Banjax

Banjax (pronounced ban-jaks)

(1) In UK (originally Irish) slang, a mess or undesirable situation created through incompetence

(2) In UK (originally Irish) slang, to ruin, incapacitate or break; to batter or destroy (a person or thing).

Early 1900s (contested): Apparently a regional (Dublin) slang of unknown origin but the most supported theory is it being a euphemism for “ballocks” (a variant of “bollocks” (in this context meaning “rubbish; nonsense”, but associated also with “the tentacles”, the latter the origin of the vulgarity which demands a euphemism.  The alternative spellings were banjack, bandjax, such variations not unusual in the evolution of slang where so much transmission is oral.  Banjax is a noun & verb and banjaxing & banjaxed are verbs; the noun plural is banjaxes or banjaxs.  The suggestion a banjax was a “type of electric banjo” was wholly facetious.

Although one dictionary of Hiberno-English (the collective name for the dialects of English native to the island of Ireland (known also as Irish English (IrE) & (more confusingly), Anglo-Irish), The Irish Use of English (2006) compiled by Irish lexicographer Professor Terence Dolan (1943–2019) offers two possible sources (1) a possible combination of “bang” & “smash” and (2) a Corkese (a regional dialect of English native to County Cork) word meaning “for public lavatory for females”.  There is support for the link with Corkese because in that dialect the vowel sounds in Corkese significantly can differ from other varieties of IrE and the “a” in “cat” can sound more like “cot” to non-locals which would make “banjax” sound closer to “ballocks” and as early as the 1920s the idea of it as a euphemism for “ballocks” had appeared (described in some cases as a “semi-euphemism”).  Whether or not it’s in any way related to the later meaning isn’t known but there’s a document from 1899 listing “Banjax” as the name of a racehorse belong to one Mr Sweeney; the names of race horses are among the more random studies in language so any link is speculative but the meaning was obvious by September 1909 in the report of court proceedings in the Dublin Daily Express, where the transcript recorded: “In the case of a Nationalist claim when the witness entered the box the Unionist agent said that this was a complete ‘banjax’ (laughter)."

It appears also in Act 3 of the play Juno and the Paycock (1924) by the Irish dramatist and memoirist Seán O'Casey (1880–1964): “I’m tellin’ you the scholar, Bentham, made a banjax o’ the Will.”  O’Casey was of the socialist left and regarded as the “first Irish playwright of note” to focus on the working classes Dublin, including them as fully-developed and explored characters rather than as caricatures or political symbols.  He wasn’t exactly a proto-Angry Young Man (said by some to a tautology in the case of Irish youth) but his Irishness, while genuine, was “tuned”: in 1907 he Gaelicised his name from John Casey to Seán Ó Cathasaigh.  It must have been known as a popular oral form because it’s in a number of examples of Irish literature including A Nest of Simple Folk by Seán Ó Faoláin (1900–1991): “For two streets Johno kept complaining to the driver that it was a nice banjax if a fellow…”  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) noted the certain literary respectability banjax gained when Nobel Prize laureate (Literature, 1969) Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)) included it in a passage in 1956.

Banjaxed cars in California: 2005 Mercedes-Benz SL 65 (R230) AMG roadster (2005, left) and 2012 Porsche 911 (997) Carrera S (2012, right).  Lindsay Lohan had some really bad luck while driving black, German cars.

Not for the first time, word nerds can thank the Daily Mail for enriching the current vernacular for in September 2024 it began publishing extracts from Unleashed, the memoir of Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) to be released on 10 October.  Being the Daily Mail, the fragments chosen as extracts are perhaps not representative of the whole but they’re doubtlessly the best click-bait, including discussions in Number 10 about the British Army invading Continental Europe (and thus NATO territory) for the first time since the D-Day landings (6 June 1944), observations about the “long and pointy black” nostrils of his predecessor, a non-apologia dismissing the “Partygate” scandal as much ado about, if not quite nothing, not a great deal, his treacherous colleagues and, of course, something about Meghan & Harry.  The probably brief revival of banjax came in the account of his stay in hospital under the care of the National Health Service (NHS) after testing positive in 2020 in the early stages of what would later be named the COVID-19 pandemic.  Fond of quoting the classics, Mr Johnson recalled the plague of Athens (430 BC) which killed perhaps a third of the population but resorted also to the earthy, detailing his declining health as he was “banjaxed” by the virus, descending from his usual “bullish” and “rubicund” state to within days having a face “the colour of mayonnaise”.

Boris Johnson (right) with prize bull (left), Darnford Farm, Banchory, Scotland September, 2019.

Best though was his vivid pen-portrait of Sir Keir Starmer (b 1962; prime-minister of the UK since 2024), his “irritable face” during a COVID-19–era debate in the House of Commons said to be “like a bullock having a thermometer unexpectedly shoved in its rectum”.  That was an allusion to a prime-ministerial barb accusing the then leader of the opposition of being unable to say schools were safe to re-open because it would “go against his masters in the teaching unions”.  “A great ox has stood on his tongue” he told the speaker.  Although the Daily Mail didn’t bother, the use of a simile in which a politician is compared to a bullock does need some footnoting for an international audience.  In the UK, a bullock is “a castrated male bovine animal of any age” while in US English it’s “a young bull (an uncastrated male bovine animal)” and in other places of the old British Empire (Australia, India & New Zealand) it’s an “ox, an adult male bovine used for draught (usually but not always castrated)”.  One can see how these regional differences might make a difference to someone reading Unleashed.

Cyrus Eaton (1883–1979, centre), Mr Eaton’s prize bull (left) and Harry Truman (1884–1972; US president 1945-1953, right), Cleveland, Ohio, June 1955.

Pleasingly, it’s not the first time one politician has used the imagery of another having a medical device “shoved” in his rectum.  Harry Truman in 1951 wrote to an old friend expressing the wish he could shove a trocar (a sharp-pointed hollow cylindrical instrument (enclosed in a cannula), used (1) in medicine for removing fluid from bodily cavities and (2) by vets and ranchers to “relieve intestinal gas” in cattle) up some of the “stuffed shirts” in Congress: “You know what happens when you stick one of them in an old bull that’s clovered [ie suffering excessive internal gas as a result of eating too much clover].  “The report is loud and the wind whistles – but the bull usually comes down to size and recovers.”  President Truman liked “windy” as a way of describing talkative politicians, applying it to the infamous William “Wild Bill” Langer (1886–1959; US senator (Republican-North Dakota 1940-1959)), long a thorn in his side but he never forgot the lessons he learned from old Tom Pendergast (1872–1945) who ran the corrupt Democratic Party machine in Kansas City & Jackson County, Missouri, 1925-1939.  Accordingly, Republicans generally got attacked and another called “windy” was Arthur Vandenberg (1884–1951; US senator (Republican-Michigan 1928-1951)) who was generally supportive of Truman’s foreign policy, something which didn’t save him from being shoved with the (figurative) presidential trocar.  The noun & verb trocar dates from the early 1700s and was from the French trocart (literally “three-sided”), the construct being tro- (a variant of trois (three)) + cart (a variant of carre (side)), from the Latin quadra (something square) (the connection being as a corruption of trois-quart (three-quarters).

