Janus

Janus (pronounced jey-nuhs)

(1) In Roman mythology, a god of doorways (and thus also of beginnings), and of the rising and setting of the sun, usually represented as having one head with two bearded faces back to back, looking in opposite directions, historically understood as the past and the future.

(2) When used attributively, to indicate things with two faces or aspects; or made of two different materials; or having a two-way action.

(3) In zoology, a diprosopus (two-headed) animal.

(4) In chemistry, used attributively to indicate an azo dye with a quaternary ammonium group, frequently with the diazo component being safranine.

(5) In astronomy, a moon of the planet Saturn, located just outside the rings.

(6) In figurative use, a “two-faced” person; a hypocrite.

(7) In numismatics, a coin minted with a head on each face.

(8) In architecture, as the jānus doorway, a style of doorway, archway or arcade, the name derived from the Roman deity Iānus being the god of doorways.

Mid-late 1500s: From the Latin Iānus (the ancient Italic deity Janus), to the Romans of Antiquity, the guardian god of portals, doors, and gates; patron of beginnings and endings.  The Latin Iānus (literally “gate, arched passageway”) may be from the primitive Indo-European root ei- (to go), the cognates including the Sanskrit yanah (path) and the Old Church Slavonic jado (to travel).  In depictions, Janus is shown as having two faces, one in front the other in back (an image thought to represent sunrise and sunset reflect his original role as a solar deity although it represents also coming and going in general, young and old or (in recent years) just about anything dichotomous).  The doors of the temple of Janus were traditionally open only during the time of war and closed to mark the end of the conflict, the origins of allusions to the “temple of Janus” being used metaphorically to mean conflict or wartime and the month of January is named after Janus, the link being to “the beginning of the year.  Janus is a noun or proper noun and Janian is an adjective.

Prosthetic in studio (left), Ralph Fiennes (b 1962) on-set in character (centre) and Peter Dutton (b 1970; leader of the opposition and leader of the Australian Liberal Party since May 2022) imagined in the same vein (right).

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 Peter 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, fine though Mr Fiennes' performance surely was.  Interestingly, despite many opportunities, Mr Dutton has never denied being a Freemason.

An eighteenth century carving of Janus in the style of a herm.

A part of the etymological legacy of the Roman Empire, the name Janus appears in several European languages.  In Danish (from the Latin Iānus), it’s a Latinization of the Danish given name Jens.  In Faroese, it’s a male given name which begat (1) Janussson or Janusarson (son of Janus) and (2) Janusdóttir or Janusardóttir (daughter of Janus).  In Estonian it’s a male given name.  In Polish, it’s both a masculine & feminine surname (the feminine surname being indeclinable (a word that is not grammatically inflected).  There is no anglicized form of the Latin name Janus.  Although it was never common and is now regarded by most genealogy authorities as "rare", when used in the English-speaking world the spelling remain "Janus".  Often, when Latin names were adopted in English, even when the spelling was unaltered, there were modifications to suit local phonetics but Janus is pronounced still just as it would have been by a Roman.

Tristar pictures used the janus motif in the promotional material for I Know Who Killed Me (2007).

Dating from the 1580s, was from the Latin ianitor (doorkeeper, porter), from ianua (door, entrance, gate), the construct being ianus (arched passageway, arcade" + tor (the agent suffix).  The meaning “usher in a school” and later “doorkeeper” emerged in the 1620s white the more specific (and in Scotland and North America enduring) sense of “a caretaker of a building, man employed to attend to cleaning and tidiness” seems first to have been documented in 1708 (the now unused feminine forms were janitress (1806) & janitrix (1818).  Why janitor survived in general use in Scotland and North America and not elsewhere in the English-speaking world is a mystery although the influence of US popular culture (film and television) did see something of a late twentieth century revival and in  sub-cultures like 4chan and other places which grew out of the more anarchic bulletin boards of the 1980s & 1990s, a janitor is the (often disparaging) term for a content moderator for a discussion forum.

Augustus Orders the Closing of the Doors of the Temple of Janus (circa 1681), oil on canvas by Louis de Boullogne (1654–1733), Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

Among the more annoying things encountered by those learning English are surely Janus words, those with opposite meanings within themselves.  Examples include:

Hew can mean cutting something down or adhering closely to it.  Sanction may mean “formal approval or permission” or “an official ban, penalty, or deterrent”.  Scan can mean “to look slowly and carefully” or “quickly to glance; a cursory examination”.  Inflammable, which many take to mean “easy to burn” but the treachery of the word lies in the in- prefix which is often used as a negative, with the result that inflammable can be deconstructed as “not flammable”.  Trip can (and usually does) suggest clumsiness but can also imply some nimbleness or lightness of foot, as in the saying “trip the light fantastic”.  Oversight is a particularly egregious example.  To exercise oversight over someone or something is provide careful, watchful supervision yet an oversight is an omission or mistake.  In the ever-shifting newspeak of popular culture, the creation of the janus-word is often deliberate.  Filth can mean “of the finest quality”, wicked can mean “very good” and in the way which might have pleased George Orwell "bad" has become classic newspeak.   “Bad weed” can  mean the drug was either good or bad depending on the sentence structure: “that was bad weed” might well suggest it was of poor quality while “man, that was some bad weed” probably means it was good indeed.  Saying nice now seems rarely to mean what dictionaries say nice has come to mean but can variously describe something appalling or disgusting.

