Acrimony

Acrimony (pronounced ak-ruh-moh-nee)

Sharpness, harshness, or bitterness of nature, speech, disposition, animosity, spitefulness or asperity; a state of or expression of enmity, hatred or loathing.

1535-1540: From the Middle French acrimonie (quality of being sharp or pungent in taste) or directly from the Latin acrimonia (sharpness, pungency of taste), figuratively "acrimony, severity, energy" an abstract noun, from acer (feminine. acris) (sharp), from the primitive Indo-European root ak- (be sharp, rise (out) to a point, pierce) + -monia or –mony (the suffix of action, state, condition).  Figurative extension to personal sharpness, bitterness and hatred was well established by 1610 and has long been the dominant meaning, the application to describe even a dislike of someone “irritating in manner” was noted from 1775.  The adjectival form acrimonious dates from circa 1610 from the French acrimonieux, from the Medieval Latin acrimoniosus and, again, is now usually figurative of dispositions, the use referencing taste or spell now entirely obsolete.

In the West, democratic politics, sometime in the nineteenth century had, evolved into the form today familiar: a contest between parties or aggregations sometimes described otherwise but which behave like parties. There’s much variation, there are systems which usually have two-parties and some which tend towards more and there are those with electoral mechanisms which cause distortions compared with the results the parties actually achieve but the general model is that of a contest between parties.  What that generates can be fun to watch but what’s more amusing is the contest within parties in which there’s more fear, hatred, loathing and acrimony than anything transacted between one party and another.  Sometimes these hatreds arise out of some ideological difference and sometimes it’s just a visceral personal hatred between people who detest each other.

Paris Hilton (left) and Lindsay Lohan (right), September 2004.

In December 2021, Paris Hilton revealed she and Lindsay Lohan had ended their acrimony of a decade-odd, because they’re “not in high school” and the renewal of the entente cordiale seems to have been initiated the previous month when Ms Lohan announced her engagement.  In her podcast This Is Paris, Ms Hilton observed “I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but I just wanted to say congratulations to her and that I am genuinely very happy for her”, reflecting on the changes in their lives and that of Britney Spears, the three who had been dubbed “The Holy Trinity” after Rupert Murdoch’s (b 1931) New York Post in 2006 published the infamous “Bimbo Summit” front page with the three seated in Ms Hilton’s Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (C199; 2003-2010).  Perhaps feeling nostalgic, she added “It just makes me so happy to see, you know, 15 years later, and just so much has happened in the past two weeks… I got married, Britney got her freedom back and engaged, and then Lindsay just got engaged. So I love just seeing how different our lives are now and just how much we’ve all grown up and just having love in our lives.”  She concluded with: “And I think that love is the most important thing in life, it’s something that really just changes you and makes you grow, and when you find that special person that is your other half and is your best friend and you can trust…that’s just an amazing feeling.”  Both recently became mothers and exchanged best wishes.

Acrimony in action

At prayer together: Former Australian prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, Parliament House, Canberra ACT, Australia.

More than one political leader has observed the secret to a successful relationship between a leader and deputy was to make sure neither wanted the other’s job and the Australian Labor Party's (ALP) Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010 & 2013) should have listened, not a quality for which he was noted.  Winning a convincing victory and supported by a groundswell of goodwill not seen in a generation, in December 2007 he became Prime Minister of Australia with Julia Gillard (b 1961; Australian prime minister 2010-2013) as deputy.  Things went well for a while, then they went bad and Gillard staged a coup.  After the hatchet men had counted the numbers, late one mid-winter night in June 2010, the deed was done and with Rudd politically defenestrated, Gillard was installed as Australia’s first female prime minister.

Beyond the beltway, the coup wasn’t well received, the voters appearing to take the view that while Rudd might have turned out to be a dud, it was their right to plunge the electoral dagger through the heart, not have the job done by the faceless men stabbing him in the back.  The support which had gained Rudd a healthy majority in 2007 declined and the 2010 election produced the first hung parliament since 1940, Gillard was forced form a minority government which relied on the support of a Green Party MP and three soft-drink salesmen, all with their own price to be paid,  Perhaps surprisingly, the parliament actually ran quite well and was legislatively productive, a thing good or bad depending on one’s view of what was passed but there certainly wasn’t the deadlock some had predicted.

Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.

A slender majority of the politicians may have been pleased but the electorate remained unconvinced and however bad Rudd’s standing had been in 2010, by 2013 Gillard’s was worse and, after a splutter or two, in June 2013, the long months of instability came to a head and the hatchet men (this time aligned with Rudd) again assembled to do their dirty day's work.  Rudd took his vengeance, regaining the prime-ministership and Gillard retired from politics though the victory proved pyrrhic, Rudd defeated in the general election three months into his second coming, the spin being his accession to the leadership being what saved his party from what would have been a much worse defeat under Gillard.  Pyrrhic it may have been but he got his revenge so there’ll always be that.