Mutation

Mutation (pronounced myoo-tey-shuhn)

(1) In biology (also as “break”), a sudden departure from the parent type in one or more heritable characteristics, caused by a change in a gene or a chromosome.

(2) In biology, (also as “sport”), an individual, species, or the like, resulting from such a departure.

(3) The act or process of mutating; change; alteration.

(4) A resultant change or alteration, as in form or nature.

(5) In phonetics (in or of Germanic languages), the umlaut (the assimilatory process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vocoid that is separated by one or more consonants).

(6) In structural linguistics (in or of Celtic languages), syntactically determined morphophonemic phenomena that affect initial sounds of words (the phonetic change in certain initial consonants caused by a preceding word).

(7) An alternative word for “mutant”

(8) In cellular biology & genetics, a change in the chromosomes or genes of a cell which, if occurring in the gametes, can affect the structure and development of all or some of any resultant off-spring; any heritable change of the base-pair sequence of genetic material.

(9) A physical characteristic of an individual resulting from this type of chromosomal change.

(10) In law, the transfer of title of an asset in a register.

(11) In ornithology, one of the collective nouns for the thrush (the more common forms being “hermitage” & “rash”)

1325–1375: From the Middle English mutacioun & mutacion (action or process of changing), from the thirteenth century Old French mutacion and directly from the Latin mūtātion- (stem of mūtātiō) (a changing, alteration, a turn for the worse), noun of action from past-participle stem of mutare (to change), from the primitive Indo-European root mei- (to change, go, move).  The construct can thus be understood as mutat(e) +ion.  Dating from 1818, the verb mutate (to change state or condition, undergo change) was a back-formation from mutation.  It was first used in genetics to mean “undergo mutation” in 1913.  The –ion suffix was from the Middle English -ioun, from the Old French -ion, from the Latin -iō (genitive -iōnis).  It was appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action or process, or the result of an action or process. The use in genetics in the sense of “process whereby heritable changes in DNA arise” dates from 1894 (although the term "DNA" (deoxyribonucleic acid) wasn't used until 1938 the existence of the structure (though not its structural detail) was fist documented in 1869 after the identification of nuclein).  In linguistics, the term “i-mutation” was first used in 1874, following the earlier German form “i-umlaut”, the equivalent in English being “mutation”.  The noun mutagen (agent that causes mutation) was coined in 1946, the construct being muta(tion) + -gen.  The –gen suffix was from the French -gène, from the Ancient Greek -γενής (-genḗs).  It was appended to create a word meaning “a producer of something, or an agent in the production of something” and is familiar in the names of the chemical elements hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen.  From mutagen came the derive forms mutagenic, mutagenesis & mutagenize.  Mutation, mutationist & mutationism is a noun, mutability is a noun, mutable & mutant are nouns & adjectives, mutated & mutating are verbs & adjectives, mutational & mutationistic are adjective and mutationally is an adverb; the noun plural is mutations.  For whatever reasons, the adverb mutationistically seems not to exist.

In scientific use the standard abbreviation is mutat and forms such as nonmutation, remutation & unmutational (used both hyphenated and not) are created as required and there is even demutation (used in computer modeling).  In technical use, the number of derived forms is vast, some of which seem to enjoy some functional overlap although in fields like genetics and cellular biology, the need for distinction between fine details of process or consequence presumably is such that the proliferation may continue.  In science and linguistics, the derived forms (used both hyphenated and not) include animutation, antimutation, backmutation, e-mutation, ectomutation, endomutation, epimutation, extramutation, frameshift mutation, hard mutation, heteromutation, homomutation, hypermutation, hypomutation, i-mutation, intermutation, intramutation, intromutation, macromutation, macromutational, megamutation, mesomutation, micromutation, missense mutation, mixed mutation, multimutation, mutationless, mutation pressure, nasal mutation, neomutation, nonsense mutation, oncomutation, paramutation. Pentamutation, phosphomutation. point mutation, postmutation, premutation, radiomutation, retromutation, soft mutation, spirant mutation, stem mutation, stereomutation, ultramutation & vowel mutation.

Ginger, copper, auburn & chestnut are variations on the theme of red-headedness: Ranga Lindsay Lohan demonstrates the possibilities.

Red hair is the result of a mutation in the melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) gene responsible for producing the MC1R protein which plays a crucial role also in determining skin-tone. When the MC1R gene is functioning normally, it helps produce eumelanin, a type of melanin that gives hair a dark color.  However, a certain mutation in the MC1R gene leads to the production of pheomelanin which results in red hair.  Individuals with two copies of the mutated MC1R gene (one from each parent) typically have red hair, fair skin, and a higher sensitivity to ultraviolet (UV) light, a genetic variation found most often in those of northern & western European descent.

A mutation is a change in the structure of the genes or chromosomes of an organism and mutations occurring in the reproductive cells (such as an egg or sperm), can be passed from one generation to the next.  It appears most mutations occur in “junk DNA” and the orthodox view is these generally have no discernible effects on the survivability of an organism.  The term junk DNA was coined to describe those portions of an organism's DNA which do not encode proteins and were thought to have no functional purpose (although historically there may have been some).  The large volume of these “non-coding regions” surprised researchers when the numbers emerged because the early theories had predicted they would comprise a much smaller percentage of the genome.  The term junk DNA was intentionally dismissive and reflected the not unreasonable assumption the apparently redundant sequences were mere evolutionary “leftovers” without an extant biological function of any significance.

However, as advances in computing power have enabled the genome further to be explored, it’s been revealed that many of these non-coding regions do fulfil some purpose including: (1) A regulatory function: (the binary regulation of gene expression, influencing when, where, and how genes are turned on or off; (2) As superstructure: (Some regions contribute to the structural integrity of chromosomes (notably telomeres and centromeres); (3) In RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecules: Some non-coding DNA is transcribed into non-coding RNA molecules (such as microRNAs and long non-coding RNAs), which are involved in various cellular processes; (4) Genomic Stability: It’s now clear there are non-coding regions which contribute to the maintenance of genomic stability and the protection of genetic information.  Despite recent advances, the term junk DNA is still in use in mapping but is certainly misleading for those not immersed in the science; other than in slang, in academic use and technical papers, “non-coding DNA” seems now the preferred term and where specific functions have become known, these regions are described thus.