Fluoroscope

Fluoroscope (pronounced floor-uh-skohp, flawr-uh-skohp or flohr-uh-skoph)

(1) In laboratory physics, a device used to measure the fluorescence of a solution (now rare).

(2) In medicine (and later commerce), a radiologic instrument (originally built as a tube or box) equipped with a fluorescent screen on which opaque internal structures can be viewed as moving shadow images formed by the differential transmission of x-rays through the body.

1896: A word coined in US English to describe a newly introduced device, the construct being fluoro- + -scope and adapted from the German Fluorescop.  Fluro- was from the Italian fluoro, from the Latin fluor (flow).  Scope was from the Italian scopo (purpose), from the Latin scopus (target), from the Ancient Greek σκοπός (skopós) & σκοπέω (skopéō) (examine, inspect, look to or into, consider), from σκέπτομαι (sképtomai), from the primitive Indo-European speḱ-.  Etymologically, the word is related to both skeptic and spectrum.  Fluoroscope & fluoroscopy are nouns, fluoroscopically is an adverb and fluoroscopic is an adjective; the noun plural is fluoroscopes.

The shoe-fitting fluoroscope

From the podological safety of the twenty-first century, the idea that part of the shoe-buying process once involved having one’s feet blasted with radiation probably seems strange but for decades they were a fixture in shoe-shops.  The idea has a certain compelling logic because under x-rays, the bones and flesh of the feet were clearly visible as was the outline of the shoe, all guesswork about the fit thus removed, customers able to choose a perfect pair.

Shoe-fitting fluoroscope, circa 1940.

The design of the fluoroscope also had great appeal as a sales device because unlike many of the uses of the technology in clinical medicine, the ones in shoe shops were designed so the images could be seen by the customer.  Indeed, they featured three viewing ports so simultaneously the x-rayed foot could be seen by the owner, the sales staff and one other which the manufacturers said was to allow a parent and a child to share the experience.  Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were made with an upward-facing x-ray tube which sat inside the bottom of a metal housing, the images fed to a fluorescent screen at the top, viewable through the three ports.  At foot level was an aperture which opened into a space between x-ray tube fluoroscopic screen and it was in this space the foot rested.  When triggered, the x-rays penetrated both shoe and foot, the fluorescent screen lighting up with the image.

The original specifications of the machines included lead-shielding as well as a section in the manual explaining the importance of these protective fittings but, shoe shops being commercial spaces where displays are often moved (and over the years, renovations effected), it was subsequently found it wasn’t unusual for the heavy shields to be removed so the machines were easier to maneuver into another place.  Additionally, shop staff soon noted that the less shielding fitted, the higher the quality of the image.  That obviously conferred some commercial advantage but also meant that with every scan (and daily there could be dozens), bursts of radiation were scattered in all directions bathing the bodies of customers, staff and innocent bystanders.  In perfect order, maintained according to the manufacturer’s recommendations, the specified 20-second scan delivered around half the dose of radiation of a typical CT (computed tomography) chest scan but not being in a clinical environment where they received regular servicing from qualified technicians, many of the machines in shoe shops were poorly maintained and some subsequently were found to be delivering potentially hazardous doses, registering several hundred times above the permissible limit.  Worse, some shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were positioned next to a wall so those in the shop next door were also irradiated and, to attract those passing the shop, some scans were even conducted with the machine in the store’s front window, radiation blasting all walking past.  For the individual customer who received anyway the highest dose, there was also a multiplier effect because women in particular rarely try just the one pair and could therefore be subject to many dangerous blasts.  Statistically though, most at risk were the staff who, given the machines had been in use since the 1920s, might have been exposed to the risk for decades, papers in the medical literature first documenting the issue in the mid-1950s, the case notes mentioning that not only did one patient report operating the fluoroscope as many as twenty times as day but also the common practice among staff to give their own feet a demonstrative scan just to assure sceptical children the process was painless.

Lindsay Lohan in stiletto heels an an image of how an x-ray of her foot might appear.

