Interregnum

Interregnum (pronounced inn-ter-reg-numb)

(1) (a) An interval of time between the close of a sovereign's reign and the accession of his or her normal or legitimate successor.  (b) A period when normal government is suspended, especially between successive reigns or regimes.  (c)  Any period during which a state has no ruler or only a temporary executive

(2) The period in English history from the execution of Charles I in 1649 to the Restoration of Charles II in 1660.

(3) An interval in the Church of England dioceses between the periods of office of two bishops.

(4) In casual use, any pause or interruption in continuity.

1570-1580: From the Latin interregnum (an interval between two reigns (literally "between-reign), the construct being inter (between; amid) + rēgnum (kingship, dominion, reign, rule, realm (and related to regere (to rule, to direct, keep straight, guide), from the primitive Indo-European root reg- (move in a straight line), with derivatives meaning "to direct in a straight line", thus "to lead, rule"). To illustrate that linguistic pragmatism is nothing new, in the Roman republic, the word was preserved to refer to a vacancy in the consulate.  The word is now generally applied to just about any situation where an organization is between leaders and this seems an accepted modern use. The earlier English noun was interreign (1530s), from French interrègne (14c.).  Interregnum & interregent are nouns and interregnal is an adjective; the noun plural is interregnums or interregna.

The classic interregnum.  One existed between 1204 and 1261 in the Byzantine Empire.  Following the Sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, the Byzantine Empire was dissolved, to be replaced by several Crusader states and several Byzantine states.  It was re-established by Nicean general Alexios Strategopoulos who placed Michael VIII Palaiologos back on the throne of a united Byzantine Empire.

The retrospective interregnum.  The Interregnum of (1649–1660) was a republican period in the three kingdoms of England, Ireland and Scotland.  Government was carried out by the Commonwealth and the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell after the execution of Charles I and before the restoration of Charles II; it became an interregnum only because of the restoration.  Were, for example, a Romanov again to be crowned as Tsar, the period between 1917 and the restoration would become the second Russian interregnum, the first being the brief but messy business of 1825, induced by a disputed succession following the death of the Emperor Alexander I on 1 December.  The squabble lasted less than a month but in those few weeks was conducted the bloody Decembrist revolt which ended when Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich renounced his claim to throne and Nicholas I declared himself Tsar.

The constitutional interregnum.  In the UK, under normal conditions, there is no interregnum; upon the death of one sovereign, the crown is automatically assumed by the next in the line of succession: the King is dead, long live the King.  The famous phrase signifies the continuity of sovereignty, attached to a personal form of power named auctoritas.  Auctoritas is from the Old French autorité & auctorité (authority, prestige, right, permission, dignity, gravity; the Scriptures) from the Latin auctoritatem (nominative auctoritas) (invention, advice, opinion, influence, command) from auctor (master, leader, author).  From the fourteenth century, it conveyed the sense of "legal validity" or “authoritative doctrine", as opposed to opposed to reason or experience and conferred a “right to rule or command, power to enforce obedience, power or right to command or act".  It’s a thing which underpins the legal theory of the mechanics of the seamless transition in the UK of one the sovereign to the next, coronations merely ceremonial and proclamations procedural.  Other countries are different.  When a King of Thailand dies, there isn’t a successor monarch until one is proclaimed, a regent being appointed to carry out the necessary constitutional (though not ceremonial) duties.  A number of monarchies adopt this approach including Belgium and the Holy See.  The papal interregnum is known technically as sede vacante (literally "when the seat is vacant") and ends upon the election of new pope by the College of Cardinals.

The interregnum by analogy.  The term has been applied to the period of time between the election of a new President of the United States and his (or her!) inauguration, during which the outgoing president remains in power, but as a lame duck in the sense that, except in extraordinary circumstances, there is attention only to procedural and ceremonial matters.  So, while the US can sometimes appear to be in a state with some similarities to an interregnum between the election in November and the inauguration in January, it’s  merely a casual term without a literal meaning.  The addition in 1967 of the twenty-fifth amendment (A25) to the US Constitution which dealt with the mechanics of the line of succession in the event of a presidential vacancy, disability or inability to fulfil the duties of the office, removed any doubt and established there is never a point at which the country is without someone functioning as head of state & commander-in-chief.

Many turned, probably for the first time, to A25 after watching 2024’s first presidential debate between sleazy old Donald and senile old Joe.  Among historians, comparisons were made between some revealing clips of Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) late in his second term and reports of the appearance and evident mental state of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) during the Yalta conference (February 1945).  In 1994, Reagan’s diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease was revealed and within two months of Yalta, FDR would be dead.  Regarding the matter of presidential incapacity or inability, the relevant sections of A25 are:

Section 3: Presidential Declaration of Inability: If the President submits a written declaration to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President becomes Acting President until the President submits another declaration stating that he is able to resume his duties.