There’s also now some doubt about the early assumptions that of the remaining mutations, the majority have harmful effects and only a minority operate to increase an organism's ability to survive, something of some significance because a mutation which benefits a species may evolve by means of natural selection into a trait shared by some or all members of the species.  However, there have been suggestions the orthodox view was (at least by extent) influenced by the slanting of the research effort towards diseases, syndromes and other undesirable conditions and that an “identification bias” may thus have emerged.  So the state of the science now is that there are harmful & harmless mutations but there are also mutations which may appear to have no substantive effect yet may come to be understood as significant, an idea which was explored in an attempt to understand why some people found to be inflected with a high viral-load of SARS-Cov-2 (the virus causing Covid-19) remained asymptomatic.

In genetics, a mutation is a change in the DNA sequence of an organism and it seems they can occur in any part of the DNA and can vary in size and type.  Most associated with errors during DNA replication, mutations can also be a consequence of viral infection or exposure to certain chemicals or radiation, or as a result of viral infections.  The classification of mutations has in recent years been refined to exist in three categories:

(1) By the Effect on DNA Sequence:  These are listed as Point Mutations which are changes in a single nucleotide and include (1.1) Substitutions in which one base pair is replaced by another, (1.2) Insertions which describe the addition of one or more nucleotide pairs and (1.3) Deletions, the removal of one or more nucleotide pairs.

(2) By the Effect on Protein Sequence: These are listed as: (2.1) Silent Mutations which do not change the amino acid sequence of the protein, (2.2) Missense Mutations in which there is a change one amino acid in the protein, potentially affecting its function, (2.3) Nonsense Mutations which create a premature stop codon, leading to a truncated and usually non-functional protein and (2.4) Frameshift Mutations which result from insertions or deletions that change the reading frame of the gene, often leading to a completely different and non-functional protein.

(3) By the Effect on Phenotype: These are listed as (3.1) Beneficial Mutations which provide some advantage to the organism, (3.2) Neutral Mutations which have no apparent significant effect on the organism's fitness and (3.3) Deleterious Mutations which are harmful to the organism and can cause diseases or other problems.

(4) By the Mechanism of Mutation: These are listed as (4.1) Spontaneous Mutations which occur naturally without any external influence, due often to errors in DNA replication and (4.2) Induced Mutations which result from exposure to mutagens environmental factors such as chemicals or radiation that can cause changes in DNA),

Because of the association with disease, genetic disorders and disruptions to normal biological functions, in the popular imagination mutations are thought undesirable.  They are however a crucial part of the evolutionary process and life on this planet as it now exists would not be possible without the constant process of mutation which has provided the essential genetic diversity within populations and has driven the adaptation and evolution of species.  Although it will probably never be known if life on earth started and died out before beginning the evolutionary chain which endures to this day, as far as is known, everything now alive (an empirically, that means in the entire universe) ultimately has a single common ancestor.  Mutations have played a part in the diversity which followed and of all the species which once have inhabited earth, a tiny fraction remain, the rest extinct.

Nuclear-induced mutations

Especially since the first A-Bombs were used in 1945, the idea of “mutant humans” being created by the fallout from nuclear war or power-plants suffering a meltdown have been a staple for writers of science fiction (SF) and producers of horror movies, the special-effects and CGI (computer generated graphics) crews ever imaginative in their work.  The fictional works are disturbing because radiation-induced human mutations are not common but radiation can cause changes in DNA, leading to mutations and a number of factors determine the likelihood and extent of damage.  The two significant types of radiation are: (1) ionizing radiation which includes X-rays, gamma rays, and particles such as alpha and beta particles.  Ionizing radiation has enough energy to remove tightly bound electrons from atoms, creating ions and directly can damage DNA or create reactive oxygen species that cause indirect damage.  In high doses, ionizing radiation can increase the risk of cancer and genetic mutations and (2) non-ionizing radiation which includes ultraviolet (UV) light, visible light, microwaves, and radiofrequency radiation.  Because this does not possess sufficient energy to ionize atoms or molecules, which there is a risk of damage to DNA (seen most typically in some types of skin cancer), but the risk of deep genetic mutations is much lower than that of ionizing radiation.  The factors influencing the extent of damage include the dose, duration of exposure, the cell type(s) affected, a greater or lesser genetic predisposition and age.

Peter Dutton (b 1970; leader of the opposition and leader of the Australian Liberal Party since May 2022) announces the Liberal Party's new policy advocating the construction of multiple nuclear power-plants in Australia.

The prosthetic used in the digitally-altered image (right) was a discarded proposal for the depiction of Lord Voldemort in the first film version of JK Rowling's (b 1965) series of Harry Potter children's fantasy novels; it used a Janus-like two-faced head.  It's an urban myth Mr Dutton auditioned for the part when the first film was being cast but was rejected as being "too scary".  If ever there's another film, the producers might reconsider and should his career in politics end (God forbid), he could bring to Voldemort the sense of menacing evil the character has never quite achieved.  Interestingly, despite many opportunities, Mr Dutton has never denied being a Freemason.

On paper, while not without challenges, Australia does enjoy certain advantages in making nuclear part of the energy mix: (1)  With abundant potential further to develop wind and solar generation, the nuclear plants would need only to provide the baseload power required when renewable sources were either inadequate or unavailable; (2) the country would be self-sufficient in raw uranium ore (although it has no enrichment capacity) and (3) the place is vast and geologically stable so in a rational world it would be nominated as the planet's repository of spent nuclear fuel and other waste.  The debate as it unfolds is likely to focus on other matters and nobody images any such plant can in the West be functioning in less than twenty-odd years (the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) gets things done much more quickly) so there's plenty of time to squabble and plenty of people anxious to join in this latest theatre of the culture wars.  Even National Party grandee Barnaby Joyce (b 1967; thrice (between local difficulties) deputy prime minister of Australia 2016-2022) has with alacrity become a champion of all things nuclear (electricity, submarines and probably bombs although, publicly, he seems not to have discussed the latter).  The National Party has never approved of solar panels and wind turbines because they associate them with feminism, seed-eating vegans, homosexuals and other symbols of all which is wrong with modern society.  While in his coal-black heart Mr Joyce's world view probably remains as antediluvian as ever, he can sniff the political wind in a country now beset by wildfires, floods and heatwaves and talks less of the beauty of burning fossil fuels.  Still, in the wake of Mr Dutton's announcement, conspiracy theorists have been trying to make Mr Joyce feel better, suggesting the whole thing is just a piece of subterfuge designed to put a spanner in the works of the transition to renewable energy generation, the idea being to protect the financial positions of those who make much from fossil fuels, these folks being generous donors to party funds and employers of "helpful" retired politicians in lucrative and undemanding roles.

