Encyclopedist

Encyclopedist (pronounced en-sahy-kluh-pee-dist)

(1) A compiler of or contributor to an encyclopedia.

(2) One of the collaborators fn the French Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers (now almost always used with initial capital letter).

(3) A dismissive term applied by KGB specialists to generalists.

1645–1655: The construct was encycloped(ia) + -ist.  Encyclopedia was attested from the 1530s, from the New Latin encyclopaedia (general education), from the Renaissance Ancient Greek ἐγκυκλοπαιδεία (enkuklopaideía) (education in the circle of arts and sciences (literally “training in a circle”)), a mistaken univerbated form of the Koine Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδείᾱ (enkúklios paideíā) (education in the circle of arts and sciences, the construct being ἐγκύκλιος (enkúklios) (circular (also “general”)) + παιδείᾱ (paideíā) (child-rearing, education), from pais (genitive paidos (child).  The modern sense of a "reference work arranged alphabetically" is from 1640s, the origin most associated with the French Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers (Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts (1751-1772)).  Encyclopedism (or encyclopaedism) is the related noun and encyclopaedist the alternative spelling, the Latin form surviving as a variant because many of the most famous printed volumes had Latin names; as the printed editions fade from use, except in historic references, encyclopedia is now by far the prevalent spelling.  The adjective encyclopedic dates from 1816 while the truncation cyclopaedia is attested from 1728.  

The -ist suffix was from the Middle English -ist & -iste, from the Old French -iste and the Latin -ista, from the Ancient Greek -ιστής (-istḗs), from -ίζω (-ízō) (the -ize & -ise verbal suffix) and -τής (-tḗs) (the agent-noun suffix).  It was added to nouns to denote various senses of association such as (1) a person who studies or practices a particular discipline, (2), one who uses a device of some kind, (3) one who engages in a particular type of activity, (4) one who suffers from a specific condition or syndrome, (5) one who subscribes to a particular theological doctrine or religious denomination, (6) one who has a certain ideology or set of beliefs, (7) one who owns or manages something and (8), a person who holds very particular views (often applied to those thought most offensive).  The original Encyclopedists (encyclopaedists in historic British use) were the French Encyclopédistes, members of the Société des gens de lettres (a literary association) who between 1751-1765 contributed entries for the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers, published between 1751-1772, edited by noted art critic Denis Diderot (1713–1784) and (until 1759 when one of his entries triggered an amusing ecclesiastical turf-war), mathematician & musicologist Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert (1717–1783).  Encyclopedist is a noun; the noun plural is encyclopedists.

Opening pages of Lindsay Lohan's entry at encyclopedia.com.

Confusingly, “cyclopedia” and “encyclopedia” mean the exact same thing, cyclopedia a long less common spelling although one that in a niche in publishing did persist into the twenty-first century.  First known to have appeared in 1728, according to the usually practice in English where shorter forms are preferred with the unnecessary discarded, “cyclopedia” should have prevailed but as Henry Fowler (1858–1933) pointed out in his authoritative A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926): “The longer forms [encyclopaedia & encyclopaedic] are in themselves better” simply on the basis of an established pattern of use although he did note “cyclopaedic is becoming the more usual form for the adjective”.  That adjectival preference didn’t last into the modern age and etymologists attribute the decline in use of cyclopaedic and its related forms to the Encyclopædia Britannica (Latin for “British Encyclopædia”) becoming for more than a century a cultural reference in much of the English-speaking world.  First published in 1768, the 15^th and final printed edition appeared in 2010, spanning some 33,000 pages over 32 volumes and complete sets often are offered for sale.  For anyone with a bookshelf to fill they’re a visually impressive sight and doubtlessly some have bought sets for “interior decoration” but it would appear supply now exceeds demand.  Since 2016, the encyclopaedia has appeared online at Britannica.com.  If any one factor encouraged the survival of “cyclopaedia”, it was the popularity of Pears' Cyclopaedia, a single-volume encyclopaedia published in the UK by the Pears' Soap Company (1807); it first appeared in 1879, the year of Queen Victoria’s (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901) Diamond Jubilee.  Obviously less comprehensive than the Britannica, Pears’ found a niche in being convenient and oriented towards what most people wanted to know most of the time including an atlas, gazetteer & medical dictionary with sections devoted to topics as diverse as commerce, history, science, religion and literature.  After 1953 the editions became annual but, from the 1990, sales tended down and succumbing to the inevitable, the last appeared in 2017.

KGB identity card, issued in 1982 for British SIS (MI6) defector Kim Philby (1912–1988).

The Soviet Union’s (USSR) KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, literally “Committee for State Security” but better understood as “political police”) was the last of an alphabet-soup of similar agencies (Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD, SMERSH & MGB) which, building on the models of the many secret-police forces maintained by Tsarist Russia (1547-1917), was responsible for the USSR’s internal security and, beyond its borders, espionage, counter espionage and a range of activities conducted in support of Soviet foreign policy (including that not disclosed and that sometimes denied).  In post-Soviet Russia, the KGB evolved into the FSB (Federal Security Service), former comrade Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) honing his skills in the KGB, an institution he is believed to have joined in 1975.

“Lubtanka building”, Lubyanka Square, Meshchansky, Moscow, Russia.