In 2013, Rudd had lost to Tony Abbott (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2013-2015) who gained quite a good swing, picking up a healthy majority which conventional political wisdom suggested should have guaranteed the Liberal-National coalition at least two terms in office.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t until two years into his term that some in the Liberal Party worked out there’d been a filing error and Mr Abbott thought he’d joined the Democratic Labor Party (the DLP, Catholic Church’s political wing in Australia) and genuinely believed he was leading a DLP government.  Malcolm Turnbull (b 1954; Australian prime-minister 2015-2018), who in 2009 had been usurped as opposition leader by Mr Abbott’s hatchet men, sniffed blood and assembled his henchmen, handing out the axes for what proved to be one of the longer slow-motion coups.  It culminated in a party-room vote in September 2015 when Mr Turnbull took his revenge, assuming the party leadership and becoming prime-minister.

This time, things went really well, Turnbull’s victory greeted with genuine optimism which exceeded that even which had swept Rudd to power in 2007 but it didn’t last and Turnbull missed his historic moment to go to the polls.  Like Sir John Gorton (1911-2002; Australian prime-minister 1968-1971) in 1968 and Gordon Brown (b 1951; UK prime-minister 2007-2010) in 2007, he didn’t seize the moment and do what Anthony Eden (1897-1977; UK prime-minister 1955-1957) did in 1955, realise this is a good as it's going to get and to delay will only make things worse.  Things got worse and after the 2016 election, although the government was returned, Turnbull's majority was greatly reduced.  To some extent, the electoral reversal could be accounted for by Turnbull using the campaign slogan "Continuity with Change", ridiculed almost immediately because it turned out to have been used in a US television comedy as an example of the sort of cynical, meaningless slogans around which election campaigns are now built.  The 3WS (three word slogan) is actually a good idea in the social medial age but whereas Mr Abbott was a master at using them in the propaganda technique perfected by the Nazis (simple messages endlessly repeated) and made "Stop the Boats", "Big Fat Tax" et al potent electoral weapons, Mr Turnbull proved not so adept.  His successors wouldn't make the same mistake of over-estimating the voters' hunger for intelligent discussion. 

God expresses his disapproval: Lightning strike in Wentworth on day of Wentworth by-election, 20 October 2018.

That couldn’t last either and it didn’t.  He had problems during his premiership, some of his own making but most not and in August 2018, the hatchet men of the other faction staged one of the more interesting coups and certainly one of the more convoluted, the challenger, whatever his original intention might have been, acting as a stalking horse, unsuccessful in his challenge but trigging a demand for a second vote which Turnbull, reading the tea leaves, declined to contest.  Scott Morrison (b 1968; Australian prime-minister 2018-2022), a perhaps even too convincing a Vicar of Bray, then won the leadership against two opponents from the right and left and both improbable as prime minister in their own ways.  Turnbull resigned from Parliament, triggering a most unwelcome by-election in which the Liberal Party lost the seat of Wentworth to an independent, thereby losing its absolute majority on the floor of the house.  The dish of vengeance had been served hot and eaten cold.

Morrison went on to secure an unexpected victory in the 2019 election.  There’s been a bit of commentary about that surprise result but, given the circumstances, it can’t be denied it was a personal triumph and for the first time in almost a decade, the country had a prime minister who could govern with the knowledge none of his colleagues were (obviously) plotting against him.  His term has, like all administrations had its ups and downs but unlike many, ultimately he didn't gain a benefit from the COVID-19 pandemic and was defeated in the 2022 election.  Because the acrimonies between some of the leading figures in the new ALP government were well-known, political junkies were looking forward to a new round of back-stabbing and shark-feeding but thus far, the tensions have remained (mostly) well-hidden from public view.

Puffer

Puffer (pronounced puhf-er)

(1) A person or thing that puffs.

(2) Any of various fishes of the family Tetraodontidae, noted for the defense mechanism of inflating (puffing up) its body with water or air until it resembles a globe, the spines in the skin becoming erected; several species contain the potent nerve poison tetrodotoxin.  Also called the blowfish or, globefish.

(3) In contract law, the casual term for someone who produces “mere puff” or “mere puffery”, the term for the type of exaggerated commercial claim tolerated by law.

(4) In cellular automaton modelling (a branch of mathematics and computer science), a finite pattern that leaves a trail of debris.

(5) In auctioneering, one employed by the owner or seller of goods sold at auction to bid up the price; a by-bidder (now rare, the term “shill bidders” or “shills” more common).

(6) In marine zoology, the common (or harbour) porpoise.

(6) A kier used in dyeing.

(8) In glassblowing, a soffietta (a usually swan-necked metal tube, attached to a conical nozzle).

(9) Early post-war slang for one who takes drugs by smoking and inhaling.

(10) In mountaineering (and latterly in fashion), an insulated, often highly stylized puffy jacket or coat, stuffed with various forms of insulation.

(11) As Clyde puffer, a type of cargo ship used in the Clyde estuary and off the west coast of Scotland.

(12) In electronics and electrical engineering, a type of circuit breaker.

(13) A manually operated medical device used for delivering medicines into the lungs.

(14) As puffer machine, a security device used to detect explosives and illegal drugs at airports and other sensitive facilities.