Panda

Panda (pronounced pan-duh)

(1) A black & white, herbivorous, bearlike mammal (in popular use sometimes as “giant panda”), Ailuropoda melanoleuca (family Procyonidae), now rare with a habitat limited to relatively small forested areas of central China where ample growth exists of the stands of bamboo which constitutes the bulk of the creature’s diet.

(2) A reddish-brown (with ringed-tail), raccoon-like mammal (in the literature often referred to as the “lesser panda”), Ailurus fulgens which inhabits mountain forests in the Himalayas and adjacent eastern Asia, subsisting mainly on bamboo and other vegetation, fruits, and insects.

(3) In Hinduism, a brahmin (a member of the highest (priestly) caste) who acts as the hereditary superintendent of a particular ghat (temple) and regarded as authoritative in matters of genealogy and ritual.

(4) In colloquial use (picked up as UK police slang) as “panda car” (often clipped to “panda”), a UK police vehicle painted in a two-tone color scheme (originally black & white but later more typically powder-blue & white) (historic use only).

(5) Used attributively, something (or someone) with all (or some combination of) the elements (1) black & white coloration, (2) perceptions of “cuteness” and (3) the perceived quality of being “soft & cuddly”.

1835: From the French (Cuvier), a name for the lesser panda, assumed to be from a Tibeto-Burman language or some other native Nepalese word.  Cuvier is a trans-lingual term which references the French naturalist and zoologist Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) and his younger brother the zoologist and paleontologist Frédéric Cuvier (1773–1838).  The term was use of any of the Latinesque or pseudo-Latin formations created as taxonomic names for organisms following the style & conventions used by the brothers.  Most etymologists suggest the most likely source was the second element of nigálya-pónya (a local name for the red panda recorded in Nepal and Sikkim), which was perhaps from the Nepali निँगाले (nĩgāle) (relating to a certain species of bamboo), the adjectival form of निँगालो (nĩgālo), a variant of निङालो (niṅālo) (Drepanostachyum intermedium (a species of bamboo)).  The second element was a regional Tibetan name for the animal, related in some way to ཕོ་ཉ (pho nya) (messenger).  The use in Hinduism describing “a learned, wise; learned man, pundit, scholar, teacher (and specifically of the Brahmin (a member of the highest (priestly) caste) who was the hereditary superintendent of a particular ghat (temple) and regarded as authoritative in matters of genealogy and ritual, especially one who had memorized a substantial proportion of the Vedas)” was from the Hindi पंडा (paṇḍā) and the Punjabi ਪਾਂਡਾ (pāṇḍā), both from the Sanskrit पण्डित (paṇḍita) (learned, wise; learned man, pundit, scholar, teacher).  The English word pundit (expert in a particular field, especially as called upon to provide comment or opinion in the media; a commentator or critic) entered the language during the British Raj in India, the use originally to describe native surveyor, trained to carry out clandestine surveillance the colonial borders.  The English form is now commonly used in many languages but the descendants included the Japanese パンダ (panda), the Korean 판다 (panda) and the Thai: แพนด้า.  Panda is a noun and pandalike (also as panda-like) is an adjective (pandaesque & panderish still listed as non-standard; the noun plural is pandas.

A charismatic creature: Giant Panda with cub.

As a word, panda has been productive.  The portmanteau noun pandamonium (the blend being panda +‎ (pande)monium was a humorous construct describing the reaction which often occurs in zoos when pandas appear and was on the model of fandemonium (the reaction of groupies and other fans to the presence of their idol).  The "trash panda" (also as "dumpster panda" or "garbage panda") was of US & Canadian origin and an alternative to "dumpster bandit", "garbage bandit" or "trash bandit" and described the habit of raccoons foraging for food in trash receptacles.  The use was adopted because the black patches around the creature's eyes are marking similar to those of the giant panda.  The Australian equivalent is the "bin chicken", an allusion to the way the Ibis has adapted to habitat loss by entering the urban environment, living on food scraps discarded in rubbish bins.

Lindsay Lohan with “reverse panda” eye makeup.

The “panda crossing” was a pedestrian safety measure, an elaborate form of the “zebra crossing”.  It was introduced in the UK in 1962, the name derived from the two-tone color scheme used for the road marking and the warning beacons on either side of the road.  The design worked well in theory but not in practice and all sites had been decommissioned by late 1967.  The giant panda’s twotonalism led to the adoption of “panda dolphin” as one of the casual tags (the others being “jacobita, skunk dolphin, piebald dolphin & tonina overa for the black & white Commerson's dolphin (Cephalorhynchus commersonii).  “Reverse panda” is an alternative version of “raccoon eyes” and describes an effect achieved (sometimes “over-achieved”) with eye-shadow or other makeup, producing a pronounced darkening around the eyes, an inversion of the panda’s combination.  It’s something which is sometimes seen also in photography as a product of lighting or the use of a camera’s flash.

In English, the first known reference to the panda as a “carnivorous raccoon-like mammal (the lesser panda) of the Himalayas” while the Giant Panda was first described in 1901 although it had been “discovered” in 1869 by French missionary Armand David and it was known as parti-colored until the name was changed which evidence of the zoological relationship to the red panda was accepted.  The giant panda was thus once included as part of the raccoon family but is now classified as a bear subfamily, Ailuropodinae, or as the sole member of a separate family, Ailuropodidae (which diverged from an ancestral bear lineage).  The lesser panda (the population of which has greatly been reduced by collectors & hunters) is now regarded as unrelated to the giant panda and usually classified as the sole member of an Old World raccoon subfamily, Ailurinae, which diverged from an ancestral lineage that also gave rise to the New World raccoons, most familiar in North America.  As late as the early twentieth century, the synonyms for the lesser panda included bear cat, cat bear & wah, all now obsolete.

Panda diplomacy

Lindsay Lohan collecting Chinese takeaway from a Panda Express outlet, New York City, November 2008.