It was German mechanical engineer and physicist Wilhelm Röntgen (1845–1923) who in 1895 produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range which could “see through” material including human flesh.  He found the phenomenon so strange and the rays weird beyond immediate comprehension so named them “x-rays”, the implications of his discovery immediately understood and in 1901 it gained him the inaugural Nobel Prize in Physics.  Still, neither Herr Doktor Röntgen nor any other scientist probably pondered x-rays as something useful in shoe shops and that they ended up there was something serendipitous.  The tale of the migration is contested but the most accepted (and certainly the one supported by patent applications and registrations) is that of a World War I (1914-1918) doctor who adapted an x-ray machine so that the feet of soldiers with foot wounds could be scaned without them having to remove their boots, something which rendered the triage process much more efficient.  After the war, he modified the device to suit the shoe-buying process, demonstrating one at a Boston retailer convention in 1920, eventually being granted a US patent.  The UK authorities about the same time issued a patent for a similar device (where it was called the Pedoscope) and with mass-production lowering the unit cost, by the late 1920s they had proliferated on both sides of the Atlantic.  Although the take-up rate slowed during the depressed decade of the 1920s, sales accelerated in the consumerist culture of the post-war years and by the late 1950s, there were reputedly over ten-thousand in North America, three thousand in the UK and close to a thousand spread between Australia & New Zealand.

Remarkably, although it had been known since the 1920s that x-rays could be harmful, the research was fragmentary and the data insufficient to quantify the risk.  Consumer protection and concerns about public health were nothing like those of today and it was only in 1946, after the aftermath of the A-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945) provided graphic examples of the effects of exposure to radiation in high-doses that the American Standards Association (ASA) issued guidelines for the manufacture of shoe-fitting fluoroscopes, setting an upper limit on the amount of radiation the devices can emit.  Shortly afterwards, shoe shops were required to place warning signs on the machines cautioning customers to have no more than twelve scans a year, an early example of a nation-wide edict at at time when most public-health measures were usually administered by state and local governments.  The concerns remained and in 1948, a survey of the fluoroscopes operating in Detroit revealed most were emitting hazardous doses of radiation, something confirmed by wider tests and the first warnings were issued in 1950 although remarkably, the last wouldn’t be withdrawn from service until the 1970s.

Envelope

Envelope (pronounced on-vuh-lohp or en-vee-lope (non-U))

(1) A flat paper container, usually having a gummed flap or other means of closure and used to enclose small, flat items (especially letters) for mailing. 

(2) Something that envelops; a wrapper, integument, or surrounding cover.

(3) In biology, a surrounding or enclosing structure, as a corolla or an outer membrane.

(4) In geometry, a mathematical curve, surface, or higher-dimensional object that is the tangent to a given family of lines, curves, surfaces, or higher-dimensional objects.

(5) In the radio transmissions of a modulated carrier wave, a curve connecting the peaks of a graph of the instantaneous value of the electric or magnetic component of the carrier wave as a function of time.

(6) The fabric structure enclosing the gasbag of an aerostat or the gasbag itself.

(7) As an idiom, in pushing the envelope, to stretch established limits, as in technological advance or social innovation.

(8) In music, the shape of a sound which may be controlled by a synthesizer or sampler.

(9) In computing, the information used for routing a message that is transmitted with the message but not part of its contents, the best known example of which is the blind carbon-copy (bcc) in eMail.

(10) In astronomy, the nebulous covering of the head or nucleus of a comet; a coma.

(11) In civil engineering, an earthwork in the form of a single parapet or a small rampart, sometimes raised in the ditch and sometimes beyond it.

(12) In engineering and design, the set of limitations within which a technological system can perform safely and effectively.

(13) In aviation (of dirigibles), a bag containing the lifting gas of a balloon or airship; fabric that encloses the gas-bags of an airship.

(14) In electronics, a curve that bounds another curve or set of curves, as the modulation envelope of an amplitude-modulated carrier wave in electronics.

(15) In computing, the information used for routing a message that is transmitted with the message but not part of its contents.

(6) In music, the shape of a sound, which may be controlled by a synthesizer or sampler. 

1705: From the Middle French and Old French envoluper, the construct being en- (from the Old French en-, from the Latin in-, a prefixation of in (in, into)) +‎ voluper (to wrap, wrap up).  In Italian, the derivation was viluppare, from the Old Italian alternate goluppare (to wrap) from the Vulgar Latin vlopp (to rap).  The Proto-Germanic wrappaną and wlappaną (to wrap, roll up, turn, wind) came from the primitive werb (to turn, bend), akin to the Middle English wlappen (to wrap, fold) and ultimately the Modern English lap (to wrap, involve, fold).  The modern wrap is derived from the Middle English wrappen (to wrap), the dialectal Danish vravle (to wind, twist), the Middle Low German wrempen (to wrinkle, distort) and the Old English wearp (warp).  The French enveloppe, is a derivative back-formation of envelopper (to envelop).  Envelope is a noun; the noun plural is envelopes.