In Soviet times, citizens referred to the building as “the Lubyanka”, a term in synecdochic use referencing the KGB specifically and the state’s sprawling internal security apparatus generally.  After 1918, the yellow-brick building was for decades headquarters of various organs of the Soviet and Russian security services since 1918 (most infamously the KGB, 1954-1991) and it became notoriously especially for the cells in which were conducted interrogations, torture and the executions.  The legend grew the cells were in the basement but that was an illusion, the prison complex actually the windowless top floor, those detained disorientated by the “basement-like” environment.  In a sign of changed times, under the comparatively less repressive regime of comrade Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982; Soviet leader 1964-1982), architects were commissioned to re-model the prison into the KGB staff cafeteria.  After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, a museum was opened within the Lubyanka but the political winds have since again blown from the east and access is now highly restricted.  The word became a cultural reference point also in the West and one of the jocular nicknames for the headquarters for the UK's SIS is “London Lubyanka”; sited on the banks of the Thames, descriptions of the building include “fortress-like” & “North Koreaish” but the eclectic mix of styles, shapes & structures has aged well. 

As an internal security agency, the KGB (like its predecessors) was always formidable and usually effective in the suppression of dissent but in espionage and counter-espionage, the record was patchy and increasingly so as the Cold War (1947-1991) drew to its (anti-) climax.  Most of the celebrated successes happened either before the Cold War began or in its early years, the number and usefulness of ideologically motivated defectors and traitors from the West sharply declining after comrade Khrushchev’s (Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) “Secret Speech” at the 1956 Communist Party Congress in which he denounced comrade Stalin's (Joseph Stalin 1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) repressions and purges, laying bare the nature of the his regime.  The speech didn’t long stay secret, the transcripts leaked to the West convincing all but the few most devoted of the “useful idiots” their faith had been misplaced and the god had failed.  After the interventions in Hungary that same year and Czechoslovakia in 1968, idea of a Soviet-like future became still less appealing, not only in the West but also among the disillusioned in the USSR and its satellite states.

Decline: Soviet real per capita GDP growth 1960-1985.  Nostalgic as he may be for the empire of the old USSR, even Mr Putin admits the economic system simply didn't work.

However, whatever the decline in the metrics, the KGB continued to grow, reflecting the need to increase surveillance and internal control in order for the party to maintain its authority over a system in which occasional periods of stagnation were the only good news in what was, in retrospect, a system in the throes of terminal decline.  By the mid-1970s, in the Moscow region alone, the KGB establishment stood at some 50,000 (greater than the combined workforce of their Cold War opponent’s CIA & FBI (the US Central Intelligence Agency & Federal Bureau of Investigation) although other Western nations also maintained large security operations of spies and analysts) and of the total force of half a million-odd, some 220,000 guarded the USSR’s borders, not from fear of invasion by a foreign power but to discourage escape attempts.  Once an organization with a relatively simple structure which, as late as the early 1960s, was administered through three directorates, the KGB grew to encompass a dozen, reflecting in part the geographical division of the country by 1980 in 21 departments when once there had been eight.  If there was one dominated theme in the government of the late Soviet Union it was a burgeoning bureaucracy, the upper echelons staffed increasingly by party apparatchiks with little knowledge of intelligence or espionage (the USSR’s equivalent of the MBA-CEO class in the West).  These the experienced operators disparagingly called “encyclopedists”, the idea being they knew just a little bit about many things and, being empire-builders as industrious as their imperialist lackey counterparts, fiefdoms proliferated.  Apart from the documented decrease in efficiency, the growth of the KGB, like that of the armed forces, the party and the military-industrial complex, absorbed (unproductively), a rising share of the USSR’s diminishing financial resources at a time of failing health care, food shortages and a general decline in living standards, one former KGB general (Oleg Kalugin (b 1934)) later telling the joke which circulated within the organization: The USSR was “the Congo with rockets”.  In living standards, the flagship of the second-world was tending towards the third and the structural imbalances fed off themselves, an economic viscous circle that led to the economic and moral bankruptcy which doomed the USSR.  Late in 1991, the KGB was dissolved, having out-lasted the party by just weeks although, in the years since, the successor organizations in both Russia and the states within its sphere of influence have sometimes devolved towards the past.

Comrade Andropov.

General Kalugin did however give credit where it was due.  The KGB in 1979 had spies well-placed inside the intelligence apparatuses of a number of countries and one of these agents provided the information the wife of a Soviet diplomat had with some frequency been observed having sex with the family’s large pet (male) dog.  The KGB agents were a worldly lot and might have had a chuckle before turning a blind eye but the source advised there were plans to obtain video evidence with which the diplomat could be blackmailed.  So sensitive was the matter that discussions involved the head of KGB himself, Yuri Andropov (1914–1984; head of KGB 1967-1982, Soviet leader 1982-1984).  Unable simply to recall the couple lest it compromise the source and, in a nice touch, not wishing to burden the husband with the knowledge of his wife’s unusual predilection for canine-intimacy, no solution seemed immediately obvious until, after for some time sitting in silence, comrade Andropov suggested: “Kill the dog”.  All agreed this was a good idea so it was arranged for a KGB technician to visit the house on some pretext to slip the hound some poisoned meat.  The dose turned out to be wrong so instead of killing the beast, just its hind quarters became paralyzed although that obviously solved the problem; a tactical failure but a strategic success.  It was a minor event in a long career and it's believed it played no part in comrade Andropov being the last leader of the USSR but one.

Malia Nummerdor mugshot.  Lots of stuff happens in Florida.