Although the first pandas were gifted by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s (1887-1975; leader of the Republic of China (mainland) 1928-1949 & the renegade province of Taiwan 1949-1975) Chinese government in 1941, “panda diplomacy” began as a Cold War term, the practice of sending pandas to overseas zoos becoming a tool increasingly used by Peking (Beijing after 1979) following the Sino-Soviet split in 1957.  Quite when the phrase was first used isn’t certain but it was certainly heard in government and academic circles during the 1960s although it didn’t enter popular use until 1972, when a pair of giant pandas (Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing) were sent to the US after Richard Nixon’s (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) historic visit to China, an event motivated by Washington’s (1) interest in seeking Peking’s assistance in handling certain aspects of the conflict in Indochina and (2) desire to “move Moscow into check on the diplomatic chessboard”.  Ever since, pandas have been a unique part of the ruling Communist Party of China’s (CCP) diplomatic toolbox although since 1984 they’ve been almost always leased rather than gifted, the annual fee apparently as high as US$1 million per beast, the revenue generated said to be devoted to conservation of habitat and a selective breeding program designed to improve the line’s genetic diversity.  Hong Kong in 2007 were gifted a pair but that’s obviously a special case ("one country, two pandas") and while an expression of diplomatic favour, they can be also an indication of disapprobation, those housed in the UK in 2023 returned home at the end of the lease and not replaced.

It’s one of a set of such terms in geopolitics including  “shuttle diplomacy” (the notion of a negotiator taking repeated "shuttle flights" between countries involved in conflict in an attempt to manage or resolve things (something with a long history but gaining the name from the travels here & there of Dr Henry Kissinger (1923-2023; US national security advisor 1969-1975 & secretary of state 1937-1977) in the 1960s & 1970s)), “ping-pong diplomacy” (the use of visiting table-tennis teams in the 1960s & 1970s as a means of reducing Sino-US tensions and maintaining low-level cultural contacts as a prelude to political & economic engagement), “commodity diplomacy” (the use of tariffs, quotas and other trade barriers as “bargaining chips” in political negotiations), “gunboat diplomacy” (the threat (real or implied) of the use of military force as means of coercion), “hostage diplomacy” (holding the nationals of a country in prison or on (sometimes spurious) charges with a view to exchanging them for someone or something) and “megaphone diplomacy” (an official or organ of government discussing in public what is usually handled through “usual diplomatic channels”; the antonym is “quiet diplomacy”).

Panda diplomacy in action.

A case study in the mechanics of panda diplomacy was provided by PRC (People’s Republic of China) Premier Li Qiang (b 1959; premier of the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 2023) during his official visit to Australia in June 2024.  Mr Li’s presence was an indication the previous state of “diplomatic deep freeze” between the PRC & Australia had been warmed to something around “correct but cool”, the earlier state of unarmed conflict having been entered when Beijing reacted to public demands (delivered via “megaphone diplomacy”) by previous Australian prime minister Scott Morrison (b 1968; Australian prime-minister 2018-2022) for an international enquiry into the origin of the SARS-Covid-2 virus which triggered the COVID-19 pandemic.  Such a thing might have been a good idea but underlying Mr Morrison’s strident call was that he was (1) blaming China and (2) accusing the CCP of a cover-up.  Mr Morrison is an evangelical Christian and doubtlessly it was satisfying for him to attend his church (one of those where there’s much singing, clapping, praising the Lord and discussing the real-estate market) to tell his fellow congregants how he’d stood up to the un-Christian, Godless communists but as a contribution to international relations (IR), it wasn’t a great deal of help.  His background was in advertising and coining slogans (he so excelled at both it was clearly his calling) but he lacked the background for the intricacies of IR.  The CCP’s retributions (trade sanctions and refusing to pick up the phone) might have been an over-reaction but to a more sophisticated prime-minister they would have been reasonably foreseeable.

Two years on from the diplomatic blunder, Mr Li arrived at Adelaide Zoo for a photo-opportunity to announce the impending arrival of two new giant pandas, the incumbent pair, Wang Wang and Fu Ni, soon to return to China after their 15 year stint.  Wang Wang and Fu Ni, despite over those years having been provided “every encouragement” (including both natural mating and artificial insemination) to procreate, proved either unable or unwilling so, after thanking the zoo’s staff for looking after them so well, the premier announced: “We will provide a new pair of equally beautiful, lovely and adorable pandas to the Adelaide Zoo.”, he said through an interpreter, adding: “I'm sure they will be loved and taken good care of by the people of Adelaide, South Australia, and Australia.”  The duo, the only giant pandas in the southern hemisphere, had been scheduled to return in 2019 at the conclusion of the original ten year lease but sometime before the first news of COVID-19, this was extended to 2024.  Although their lack of fecundity was disappointing, there’s nothing to suggest the CCP regard this as a loss of face (for them or the apparently unromantic couple) and Wang Wang and Fu Ni will enjoy a comfortable retirement munching on abundant supplies of bamboo.  Unlike some who have proved a “disappointment” to the CCP, they’ll be spared time in a “re-education centre”.

A classic UK police Wolseley 6/80 (1948-1954) in black, a staple of 1950s UK film & television (top left), Adaux era Hillman Minx (1956–1967) (top centre) & Jaguar Mark 2 (1959-1969) (top right), the first of the true "black & white" panda cars, Ford Anglia 105E (1958-1968) on postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail in 2013 (bottom left), in one of the pastel blues which replaced the gloss black, Rover 3500 (SD1, 1976-1984) (bottom centre) in one of the deliberately lurid schemes used in the 1970s & 1980s (UK police forces stockpiled Rover 3500s when it was announced production was ending; they knew what would follow would be awful) and BMW 320d (bottom right) in the "Battenburg markings" designed by the Police Scientific Development Branch (SDB).

Until 1960, the fleets of cars run by most of the UK’s police forces tended to be a glossy black.  That began to change when, apparently influenced by US practice, the front doors and often part or all of the roof were painted white, the change said to be an attempt to make them “more distinctive”.  The new scheme saw then soon dubbed “panda cars”, the slang picked up by police officers (though often, in their economical way, clipped to “panda”) and use persisted for years even after the dominant color switched from black to pastels, usually a duck-egg blue.  Things got brighter over the years until the police developed the high-visibility “Battenburg markings” a combination of white, blue and fluorescent yellow, a system widely adopted internationally.  Interestingly, although the black & white combination was used between the 1960s-1990s by the New Zealand’s highway patrol cars (“traffic officers” then separate from the police), the “panda car” slang never caught on.

The Fiat Panda

Basic motoring, the 1980 Fiat Panda.