Pushing the envelope

The phrase pushing the envelope is from the lingo of test pilots, whose job is among the most dangerous of their profession.  It entered general usage following the publication of the late Tom Wolfe’s (1930-2018) book about test pilots and the early US space program, The Right Stuff (1979).  The envelope in the phrase is a mathematical construct, what is called the "flight envelope" of a given aircraft: combinations of speed, altitude, range and stress that are considered the limits of an airframe’s capabilities and so-named because usually it's graphically represented in the shape of the familiar DL envelope.  Within the envelope formed by these parameters, the airframe is structurally sound; beyond those limits, perhaps not and that’s what test pilots do, verify the safety of the aircraft within those limits and pinpoint possible points of failure if the envelope is pushed too far.  Although big, fast computers now make the parameters of the envelope more predictable and the job of the test pilot less dangerous, structural failures during test flights continue to happen.

Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.

Few airframes have operated within such a tight envelope as the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, introduced into service in 1956 as a single-engine, supersonic interceptor, built for the United States Air Force (USAF) but used by many nations.  Best thought of as the manned missile by which it was referred to by many, it had a radical wing design, a very small, straight, mid-mounted trapezoidal.   After the German research undertaken during World War II (1939-1945) became available, most jet fighters had used either swept or delta-wings, a compromise between speed, lift, maneuverability and internal space for fuel and equipment.  Lockheed sophisticated wind-tunnels and primitive computers however determined the optimal shape for high-speed supersonic flight was small, straight and trapezoidal.  An extraordinary achievement of manufacture as well as design, the wing was so thin and sharp it was a cut-hazard for ground crews and protective guards were fitted during maintenance.

The F-104 was the first combat aircraft capable of sustained Mach 2 flight, its speed and climb performance impressive even by today’s standards.  However, there was a price to be paid, take-off, stall and landing speeds were high as was the turn radius, combat pilots referring to low-speed turns as “banking with intent to turn".

The flight envelope, note the DL envelope shape.

The safety record was infamously bad.  Of the 916 delivered to the West-German (FRG) Air Force, 262 crashed, gaining it the nickname witwenmacher (widow maker, shared with the Porsche 911 Turbo (930, 1975-1989)) and some of those grieving widows sued Lockheed, receiving judgment in their favor.  In USAF service, the write-off rate was 30.63 accidents per 100,000 flight hours.  By comparison, the rate for the Convair F-102 Dagger was 14.2 and for the North American F-100 Sabre, 16.25.  The F-104's two nicknames, "manned missile" and "widow maker" may be thought of as cause and effect.

Personalised Lindsay Lohan Celebrity Birthday Card on premium quality satin cardstock @ Stg£3.95 (including envelope).

Quadrat

Quadrat (pronounced kwod-ruht)

(1) In ecology, an area of vegetation (sometimes as small as one square metre), marked out for study of flora and fauna in the surrounding area; the frame used to mark out such an area.

(2) In printing, a blank, low-cast type used by typographers to fill in larger spaces in printed lines.

(3) In civil engineering, a type of surveying instrument (obsolete since the sixteenth century).

(4) In Egyptology, a virtual rectangular subdivision of a line or column of hieroglyphs within which a group of hieroglyphs is arranged.

1675-1685: From the late Middle English quadrate, from the French quadrat (literally "a square") from the Latin quadratrus, past participle of quadrare (to make square) and related to quadrus (a square), quattuor (four); the ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European kwetwer- (four).  The earlier use in English (certainly as quadrate but there are indications the spelling quadrat was also used although this may be a later error in transcription) dates from circa 1400 and described a type of surveying instrument.  Quadrat is a noun; quadratic is an adjective and quadrically is an (irregular) adverb; the noun plural is quadrats.   

For pedants only

English is known for its grammar Nazis but there are also style Nazis, one of their concerns being whether there should be one or two spaces after a period (full- stop).  While its quite possible most neither notice nor care, obsessives in both factions feel strongly about this and Microsoft’s April 2020 update for Word users on the 365 platform (the old Microsoft Office 365), which included a new rule flagging double spacing as an error, triggered a minor twitterstorm.

The debate actually goes back centuries, mono and double spacing between sentences, sometimes within the same document, existing from the earliest days of mechanical printing and it’s a myth it has anything to do with proportional fonts.  Proportional (variable width) typefaces were created hundreds of years ago but by the nineteenth century, the double space between sentences was the usual practice in commercial publishing, a standardisation (in English) reinforced during the era of the typewriter (1880s-1980s).  Except for a tiny number of (initially very expensive) IBM machines (from 1942), typewriters universally used monotype typefaces, every character, regardless of shape, taking the space of an upper case M.  The two spaces between sentences became the standard for typists because it made the text easier to read, a practice which endured even after most commercial publishing had, by the mid-twentieth century, adopted single spacing.