(15) In automotive engineering, a slang term for forced induction (supercharger & turbocharger), always less common than puffer.

In 1620–1630: A compound word puff + -er.  Puff is from the Middle English puff & puf from the Old English pyf (a blast of wind, puff).  It was cognate with the Middle Low German puf & pof.  The –er suffix is from the Middle English –er & -ere, from Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought usually to have been borrowed from Latin –ārius and 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.  Added to verbs (typically a person or thing that does an action indicated by the root verb) and forms an agent noun.  The original form from the 1620s was as an agent noun from the verb puff, the earliest reference to those who puffed on tobacco, soon extended to steamboats and steam engines generally when they appeared.  The sense of "one who praises or extols with exaggerated commendation" is from 1736, which, as “mere puff” or “mere puffery” in 1892 entered the rules of contract law in Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company (1892, QB 484 (QBD)) as part of the construction limiting the definition of misrepresentation.  The remarkable fish which inflates itself in defense was first noted in 1814, the meanings relating to machinery being adopted as the industrial revolution progressed although the more virile “blower” was always preferred as a reference to supercharging, puffer more appropriate for the hand-held inhalers used by those suffering a variety of respiratory conditions. 

Puffer Jackets and beyond

Calf-length puffer coats.

The first down jacket, a lightweight, waterproof and warm coat for use in cold places or at altitude and known originally as an eiderdown coat, appears to be the one designed by Australian chemist George Finch (1888-1970) for the 1922 Everest expedition but a more recognizable ancestor was the Skyliner, created by American Eddie Bauer (1899-1986) in 1936, his inspiration being the experience of nearly losing his life to hypothermia on a mid-winter fishing trip.  Using trapped air warmed by the body as a diver’s wet suit uses water, Bauer’s imperative was warmth and protection, but he created also a visual style, one copied in 1939 by Anglo-American fashion designer, Charles James (1906-1978) for his pneumatic jacket, the Michelin Man-like motif defining the classic puffer look to this day.

Lindsay Lohan in puffer vest with Ugg boots, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2013 (left) and in puffer jacket, New York City, 2018 (right).

It was in the late 1940s it began to enjoy acceptance as a fashion item, marketed as evening wear and it was sold in this niche in a variety of materials until the 1970s when a new generation of synthetic fibres offered designers more possibilities, including the opportunity to create garments with the then novel characteristic of being simultaneously able to be bulky, lightweight yet able to retain sculptured, stylized shapes.  These attributes enabled puffer jackets to be made for the women’s market, some of which used a layering technique to create its effect and these were instantly popular.  Although initially in mostly dark or subdued colors, by the 1980s, vibrant colors had emerged as a trend, especially in Italy and England.  By the twenty-first century, although available across a wide price spectrum, the puffer as a style cut across class barriers although, those selling the more expensive did deploy their usual tricks to offer their buyers class identifiers, some discrete, some not.

The puffer started life as a jacket and it took a long time to grow but by the 2000s, calf-length puffers had appeared as a retail item after attracting comment, not always favorable, on the catwalks.  Although not selling in the volumes of the jackets, the costs of lengthening can’t have been high because ankle and even floor-length puffers followed.  Down there it might have stopped but, in their fall 2018 collection released during Milan Fashion Week, Italian fashion house Moncler, noted for their skiwear, showed puffer evening gowns, the result of a collaborative venture with Valentino’s designers.  Available in designer colors as well as glossy black, the line was offered as a limited-edition which was probably one of the industry’s less necessary announcements given the very nature of the things would tend anyway to limit sales.  The ploy though did seemed to work, even at US$2,700 for the long dress and a bargain US$3,565 for the cocoon-like winter cape, demand was said to exceed supply so, even if not often worn, puffer gowns may be a genuine collector’s item.

A Dalek.

It wasn’t clear what might have been inspiration for the conical lines although the ubiquity of the shape in industrial equipment was noted.  It seemed variously homage to the burka, a sculptural installation of sleeping bags or the stair-challenged Daleks, the evil alien hybrids of the BBC's Dr Who TV series.  It also picked up also existing motifs from fashion design, appearing even as the playful hybrid of the mullet dress and a cloak.

A monolith somewhere may also have been a reference point but the puffer gown was not stylistically monolithic.  Although to describe the collection as mix-n-match might be misleading, as well as designer colors, some of the pieces technically were jackets, there were sleeves, long and short and though most hems went to the floor, the mullet offered variety, especially for those who drawn to color combination.  Most daring, at least in this context, were the sleeveless, some critics suggesting this worked best with gowns cinched at the middle.

By the time of the commercial release early in 2019, solid colors weren’t the only offering, the range reflecting the influence of Ethiopian patterns although, in a nod to the realities of life, only puffer jackets were made available for purchase.  Tantalizingly (or ominously, depending on one’s view), Moncler indicated the work was part of what they called their “genius series”, the brand intending in the future to collaborate with other designers as well as creating a series of Moncler events in different cities, the stated aim to “showcase the artistic genius found in every city”.  The venture was pursued but in subsequent collections, many found the quality of genius perhaps too subtly executed for anyone but fellow designers and magazine editors to applaud.  The shock of the new has become harder to achieve.