Section 4: Vice Presidential and Cabinet Declaration of Presidential Inability: If the Vice President and a majority of the principal officers of the executive departments (or another body as Congress may by law provide) submit a written declaration to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President immediately assumes the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

If the President then submits a declaration that no inability exists, he resumes the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of the principal officers (or another body as Congress may by law provide) submit a second declaration within four days that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. In this case, Congress must decide the issue, convening within 48 hours if not in session. If two-thirds of both Houses vote that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President continues as Acting President; otherwise, the President resumes his powers and duties.

Quite what the mechanism would be for a vice president and the requisite number of the cabinet to issue such a certificate is not codified.  Every president in the last century-odd has been attended by a doctor with the title “Physician to the President” (both John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) and Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001), uniquely, appointed women) and presumably they would be asked for an opinion although, even though FDR’s decline was apparent to all, nobody seems to have suggested Vice Admiral Ross McIntire (1889–1959) would have been likely to find the threshold incapacity in a president he’d known since 1917 as served as physician since 1933.  Vice presidents and troubled cabinet members may need to seek a second opinion.

Fashions change: The dour Charles I (left), the puritanical Oliver Cromwell (centre) and the merry Charles II (right).

The famous interregnum in England, Scotland, and Ireland began with the execution of Charles I (1600-1649) and ended with the restoration to the thrones of the three realms of his son Charles II (1630-1685) in 1660.  Immediately after the execution, a body known as the English Council of State (later re-named the Protector's Privy Council) was created by the Rump Parliament.  Because of the implication of auctoritas, the king's beheading was delayed half a day so the members of parliament could pass legislation declaring themselves the sole representatives of the people and the House of Commons the repository of all power.  Making it a capital offence to proclaim a new king, the laws abolished both the monarchy and the House of Lords.  For most of the interregnum, the British Isles were ruled by Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) an English general and statesman who combined the roles of head of state and head of government of the republican commonwealth.

When Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of England and other places variously 1952-2022) took her last breath, Charles (b 1948) in that moment became King Charles III; the unbroken line summed up in the phrase "The King is dead.  Long Live the King".  In the British constitution there is no interregnum and a coronation (which may happen weeks, months or even years after the succession) is, in secular legal terms, purely ceremonial although there have been those who argued it remains substantive in relation to the monarch's role as supreme governor of the established Church of England, a view now regarded by most with some scepticism.  As a spectacle however it's of some interest (as the worldwide television ratings confirmed) and given the history, there was this time some interest in the wording used in reference to the queen consort.  However, constitutional confirmed that had any legal loose ends been detected or created at or after the moment of the succession they would have been "tidied up" at a meeting of the Accession Council, comprised of a number of worthies who assemble upon the death of a monarch and issue a formal proclamation of accession, usually in the presence of the successor who swears oaths relating to both church (England & Scotland) and state.  What receives the seal of the council is the ultimate repository of monarchical authority (on which the laws and mechanisms of the state ultimately depend) and dynastic legitimacy, rather than the coronation ceremony.

Some fashions did survive the interregnum: Charles II in his coronation regalia (left) and Lindsay Lohan (right) demonstrate why tights will never go out of style.

Atlas

Atlas (pronounced at-luhs (U) or At-lass (non-U))

(1) A bound collection of maps, named after the Greek god. Since the sixteenth century, pictures of Atlas and his burden have been used as decorations on maps.

(2) A detailed visual conspectus of something of great and multi-faceted complexity, with its elements splayed so as to be presented in as discrete a manner as possible whilst retaining a realistic view of the whole.  Most associated with anatomy, especially of the human body, it’s long been used to describe detailed collections of drawings, diagrams etc of any subject.

(3) In anatomy, the top or first cervical vertebra of the neck, supporting the skull and articulating with the occipital bone and rotating around the dens of the axis.

(4) In stationery, a size of drawing or writing paper, 26 × 33 or 34 inches (660 x 838 or 864 mm); in some markets sold in a 26 x 17 inch (660 x 432 mm) form.

(5) In architecture, a sculptural figure of a man used as a column; also called a telamon (plural telamones or telamons) or atlant, atlante & atlantid (plural atlantes).

(6) A mountain range in north-west Africa.

(7) In classical mythology, a Titan, son of Iapetus and brother of Prometheus and Epimetheus, condemned for eternity to support the sky on his shoulders as punishment for rebelling against Zeus: identified by the ancients with the Atlas Mountains.

(8) A very strong person or who supports a heavy burden; a mainstay.