Unlike typists, mechanical typesetters weren’t limited to the monotype.  However, the upper case M remained their baseline which came to be known as the “em”.  Units of space were developed as specific fractional segments based on the em, a linear measurement equal to the point size of the typeface. In 10 point type, the em is 10 points wide; in 12 point type, 12 points wide etc.  There were four ubiquitous spaces, thick, middle, thin, and hair, the thickest of which was less than an en (an en being half of an em).  When more horizontal space was needed, typesetters turned to the quadrat (from the Latin quadrates (squared)).  These precisely sized typographic blanks were used for indents, larger spacing, the creation of white lines, and the filling up of short lines and existed in printers’ jargon as en, em, two-em, three-em and four-em although, when setting poetry, special quadrats were sometimes cast to ensure the proper alignment of uniquely set lines.

Below are two examples of the first paragraph of IMDb's biography of Lindsay Lohan, rendered in a monotype font which emulates the output from a classic mechanical typewriter; the upper sample uses single spaces after each period, the lower two spaces.  The comparison illustrates (1) how the double-space between sentences was helpful with monospace typesetting because it so assisted readability and (2) how with proportional fonts the difference is probably so marginal as to be imperceptible to all but a trained (or obsessive) eye.

Microsoft’s 365 update is optional, those committed to the double space can switch off the rule but there’s little doubt the single space is now the more popular practice.  Neither is right or wrong and research about which renders text more readable has been inconclusive, proving only that the factions seem set in their views.  One finding from the research however was that most readers seemed not to care one way or the other; most not noticing even when both methods were applied even within the same paragraph.

Cryptic

Cryptic (pronounced krip-tik)

(1) Deliberately mysterious in meaning; puzzling.

(2) A message which is abrupt; terse; short, ambiguous, obscure (ie the effect rather than the intent).

(3) Of things secret; the occult.

(4) Involving use of a code or cipher etc (the stuff of cryptography).

(5) In zoology, fitted for concealing; serving to camouflage (applied especially to the coloring or shape of animals); living in a cavity or small cave (also as cryptozoic).

(6) In cruciverbalism (the compilation of crosswords), the puzzle, or a clue in such a puzzle, using, in addition to definitions, wordplay such as anagrams, homophones and hidden words to indicate solutions (the “cryptic crossword” usually distinguished from the “standard”, “basic” or “simple”.

(7) In biology, apparently identical, but actually genetically distinct.

(7) In biology, as “cryptic ovulation”, a phenomenon noted in certain species where the female shows no perceptible signals indicating a state of fertility (also as “concealed ovulation”).

1595-1605: From the Late Latin crypticus, from the Ancient Greek κρυπτικός (kruptikós) (fit from concealing), from κρυπτός (kruptós) (hidden), from κρύπτω (krúptō) (to hide).  The construct was crypt + -ic.  Crypt was from the Latin crypta (vault), again from the Ancient Greek κρυπτός (kruptós) (hidden).  The suffix -ic was from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos & -ḱos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos & -ḱos.  The form existed also in the Ancient Greek as -ικός (-ikós), in Sanskrit as -इक (-ika) and the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); A doublet of -y.  In European languages, adding -kos to noun stems carried the meaning "characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to" while on adjectival stems it acted emphatically; in English it's always been used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning “of or pertaining to”.  A precise technical use exists in physical chemistry where it's used to denote certain chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a higher oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ous; (eg sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃).  The alternative spelling cryptick is obsolete.  Cryptic is a noun and adjective, cryptical is an adjective and cryptically an adverb; the noun plural is cryptics.

Cryptic’s synonyms can include ambiguous, arcane, enigmatic, equivocal, incomprehensible, mysterious, strange, vague, veiled, abstruse, apocryphal, cabalistic, dark, esoteric, evasive, hidden, inexplicable, murky, mystic, mystical & perplexing.  However, it’s often necessary to distinguish between that thought deliberately obscure in meaning and messages either badly written or too brief for the meaning to be clear.  The familiar modern meaning “mysterious or enigmatic” is surprisingly modern, emerging only in the 1920s.  The noun cryptography (the art & science of writing in secret characters) sates from the 1650s and was either from the French cryptographie or directly from the Modern Latin cryptographia, the construct being the Ancient Greek κρυπτός (kruptós) (hidden) + graphia (of or relating to writing), the practitioner or code-breaker (the latter sense now more common and known also as crypto-analysts) being a cryptographer, the discipline cryptography (or cryptoanalytics) and the adjectival form the cryptographic.

Novelty birthday card on the theme of Freaky Friday (2003).