Hagiography

Hagiography (pronounced hag-ee-og-ruh-fee or hey-jee-og-ruh-fee)

(1) The writing and critical study of the lives of the saints; hagiology.

(2) A biography of a saint.

(3) In biographical publishing & criticism, works essentially promotional or otherwise uncritical; any biography that idealizes or idolizes its subject; a biography which is uncritically supportive of its subject, often including embellishments or propaganda.

1805–1820: A compound word, the construct being hagio- + -graphy.  Hagio was from a combining form of the Ancient Greek ἅγιος (hágios) (holy, saintly) and the -graphy element was from the Ancient Greek -γραφία (-graphía) (writing), thus “sacred writing”.  In English, the word was first used in the 1820s of studies (strictly speaking often not biographies by modern standards) of the lives of saints, use later extended to “sacred writing” in general and only (and scholars are not in accord about quite when) sometime in the late nineteenth century to biographies and other secular works which were uncritical (especially if some criticism was obviously justified).  The suspicion is that such works would have been referred to as “hagiographic” before the idea of “the hagiography” came to be accepted as a definable category; it’s now an accepted slur among book reviewers.  The hagiography as a device of propaganda has a long tradition and there are studies of saints who, although known to have lived not wholly saintly lives, certainly seemed to have after some medieval hagiologists had finished with them.  The earlier forms were hagiographer (1650s), hagiographical (1580s) and Hagiographic (1809).  Hagiography, hagiologist, hagiology & hagiographer are nouns, hagiographic & hagiographical are adjectives and hagiographically is an adverb; the noun plural is hagiographies.

Google ngram: Because of the way Google harvests data for their ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.  The assumption is the use of the word "hagiography" increased as it came to be applied to secular literature and (especially from the early twentieth century onwards) both the volume of biographies and reviews & criticism of them became more frequent.    

Among the earliest forms of formally structured propaganda, the use can be traced to Hagiographa, the Greek designation of the Ketuvim, the third part of the Jewish Scriptures and the modern idea of the hagiography is that of a work which treats ordinary, flawed human subjects (as all the saints of course were) as saintly.  One outfit for which hagiography has been perfected is the DPRK (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (or North Korea)).  It’s often referred to as a hermit state shrouded in mystery but the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the regime’s official state news agency is surprisingly energetic in its production of information about the nation for both domestic & international consumption.  In 2008, the KCNA issued the “official biography” of Kim Jong-il (Kim II, 1941-2011; The Dear Leader of DPRK (North Korea) 1994-2011), making clear that from the moment of his birth, truly he was amazing.  He was born inside a log cabin beneath Korea’s most sacred mountain and in the moment of delivery, a shooting star brought forth a spontaneous change from winter to summer and there appeared in the sky, a double rainbow.  That year there was no spring because the appearance of The Dear Leader on Earth brought sunlight and prosperity, the finest summer the nation has even known.  Exceptional from his first breath, The Dear Leader was not subject to bowel movements, never needing to defecate or urinate although this seems not to be an inheritable genetic trait of the dynasty because Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; The Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011) is known to be accompanied on his travels always by some form of portable toilet.  So discriminating was the palette of The Dear Leader that he employed staff to inspect every grain of rice by hand to ensure each piece was of uniform length, plumpness, and color, The Dear Leader eating only perfectly-sized rice.  Although, just to illustrate the pointlessness of the capitalist pursuit, he only ever played one round of golf and that on the country’s notoriously difficult 7,700 yard (7040 m) course at Pyongyang, he took only 34 strokes to complete the 18 holes, a round which included five holes-in-ones.  Every word the KCNA released was said to be true but in the West, it was labelled as “beyond hagiographic” (except for the bit about the rice which was judged “plausible”).

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

Apparently the author of 39 books on topics as diverse as travelling in Africa and a multi-language illustrated dictionary of photography & cinematography (including a glossary of terms), author Derek Townsend was obviously prolific but it may be that in one volume, he produced what the English literature & political science departments in any university could use as the definitive case study of the hagiography.  Townsend’s Jigsaw: The Biography of Johannes Bjelke-Petersen : Statesman - Not Politician (Sneyd and Morley, Sydney, 1983 (ISBN-13: 9780949344007)) was the “authorized biography” of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen KCMG (1911–2005; premier of the Australian state of Queensland 1968-1987) and it was an extraordinary book in that not one reviewer could find one fragment of text which was anything but complimentary and gushingly so.  To be fair, the facts (dates and locations etc) all appeared to be correct.  What was best part however was for the hardback edition, a biographical piece (thumbnail sketch just not sufficient) describing the author was included in which he was described as:

"...professional traveller, acclaimed explorer, technologist, government strategist and one of the most diverse business entrepreneurs... an international best-selling author [whose] non-fiction books have sold millions of copies".  Said to have been "...one of the first visitors allowed into Zanzibar after the 'revolution'... numerous government leaders have extended their hospitality - presidents Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, Milton Obote, Dr Eric Williams and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to mention but a few".  He was also "...actively concerned with sophisticated design technology of early commercial turboprop aircraft as well as involvement with many aspects of Britain’s first defensive surface to air (SAM) guided missile, the ramjet powered Bloodhound.  For the Rank Organization, one of his many achievements was the initial responsibility for developing not only the marketing strategy but also the techniques of utilization for a revolutionary dry electrostatic 'copying' process now commonly known as Xerox".  Surprisingly, he didn't bother describing himself also as a "scientist" which he'd earlier done in a piece for a magazine in which he extolled the benefits of Castrol GTX motor oil.  Again, to be fair, Castrol GTX was and remains a fine lubricant.  An analysis by artificial intelligence (AI) might now help but for readers then, it was hard whether the biography or the blurb about the author was the more hagiographic.

Jigsaw (1983), a classic and perhaps the definitive book of its kind.

Someone who could write like that of themselves was clearly just the chap the premier needed for a his authorized biography which could be released during the 1983 state election and Mr Townsend didn’t disappoint, his text including phrases which lauded his subject as a “statesman extraordinaire” & “protectorate of Queensland and her people”.  Whether despite or because of Jigsaw, Mr Bjelke-Petersen’s National Party government enjoyed an extraordinary victory, defeating not only the official Australian Labor Party (ALP) opposition but securing such a majority that the Nationals no longer needed the support of the troublesome Liberal Party to form a government. 

Cimarron

Cimarron (pronounced sim-uh-ron, sim-uh-rohn or sim-er-uhn)

(1) A Maroon (an African or one of African descent who escaped slavery in the Americas, (or a descendant thereof, especially a member of the Cimarron people of Panama).

(2) In Latin America (1) feral animals or those which have returned to the wild, (2) rural areas (campestral) and the inhabitants there dwelling & (3) wild plants.

(3) A name used in the US for both rivers & as both a localities.

(4) A not fondly remembered small "Cadillac", built between 1981-1988.

1840–1850: From the Colonial Spanish cimarrón (a maroon (used also casually of feral animals, wild rams etc), from the Spanish and thought likely equivalent to the Old Spanish cimarra (brushwood, thicket), the construct being & cim(a) (peak, summit (from the Latin cȳma (spring shoots of a vegetable), from the Ancient Greek  + -arrón (the adjectival suffix).  Most etymologists appear to accept the Spanish cimarrón was a native Spanish formation from cima (summit, peak), referring to slaves who escaped to seek refuge in the mountains but the alternative theory is that it was a borrowing from Taíno símaran (wild (like a stray arrow)), from símara (arrow).  The feminine was cimarrona, the masculine plural cimarrones & the feminine plural cimarronas.  The verb maroon (put ashore on a desolate island or some isolate and remote coast by way of punishment) dates from 1724 and was from maroon (fugitive black slave living in the wilder parts of Dutch Guyana or Jamaica and other West Indies islands) which has always been assumed to be a corruption of the Spanish cimmaron & cimarrón.  Cimarron is a noun & proper noun (the adjective cimarific (based on Cimar(ron) + (horr)ific) was sardonic; a slur relating to the Cadillac); the noun plural is Cimarrons.

The Cadillac Cimarron, 1982-1988

For those who can remember the way things used to done: 1968 Cadillac Coupe DeVille convertible.

The path of the reputation of the unfortunate Cadillac Cimarron was unusual in the more it was upgraded and improved, the further it seemed to fall in the estimation of the motoring press.  Despite the impression which seems over the decades to have become embedded, the early critical reaction to the Cimarron was generally polite and even positive, while acknowledging the inadequacies of the original engine-transmission combinations.  The journalists may however have been in a mood to be unusually forgiving because in 1981, when the first examples were provided for press evaluation, that a Cadillac was for the first time since 1914 fitted with a four-cylinder engine and one with a displacement smaller than 2.0 litres (122 cubic inch) for the first time since 1908 was a sign how much the universe had shifted; not even ten years earlier every Cadillac on sale used an 8.2 litre (500 cubic inch) V8.  The ripples of the first oil shock would see the big-block V8 twice downsized but so much had rising cost (and the threatened scarcity) of gas scarred the consumer that even Cadillac owners wanted more efficient vehicles.  They still wanted to drive Cadillacs and while demand for the full-sized cars remained, it was obvious to General Motors (GM) that the segment was in decline and the alternatives proving popular were not the traditional Lincoln and Imperial but the premium brand Europeans, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and (as a niche player), Jaguar.

The cleverly engineered 1976 Cadillac Seville which hid its origins well.