(9) In rocketry, a liquid-propellant booster rocket, originally developed as the first US intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), used with Agena or Centaur upper stages to launch satellites into orbit around the earth and send probes to the moon and planets; also used to launch the Mercury spacecraft into Earth orbit.

(9) in military use (US rocketry) & astronautics, the SM-65, an early ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missile), re-purposed as the launch platform for orbital vehicles (satellites) and later used with Agena or Centaur upper stages to send probes to the moon and planets; also used to launch the Mercury spacecraft into Earth orbit.

(10) In astronomy, a small satellite of Saturn, discovered in 1980.

(11) In astronomy, a crater in the last quadrant of the moon.

(12) In astronomy, a triple star system in the Pleiades open cluster (M45) also known as 27 Tauri.

(13) In psychiatry, as Atlas personality, a term used to describe the personality of someone whose childhood was characterized by excessive responsibilities.

(14) As the ERA Atlas, the original name for the UNIVAC 1101 computer, released in 1950.

(15) In differential geometry & topology, a family of coordinate charts that cover a manifold.

(16) A rich satin fabric (archaic).

1580-1590: From the Latin Atlas, from the name of the Ancient Greek mythological figure Ἄτλας (Átlas) (Bearer (of the Heavens)), from τλῆναι (tlênai) (to suffer; to endure; to bear).  The traditional translation of the Greek name as "The Bearer (of the Heavens)" comes from it construct: a- (the copulative prefix) + the stem of tlenai (to bear), from the primitive Indo-European root tele- (to lift, support, weigh) but some etymologists suggest the Berber adrar (mountain) as a source and argues it’s at least plausible that the Greek name is a "folk-etymological reshaping" of this. Mount Atlas, in (then) Mauritania, featured in the cosmology of Ancient Greece as a support of the heavens.  Atlas had originally been the name of an Arcadian mountain god before being transferred to the mountain chain.  In Arabic script atlas was أَطْلَس‎ and Atlas Mountains جِبَال ٱلْأَطْلَس, Romanized as jibāl al-ʾaṭlas.  The Atlas mountain range lies in north-west Africa and separates the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines from the Sahara.  The noun plural is atlases for the collection of maps and atlantes for the architectural feature.  Atlas is a noun and atlas-like is an adjective; the noun plural is atlases.  When used as a proper noun to refer to the figure of mythology, it's with an initial capital.

The first use of the word atlas (in English translation) in the sense of a "collection of maps in a volume" is thought to have the 1636 edition of the 1595 Atlas Sive Cosmographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura (Atlas or cosmographical meditations upon the creation of the universe, and the universe as created) by Flemish geographer & cartographer Gerhardus Mercator (1512-1594).  An impression of the Titan Atlas holding the globe was imprinted on the frontispiece and many subsequent atlases followed, creating a tradition which has endured until today. Mercator died prior to publication of the atlas, the first edition of which he had already largely complied and assembled; the final editing was undertaken by his son who would also pursue a career in cartography.

The adjective (resembling or pertaining to Atlas) was atlantean which from 1852 extended to “pertaining to Atlantis".  The mythical island (even sometimes a continent) become widely known in Europe only after circa 1600 after translations of Plato’s Timaeus and Critias (both written circa 360 BC) became available.  Even then, like some previous medieval scholars who knew the texts, many thought regarding Plato as a historian as dubious and considered Atlantis entirely an invention, a device used to illustrate a political cautionary tale.  Still, given a long history of earthquakes and sea-level rise since the last peak of the ice-age (in which we’re still living), it’s not impossible there are buried settlements which would, by the standards of the time, have been thought large.  The Greek Atlantis (literally "daughter of Atlas”), is a noun use of the feminine adjective from Atlas (stem Atlant).

A brace of Atlantes at the tomb of Louis Phélypeaux (1598–1681), seigneur de La Vrillière, marquis de Châteauneuf and Tanlay (1678), comte de Saint-Florentin, church of Saint Martial of Châteauneuf-sur-Loire.

In European architectural sculpture, an atlas (also known as an atlant, atlante & atlantid (plural atlantes)), was a (usually decorative) support sculpted in the form of a man and either part of or attached to a column, a pier or a pilaster.  The Roman term was telamon (plural telamones or telamons), from a later mythological hero, Telamon, one of the Argonauts, the father of Ajax.  Pre-dating the alantes in Classical architecture was the caryatid, an exclusively female form where the sculpture of a woman stands with each pillar or column.  Usually in an Ionic context, they were traditionally represented in association with the goddesses worshiped in the temples to which they were attached and rarely were they full-length forms, usually crafted as a conventional structural member below the waist, assuming the female lines above.  One difference between the male and female renderings was the atlantes often bore expressions of strain or had limbs bent by the effort of sustaining their heavy load.  The caryatids were almost always purely decorative and carved to show a nonchalant effortlessness.

Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque (1943), oil on canvas by Sir Winston Churchill (1974-1965).

In January 1943, Winston Churchill (1874-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) and Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945; US president 1933-1945) met at Casablanca to discuss Allied political and military strategy.  One of the critical meetings of the war and one which tends to be neglected compared with the later tripartite conferences (which included Comrade Stalin (1878-1953; leader of the USSR 1924-1953) at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, it’s remembered for a statement which emerged almost casually at the end of the ten day session: that Germany, Italy and Japan must surrender unconditionally.  The phrase "unconditional surrender" came from the president and surprised many (including Churchill) and it proved a gift for the ever-active Nazi propaganda machine. 

Churchill prevailed on the president to stay another day before returning to Washington DC, insisting one couldn’t come all the way to Morocco without visiting Marrakech and seeing the sun set over the Atlas Mountains.  They stayed at the Villa Taylor on 24 January and the next day, after the American delegation had departed, the prime-minister painted his view of the Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque, framed by the Atlas Mountains.  He’d visited Marrakech during the 1930s and completed several paintings but this was the only one he would paint during the war.  It was sent it to Roosevelt, as a present for his birthday on 30 January.  Churchill was a keen amateur painter, even having published Painting as a Pastime (1922) but never rated his own skills highly, often when speaking with other amateurs cheerfully admitting their work was better but he did think the 1943 effort was “a cut above anything I have ever done so far”.  He would have been surprised to learn that on 1 March 2021, Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque sold at auction at Christie’s in London for Stg£8,285,000 (US$11,194,000).

The Farnese Atlas (left) which historians concluded was a Roman copy (circa 150 AD) in marble of (second century BC) work typical of the style of the Hellenistic period.  It depicts Atlas holding the world on his shoulders and is the oldest known representation of the celestial spheres and classical constellations, Napoli, Museo archeologico nazionale (National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy).  Lindsay Lohan (right) reprises the look in an aqua swimsuit, Mykonos, Greece, July 2017.

After the war Churchill was amused to read that but for a misunderstanding, he may never have got to paint in Morocco at all.  The wartime meetings of the leaders were all top-secret but in something of a coup by North African agents of the Abwehr (the German military-intelligence service 1920-1944), the details of the meeting at Casablanca were discovered and Berlin was advised to consider a bombing mission.  Unfortunately for the Abwehr, the decoders translated “Casablanca” literally as “White House” and the idea of any action was dismissed because the Germans had no bomber capable of reaching the US.  Casablanca had originally been named Dar al-Baiḍā (دار البيضاء (House of the White) in the Arabic, later renamed by the Portuguese as Casa Branca before finally being Hispanicized as "Casablanca".

Group photograph of the political leaders with the Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee, Casablanca Conference, Morocco, 14-24 January 1943.  It was at this conference the president unexpectedly announced the allied demand for "unconditional surrender" by the Axis powers and historians have since debated the political and military implications, one theory being it was something which mitigated against the possibility of any attempt within Germany to depose Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).

Sitting: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) (left); Sir Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) (right).

Standing, left to right (retirement ranks used): General Brehon B Somervell (1892–1955; head of US Army Service Forces 1942-1946); General of the Air Force Henry H "Hap" Arnold (1886–1950; head of US air forces 1938-1947); Fleet Admiral Ernest J King (1878–1956; US Chief of Naval Operations 1944-1945); General Lord (Hastings "Pug") Ismay (1887–1965; chief of staff to the prime-minister in his capacity as minister of defence 1940-1965); General of the Army George C Marshall (1880–1959; US Army chief of staff 1939-1945); Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound (1877–1943; First Sea Lord 1939-1943); Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke (1883–1963; Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) 1941-1946); Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord (Charles "Peter") Portal (1893–1971; Chief of the RAF Air Staff 1940-1945); Admiral of the Fleet Lord (Louis) Mountbatten (1900–1979; First Sea Lord 1955-1959).

Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan (pronounced koz-muh-pol-i-tn)

(1) One free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudices, or attachments; an internationalist.

(2) One with the characteristics of a cosmopolite.

(3) A cocktail made with vodka, cranberry juice, an orange-flavored liqueur, and lime juice.

(4) Sophisticated, urbane, worldly.

(5) Of plants and animals, wildly distributed species.

(6) Common name for the vanessa cardui butterfly. 

1828:  An adoption in Modern English, borrowed from the French cosmopolite (citizen of the world), ultimately derived from the Ancient Greek kosmopolitēs (κοσμοπολίτης), the construct being kósmos (κόσμος) (world) + politēs (πολίτης) (citizen); word being modeled on metropolitan.  The US magazine Cosmopolitan was first published in 1886.