Developed during the second half of the troubled and uncertain 1970s, the Fiat Panda debuted at the now defunct Geneva Motor Show in 1980.  Angular, though not a statement of high rectilinearism in the manner of the memorable Fiat 130 coupé (1971-1977), it was a starkly functional machine, very much in the utilitarian tradition of the Citroën 2CV (1948-1990) but visually reflecting more recent trends although, concessions to style were few.  Fiat wanted a car with the cross-cultural appeal of its earlier Cinquecento (500, 1957-1975) which, like the British Motor Corporation’s (BMC) Mini (1959-2000) was “classless” and valued for its practicality.  It was designed from “the inside out”, the passenger compartment’s dimensions created atop the mechanical components with the body built around those parameters, the focus always on minimizing the number of components used, simplifying the manufacturing and assembly processes and designing the whole to make maintenance as infrequently required and as inexpensive as possible.  One innovation which seemed a good, money saving device was that all glass was flat, something which had fallen from fashion for windscreens in the 1950s and for side windows a decade later.  In theory, reverting to the pre-war practice should have meant lower unit costs and greater left-right interchangeability but there were no manufacturers in Italy which had maintained the machinery to produce such things and the cost per m² proved eventually a little higher than would have been the case for curved glass.  Over three generations until 2024, the Panda was a great success although one which did stray from its basic origins as European prosperity increased.  There was in the 1990s even an electric version which was very expensive and, its capabilities limited by the technology of the time, not a success.

The name of the Fiat Panda came from mythology, Empanda, a Roman goddess who was patroness of travelers and controversial among historians, some regarding her identity as but the family name of Juno, the Roman equivalent of Hera, the greatest of all the Olympian goddesses.  Whatever the lineage, she was a better choice for Fiat than Pandarus (Πάνδαρος) who came from the city of Zeleia, Apollo himself teaching him the art of archery.  Defying his father’s advice, Pandarus marched to Troy as a foot soldier, refusing to take a chariot & horses; there he saw Paris & Menelaus engaged in single combat and the goddess Athena incited Pandarus to fire an arrow at Menelaus.  In this way the truce was broken and the war resumed.  Pandarus then fought Diomedes but was killed, his death thought punishment for his treachery in breaking the truce.

Press-kit images for the 2024 Fiat Grande Panda issued by Stellantis, June 2024.

In June 2024, Fiat announced the fourth generation Panda and advances in technology mean the hybrid and all-electric power-trains are now mainstream and competitive on all specific measures.  The Grande Panda is built on the new Stellantis “Smart Car platform”, shared with Citroën ë-C3, offering seating capacity for five.  Unlike the original, the 2024 Panda features a few stylistic gimmicks including headlights and taillights with a “pixel theme”, a look extended to the diamond-cut aluminium wheels, in homage to geometric motifs of the 1980s and the earlier Panda 4x4.

Bug

Bug (pronounced buhg)

(1) Any insect of the order Hemiptera, especially any of the suborder Heteroptera (a hemipteran or hemipteron; a hemipterous insect), having piercing and sucking mouthparts specialized as a beak (rostrum) and known loosely as the “true bug”.

(2) Any of various species of marine or freshwater crustaceans.

(3) In casual use, any insect or insect-like invertebrate (ie used often of spiders and such because of their supposed “bug-like” quality).

(4) In casual use, any micro-organism causing disease, applied especially to especially a virus or bacterium.

(5) An instance of a disease caused by such a micro-organism; a class of such conditions.

(6) In casual (and sometimes structured) use, a defect or imperfection, most associated with computers but applied also to many mechanical devices or processes.

(7) A craze or obsession (usually widespread or of long-standing).

(8) In slang, a person who has a great enthusiasm for such a craze or obsession (often as “one bitten by the bug”).

(9) In casual (and sometimes structured) use, a hidden microphone, camera or other electronic eavesdropping device (a clipping of bugging device) and used analogously of the small and effectively invisible (often a single-pixel image) image on a web page, installed usually for the purpose of tracking users.

(10) Any of various small mechanical or electrical gadgets, as one to influence a gambling device, give warning of an intruder, or indicate location.

(11) A mark, as an asterisk, that indicates a particular item, level, etc.

(12) In US horse racing, the five-pound (2¼ kg) weight allowance able to be claimed by an apprentice jockey and by extension (1) the asterisk used to denote an apprentice jockey's weight allowance & (2) in slang, US, a young apprentice jockey (sometimes as “bug boy” (apparently used thus also of young female jockeys, “bug girl” seemingly beyond the pale.)).

(13) A telegraph key that automatically transmits a series of dots when moved to one side and one dash when moved to the other.

(14) In the slang of poker, a joker which may be used only as an ace or as a wild card to fill a straight or a flush.

(15) In commercial printing, as “union bug”, a small label printed on certain matter to indicate it was produced by a unionized shop.

(16) In fishing, a any of various plugs resembling an insect.

(17) In slang, a clipping of bedbug (mostly UK).

(18) A bogy; hobgoblin (extinct).

(19) In slang, as “bug-eyed”, protruding eyes (the medical condition exophthalmos).

(20) A slang term for the Volkswagen Beetle (Type 1; 1938-2003 & the two retro takes; 1997-2019).

(21) In broadcasting, a small (often transparent or translucent) image placed in a corner of a television program identifying the broadcasting network or channel.

(22) In aviation, a manually positioned marker in flight instruments.

(23) In gay (male) slang in the 1980s & 1990s as “the bug”, HIV/AIDS.

(24) In the slang of paleontology, a trilobite.

(25) In gambling slang, a small piece of metal used in a slot machine to block certain winning combinations.

(26) In gambling slang, a metal clip attached to the underside of a table, etc and used to hold hidden cards (a type of cheating).

(27) As the Bug (or Western Bug), a river in Eastern Europe flows through Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine with a total length of 481 miles (774 km).  The Southern Bug (530 miles (850 km)) in south west Ukraine flows into the Dnieper estuary and is some 530 miles (850 km) long.

(28) A past tense and past participle of big (obsolete).

(29) As ISO (international standard) 639-2 & ISO 639-3, the language codes for Buginese.

(30) To install a secret listening device in a room, building etc or on a telephone or other communications device.

(31) To badger, harass, bother, annoy or pester someone.

1615–1625: The original use was to describe insects, apparently as a variant of the earlier bugge (beetle), thought to be an alteration of the Middle English budde, from the Old English -budda (beetle) but etymologists are divided on whether the phrase “bug off” (please leave) is related to the undesired presence of insects or was of a distinct origin.  Bug, bugging & debug are nouns & verbs, bugged is a verb & adjective and buggy is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is bugs.  Although “unbug” makes structural sense (ie remove a bug, as opposed to the sense of “debug”), it doesn’t exist whereas forms such as the adjectives unbugged (not bugged) and unbuggable (not able to be bugged) are regarded as standard.