The Europeans produced very different machines to the Cadillacs and it would have taken much time and money to match them in sophistication but what could be done quickly and at relatively low cost was to make a Cadillac out of a Chevrolet and that was the path chosen, the long-serving Chevrolet Nova re-styled, re-trimmed, re-engined (with the 5.7 litre (350 cubic inch) Oldsmobile V8) and re-badged as the Cadillac Seville.  On paper, it didn’t sound promising but on the road it actually worked rather well, essentially because Chevrolet had done a creditable job in making the Nova drive something like a Cadillac with some Mercedes-like characteristics.  So, the task for Cadillac’s engineers wasn’t that onerous but they did it well and the Seville was a great success, something especially pleasing to GM because the thing retailed at some four times what Chevrolet charged for Novas.  That made the Seville one of the most famously profitable lines ever to emerge from Detroit which was good but what was not was that most people who bought one weren’t conquests from Mercedes-Benz or BMW (and definitely not from Jaguar) but those who would otherwise have bought a Cadillac.  Still, the Seville did its bit and contributed to brief era of record sales and high profits for GM.

Cadillac’s new enemy: 1982 BMW 320i (E21).

By the early 1980s however, Cadillac decided it need to do the same thing again, this time on a smaller scale.  A second oil shock had struck in 1979 and this time the US economy wasn’t bouncing back as it had in the mid-1970s and the recession of the early 1980s was nasty indeed.  One market segment which was a bright spot however was what was called the “small executive sedan” dominated then by the BMW 3-Series, soon to be joined by what would become known as the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, compact, high-quality and high-priced cars being bought by what to Cadillac would be a most attractive demographic: the then newly defined YUPIEs (young upwardly-mobile professionals).  Cadillac had nothing which appealed to this market and their plans for an entry were years sway even from the initial design phases.  The economic situation of the time however had made the matter urgent and so, at a very late stage, Cadillac was appended to GM’s ambitious programme to use the one “world car” platform to be used in the divisions which produced cars in the planet’s major markets (the US, UK, Europe, Japan & Australasia).  This one front-wheel drive platform would provide a family sized car in Japan, the UK and Europe, a medium-sized entrant in Australasia and a small car in the US with the highest possible degree of component interchangeability and a consequent reduction in the time and cost to bring the lines to production.

1982 Holden Camira SL/E (1982-1989), the Australian version of the “World Car”.

The longevity of the GM “World Car" (the J-Car (J-Body the US nomenclature)), the last produced in 2005, attests to the quality of GM’s fundamental engineering and over the decades, over 10 million would be sold as Vauxhalls (UK), Opels (Europe), Holdens (Australia & New Zealand), Isuzus and even Toyotas (Japan) and Chevrolets, Buicks, Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs & Cadillacs (US).  By the standards of the time they were good cars (although they did prove less suited to Australian driving conditions) but they could not, and certainly not in the eleven months available, be made into what would be thought of as “a Cadillac”.  To do that, given the technology available at the time, ideally the platform would have been widened, a small version of one of the corporate V8s (perhaps as small as 3.5 litres (215 cubic inch) fitted and the configuration changed to accommodate rear-wheel drive (RWD) and independent rear suspension (IRS).  The J-Body could have accommodated all this and, thus configured, coupled with the lashings of leather expected in the interior, GM would have had an appropriately sized small executive sedan, executed in an uniquely American way.  Like the Seville, it may not have made much of a dent in the business Mercedes-Benz and BMW were doing but it would have had real appeal and it’s doubtful it would have cannibalized the sales of the bigger Cadillacs.  Additionally, it would have been ideally place to take advantage of the rapid fall in gas prices which came with the 1980s “oil glut”.  Alas, such a thing would have taken too long to develop and it would have been such an expensive programme Cadillac would have convinced the GM board they may as well accelerate the development of their own small car.  So, needing something small to put in the showrooms because that’s what Cadillac dealers were clamouring for, the decision was taken to tart up the J-Body.

1982 Cadillac Cimarron (1982-1988), the origins of which were obvious.

That, for the 1982 model year, was exactly what was done.  The Cadillac Cimarron was nothing more than a Chevrolet Cavalier with a lot of extra stuff bolted or glued on.  Apparently, the name “Cimarron” was chosen because it had in the US been used to refer to the wild and untamed horses which once roamed freely in the American West, the company hoping to add the idea of an “untamed spirit” to the (even if by then slightly tarnished) reputation for luxury and elegance once associated with Cadillac.  Whether much thought was given to the name’s association with slavery isn’t known.  That aside, the spirit wasn’t exactly untamed because the already anaemic performance of the Chevrolet was hampered further by all the extra weight of the luxury fittings which adorned the Cimarron, something which was tolerated (indeed probably expected) in what Chevrolet was selling as an “economy car” but luxury buyers had higher expectations.

Cadillac found that bigger was better: Yuppie Lindsay Lohan entering Cadillac Escalade, May 2012.

Most would conclude it made things worse.  Had it been sold as the Chevrolet Caprice II (a la Ford’s approach with the LTD II), the Cimarron would probably have been a hit and while there would have been the same criticisms, in a car costing so much less, they would have been less pointed.  However, that would have meant the Cadillac dealers not having product to put in their showrooms which was of course the point of the whole Cimarron venture.  As it was, sales never came close to Cadillac’s optimistic projections, numbers influenced presumably by the Seville’s stellar performance a few years earlier and this time the mark-up was less, a Cimarron only twice the cost of a Cavalier.  That wasn’t enough however and nor were the constant upgrades, the most notable of which was the introduction of the Chevrolet’s 2.8 litre (173 cubic inch) V6 in 1985 and that did induce a surge in sales (though still to nothing like the once hoped for levels) but it was short lived and after production ended in 1988, Cadillac offered no replacement and they’ve not since attempted to build anything on this scale.