In English, the Ancient Greek κρυπτός (kruptós) (hidden) proved productive.  A cryptogram can be just about any form of puzzle although as a commercial name (sometimes as crypto-gram) it has been used (on the model of telegram a la the strippergram, gorillagram, kissogram etc).  The idea of cryptocurrency gained the name from (1) the use of cryptography when storing the underlying data in the blockchain (a big-machine distributed database) and (2) the notion of the blockchain as a secure crypt (vault).  In biology, cryptobiosis is a state of life in which all metabolic activity is temporarily halted (a cryptobiont any organism capable of cryptobiosis).  In critical political discourse, crypto- was used (crypto-communist, crypto-Nazi, crypto-fascist etc) to label someone as something they were attempting to conceal.  In medicine, the unfortunate condition cryptorchism (the plural (where required) cryptorchisms) was the failure of one or both testes to descend into the scrotum.  In geology, a cryptoclastic rock is one composed of minute or microscopic fragments.

Pope Benedict XVI with Cardinal George Pell (1941-2023), Australia 2008. 

In his theological writings Pope Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) could be cryptic but when speaking to his flock of 1.3 billion-odd, his thoughts were expressed usually in simple language, his meaning clear.  Not all pontiffs have managed this so Benedict’s pontificate of plain-speaking was welcome, even if his messages didn’t please all.  Even so however, he never manage to issue anything with the raw honesty Pope Adrian VI (1459–1523; pope 1522-1523) showed in the instructions he gave to his nuncio, Francesco Chieregati (1479-1539) his representative at the Diet of Nuremberg, a gathering of the princes of the Holy Roman Empire convened in 1552.  Adrian’s words, a statement of repentance unique in the Church’s history was an admission of the need to reform the corrupted institution which instructed Chieregati to make clear:

“…we frankly confess that God permits this persecution to afflict His Church because of the sins of men, especially of the priests and prelates of the Church. For certainly the hand of the Lord has not been shortened so that He cannot save, but sins separate us from Him and hide His face from us so that He does not hear. Scripture proclaims that the sins of the people are a consequence of the sins of the priests, and therefore (as Chrysostom says) our Savior, about to cure the ailing city of Jerusalem, first entered the Temple to chastise first the sins of the priests, like the good doctor who cures a sickness at its source.

We know that for many years many abominable things have occurred in this Holy See, abuses in spiritual matters, transgressions of the commandments, and finally in everything a change for the worse (et omnia denique in perversum mutata). No wonder that the illness has spread from the head to the members, from the Supreme Pontiffs to the prelates below them. All of us (that is, prelates and clergy), each one of us, have strayed from our paths; nor for a long time has anyone done good; no, not even one.

Therefore, we must all give glory only to God and humble our souls before Him, and each one of us must consider how he has fallen and judge himself, rather than await the judgment of God with the rod of His anger. As far as we are concerned, therefore, you will promise that we will expend every effort to reform first this Curia, whence perhaps all this evil has come, so that, as corruption spread from that place to every lower place, the good health and reformation of all may also issue forth.

We consider ourselves all the more bound to attend to this, the more we perceive the entire world longing for such a reformation. (As we believe others have said to you) we never sought to gain this papal office. Indeed we preferred, so far as we could, to lead a private life and serve God in holy solitude, and we would have certainly declined this papacy except that the fear of God, the uncorrupt manner of our election, and the dread of impending schism because of our refusal forced us to accept it. Therefore we submitted to the supreme dignity not from a lust for power, nor for the enrichment of our relatives, but out of obedience to the divine will, in order to reform His deformed bride, the Catholic Church, to aid the oppressed, to encourage and honor learned and virtuous men who for so long have been disregarded, and finally to do everything else a good pope and a legitimate successor of blessed Peter should do.

Yet no man should be surprised if he does not see all errors and abuses immediately corrected by us. For the sickness is of too long standing, nor is it a single disease, but varied and complex. We must advance gradually to its cure and first attend to the more serious and more dangerous ills, lest in a desire to reform everything at the same time we throw everything into confusion. All sudden changes (says Aristotle) are dangerous to the state. He who scrubs too much draws blood.

We know how prejudicial it has been to the honor of God and the salvation and edification of souls that ecclesiastical benefices, especially those involving the care and direction of souls, for so long have been given to unworthy men.”

Probably plenty of popes could over the centuries have been justified in saying much the same thing but if any were tempted, none did.  Benedict did of course issue the odd statement of apologia for this and that but they bore the mark of a lawyer’s careful vetting to avoid legal troubles rather than a sinner repenting and seeking forgiveness.  Most of the Church’s problems and scandals were of course not of his making and it was unfortunate his time on the throne came when scandals stretching back decades were being exposed because the publicity these attracted meant there was less attention paid to some of Benedict’s genuinely interesting thoughts on the state of Western Civilization.  Unfortunately, there were occasions on which he should perhaps have been rather more cryptic when discussing these matters, such as the famous address delivered at the University of Regensburg in 2006, entitled Faith, Reason and the University, none of which attracted the attention of the popular press except the one notorious sentence:

“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

The comment was originally written in 1391 as an encapsulation of the view of the Manuel II (1350–1425; Byzantine emperor 1391-1425) but the thoughts were not new to Benedict and nor was its expression but what one says as an academic theologian is less scrutinized than when it comes from the vicar of Christ on earth.  That one brief fragment from the lecture overshadowed what was a thoughtful warning to Western civilization about its internal threats and contradictions, specifically the retreat from reason in moral and political life.  Among academics, the similarity of Benedict’s ideas to those of the German philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973) seemed striking and poignant too, the pope among the last of then generation of Germans who, like Strauss, had seen Nazism, probably the most evil of the totalitarianism which was such a feature of the twentieth century.  In their time, Strauss and Benedict both knew the West was facing a crisis, something identified by the philosopher as the very modern culture which had lost “its faith in reason’s ability to validate its highest aims”, understood as the view that notions of right and wrong are historically variable, changing as intellectual fashions shifted.  The pope knew this as moral relativism and understood that a “crisis of political reason… is a crisis of politics as such” which has relegated moral and political knowledge to the realm of radical subjectivity.

As a historical decline, Benedict traced the retreat from the Reformation, through the liberal theology of the last two-hundred years to the latter-day descent of Christendom to cultural relativism.  That didn’t mean the pope wished to undo the Enlightenment, it was rather that scientific positivism should run in parallel with moral certainty.  It might have been better, certainly for the quality of the press coverage, if Benedict had adhered a little more to one of Strauss’ techniques of didacticism: cultured crypticism.  Strauss held that Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was no proto-Nazi but had written in such an accessible manner that it was simply for the Nazis to twist and appropriate his words for their purposes.  Strauss therefore sought to be more elusive, not wishing to be another misused German philosopher, his words were sometimes cryptic, the meaning able to be unlocked only by the few who had long been immersed.  Benedict too might have been well advised on occasion to remain a little more obscure because he had many interesting things to say which could have been plainly spoken.

Benedict XVI lying in state.

The mortal remains of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI were moved early in the morning on Monday 2 January 2023, from his former residence in the Vatican's Mater Eccle.  The archpriest of the basilica, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, received the remains with a liturgical act that lasted about 30 minutes.

Pope Francis conducting the Solemn Requiem Mass.  It's the first time a pope has presided over the funeral of his predecessor since Pius VII (in somewhat different circumstances) attended the funeral of Pius VI in 1802.

A Solemn Requiem Mass was conducted in St Peter’s Square on Thursday 5 January, presided over by Pope Francis.  The readings for the Mass were Isaiah 29:16–19 in Spanish; Psalm 23 sung in Latin; 1 Peter 1: 3–9 in English, and the Gospel of Luke 23: 39–46 read in Italian.  At the conclusion of the service, the coffin was carried to his place of burial in the crypt of St. Peter’s Basilica, accompanied by the choir singing the Magnificat in Latin.

Cheater

Cheater (pronounced chee-ter)

(1) A person who cheats.

(2) A device or component used to evade detection of non-compliance with rules or regulations (such as the (Dieselgate) mechanical and electronic devices used by Volkswagen and others to cheat emissions testing programmes (usually as a modifier).

(3) Slang for eyeglasses or spectacles (archaic).

(4) In mechanical repair, an improvised breaker bar made from a length of pipe and a wrench (spanner), usually used to free screws, bolts etc proving difficult to remove with a ratchet or wrench alone; any device created ad-hoc to perform a task not using the approved or designated tools.

1300-1350: From the Middle English cheater from cheat, from cheten, an aphetic variant of acheten & escheten, from the Old French eschetour, escheteur & escheoiter, from the noun; it displaced native Old English beswican.  The -er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, probably borrowed from the Latin -ārius.  The adoption was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant was -our), from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  The suffix was added to a person or thing that does an action indicated by the root verb, thereby forming the agent noun.  The noun cheatery is now rare, existing only in old texts.  Escheat refers to the right of a government to take ownership of estate assets or unclaimed property, most often when an individual dies without making a will and with no heirs.  In common law, the theoretical basis of escheat was that (1) all property has a recognized owner and (2) if no claimants to ownership exists or can be identified, ownership reverts to the King (in modern terms the state).  However, in some circumstances escheat rights can also be granted when assets are held to be bona vacantia (unclaimed or lost property).

The original sense was of the "royal officer in charge of the king's escheats," and was a shortened form of escheater, agent noun from escheat.  The meaning “someone dishonest; a dishonest player at a game” emerged in the 1530s as the Middle English chetour, a variant of eschetour following the example of escheat +‎ -er which evolved in English in the modern form cheater (cheat + -er).

Heav'n has no rage, like love to hatred turn'd, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorn'd. William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697).