Less inclined to understanding and forgiveness than the KGB’s apparatchiks were one husband in Florida and the officers of the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office.  In September 2026, Rupert Murdoch’s (b 1931) tabloid New York Post reported a husband’s bedroom security camera (said to be visible and displaying a blinking red light when recording) had captured scenes of his wife performing “a disgusting act” with the family dog.  The man had installed the camera in an attempt to find who was pilfering from a coin jar so the sight of his wife enjoying bestiality with his dog would have been at least a surprise.  Mother of two Malia Nummerdor (b 1989) was arrested and charged with “engaging in sexual contact with an animal”, the sheriff’s office confirming the footage revealed Ms Nummerdor was “nude from the waist down, positioned with the dog in a manner consistent with sexual activity”.

Police interviewed the suspect who “acknowledged the video showed her with the dog, but denied there was any sexual contact – claiming that she was just petting it.”  In the report of interview filed, the investigating detective described her answers as “contradictory”.  Predictably, a case that sounded like something from the front page of NRS (normally reliable source) National Enquirer attracted much public interest and friends of Ms Nummerdor launched a fundraiser to assist her with legal expenses, claiming she was “set up by her spouse”.  Helpfully, one acquaintance revealed: “I went to school with her, and she never rubbed me as a weirdo.  She is very pretty.  I don’t think she would have trouble finding a human being to be intimate with.  Of course, that alone doesn’t prove anything, but I think it’s important to remember that the person being portrayed online is someone who has people who knew her before these allegations.” while another concluded “I feel there is much more to the story.”

Mushroom

Mushroom (pronounced muhsh-room)

(1) Any of various fleshy fungi including the toadstools, puffballs, coral fungi, morels etc; any of several edible species, especially of the family Agaricaceae, as Agaricus campestris meadow mushroom, or field mushroom, cultivated for food in many places.

(2) A fungus producing such fruiting bodies.

(3) Anything of similar shape or correspondingly rapid growth.

(4) As ellipsis of “mushroom cloud”, a large, mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke or rubble, formed in the atmosphere as a result of an explosion (or other sudden release of energy), especially a nuclear explosion.

(5) Of, consisting of, or containing mushrooms.

(6) Resembling a mushroom in shape or form; to have or assume the shape of a mushroom.

(7) Of rapid growth and often brief duration (to spread, grow, or develop quickly).

(8) To gather mushrooms (typically as “mushrooming”, practiced by a mushroomer).

(9) As “magic mushroom” (used typically in the plural), any mushroomlike fungus that after ingestion induces psychedelic effects (“shrooms” to users, “psilocybin mushroom” to clinicians in some jurisdictions where prescription is now lawful).

(10) In ballistics (of a bullet), to form the shape of a mushroom when striking a soft target.

(11) In bar billiards, any of the mushroom-shaped pegs.

(12) In architecture, a concrete column with a thickened portion at the top, used to support a slab.

(13) In slang, an individual who rises rapidly from obscurity or poverty (now rare and displaced by “upstart”); the figurative sense of something that grows very quickly or seems to appear suddenly remains in use.

1350–1400: Following the usual conventions in English, it may be expected the construct was mush- + -room but those words wholly are unrelated and the ultimate source is unknown.  Mushroom was an alteration (by folk etymology) of the Middle English muscheron & musseroun, from the eleventh century Middle French mousseron, from the Anglo-Norman musherum & moscheron, from the Old French moisseron, from the Late Latin mussiriōn- (stem of mussiriō).  The Old French word had a murky history and etymologists suspect it was from the Old French mosse & moise (moss (from which modern French gained mousse (on the basis of the first known use being of a type of fungus which grows in moss))), from the Frankish mosu (moss) or the Old Dutch mosa (moss).  The Old French was akin to the Old High German mosa (moor, swamp), the Old High German mos (moss, bog) & mios (moss, mire), the Old English mēos (moss) & mōs (bog, marsh), the Old Norse mosi (moss) & myrr (bog, mire), all from the Proto-Germanic musą, muso & miuziz (mosses, bog), from the primitive Indo- European mews- (mosses, mold, mildew).  It displaced the native Old English swamm.  The clipping shroom is a synonym (most popular with users of magic mushrooms) and the spelling mushrump is long obsolete (the modern spelling more or less standardized by the 1560s).  Mushroom is a noun, adjective & verb, mushroomed is a verb, mushrooming is a noun & verb, mushroomer is a noun, mushroomic, mushroomless, mushroomlike, mushroomoid & mushroomy are adjectives; the noun plural is mushrooms.

Lindsay Lohan's mushroom gravy.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil or butter
3 cups thinly sliced baby portabella mushrooms or white button mushrooms
½ cup finely chopped onion
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour or cup for cup gluten-free flour
3 cups beef broth/stock or vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

(1) In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat.  Sautee mushrooms and onions until they are nicely browned (should take around 7 minutes).  Add in garlic and stir until fragrant (about 30 seconds).

(2) Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.  Whisk in the broth, remembering to scrape from the bottom of pan all the "browned bits" (the best part).  Reduce to a simmer and simmer until thickened, then remove from heat.  Taste for salt and pepper and season to taste.

The alternative etymology (noting the Ancient Greek μύκης (múkēs) (mushroom) suggests the Old French may be of pre-Roman origin and it remains a matter of debate among etymologists (almost all lexicographers stick to “of uncertain origin”).  What is agreed is the noun “mushroom” was at first applied to almost any of the larger fungi but later to the agaricoid fungi (especially the edible varieties).  The figurative use for something or someone that makes a sudden appearance in full form dates from the 1590s; it was applied especially an upstart person (bounder) or family (those who rose rapidly from a low station in life).  All that was based on the mushroom’s impressively rapid rate of growth and by the 1740s the figurative use substantially has lost the “upstart” sense and came to be used generally of “expanding or increasing rapidly; to rise suddenly in position or rank”.  The famous (or infamous) “mushroom cloud” was first widely described in 1916 (World War I (1914-1918) a time & place of big explosions witnessed by many with cameras) but the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) cites the first use as dating from US in 1902.  It thus long pre-dates the nuclear-age but the phenomenon would for millennia (long before there were explosives) have been observed by those watching volcanic eruptions.  After photographs of the immediate aftermath of the A-bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki (August 1945) widely were publicized, the term became popular and spread to many aspects of popular culture including film, art and T-shirts.

Germania, Berlin’s sandy soil and the “mushroom” used to test for sinkage

Germania model, circa 1940.  The scale of the buildings was monumental and Speer was aware of the comparisons with the Rome and Athens of Antiquity, even writing (a not wholly original) “Theory of Ruin Value” arguing the importance of designs that might, thousands of years hence, leave “magnificent ruins”.

Until in the twenty-first century the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) began doing things at a scale once thought unsustainable, the urban-redevelopment plan imagined on a grandest scale was that for Berlin designed by Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945).  What was the be the capital of the Third Reich (and, in the minds of the most delusional of the Nazis: “of the world”) would be renamed Germania and, as Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) told Speer’s wife: “Your husband is going to build buildings for me the likes of which haven't been built for 4,000 years.”  Prone to lies and exaggeration, this was one of the occasions the Führer was being truthful and although there was little the plans for Germania that was original, what was impressive was the scale, Speer taking reference points from architectural history (the Pantheon in Rome, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris) and making the German versions bigger.  Although at the time much taken with what he called the regime’s “Empire style”, in his (sometimes reliable) post-war memoirs (Erinnerungen (Memories or Reminiscences) and published in English as Inside the Third Reich (1969)) he admitted the stylistic failure, above all because the architecture wholly was disconnected from the human scale.

The mushroom, Speer's improbable architectural legacy.

Of all that Speer planned for Hitler's megalomaniacal vision of Germania, only small fragments remain but the strangest and largest relic is the Schwerbelastungskörper (heavy load-bearing body) a concrete structure 30 metres (100 feet) tall and weighing 12,650 tons (11,476 tonnes); locals nicknamed it der Pilz (the mushroom).  Located on the city’s southern edge (near modern day Südkreuz station), the giant concrete cylinder was in 1941 erected to test the suitability of Berlin’s sandy soil, something of great significance because most of Germania’s large, representational buildings would be constructed from granite, concrete & steel; although structural engineers could solve the challenges the architects designs presented, the only way to be certain the soil could handle such weight was to conduct a practical, real-time, full-size experiment.  While the data were required for much of what was planned, of particular interest was intended landmark of the Victory Arch which, at 117 metres (384 feet) tall and 170 metres (558 feet) wide would obviously exert much pressure and, having the foundations sinking into the sandy soil was less than ideal.  With a footprint of exactly 100 m³, Speer’s giant, reinforced concrete “mushroom” was placed in a way that would as closely as possible emulate the forces involved; it sat 18 metres (60 feet) deep with the above-ground extending 14 metres (46 feet) high while inside there were a number of measuring devices recording movement.  As things transpired the instruments recorded sinking between 110-180 mm (4.3-7.1 inches) across the six measuring points and that was well beyond the 60 mm (2.4 inches) deemed by Speer as the upper limit of acceptability.  Whether the findings would have compelled a change to the arch or indeed any of Germania’s other gargantuan designs will never be known because, as the tide of war turned, the resources devoted to the project were re-allocated to more urgent tasks and by 1943 Speer, by then also minister of armaments and war production, quietly shut-down the Germania planning office.  So little was built and less survived but the “mushroom” remained and is now a tourist attraction and a site visited by many organized tours.

The mushroom cloud

Tsar Bomba, the largest ever nuclear test, detonated by the Soviet Union in October 1961.

As the photographs suggest, the mushroom clouds generated by large volcanic eruptions and the detonation of nuclear weapons can look similar because the same atmospheric physics are operating despite the underlying energy-release mechanisms being completely different and, counterintuitively, there is no precise TNT (abbreviation of trinitrotoluene (an explosive substance used in blasting)) equivalent threshold above which every explosion produces a mushroom cloud. A mushroom cloud is principally a consequence of buoyancy and atmospheric fluid dynamics, rather than merely a product of energy released, thus the phenomenon can occur with nuclear explosions, large conventional explosions, volcanic eruptions and even especially intense fires.  What an explosion does is produce a very hot, rapidly expanding mass of gas and entrained material and this rises because the air above has less resistance than the ground below; it rises because it has acquired enormous upward momentum and, as it rises, it entrains surrounding air.  The most important mechanism in the ultimate generation of a mushroom cloud’s distinctive shape is a phenomenon plasma physicists call “thermal buoyancy”.

Physics of a mushroom cloud (left), the fluid dynamics an interplay of energy, matter & air temperature and a mushroom cloud T-shirt (right), the images used sometimes for political messaging and sometimes just for dramatic effect. 

Fernando Famiani's photograph of the eruption of Mt Etna, Sicily, Italy, December 2015, shot from the outskirts of the village of San Teodora.

Familiar from many conditions in climate science, as hot material rises, the heated gas being less dense than the surrounding atmosphere, the rising plume entrains cooler air, increasing its volume while reducing its average temperature, a process that continues until its density approaches that of the surrounding atmosphere at which point, the rising material spreads laterally, producing the mushroom cloud’s characteristic “cap”, the outer regions circulating downwards, maintain the shape of the stem.  There are scaling relationships between explosion energy and the size, height and evolution of the resulting plume and consequently, as a general principle, as explosions become larger, a mushroom cloud becomes increasingly likely under appropriate atmospheric conditions.  So the mushroom cloud is a product of the environment; the same release of energy in different conditions (an explosion deep underground; a large underwater explosion; an explosion in a confined structure; energy released over a sufficiently long period rather than instantaneously) will tend not to create one whereas a relatively modest release of energy can produce one if the geometry and atmospheric conditions are favourable.  So, a mushroom cloud is a thing not of yield but of atmospheric conditions.

Death cap mushrooms.

In 2023, Australian mother of two Erin Patterson (b 1974) murdered three of her relatives and nearly killed a fourth by preparing for them a lunch of Beef Wellingtons laced with highly toxic death cap mushrooms.  Amanita phalloides (the more evocative “death cap” the common name) is a basidiomycete fungus and mushroom (one of many in the genus Amanita) and although originally from Europe, it has spread around the planet as have many species (zoological & botanical) in the age of mass-movement of people and goods.  Dangerously, the death cap closely resembles a number of (variously bland and delicious) edible mushrooms used in many dishes so mushroomers must take care when mushrooming (harvesting wild mushrooms).  They’re the most poisonous of all known mushrooms and a single example contains enough toxin to kill an adult human; unsurprisingly, death caps are estimated to be responsible for as many as 90% of the annual death-toll from eating toxic mushrooms.  Quite what is the extent of the annual loss of life is uncertain because in rural parts of Asia (where foraged mushrooms are common in diets) the statistics are not reliable but it’s believed the numbers bounce-around between 100-300.  The principal toxic constituent (hardly affected by cooking or freezing) is α-Amanitin which causes liver and kidney failure.

Erin Patterson, prior to charges being laid.

It was severe liver failure that was the cause of the death of Erin Patterson’s three victims, all of whom died within a week of falling ill (despite one receiving a liver transplant); the sole survivor recovered after several weeks of treatment.  The trial was conducted before a jury that delivered a guilty verdict on all three charges and the judge handed down a sentence of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 33 years; there was immense international interest in the case and it was the first sentencing hearing in the state of Victoria to be live-streamed.  In what was anyway a macabre tale, one interesting aspect was the way Erin Patterson chose to learn about the nature of the death cap; some will have drawn the conclusion: “When researching murder-methods, don’t use one’s own digital devices.”  The case currently is on appeal, the defense seeking a retrial on several procedural and technical grounds while the state is arguing the sentence was “manifestly inadequate” and there should be no possibility of parole.  On X (formerly known as Twitter), some were even more unforgiving, suggesting: “She should get the chair.”

Cryptic crochet: Erin Patterson crocheted a rat as a gift for her defense counsel.  According to press reports, it was an expression of “thanks” but a crocheted mushroom would have been a nice touch.

In her cell, “mushroom lady” (the public's choice of dub upon the case being publicized) is said to pass the hours crocheting, an intricate, time-consuming business but for those serving long prison sentences, time is relative in a way different to that made famous by Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and for the seven Nazis incarcerated in Spandau prison after the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946), “time” often came up in their sometimes awkward conversations.  Grand Admiral Erich Raeder (1876–1960; head of the German Navy 1928-1943) served as prison librarian and, responding to a complaint from one of his fellow inmates that his handing out the four permitted (and by 1954 uncensored) newspapers (one selected by each of the powers administering the prison (France (Kurier), the UK (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), US (Die Welt) & USSR (Berliner Zeitung)) bound in one folder meant “It will take too long for one person to read all four newspapers”, answered “That doesn't matter. You've got plenty of time, after all.”  Despite that uncompromising start, within two days the admiral relented, averting the threat of mutiny by distributing the papers singularly.

According to Australian neuroscientist Dr Sarah McKay, knitting and crochet can be “deceptively good” for the brain, being an “ideal mix of repetition plus cognitive challenge”, helping individuals regulate their mood and attention span.  She explained the mechanism by pointing out in crocheting: “You have to remember where you're up to, you have to problem solve, you have to make decisions, you're constantly challenging yourself if you're doing more and more complicated patterns but, at the same time, it's challenging but it's low stakes… which I think might be one of the best kinds [of cognitive challenge] we can have.  We're mastering a skill, we're getting better at that and we're kind of just doing the task for the sake of doing the task … it's quite a simple form of mastery and there's something really soothing and good for our mood about that.”  Intriguingly, Dr McKay now has one potential subject available for what would be a unique, longitudinal study: mushroom lady sitting for 33 years in solitary confinement, crocheting stuff.  Such parameters would of course never be approved by any university ethics committee so for researchers interested how such things affect a brain operating in a most unusual environment, there are possibilities. 

Ozempic: The famous “fat jab”.  Now on GLP-1 fat jabs, hopefully the prison authorities will permit mushroom lady (once slender) to create content and open an OnlyFans page with proceeds going to the families of her victims.  There would be a viewership for such content, some of whom would seek contact.

One unexpected coda to the trial was the announcement mushroom lady has been granted access to taxpayer-funded Ozempic (a GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) appetite suppressant), the official explanation being her inability to pursue an exercise regime while in solitary confinement; because of the nature of her offences, it's expected she'll remain in solitary confinement for the foreseeable future (33 years presumably within the vista of “foreseeable”).  Unfortunately, her previous exercise techniques were not disclosed, something that would have been of interest to many pursuing weight-loss.  Doubtlessly anticipating some public outrage at the thought taxpayers would be footing the bill for mushroom lady to get free “fat jabs”, a spokesperson for Victoria’s Department of Justice issued a statement confirming weight loss drugs were just another medicine and would be provided to prisoners based on a clinician's advice: “Prescriptions are only given by clinicians when there’s a clear medical need - like preventing serious conditions such as type 2 diabetes.  Access to prescribed weight loss medication was introduced in response to recommendations from the Coroner following a death in custody linked to obesity.”  The convicted mass-murderer had told the court she “had a problem” with body image and binge-eating, a perhaps unnecessary confirmation given some of the photographs circulated by the media.

Ambassador

Ambassador (pronounced am-bas-uh-dawr)

(1) A diplomatic official of the highest rank, sent by one sovereign or state to another as its resident representative (ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary).

(2) A diplomatic official of the highest rank sent by a government to represent it on a temporary mission, as for negotiating a treaty.

(3) A diplomatic official serving as permanent head of a country's mission to the United Nations or some other international organization.

(4) An authorized messenger or representative.

(5) A term for a corporate representative, often the public face(s) of the company, mush favoured by fashion houses etc.

1325-1375: From the Middle English ambassadore, from the Anglo-Norman ambassadeur & ambassateur, from the Old Italian ambassatore (ambassador in the dialectal Italian), from the Old Occitan ambaisador (ambassador), a derivative of ambaissa (service, mission, errand), from the Medieval Latin ambasiator, from the andbahti (service, function), from the Proto-Germanic ambahtiją (service, office), a derivative of the Proto-Germanic ambahtaz (servant), from the Gaulish ambaxtos (servant) which was the source also of the Classical Latin ambactus (vassal, servant, dependent).  The early Proto-Celtic ambaxtos (servant), was from the primitive Indo-European ambhi (drive around), from ambi- (around) + ag- (to drive).  The adjective ambassadorial (of or belonging to an ambassador) dates from 1759.  The spellings ambassador and embassador were used indiscriminately until the nineteenth century, the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) curiously continuing, well into the twentieth century, to insist the later was the preferred form in US English long after it had there been abandoned everywhere except in the halls of the State Department.  In diplomatic use, the US government had an interesting history of nomenclature, neither sending nor accrediting foreign ambassadors, having only “ministers”.  The reason for this lies in the origins of the United States as a revolutionary state freeing itself from monarchical tyranny; it thus insisted only on ministers who represented states, not ambassadors who historically were the personal emissaries of sovereigns.  Functionally there was no difference and not infrequently, in in casual use ministers were styled as ambassadors with neither offence or declaration of war following and, having made the political point for a century, after 1893, every minister became instead an ambassador.  Ambassador, ambassadress, ambassadry & ambassadrship are nouns, ambassadorial & ambassadorless are  adjectives and ambassadorially is an adverb; the noun plural is ambassadors.

Kylie Jenner (b 1997), a most glam glambassador.

The neologism ambassadonor was coined to describe those appointed to ambassadorships on the basis of the size of their donations to whichever party has the embassy in their gift.  A common practice of long-standing in the US, it’s a way not only of conferring prestige on the appointee but also grants them a title, the convention being an entitlement for life to be addressed as Mr or Madam Ambassador.  For doners, the appointments can be good value for money because (1) traditionally they’re skewed towards desirable locations (a nice (non-shithole) country with a pleasant climate and a majority white population) and (2) they’re effectively sinecures during which one can wine & dine (the US taxpayer picking up the tab), network and pursue business opportunities with any real work handled by the professional staff appointed by the State Department.  That’s just how politics works and it’s a better gig than being something like secretary of state for agriculture.  The nouns ambassadress & ambassadrix are now rare and did double duty as (1) a female ambassador or (2) the wife of an ambassador.  In the modern age, either may make a comeback because when a female ambassador is appointed, if she has a wife the forms may be thought useful but should she have a husband, there’s no equivalent honorific; he’s just an unacknowledged appendage.  Tempting though the thought may be, embassador & embassadress are not two embarrassing appointees (possibly ambassadonors) to an embassy but just now archaic alternative spellings of ambassador & ambassadress.  The informal noun glambassador describes a glamorous public figure (especially a female celebrity) who uses (or licences) her personal brand & image to promote some product or cause.  Kylie Jenner’s role in the promotion of Meta Glasses (camera glasses) may be thought a glambassadorship.

Diplomatic ranks since 1961

Margaret Qualley (b 1994), Venice Film Festival, August 2019, Brand Ambassador for French fashion house Chanel.

Diplomatic rank is the system of professional and social rank used in the world of diplomacy and international relations. A diplomat's rank determines many ceremonial details, such as the order of precedence at official processions, the seat at the table at state dinners, the person to whom diplomatic credentials should be presented and the title by which they should be addressed.  The current system of diplomatic ranks was established by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961) and the modern list is a simplified version of the more elaborate system established by the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815).  There are now three senior ranks, two of which remain in use:

Ambassador. An ambassador is a head of mission who is accredited to the receiving country's head of state. They head a diplomatic mission known as an embassy, which usually is headquartered in a chancery in the receiving state's capital, often clustered with others is what’s often styled a “diplomatic quarter”, a feature of town-planning especially associated with cities where physical security is a concern.  A papal nuncio is considered to have ambassadorial rank, and they preside over a nunciature; often, in predominantly Roman Catholic countries the nuncio is, ex officio, appointed dean of the diplomatic corps.  Between Commonwealth countries, high commissioners are exchanged; they preside over a high commission and enjoy the same diplomatic rank as an ambassador.

Minister. A Minister is a head of mission who is accredited to the receiving country's head of state. A Minister heads a legation rather than an embassy. However, the last legations were upgraded to embassies in the late 1960s, and the rank of Minister is now functionally obsolete although any country may at any time appoint them.  An envoy or an internuncio was also considered to have the rank of Minister; they’re now granted status ad-hoc but tend to be regarded as being on the level of consular appointments.  None of this should be confused with the long and tangled history of the resident minister, appointments sometimes political, sometimes diplomatic and sometime administrative.  At different times and in different places, it has meant different things, used essentially to mean whatever the immediate situation demanded and, being outside any formal rules or conventions of diplomacy, flexibility was possible.

A chargé d'affaires en pied (usually styled as chargé d'affairs in everyday use) is a permanent head of mission, accredited by his country's foreign minister to the receiving nation's foreign minister, in cases where the two governments have not reached an agreement to exchange ambassadors.  A chargé d'affaires ad interim is a diplomat who temporarily heads a diplomatic mission in the absence of an ambassador.

A variety of titles exist beneath the formal three such as counsellor, first secretary, second secretary, third secretary, attaché and assistant attaché.  The actual roles discharged vary, indeed, some of these jobs are actually covers for spies or other political operatives and, just as ambassadorships are used often as a rewards for helpful services (such as large campaign donations) or as a temptingly lucrative sinecure to get a potential rival out of the country, the lower appointments have been a dumping ground for troublesome public servants when, for whatever reason, they can’t be sacked.  The diplomatic appointment also determines the description of the architecture.  An ambassador works from (and usually lives in) an embassy whereas other diplomats (except Commonwealth high commissioners who operate from high commissions) tend to be housed in consulates.  Like ambassador and embassador, the terms ambassy and embassy used to be interchangeable but in each case one prevailed and the other went extinct.  Etymology has no explanation for either case except it was just a pattern of use which emerged and that’s how English evolves.  The word embassy evolved in another way.  It now, institutionally and architecturally, refers to something permanent but, until the late nineteenth century was more often a temporary mission and described a delegation which would return home when its business concluded.  The history is reflected in some terms still used in diplomacy such as "Head of Mission".

Uncle Otto and nephew Eric

Uncle Otto, taking the salute, Paris 1940.

Because the Third Reich (1933-1945) never concluded a peace treaty with Vichy France, diplomatic recognition was not possible so no ambassador was accredited.  There was however a de-facto ambassador, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) in November 1940 appointing Otto Abetz (1903-1958) to the German Embassy in Paris, a post he held until July 1944 when diplomatic conditions changed a bit.  As the letters patent made clear, he acted with full ambassadorial powers and, genuinely a Francophile, he certainly attempted to use his authority in a way he thought would be conducive to making France a central element in a Europe under Berlin's benign hegemony.  These proto-EU (European Union (1993)), the multi-national aggregation which evolved from the EEC (European Economic Community), the Zollverein formed in 1957) gestures didn't much impress his colleagues from the Nazi's "loot & pillage" school of thought with Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) openly contemptuous of "Herr Abetz's" earnestness.  Hitler, who applied "divide and conquer" tactics to enemies, allies & associates alike, seldom attempted to mediate in such squabbles.  In July 1949 a French court handed Abetz a 20 year sentence for crimes against humanity; released in 1954, he died in 1958 in a traffic accident on the Cologne-Ruhr Autobahn and there are conspiracy theorists who suspect the death was an "assassination", the French in the era not above administering some ex post facto justice.

Nephew Eric, taking tea, Canberra 2018.

Otto Abetz was the great uncle of Eric Abetz (b 1958; Liberal Party senator for Tasmania, Australia 1994-2022, member of the Tasmanian House of assembly since 2024).  Because of the coincidence of one being born in the same year death visited the other, there was speculation about the transmigration of uncle Otto’s soul to nephew Eric.  Spiritualists however generally agree this would have been impossible because the former senator was born on 25 January, his old Nazi relative living until 5 May the same year.  Transmigration was known also as metempsychosis and was an idea most associated in the West with pre-Ancient (archaic) Greece but which may (perhaps concurrently) have origins in Egypt and India.  Mr Abetz is now Tasmania's treasurer, a perhaps thankless task given the level of the state exchequer's indebtedness but despite his reputation as a conservative, he has a history of innovation, proudly telling one interviewer his law firm was in the 1980s the first in Hobart to include a splash of color on the firm's letterhead.  At the time, that would have seen some think him a troublesome radical but clearly he's a problem-solver and that's good because in his new role there are problems to solve.  Encouragingly, despite the unpromising family background, no evidence has ever emerged linking Eric Abetz to the Freemasons co there's that.

Lindsay Lohan: Allbirds Ambassador         

Lindsay Logan, nueva embajadora de Allbirds (the new Allbirds ambassador), possibly on a Wednesday.

In 2022, Allbirds appointed Lindsay Lohan as an ambassador for its "Unexpected Athlete" campaign, focusing on her for the new limited edition of its most successful running shoe to date, the Tree Flyer.  The promotional video issued for the announcement was nicely scripted, beginning with Ms Lohan’s perhaps superfluous admission that as an ambassador for running “I am a little unexpected" before working in a few references to her career in film (showing again a rare sense of comedic timing), fondness for peanut butter cookies and the odd social media faux-pas, many of which she's over the years embraced.  It wasn't disclosed if the photo-shoot happened on a Wednesday but the featured shoe (Lux Pink) was said to include no plastics but Allbirds didn't respond to enquiries about the material used for the laces' aglets.  