An aspect of Soviet Cold War policy under comrade Stalin

The phrase rootless cosmopolitans was coined in the nineteenth century by Vissarion Belinsky (1811-1848), a Russian literary critic much concerned about Western influences on both Russian literature and society.  He applied it to writers he felt “…lacked Russian national character” but as a pejorative euphemism, it’s now an anti-Semitic slur and one most associated with domestic policy in the Soviet Union (USSR) between 1946 and comrade Stalin’s death in 1953.  Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR 1922–1953) liked the phrase and applied it to the Jews, a race of which he was always suspicious because he thought their lack of a homeland made them “mystical, intangible and other-worldly”.  Not a biological racist like Hitler and other rabid anti-Semites, Stalin’s enemies were those he perceived a threat; Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), Grigory Zinoviev (1883–1936) and Lev Kamenev (1883–1936) were disposed of not because they were Jewish but because Stalin thought they might threaten his hold on power although the point has been made that while it wasn’t because he was Jewish that Trotsky was murdered, many Jews would come to suffer because Stalin associated them with Trotsky.

Comrade Stalin signing death warrants.

It was the same with institutions.  He found disturbing the activities of Moscow’s Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) and did not approve them being accepted by Western governments as representing the USSR.  Further, he feared the JAC’s connections with foreign powers might create a conduit for infiltration by Western influences; well Stalin knew the consequences of people being given ideas; the campaign of 1946-1953 was thus more analogous with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) opposition to the Falun Gong rather than the pogroms of Tsarist times.  Authoritarian administrations don’t like independent organisations; politics needs to be monolithic and control absolute.  In a speech in Moscow in 1946, he described certain Jewish writers and intellectuals, as “rootless cosmopolitans” accusing them of a lack of patriotism, questioning their allegiance to the USSR.  This theme festered but it was the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, fostering as it did an increased self consciousness among Soviet Jews, combined with the Cold War which turned Stalin into a murderous anti-Semite.

Rootless cosmopolitan Comrade Trotsky, murdered with an ice axe on comrade Stalin's orders.

Before the formation of the state of Israel, Stalin's anti-Semitism was more a Russian mannerism than any sort of obsession.  For years after assuming absolute power in the USSR, he expressed no disquiet at the preponderance of Jews in the foreign ministry and it was only in 1939, needing a temporary diplomatic accommodation with Nazi Germany, that he acted.  Having replaced the Jewish Foreign Commissar, Maxim Litvinov (1876–1951; People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union 1930–1939) with Vyacheslav Molotov (1890-1986; USSR Minister of Foreign Affairs 1939-1949 & 1953-1956), he ordered him to purge the diplomatic corps of Jews, his memorable phrase being "clean out the synagogue".  Concerned the presence of Jews might be an obstacle to rapprochement with Hitler, Stalin had the purge effected with his usual efficiency: many were transferred to less conspicuous roles and others were arrested or shot.

Meeting of minds: Joachim von Ribbentrop (left), comrade Stalin (centre) and comrade Molotov (right), the Kremlin, 23 August 1939.

Negotiations began in the summer of 1939, concluding with German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) leading a delegation to Moscow to meet with Molotov and Stalin.  It proved a remarkably friendly conference of political gangsters and agreement was soon reached, the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (usually called the Nazi-Soviet Pact or Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) being signed on 23 August.  The pact contained also a notorious secret protocol by which the two dictators agreed to a carve-up of Poland consequent upon the impending Nazi invasion and the line dividing Poland between the two was almost identical to the Curzon Line, a demarcation between the new Polish Republic created in the aftermath of World War I (1914-1918) and the emergent Soviet Union which had been proposed by Lord Curzon (1859–1925; UK foreign secretary 1919-1924).  At the Yalta Conference in 1945, during the difficult negotiations over Polish borders, Molotov habitually referred to "the Curzon Line" and the UK Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden (1897–1977; thrice UK foreign secretary & prime minister 1955-1957), in a not untypically bitchy barb, observed it was more common practice to call it the “Molotov-Ribbentrop line”.  "Call it whatever you like" replied Stalin, "we still think it's fair and just".  Comrade Stalin rarely cared much to conceal the nature of the regime he crafted in his own image.  When asked by Franklin Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) if Molotov had been to New York during his visit to the US, Stalin replied: "No, he went to Chicago to be with the other gangsters".

Whatever the motives of Stalin, rootless cosmopolitans has joined the code of dog-whistle politics, a part of the core demonology to label the Jews a malign race, a phrase in the tradition of Christ killer, Rothschild-Capitalist and Untermenschen (the sub-humans).  Despite that, there are always optimists, Jewish writer Vincent Brook (b 1946), suggesting the term could convey the positive, a suggestion the Jews possess an “adaptability and empathy for others”.  It’s not a view widely shared and rootless cosmopolitan remains an anti-Semitic trope although it's not unknown for Jews to use it ironically.

Lindsay Lohan, Cosmopolitan, various international editions: April, May & June, 2006.

Cosmopolitan Magazine was launched in 1886 as a family journal of fashion, household décor, cooking, and other domestic interests.  It survived in a crowded market but its publisher did not and within two years Cosmopolitan was taken over by another which added book reviews and serialized fiction to the content.  This attracted the specialist house founded by John Brisben Walker (1847-1931), which assumed control in 1889, expanding its circulation twenty-fold to become one of America’s most popular literary magazines.  The Hurst Corporation acquired the title in 1905, briefly adding yellow-journalism before settling on a format focused on short fiction, celebrities and public affairs.  The formula proved an enduring success, circulation reaching two million by 1940 and this was maintained until a decline began in the mid 1950s, general-interest magazines being squeezed out by specialist titles and the time-consuming steamroller of television.

It was the appointment in 1965 of Helen Gurley Brown (1922–2012) as editor which signalled Cosmopolitan’s shift to a magazine focused exclusively on an emerging and growing demographic with high disposable income: the young white women of the baby boom.  In what proved a perfect conjunction, a target market with (1) economic independence, (2) social freedom, (3) an embryonic feminist awareness and (4) the birth control pill, the magazine thrived, surviving even the rush of imitators its success spawned.  Gurley Brown had in 1962 published the best seller advice manual, Sex and the Single Girl and Cosmopolitan essentially, for decades, reproduced variations on the theme in a monthly, glossy package.  It was clearly a gap in the market.  The approach was a success but there was criticism.  Conservatives disliked the choices in photography and the ideas young women were receiving.  Feminists were divided, some approved but others thought the themes regressive, a retreat from the overtly political agenda of the early movement into something too focused on fun and fashion, reducing women yet again to objects seeking male approbation.

Still published in many international editions, Cosmopolitan Australia was one casualty of market forces, closed after a final printing in December 2018.  However, surprising many, Katarina Kroslakova (b 1978) in April 2024 announced her publishing house KK Press, in collaboration with New York-based Hearst Magazines International, would resume production of Cosmopolitan Australia as a bi-monthly, the first edition of the relaunched version scheduled for release in August 2024.  Other than appearing in six issues per year rather than the traditional twelve, the format is expected to be much the same, echoing Elle Australia which reappeared on newsstands in March, ending a four-year hiatus.  Both revivals would have surprised industry analysts as recently as 2023 when the conventional wisdom was the post-Covid, social media age was no longer the place for time consuming and expensive glossy titles.  Ms Kroslakova clearly sees a business model and was quoted as saying print magazines are “the new social media” which was an interesting way of putting it but she explained the appeal by adding: “We need that 15 minutes to drop everything and actually have something tangible and beautiful in our hands to consume.  If we can present content which is multi-layered and deep and has authenticity and connection with the reader – that’s a really excellent starting point.”  She may have a point because in an age where screen-based content is intrinsically impermanent, the tactile pleasure of the traditional glossy may have genuine appeal, at least for an older readership who can remember the way things used to be done, something perhaps hinted at by her “15 minutes” reference, now regarded by many media analysts as a long-term connection.  The revival of the print editions of Elle and Cosmopolitan will be an interesting experiment in a difficult economic environment which may get worse before it gets better.  Whether the novelty will attract enough of the "affluent readers" (what used to be called the A1, A2 & B1 demographic) to convince advertisers that it's a place to run their copy will likely decide the viability of the venture and while it's not impossible that will happen, Cosmopolitan is a couple of points down from the "prestige" titles which have maintained an advertising base.   

Delivery

Delivery (pronounced dih-liv-uh-ree (U) or dee-liv-er-ree (non-U))

(1) The carrying and turning over of letters, goods, etc to a designated recipient or recipients.

(2) A giving up or handing over; surrender.

(3) The utterance or enunciation of words.

(4) Vocal and bodily behavior during the presentation of a speech.

(5) The act or manner of giving or sending forth.

(6) The state of being delivered of or giving birth to a child; parturition.

(7) Something delivered.

(8) In commerce, a shipment of goods from the seller to the buyer.

(9) In law, a formal act performed to make a transfer of property legally effective.

(10) In printing, the part of a printing press where the paper emerges in printed form (also called delivery end).

(11) The act of rescuing or state of being rescued; liberation.

(12) In various ball sports, the act or manner of bowling or throwing a ball

(13) In machinery design, the discharge rate of a compressor or pump.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English delyvere & delyvery from the Anglo-Norman delivrée, from the Old French delivrer, from the Latin līberō, from līber (free), from the Old Latin loeber, from the Proto-Italic louðeros, from the primitive Indo-European hléwdheros, from hlewdh- (people) + the prefix de- (from the Latin dē-, from the preposition dē (of, from).  It was cognate with the Ancient Greek ἐλεύθερος (eleútheros), the Sanskrit रोधति (ródhati), the Dutch lieden, the German Leute and the Russian люди (ljudi) (people); the Old English æf- was a similar prefix.  The word was a noun use of the feminine past participle of delivrer (to deliver) with the suffix assimilated to –ery.  Delivery, deliverer, deliveree, deliverance & deliverability are nouns, deliver & delivered are verbs & adjectives, deliverable is a noun & adjective, delivering is a noun & verb; the noun plural is deliveries. 

Delivery systems

The definition of delivery systems tends to be elastic, ranging from simple, single-se devices to entire trans-national human and industrial processes.  A hypodermic syringe can be thought a delivery system for a vaccine yet that vital machine is just one, small, inexpensive part in the delivery system for a vaccination programme in response to a pandemic.  Such a global programme demands a delivery system with many human and mechanical components: research, development, testing, multi-jurisdiction legal & regulatory compliance, production, distribution, software, hardware, refrigeration, storage and administration, all before the first nurse has delivered even one injection.

The Manhattan Project's uranium-based Little Boy (left & dropped on Hiroshima) and the plutonium implosion-type Fat Man (right & dropped on Nagasaki).  So confident was the project team in the reliability of the uranium bomb it wasn't tested prior to use while the worlds first nuclear explosion was the "Trinity Test" conducted in the New Mexico desert on 16 July 1945 when a plutonium device was detonated.  For decades, as a uranium device, the Hiroshima was a genuine one-off, all the nuclear weapons built using plutonium but it's possible that more recent entrants to the club such as the DPRK (North Korea) and Pakistan may have been attracted to uranium because of the speed and simplicity of construction. 

Delivery systems can thus be very expensive and it's not uncommon for the cost vastly to exceed whatever it is they were created to deliver.  The Manhattan Project (1942-1947) which produced the first nuclear weapons officially cost some two billion dollars ($US2,000.000,000) at a time when a billion dollars was a lot of money.  Expressed as pre-pandemic (2018-2019) money, the A-bomb project probably cost the equivalent of some US$30 billion and somewhat more once adjusted for recent inflation.  Given the physics and engineering involved, the cost seems not unexceptional but remarkably, the development of the best-known component of the bomb's delivery system was more expensive still.  Between the first studies in 1938 and its eventual commissioning in 1944, Boeing’s B29 Superfortress absorbed over three billion dollars even though, unlike the bomb which was revolutionary and startlingly new, conceptually, the bomber was an evolution of the existing B17.  It was however a collection of challenges in engineering which grew in extent and complexity as the project progressed and it was soon realized the initial specifications would need significantly to be upgraded to produce a machine which reliably could carry the desired bomb-load at the necessary altitude over the vast distances missions in the Pacific would demand.

The Boeing B29 (Enola Gay) used to deliver "Little Boy" to Hiroshima.  It was one of the "Silverplate" run which integrated a number of weight-saving measures and aerodynamic improvements as well as the modified bomb-bay.

It was the B29's engines which were the cause of much of the effort.  Early modelling suggested the use of six or even eight engines was viable in terms of a flyable airframe but the approach would so compromise the range and load capacity it would render the thing useless for the intended purpose so the four-engine configuration had to be maintained.  Jet engines would have been the answer but at that stage of their development, they lacked power, reliability and their fuel consumption was too high so a new piston engine was needed and that it would need to be of larger capacity was obvious.  However, it needed also to be of a design which didn't significantly increase frontal area so the only solution was effectively to couple two engines, one sitting behind the other.  That delivered the necessary power and the weight increase could be tolerated but induced a tendency to overheat because the rearward components received so much less of the cooling air-flow.  What made the consequences of that worse was the use of so much weight-saving but highly combustible magnesium and although ameliorated during development and in service, the inherent problem was never entirely solved and it was only in the post-war years when a different engine was fitted that the issue vanished.  As a quirk of history, although now thought of as the A-bomb's delivery system, the B29 was obviously never designed with it in mind and when the time came, it was found it didn't fit in the bomb-bay.  The Royal Air Force's (RAF) Avro Lancaster could have carried it but the US military declined to consider that option and a special run (the "Silverplates") of B29s was constructed with the necessary modifications.

The 18-cylinder, two-row Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone radial used in the war-time B-29s (left) and the 28-cylinder four-row Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major radial adopted post-war.    