The array of compound forms meaning “someone obsessed with an idea, hobby etc) produced things like “shutterbug” (amateur photographer) & firebug (arsonist) seems first to have emerged in the mid nineteenth century.  The development of this into “a craze or obsession” is thought rapidly to have accelerated in the years just before World War I (1914-1918), again based on the notion of “bitten by the bug” or “caught the bug”, thus the idea of being infected with an unusual enthusiasm for something.  The use to mean a demon, evil spirit, spectre or hobgoblin was first recorded in the mid-fourteenth century and was a clipping of the Middle English bugge (scarecrow, demon, hobgoblin) or uncertain origin although it may have come from the Middle Welsh bwg (ghost; goblin (and linked to the Welsh bwgwl (threat (and earlier “fear”) and the Middle Irish bocanách (supernatural being).  There’s also speculation it may have come from the scary tales told to children which included the idea of a bugge (beetle) at a gigantic scale.  That would have been a fearsome sight and the idea remains fruitful to this day for artists and film-makers needing something frightening in the horror or SF (science fiction) genre.  The use in this sense is long obsolete although the related forms bugbear and bugaboo survive.  Dating from the 1570s, a bugbear was in folklore a kind of “large goblin”, used to inspire fear in children (both as a literary device & for purposes of parental control) and for adults it soon came to mean “a source of dread, resentment or irritation; in modern use it's an “ongoing problem”, a recurring obstacle or adversity or one’s pet peeve.  The obsolete form bugg dates from circa 1620s and was a reference to the troublesome bedbug, the construct a conflation of the middle English bugge (scarecrow, hobgoblin) and the Middle English budde (beetle).  The colloquial sense of “a microbe or germ” dates from 1919, the emergence linked to the misleadingly-named “Spanish flu” pandemic.

Like the rest of us, even scientists, entomologists and zoologists generally probably say “bug” in general conversation, whether about the insects or the viruses and such which cause disease but in writing academic papers they’ll take care to be more precise.  Because to most of us “bugs” can be any of the small, creepy pests which intrude on our lives (some of which are actually helpful in that quietly and unobtrusively they dispose of the really annoying bugs which bite us), the word is casually and interchangeably applied to bees, ants, bees, millipedes, beetles, spiders and anything else resembling an insect.  That use may be reinforced by the idea of the thing “bugging” us by their very presence.  To the professionals however, insects are those organisms in the classification Insecta, a very large class of animals, the members of which have a three-part body, six legs and (usually) two pairs of wings whereas a bug is a member of the order Hemiptera (which in the taxonomic system is within the Insecta class) and includes cicadas, aphids and stink bugs; to emphasize the point, scientists often speak of those in the order Hemiptera as “true bugs”.  The true bugs are those insects with mouthparts adapted for piercing and sucking, contained usually in a beak-shaped structure, a vision agonizingly familiar to anyone who has suffered the company of bedbugs.  That’s why lice are bugs and cockroaches are not but the latter will continue to be called bugs, often with some preceding expletive.

9 September 1947: The engineer's note (with physical evidence) of electronic computing's "first bug".

In computing, where the term “bug” came to be used to describe “glitches, crashes” and such, it has evolved to apply almost exclusively to software issues and even if events are caused by hardware flaws, unless it’s something obvious (small explosions, flame & smoke etc) most users probably assume a fault in some software layer.  The very first documented bug however was an interaction recorded on 9 September 1947 between the natural world and hardware, an engineer’s examination of an early (large) computer revealing an insect had sacrificially landed on one of the circuits, shorting it out and shutting-down the machine.  As proof, the unfortunate moth was taped to the report.  On a larger scale (zoologically rather than the hardware), the problem of small rodents such as mice entering the internals of printers, there to die from various causes (impact injuries, starvation, heat et al) remains not uncommon, resulting sometimes in mechanical damage, sometimes just the implications of decaying flesh.

The idea of a bug as a “defect, flaw, fault or glitch” in a mechanical or electrical device was first recorded in the late 1800s as engineer’s slang, the assumption being they wished to convey the idea of “a small fault” (and thus easily fixed, as opposed to some fundamental mistake which would necessitate a re-design).  Some sources suggest the origin lies with Thomas Edison (1847-1931) who is reported as describing the consequences of an insect “getting into the works”.  Programmers deploy an array of adjectives to "bug" (major, minor, serious, critical & non-critical et al) although between themselves (and certainly when disparaging of the code of others) the most commonly heard phrase is probably “stupid bug”.  The “debugging” (also as de-bugging) process is something with a wide definition but in general it refers to any action or set of actions taken to remove errors.  The name of the debug.exe (originally debug.com) program included with a number of (almost all 16 & 32-bit) operating systems was a little misleading because in addition to fixing things, it could be used for other purposes and is fondly remembered by those who wrote Q&D (quick & dirty) work-arounds which, written in assembler, ran very fast.  The verb debug was first used in 1945 in the sense of “remove the faults from a machine” and by 1964 it appeared in field service manuals documenting the steps to be taken to “remove a concealed microphone”.  Although the origin of the use of “bug” in computing (probably the now most commonly used context) can be traced to 1947, the term wasn’t widely used beyond universities, industry and government sites before the 1960s when the public first began to interact at scale with the implications (including the bugs) of those institutions using computerized processes.  Software (or any machinery) badly afflicted by bugs can be called “buggy”, a re-purposing of the use of an adjective dating from 1714 meaning “a place infested with bugs”.

Some bugs gained notoriety.  In the late 1990s, it wasn’t uncommon for the press to refer to the potential problems of computer code using a two-numeral syntax for years as the “Y2K bug” which was an indication of how wide was the vista of the common understanding of "bug" and one quite reasonable because that was how the consequences would be understood.  A massive testing & rectification effort was undertaken by the industry (and corporations, induced by legislation and the fear of litigation) and with the coming of 1 January 2000 almost nothing strange happened and that may also have been the case had nothing been done but, on the basis of the precautionary principle, it was the right approach.  Of course switching protocols to use four-numeral years did nothing about the Y10K bug but a (possible) problem 8000 years hence would have been of little interest to politicians or corporate boards.  Actually, YxK bugs will re-occur (with decreasing frequency) whenever a digit needs to be added.  The obvious solution is trailing zeros although if one thinks in terms of infinity, it may be that, in the narrow technical sense, such a solution would just create an additional problem although perhaps one of no practical significance.  Because of the way programmers exploit the way computers work, there have since the 1950s been other date (“time” to a computer) related “bugs” and management of these and the minor problems caused has been handled well.  Within the industry the feeling is things like the “year 2029 problem” and “year 2038 problem” will, for most of the planet, be similarly uneventful.

The DOSShell, introduced with PC-DOS 4.0; this was as graphical as DOS got.  The DOSShell was bug-free.