Lava

Lava (pronounced lah-vuh or lav-uh)

(1) The molten, fluid rock that issues from a volcano or volcanic vent (sometimes accumulating, occasionally permanently) in a volcano’s “lava lake”.

(2) The rock formed when this solidifies, occurring in many varieties differing greatly in structure and constitution.

(3) In fashion, as “lava dress” (sometimes volcano dress), a long, flowing gown, classically in orange and black fabric, styled to recall a vertiginous lava flow.

(4) A shade of red which tends to orange, recalling the color of red-hot, molten lava.

(5) As Lava Lamp, the trademarked name of a electric decorative lamp made of a transparent, (usually tapered) cylinder containing a liquid in which a colored wax (or wax-like substance) is stimulated by the heat of the light bulb to change into randomly separating, seemingly luminous shapes which constantly rise and descend.

1740–1750: From the Italian lava (molten rock issuing from a volcano), from the Neapolitan or Calabrian dialectal lava (avalanche, torrent or stream; downpour overflowing the streets).  The original use in Italian was to describe flash flood rivulets after downpours and only later to the streams of molten rock from Mount Vesuvius.  The once commonly supposed link with the Latin lavāre (to wash) (from the primitive Indo-European root leue- (to wash) was based on the idea of “a liquid flowing” but is now thought one of those creations of the medieval imagination and it’s just as unlikely there’s was any relationship with the Arabic لابة‎ (lāba) (black volcanic rock).  Lava is also wholly unrelated to larva (an early stage of growth for some insects and amphibians) which was from the Latin larva (ghost-like, masked) which may have been from the Etruscan Lār (Etruscan praenomen; titulary god) which appeared usually as Lares (guardian deities).  The alternative etymology is from the Latin labes (sliding down, falling), which influenced lābī (to slide, fall or slip) (a labina an “avalanche or landslide”).  The only adjective in modern use is lavalike (or lava-like).  The old adjectives lavatic (1805), lavic (1822) & laval (1883) all fell into disuse by the twentieth century (although their occasional revival in the technical literature would not be unsurprising) and lavaesque seems never to have been coined.  The palindromic Laval did endure in France as both a locality name and surname and is remembered because of Pierre Laval (1883–1945), Prime Minister of France 1931-1932, 1935-1936 & de facto prime minister in the Vichy Government 1942-1944.  He was executed by a French firing squad in 1945.  Lava is a noun and the obsolete lavatic, lavic & lavalike were adjectives; the noun plural is lavas.

Lindsay Lohan in Pucci triangle lava-print bikini, The Bahamas, May 2007.

The terms lava and magma (from the Ancient Greek μάγμα (mágma) (paste)) are sometimes used interchangeably but to geologists and volcanologists the distinction is that Magma is molten rock which exists beneath a planet’s surface and become lava only when it flows from a volcano or volcanic vent.  Magma thus does not always become lava, sometimes cooling and solidifying as rock beneath the surface and sometimes collecting in a magma chamber.  A magma chamber differs from a lava lake in that the pleasingly alliterative latter describes the (usually large) large pool of molten lava that forms in a volcanic crater (although volcanologists do use the term also of lava which “sticks” to a volcano’s surface and doesn’t flow further.  They also in some cases call the extrusive igneous rock formed when it hardens and cools “lava” although this is not in general use, laypeople associating both “magma” and “lava” with the material in its molten state.

Lava lake, Mount Erebus, Antarctica.  Some 60 m (200 feet) in diameter, it sits within a small pit crater within the post-caldera summit and is phonolite in composition.  It may or may not remain a permanent feature.

The rock formations created by cooled magma at Mount Erebus proved especially interesting to those researching the history of the Earth’s magnetic field.  Geophysicist Dr Catherine Constable (b 1958) was studying the data used to refine a model explaining the mechanism of the earth’s occasional magnetic field reverses (from the familiar north & south polarity to the reverse where they swap) and found lava to be a substance keeping a perfect recorder of the field.  All magmas contain enough iron-rich minerals to detect the field and these align themselves toward the field as the lava freezes. As a result, the magnetic field at that moment is recorded: set in time and set in stone.  Over geological time, quite what the frequency (or the rapidity) of the shift isn’t clear and while studies suggest historically there’s be a swap every few hundred thousand years, it’s been almost a million years since the last so while one “might” be (over)due, Dr Constable says there’s no available evidence one is in progress or even immanent.

Catriona Gray (b 1994; Miss Universe 2018) in lava dress by Filipino designer Mak Tumang which used a image of lava flowing down the portrait of the Mayon Volcano rendered, in Swarovski crystals, Bangkok’s Impact Arena, Thailand, December 2018 (left) and lava flow on Tungurahua volcano, Huambalo, Ecuador (right).

Catriona Gray on the catwalk, lava flowing.

Lava cup-cakes

Lava cakes can pay tributes to volcanologists in different ways.  They can feature a magna chamber which, upon slicing can feed a lava flow or they can formed with an exposed crater in which sits a lava lake.  Professional chefs can produce the effects with room-temperature “lava” but usually these are for display and the cakes work best with hot, melted chocolate and obsessives use a variety of ingredients (peanut butter, raspberries, orange colored icing et al) to attempt to emulate the variegated colors of the real stuff.  They work best with dark chocolate but sweeter types can be used (or a blend).  Lava cakes can be made at larger scales but the laws of physics (both thermal and structural) mean full-sized constructions can be challenging (and messy) so most produce lava cup-cakes.  Because, in a sense, lava cakes are a kind of civil engineering, some very complex recipes have been created but the following will make 6-8 cup-cakes (depending on the size of the muffin tins) and it has the virtue of simplicity:

Ingredients

4 tablespoons of unsalted butter at room temperature (plus some with which to grease the muffin tray).

A third of a cup of granulated sugar (plus some to sprinkle in the muffin tray).

3 large eggs.

A third of a cup of all-purpose flour.

A quarter teaspoon of salt.

8 ounces of dark chocolate, melted (for best results, delay the melt process until ready to blend (step (8) below).

6-8 squares (from the standard blocks) of dark chocolate.

Icing (confectioners') sugar, for dusting.

Whipped cream or ice cream, for serving (optional).

Fruit for serving (optional and most choose a red or orange variety).

Instructions

(1) Preheat oven to 400°F (205°C).

(2) Grease the cups of muffin tray with butter, ensuring the coasting is light and consistent.

(3) Sprinkle some granulated sugar over the muffin tray and ensure each has buttered cup has a consistent coating.  Shake off any excess grains.

(4) Spoon some granulated sugar into each cup, swirling to make sure the cup is completely lined.

(5) Blend the butter and granulated sugar until the mix is creamy.

(6) To this mix, as the eggs, one at a time, blending them in after each addition.

(7) To this mix, beat in flour and salt (on a low speed) until combined.

(8) To this mix, add the molten chocolate, and beat until combined.  Don’t be off-put if the mix seems either more or less viscous that you might expect.

(9) Pour mix into the greased cups. Fill only to half-way.

(10) In the centre of each cup, place one of the chocolate squares.

(11) Add the remaining mix to each cup but, because the mix will expand, don’t fill higher than three-quarters.

(12) Put tray into the heated oven, baking until the middle of the cakes no longer jiggle (should be no more than 8-12 minutes and if left too long, they’ll cease to be lava cup-cakes and become chocolate cup-cakes).  Because there’s some risk of spillage, place baking paper underneath the tray.

(13) Remove tray from oven and allow it to sit for 7-8 minutes.

(14) Up turn tray on a plate or other suitable flat surface and remove cup-cakes so the conical aspect resembles volcano.

(15) Dust with the icing (confectioner's) sugar and serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, adding some sort of fruit if desired.  Upon being sliced, the magma should ooze out, lava-like.

The Lava Lamp

The decorative lava lamp was invented in 1963 by Edward Craven Walker (1918-2000), a Word War II (1939-1945) RAF pilot who was inspired by a rigged-up egg-timer he saw in a pub, the device made with oil and water in a bottle.  Oil and water being two immiscible (unable to mix) fluids, the time worked by shaking the bottle, the egg deemed to be ready when the resulting blobs of oil had re-coagulated.  Knowing the world was well-supplied with cheap, reliable egg-timers, Craven saw little point in “making a better mousetrap” but he found the behavior of the blobs a pleasing piece of art and in his garage experimented with different fluids until he found a pleasing combination which produced just the effect he’d envisaged.  The characteristic shape of the lamp came about because the one seen in the pub used a standard cocktail shaker and the container in which Craven undertook his early research was an orange-squash bottle which was made in a similar shape; it proved ideal.  They work by the heat-soak from the incandescent light-bulb heating up the blobs, lowering both their density and the liquid's surface tension.  As the warmed blobs rise, they cool, lose buoyancy thus descend to the base where a wire with an active current breaks their surface tension, inducing re-coagulation.

Although associated with psychedelia, as well as lurid colors (the range expanded since the introduction of LEDs), lava lamps with plain black blobs in clear fluid are available.

The first lava lamp patent (Lava Lamp is a registered trademark in some jurisdictions) was applied for in 1963 and they were first displayed in 1965.  Very popular in the early-mid 1970s, by the 1980s the fad had passed, not because of the popular association of them with stoners imagined sitting staring at one for hours while the Grateful Dead played on the turntable, endlessly on repeat but because they’d come to be thought of as plastic kitsch.  However, they never quite went away and while there are spikes in demand (associated usually with some appearance in some prominent piece of popular culture), there is clearly a constant demand for those who just like the look while others furnish according to retro schemes or like the odd ironic piece among their conspicuous good taste.