However, although a wartime necessity, the big piston engines were a military cul-de-sac but an innovation in the B-29 which was influential was the use of what would now be understood as a "computer-directed" (not "computer-controlled" as is sometimes stated) fire control systems which allowed two crew remotely to operate the four-turret defensive armament.  Systems like that, of which there were a few, were a reason the B-29 venture was so expensive but there have been analysts who have looked at the records of both it and the Manhattan Project and concluded the costs of the latter were probably understated because, as something for years top-secret until the bombing of Hiroshima was announced in August 1945, a significant proportion of the real expenses were charged elsewhere (notably distributed among the military's many other activities) to hide things from congressional view, everyone involved knowing that if something needs to be kept secret, the last people who should be told are politicians.  Estimates of the extent of the accounting slight-of-hand have varied but it has been suggested it may have been as high as 25%.  In industry, such thing are far from unknown.  It's long amused some that the failure of Ford's doomed Edsel (1958-1960) could be attributed to it being little more than a superficial variation of existing Ford & Mercury models (sharing engines, transmissions, platforms & assembly plants) yet when the brand was dumped Ford booked a loss of US$250 million (US$2.6 billion in 2023 dollars).  There were all sorts of corporate advantages in stating the loss as it was done and it involved things like charging the cost of developing one of the engines used wholly against the Edsel programme, even though it would serve in millions of Fords and Mercury models until 1976.

Beware of imitations: The US Boeing B-29 and the Soviet Tupolev Tu-4 clone.

One unintended beneficiary of the huge investment in the B29 was the Soviet Air Force.  Three B29s had fallen into Russian hands after emergency landing on Soviet territory and these, despite repeated requests, Moscow declined to return to their rightful owners, instead taking one apart and meticulously, part-by-part, duplicating every piece and from this, assembled their own which was released as the Tupolev Tu-4 (NATO reporting name: Bull).  In production between 1949-1952, the reverse-engineered clone remained on the active list of the Soviet military until 1964 and some were still in service with the Chinese PLA (People's Liberation Army) in 1987.  Although the Tupolev lacked some of the Boeing's advanced electronics, the Russian engineers managed to deliver an aircraft close in weight to the original despite not have access to some of the more exotic metals although it was later admitted to achieve that there were some compromises in the structural redundancies fitted.

The German V2 (one of the Vergeltungswaffen ("retaliatory weapons" or "reprisal weapons")), the worlds first ballistic missile.  As a delivery system, although inaccurate, even in 1945 it would have been effective had a nuclear warhead been available but its small payload limited its application as a strategic weapon and it was able to be produced at scale only because of the use of expendable slave labor. 

In a more conventional use of the spoils of war, the Americans were also the beneficiaries of the development of someone else's delivery system.  Nazi Germany’s big V2 (A4) rockets were (more-or-less) perfected at a cost which after the war was revealed to be higher even than the official number booked against the Manhattan project and that was not surprising given it was in its way just as ambitious.  In what was a hastily organised effort, the Allied occupation forces in 1945 rushed to grab as much of the material associated with the V2 as they could lay their hands on, train-loads of components, drawings, machine tools and test rigs sent westward from territory which, under the terms agreed at the Yalta Conference (February 1945) were to be handed to the Russian.  Just as significantly, there was a major round-up of German scientists, engineers and technicians who has worked on the V2, most of whom were anxious to be "rounded-up" by the Americans, the alternative being a career in Russian "employment".  The round-up (operation paperclip) remains controversial because matters like a Nazi past or complicity in the use of slave labor were often overlooked if an individual's contribution to the Cold War was thought to be of value and the V2 certainly saved the US from having to spend much money and perhaps a decade or more developing its own delivery system for nuclear warheads and not only were the ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) lineal V2 descendents, so was the Saturn V delivery system for the Apollo missions which enabled a dozen men to walk on the moon.

Post delivery: Lindsay Lohan's nursery in a theme of aquatic blue & white.

In humans, the female of the species is final component of the delivery system and on 17 Jul 2023 Lindsay Lohan announced she had delivered a baby boy, named Luai (an Arabic name which can be translated as “shield” or “protector”).  The child’s career in commerce has already begun, Ms Lohan partnering with Nestig to design not only her nautically-flavored nursery, but also a collection of baby products inspired by the imagery of the sea.  The nursery is a functional space in that the brand’s Wave dresser is adaptable to dual-use as a changing table and Nestig's cloud crib is modular and may later be converted into a toddler bed.

Lindsay Lohan with Nestig Aviator Mobile.  The aviator mobile was said to be “designed in partnership with Lindsay Lohan” and “handcrafted and hand-assembled by artisans in Brazil from wood, felt and locally-sourced wool” each “thoughtfully packaged in a Nestig gift box” (US$85; attachment arm sold separately).