Bugs can also become quirky industry footnotes.  As late as 1987, IBM had intended to release the update of PC-DOS 3.3 as version 3.4, reflecting the corporation’s roadmap of DOS as something of an evolutionary dead-end, doomed ultimately to end up in washing machine controllers and such while the consumer and corporate market would shift to OS/2, the new operating system which offered pre-emptive multi-tasking and access to bigger storage and memory addressing.  However, at that point, both DOS & OS/2 were being co-developed by IBM & Microsoft and agreement was reached to release a version 4 of DOS.  DOS 4 also included a way of accessing larger storage space (through a work-around with a program called share.exe) and more memory (in a way less elegant than the OS/2 approach but it did work, albeit more slowly), both things of great interest to Microsoft because they would increase the appeal of its upcoming Windows 3.0, a graphical shell which ran on top of DOS; unlike OS/2, Windows was exclusive to Microsoft and so was the revenue stream.  Unfortunately, it transpired the memory tricks used by PC-DOS 4.0 were “buggy” when used with some non-IBM hardware and the OS gained a bad reputation from which it would never recover.  By the time the code was fixed, Microsoft was ready to release its own version as MS-DOS 4.0 but, noting all the bad publicity, after a minor updates and some cosmetic revisions, the mainstream release was MS-DOS 4.01.  In the code of the earlier bug-afflicted bits, there is apparently no difference between MS-DOS 4.01 the few existing copies of MS-DOS 4.0.

Lindsay Lohan with Herbie the "Love Bug", Herbie: Fully Loaded (Disney Pictures, 2005). 

In idiomatic and other uses, bug has a long history.  By the early twentieth century “bugs” meant “mad; crazy" and by then “bug juice” had been in use for some thirty years, meaning both “propensity of the use of alcoholic drink to induce bad behaviour” and “bad whiskey” (in the sense of a product being of such dubious quality it was effectively a poison).  A slang dictionary from 1811 listed “bug-hunter” as “an upholsterer”, an allusion to the fondness bugs and other small creatures show for sheltering in the dark, concealed parts of furniture.  As early as the 1560s, a “bug-word” was a word or phrase which “irritated or vexed”.  The idea of “bug-eyed” was in use by the early 1870s and that’s thought either to be a humorous mispronunciation of bulge or (as is thought more likely) an allusion to the prominent, protruding eyes of creatures like frogs, the idea being they sat on the body like “a pair of bugs”.  The look became so common in the movies featuring aliens from space that by the early 1950s the acronym BEM (bug-eyed monster) had become part of industry slang.  The correct term for the medical condition of "bulging eyes" is exophthalmos.

To “bug someone” in the sense of “to annoy or irritate” seems not to have been recorded until 1949 and while some suggest the origin of that was in swing music slang, it remains obscure.  The now rare use of “bug off” to mean “to scram, to skedaddle” is documented since 1956 and is of uncertain origin but may be linked to the Korean War (1950-1953) era US Army slang meaning “stage a precipitous retreat”, first used during a military reversal.  The ultimate source was likely the UK, Australian & New Zealand slang “bugger off” (please leave).  The “doodle-bug” was first described in 1865 and was Southern US dialect for a type of beetle.  In 1944, the popular slang for the German Vergeltungswaffen eins (the V-1 (reprisal weapon 1) which was the first cruise missile) was “flying bomb” or “buzz bomb”) but the Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots preferred “doodle-bug”.

The ultimate door-stop for aircraft hangers: Bond Bug 700.

The popularity of three wheeler cars in the UK during the post-war years was a product of cost breakdown.  They were taxed at a much lower rate than conventional four-wheel vehicles, were small and thus economical and could be operated by anyone with only a motorcycle licence.  Most were actually genuine four-seaters and thus an attractive alternative for families and, being purely utilitarian, there were few attempts to introduce elements of style.  The Bond Bug (1970-1974) was an exception in that it was designed to appeal to the youth market with a sporty-looking two-seater using the then popular “wedge-styling” and in its most powerful form it could touch 80 mph (130 km/h), faster than any other three wheeler available.  However, the UK in 1973 introduced a value-added tax (VAT) and this removed many of the financial advantages the three-wheelers.  In an era of rising prosperity, the appeal of the compromise waned and coupled with some problems in the early productions runs, in 1974, after some 2¼ thousand Bugs had been built, the zany little machine was dropped; not even the oil crisis of the time (which had doomed a good number of bigger, thirstier cars) could save it.  Even in its best years it was never all that successful, essentially because it was really a novelty and there were “real” cars available for less money.  Still, the survivors have a following in their niche at the lower end of the collector market.

The business of spying is said to be the “second oldest profession” and even if not literally true, few doubt the synergistic callings of espionage and war are among man’s earliest and most enduring endeavors.  Although the use of “bug” to mean “equip with a concealed microphone” seems not to have been in use until 1946, bugging devices probably go back thousands of years (in a low-tech sort of way) and those known to have been used in Tudor-era England (1485-1603) are representative of the way available stuff was adapted, the most popular being tubular structures which, if pressed against a thin wall (or preferably a door’s keyhole) enabled one to listen to what was being discussed in a closed room.  Bugging began to assume its modern form when messages began to be transmitted over copper wires which could stretch for thousands of miles and the early term for a “phone bug” was “phone tap”, based upon the idea of “tapping into” the line as one might a water pipe.  Bugs (the name picked-up because many of the early devices were small, black and “bug-like”), whether as concealed microphones or phone taps, swiftly became part of the espionage inventory in diplomacy, commerce and crime and as technology evolved, so did the bugging techniques.

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr (1902–1985), US Ambassador to the UN (United Nations) at a May 1960 session of the Security Council, using the Great Seal bug to illustrate the extent of Soviet bugging.  The context was a tu quoque squabble between the Cold War protagonists, following Soviet revelations about the flight-paths of the American's U2 spy planes.  Lodge would be Richard Nixon’s (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) running mate in that year's presidential election.     

A classic bug of High Cold War was the Great Seal bug, (known to the security services as the thing), a Soviet designed and built concealed listening device which was so effective because it used passive transmission protocols for its audio signal, thereby rendering it invisible to conventional “bug-detection” techniques.  The bug was concealed inside large, carved wooden rendition of the US Great Seal which, in 1945, the Kremlin presented as a “gift of friendship” to the US Ambassador to the USSR Averell Harriman (1891-1986); in a nice touch, it was a group of Russian school children who handed over the carving.  Sitting in the ambassador’s Moscow office for some seven years, it was a masterpiece of its time because (1) being activated only when exposed to a low-energy radio signal which Soviet spies would transmit from outside, when subjected to a US “bug detection” it would appear to be a piece of wood and (2) as it needed no form of battery or other power supply (and indeed, no maintenance at all), its lifespan was indefinite.  Had it not by chance been discovered by a communications officer at the nearby British embassy who happened to be tuned to the same frequency while the Soviets were sending their signal, it may well have remained in place for decades.  Essentially, the principles of the Great Seal bug were those used in modern radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems.