut & paste" working journalist used to editing details so he could sell essentially the same piece to several different publications, he inserted and deleted as required, Current History’s subscribers spared the lengthy descriptions of the Berghof’s carpets, curtains and furniture enjoyed by Country Life’s readers who were also able to learn of the food severed at der Tabellenführer, (the leader's table) the Truite saumonée à la Monseigneur Selle (salmon trout Monseigneur style) and caneton à la presse (pressed duck) both praised although in all the many accounts of life of the court circle’s life on the Obersalzberg, there no mention of the vegetarian Hitler ever having such things on the menu.

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) in polka-dots.

Briefly, Putzi Hanfstaengl was engaged to the US author Djuna Barnes who, although she denied being predominantly lesbionic, was regarded by some contemporary critics as having written the most definitive expressions of lesbian culture since Sappho.  It was one of Hanfstaengl's wives who spoke the most succinct thumbnail sketch of Hitler's sexuality: “I am telling you Putzi, he is a neuter.”

Fitz-Gerald was though skilled at his craft and interpolated enough that was known to be true or at least plausible to paint a veneer of authenticity over the whole.  Of the guests he reported: (1) Hitler’s long-time German-American acquaintance & benefactor (when speaking of Hitler, both better words than "friend") Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl (1887–1975 and a one-time friend of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) was a fine piano player (which nobody ever denied), (2) that Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) was a wine connoisseur (he entered the wine business after marrying into the Henkell family’s Wiesbaden business although his mother-in-law remained mystified, remarking of his career in government it was: “curious my most stupid son-in-law should have turned out to be the most successful” and (3) that Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) was an engaging dinner companion and a “droll raconteur” (it is true Goebbels’ cynicism and cruel wit could be amusing even to those appalled by his views, something like the way one didn’t have to agree with the press baron Lord Beaverbrook (Maxwell Aitken, 1879-1964) to enjoy his tart cleverness).  Much of the credibility was however sustained by it being so difficult for most to “check the facts” and few would have been able to find out that in the spring of 1936 when Fitz-Gerald claimed to be enjoying the Führer’s hospitality, the quaint old Haus Wachenfeld was part of a vast building site, the place being transformed into the sprawling Berghof, the whole area unliveable and far from the idyllic scene portrayed.

Führerkitsch: A painting attributed to Adolf Hitler.

Dutifully, Hitler acknowledged the many paintings which which were little more than regime propaganda although the only works for which he showed any real enthusiasm were those which truly he found beautiful.  However, he knew there was a place for the kitsch… for others.  In July 1939, while being shown around an exhibition staged in Munich called the “Day of German Art”, he complained to the curator that some German artists were not on display and after being told they were “in the cellar”, demanded to know why.  The only one with sufficient strength of character to answer was Frau Gerhardine "Gerdy" Troost (1904–2003), the widow of the Nazi’s first court architect Paul Troost (1878–1934) and one of a handful of women with whom Hitler was prepared to discuss anything substantive.  “Because it’s kitsch” she answered.  Hitler sacked the curatorial committee and appointed his court photographer (Heinrich Hoffmann (1885–1957)) to supervise the exhibition and the depictions of happy, healthy peasants and heroic nude warriors returned.  Hitler must have been satisfied with Herr Hoffman's selections because in November that year he conferred on him the honorific "professor", a title he would award about as freely as he would later create field marshals.

Kitsch: One knows it when one sees it.

What is kitsch will be obvious to some while others will remain oblivious and the disagreements will happen not only at the margins.  Although there will be sensitive souls appalled at the notion, it really is something wholly subjective and the only useful guide is probably to borrow and adapt the threshold test for obscenity coined by Justice Potter Stewart (1915–1985; associate justice of the US Supreme Court 1958-1981) in Jacobellis v Ohio (1964):

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…

Matinée de septembre (September Morn (1911)), oil on canvas by Paul Émile Chabas (1869–1937), in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (not currently on display).

What makes something defined (or re-defined) as kitsch is thus a construct of factors including artistic merit (most obviously when lacking), the price tag and the social or political circumstances of the time.  When Paul Émile showed Matinée de Septembre at the Paris Salon of 1912, it did not attract much comment, female nudes having for decades been a common sight in the nation’s galleries (although there had been a legislative crackdown on low-cost commercial products, presumably on the basis that while the “educated classes” could appreciate nudes in art, working class men ogled naked women merely for titillation).  In other words, Parisian salon-goers had seen it all before and Matinée de Septembre, while judged competently executed, was in no way compelling or exceptional.  The work may thus have been relegated to an occasional footnote in the history of art were it not for the reaction in Chicago when a reproduction appeared in the street-front window of a photography store.  Reflecting the contrasting aspirations of those Europeans who first settled in the continent, in the US there has always been a tension between Puritanism and Libertarianism and one of the distinguishing characteristics of the USSC (US Supreme Court) is that it has, over centuries, sometimes imperfectly, managed usually to interpret the constitution in a way which straddles these competing imperatives with rulings cognizant of what prevailing public opinion will accept and while the judges weren’t required to rule on the matter of Matinée de Septembre’s appearance in a shop window, the brief furore was an example of one of the country’s many moral panics.