Lindsay Lohan, Allbirds “Unexpected Athlete Ambassador”.

As a well-known car driver and frequent flyer who has for years lived in an air-conditioned cocoon in Dubai, it’s not clear how far up the chart of conspicuous consumption Ms Lohan has stamped her environmental footprint but US-based footwear and apparel company Allbirds claims its design, production & distribution processes are designed to make its products as eco-friendly as possible.  It is a certified “B Corporation”, a system of private certification of for-profit companies of their "social and environmental performance" conferred by B Lab, a non-profit organization which claims to provide consumers with a way reliably to distinguish the genuinely environmentally active from those who cynically “greenwash”.

The AMC Ambassador's footnote in the history of automotive AC

The AMC (American Motors Corporation) Ambassador was between 1957-1974 produced in eight generations although the name had since 1927 been used by a company that would become part of the ultimately doomed AMC conglomerate.  Emblematic of the company's unsuccessful attempt consistently to compete with Detroit's big three (GM (General Motors), Ford and Chrysler), the Ambassador was in those years offered variously as an intermediate and full-sized model but unfortunately, this culminated in its largest ever iteration being sold as the first oil crisis struck in 1973; the universe shifted and the Ambassador was axed in little more than year.  One footnote in the story is that in 1968, the advertising made much of the Ambassador being the only car in the world (other than those from Rolls-Royce) with AC (air-conditioning) as standard equipment.  That was a bit of a fudge in that at the time a number of European manufacturers fitted AC (optional in Europe) to all of at least some of the models they shipped to the US but technically, AMC was correct.

1974 Rolls-Royce Phantom VI (1968-1990) Formal Limousine (coachwork by Mulliner Park Ward).

Originally, this Phantom VI was delivered to Moscow to serve as official car of British Ambassador to Russia; symbolism was of great significance during the high Cold War.  When supplied, it was in traditional diplomatic black but, after being acquired by a US collector, this was changed to two-tone black over garnet, close to the hues associated with some of the Rolls-Royces in the Royal Mews.  By the time the last left the factory in 1990, it probably remained true Rolls-Royce was "the best-built car in the world" but in many ways the Phantom VI was a relic with the engineering of some of the underpinnings dating from the inter-war years (1919-1939).  The sole virtue of the four-wheel drum brakes was their silence in operation and the solid rear axle's semi-elliptic springs (the nickname "cart springs" gained from them for centuries appearing on horse-drawn carts, carriages, buggies and such) were wrapped in leather gaiters, ensuring the ambassador would never be troubled by tiresomely intrusive squeaks.

The Rolls-Royce "best car in the world" cliché  was in the 1960s still a powerful cultural message and a couple of seasons earlier Ford had spent a lot of money on an advertising campaign asserting their then new range of full-sized Fords was "quieter than a Rolls-Royce", a claim that must have seemed audacious given the English company's hook: “At 60 mph (100 km/h) the loudest noise in a Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”.  That shtick had been verified (at least in ideal conditions) by sceptical journalists although one did note it was possible to make electric clocks function silently, concluding the company deliberately fitted time-pieces emitting an untypically loud “tick-tock”, just to ensure the claim was true.  Still, true it was and to ensure they couldn't be accused of “mere puffery”, Ford spent a lot of money, J. Walter Thompson (then Ford’s advertising agency) commissioning acoustical consultants Boldt, Beranek and Neuman to run tests, two brand new Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud (1955-1966) III (1963-1966) saloons purchased for the project.  What the engineer’s dB (decibel) meters revealed was that, under conditions that were controlled but representative of much of the driving experience in the US, the Fords were indeed quieter.

1964 Chrysler New Yorker Salon advertising.

AMC's marketing budget didn't stretch to hiring consultants of buying a brace of Roll-Royces but to verity its claim, all it required was a Rolls-Royce brochure or specification sheet, free from the closest distributer.  In a sense it was a bold move for AMC to include AC as standard in the Ambassador because it was in 1968 still far from a commonly ordered option and even Cadillacs, Lincolns and Imperials sometimes were ordered without the buyer ticking the box for what was then an expensive choice (well into four figures in 2026 US$ values).  Nor was the commercial history encouraging.  Chrysler in 1963-1964 had tried the approach of bundling almost all available options (including AC) into a top-of-the-range New Yorker it dubbed the “Salon”, daringly offering it at a price-point above some of the (less well-equipped) models in the Imperial line, nominally the corporation’s flagship brand.  Salon was from the French salon (reception room) and although the word was associated with gatherings of literary and artistic circles, most Americans were probably more familiar with the “beauty salon” (eyelashes, hair, nails and such) so how well the “associative messaging” would have cut through is uncertain but the imagery used for marketing certainly had a “European theme” with English society photographer Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) hired to do a few “artistic” shots.  Alas, at almost US$5,900 it was some 30% more expensive than the standard New Yorker and at that price was intruding not only on Imperial’s territory but also that of Cadillac and Lincoln, all with more “brand cachet” than Chrysler although, to be fair, on the basis of cost-breakdown, the value was there because it was still cheaper than any of them similarly equipped from their (long) option lists.  The salon lasted in the catalogue less than two seasons with a disappointing 2,214 sold (593 of the in 1963; 1,621 in 1964) and that was the last time the US industry dabbled with “standard AC” until AMC’s venture with the Ambassador for 1968.