Cheater cars are a frequent sight on several social media platforms, posted presumably by impressed spectators rather than victims or perpetrators.  Techniques and artistry vary but there does seem to be a trend whereby the more expensive the car, the larger and more lurid will be the lettering.  Red, pink and fuchsia appear the colours of choice except where the automotive canvas is red; those artists adorn mostly in black or white.

Hell also hath no fury like a woman cheated upon.   

For some reason, the (anyway incorrectly quoted) phrase “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” is often attributed to William Shakespeare (1564–1616), possibly because it’s plausibly in his voice or maybe because for most the only time the Middle English “hath” is seen is in some Shakespearian quote so the association sticks.  The real author however was actually Restoration playwright William Congreve (1670–1729) who coined the phrase for his 1697 play The Mourning Bride, the protagonist of which, although becoming a bit unhinged by the cruel path of doomed love, doesn’t resort to leporidaecide (bunny boiling).  Congreve’s line, “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned” was good but actually was a more poetic rendition of a similar but less elegantly expressed version another playwright had used a year earlier.  The Mourning Bride is also the source of another fragment for which the bard is often given undeserved credit: “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast” although that’s often bowdlerized as “Music has charms to soothe a savage beast”.

Politicians are notorious liars and cheaters, some even cheerfully admitting it (usually when safely in their well-provided for retirement) but in the privacy of their diaries, they’ll often happily (and usually waspishly) admit it of others.  Although he has a deserved reputation for telling not only lies but big lies, no one has ever disputed Joseph Goebbels’ (1897–1945; Reich Minister of Propaganda 1933 to 1945) assessment of a fellow cabinet member, foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Minister of Foreign Affairs 1938-1945) of whom he said “He bought his name, married his money and cheated his way into power”.

Guilty as sin.  Oliver Schmidt (b 1969; inmate number 09786-104 in US Federal, York Township, Michigan) received a seven year sentence for his involvement in the Volkswagen Dieselgate scandal.  Herr Schmidt (right) is pictured here receiving a Ward’s “Best Engine” award in 2015.

Volkswagen certainly gave cheating a bad name and in May 2022 the company announced the latest out-of-court settlement would be Stg£ 193 million (US$242 million) to UK regulators, following the Aus$125 million (US$87 million) imposed by the Federal Court of Australia.  To date, Dieselgate has cost the company some US$34 billion and some criminal cases remain afoot.

Smokey Yunick’s 1966 Chevrolet Chevelle #13 which some alleged was a 7:8 or 15:16 rendition, here aligned against a grid with a stock body.

In simpler, happier times, cheating was sometimes just part of the process and was something of a game between poacher and gamekeeper.  In the 1960s, NASCAR racing in the US was a battle between scrutineers amending their rule-book as cheating was detected and teams scanning the same regulations looking for loopholes and anomalies.  The past master at this cheating was Henry "Smokey" Yunick (1923–2001), a World War II (1939-1975) bomber pilot whose ever-fertile imagination seemed never to lack some imaginative idea that secured some advantage while remaining compliant with the letter of the law (at least according to his interpretation).  His cheats were legion but probably the most celebrated (and there would have been judges who would have agreed this one was legitimate) concerned his interpretation of the term “fuel tank capacity”.  NASCAR specified the maximum quantity of fuel which could be put in a tank but said nothing about the steel fuel line running from tank to engine so Mr Yunick replaced the modest ½ inch (12.5 mm) tube with one 11 feet (3.6 m) long and two inches (50 mm) wide, holding a reputed 5 (US) gallons (19 litres) of gas (petrol).  That was his high-tech approach.  Earlier he’d put an inflated basketball into an oversized fuel tank before the car was inspected by scrutineers and when they filled the tank, it would appear to conform to regulations; these days it’d be called “inflategate”.  After passing inspection, Mr Ynuick would deflate the ball, pull it out and top-up his oversized tank for the race.  Pointing out there was nothing in the rules about basketballs didn’t help him but did lead to the rule about a maximum “fuel tank capacity”, hence the later 11 foot-long fuel line.

NASCAR's letter of approval.

Mr Yunick’s 1966 Chevrolet Chevelles were different from the stock models but by the mid 1960s, all NASCAR’s stock cars were.  The difference was certainly perceptible to the naked eye and an urban legend arose that it was a 7:8 (some said 15:16) scale version.  The body’s external dimensions were however those of a stock Chevelle although the body was moved back three inches for better weight distribution, the floor was raised and the underside was smoothed out to improve the aerodynamics.  For the same reason the bumpers were fitted flush with the fenders.  The first car passed inspection (after making the modifications decreed by NASCAR) and took pole position at the 1967 Daytona 500.  He built another imaginative Chevelle for the 1968 race but it never made it past inspection.  In 1990, Smokey Yunick was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, a recognition as richly deserved as it was overdue.