Although at first instance a jury found the work not obscene and thus fit for public view, local politicians quickly responded and found a way to ensure such things were restricted to art galleries and museums, places less frequented by those “not of the better classes”.  The notoriety gained from becoming a succès de scandale (from the French and literally “success from scandal”) made it one of the best-known paintings in the US and, not being copyrighted, widely it was reproduced in prints, on accessories and parodied in what would now be called memes.  The popularity however meant a re-assessment of the artistic merit and many critics dismissed it as “mere kitsch” although it was in 1957 donated to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art where it has on occasion been hung as well as being loaned to overseas institutions.  The Met placed it in storage in 2014 and while that’s not unusual, whether the decision was taken because of it’s the depiction of one so obviously youthful isn’t clear.  The artist claimed his model was at the time aged 16 (thus some two years older than the star-cross’d lover in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Romeo and Juliet (1597) and half a decade older than the girl who appeared on the cover of Blind Faith’s one-off eponymous album (1969)) but there is now heightened sensitivity to such depictions.

Kitsch also has a history also of becoming something else.  As recently as the 1970s, tea-towels, placemats, oven mitts, tea-trays and plenty else in the West was available adorned with depictions of indigenous peoples, often as racist tropes or featuring the appropriation of culturally sensitive symbols.  These are now regarded as kitsch only historically and have been re-classified as examples variously (depending on the content) of cultural insensitivity or blatant racism.

Kitsch at work: Lava Lamps and Random Number Generation

Some may have dismissed the Lava Lamp as "kitsch" but the movement of the blobs possesses properties which have proved useful in a way their inventor could never have anticipated.  The US-based Cloudflare is a “nuts & bolts” internet company which provides various services including content delivery, DNS (Domain Name Service), domain registration and cybersecurity; in some aspects of the internet, Cloudflare’s services underpin as many as one in five websites so when Cloudflare has a problem, the world has a problem.  For many reasons, the generation of truly random numbers is essential for encryption and other purposes but to create them continuously and at scale is a challenge.  It’s a challenge even for home decorators who want a random pattern for their tiles, their difficulty being that however a large number of tiles in two or more colors are arranged, more often than not, at least one pattern will be perceived.  That doesn’t mean the tiles are not in a random arrangement, just that people’s expectation of “randomness” is a shape with no discernible pattern whereas in something like a floor laid with tiles, in a random distribution of colors, it would be normal to see patterns; they too are a product of randomness in the same way there’s no reason why if tossing a coin ten times, it cannot all ten times fall as a head.  What interior decorators want is not necessarily randomness but a depiction of randomness as it exists in the popular imagination.

Useful kitsch: Wall of Entropy, Cloudflare, San Francisco.  Had this been in an installation in a New York gallery circa 1972, it would have been called art.  

For most purposes, computers can be good enough at generating random numbers but in the field of cryptography, they’re used to create encryption keys and the concern is that what one computer can construct, another computer might be able to deconstruct because both digital devices are working in ways which are in some ways identical.  For this reason, using a machine alone has come to be regarded as a Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG) simply because they are deterministic.  A True Random Number Generator (TRNG) uses something genuinely random and unpredictable and this can be as simple as the tiny movements of the mouse in a user’s hand or elaborate as a system of lasers interacting with particles.

One of Cloudflare’s devices encapsulating unpredictability (and thus randomness) is an installation of 100 lava lamps, prominently displayed on a wall in their San Francisco office.  Dubbed Cloudflare’s “Wall of Entropy”, it uses an idea proposed as long ago as 1996 which exploited the fluid movements in an array of lava lamps being truly random; as far as is known, it remains impossible to model (and thus predict) the flow.  What Cloudflare does is every few milliseconds take a photograph of the lamps, the shifts in movement converted into numeric values.  As well as the familiar electrical mechanism, the movement of the blobs is influenced by external random events such as temperature, vibration and light, the minute variations in each creating a multiplier effect which is translated into random numbers, 16,384 bits of entropy each time.

Wall of Entropy, Cloudflare, San Francisco.

The arrangement of colors which avoids any two being together, in the horizontal or vertical, was a deliberate choice rather than randomness although, there's no reason why, had the selection truly been random, this wouldn't have been the result.  Were there an infinite number of Walls of Entropy, every combination would exist including ones which avoid color paring and ones in which the colors are clustered to the extent of perfectly matching rows, colums or sides.  What Cloudflare have done in San Francisco is make the lamps conform to the popular perception of randomness and that's fine because the colors have no (thus far observed) effect on the function.  In art and for other purposes, what's truly random is sometimes modified so it conforms to the popular idea of randomness.