Erase

Erase (pronounced ih-reys)

(1) To rub or scrape out, as letters or characters written, engraved etc; efface.

(2) Completely to eliminate.

(3) To remove material recorded on magnetic tape or magnetic disk; synonymous for most purposes in this context with delete although technically, in computing, an erasure is the substitution of data with characters representing a null value whereas a deletion is the removal of an pointer entry in an index.

1595–1605: From the Middle English arasen & aracen (to eradicate, remove), from the Latin ērāsus, past participle of ērādere (scrape out, scrape off, shave, abolish, remove, to abrade), the construct being ex (out of) + radere (to scratch, scrape).  The use in the context of data on magnetic storage media (tapes, disks) dates from 1945, the technical distinction between erase and delete defined in computer science theory as early as 1947 though, to this day, the distinction escapes most users.  The adjective erasable dates from 1829.  Eraser (thing that erases writing) is attested from 1790, an invention of American English, agent noun from erase.  Originally, the product was a knife with which to scraping off ink, the first rubber devices for removing pencil marks not available until from 1858.

Erasure, Comrade Stalin and Lindsay Lohan

Evil dictators (like those running beach clubs or Greek islands) have their problems too and they like them to go away.  Where problems exist, they like them to be erased or is some other way to disappear.  Sometimes, the technical term is “unpersoned”.

The Erased

Not best pleased at images of the pleasingly pneumatic Karolina Palazi appearing on the official Lohan Beach Club Mykonos Beach Club Instagram account, Lindsay Lohan quickly responded with a post demanding her staff “Erase this random person at my beach”.  In the digital age, it can be difficult entirely to erase anything which appears on the internet and probably impossible for anything distributed on the big-data social media platforms.  That said, there is unpredictability to the fate of anything ever on-line.  There is (1) material which genuinely vanishes forever, (2) stuff which proves impossible to eradicate despite best efforts, and (3) things which were thought lost, only to re-appear.  Noted for some time, the issue will be of increasing interest in the future, the internet being a distributed system with no centralised repository indicating what is held where, by whom and whether it is accessible (by someone) on or off-line or in storage.

The Disappeared

General Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006; military dictator of Chile 1973-1990).

This is the relatively new name for the centuries-old practice of secretly kidnapping or arresting people, then imprisoning or killing them, all without due process of law.  It’s most associated with the late twentieth-century military dictatorships in Chile, Argentina and Brazil but is used to describe the practice in many South and Central American republics and of late, others, sometimes at scale.  Although the practice probably pre-dates even modern humans, the word, in this context appears first to have been used by Joseph Heller (1923–1999) in the satirical Catch-22 (1961) when describing how the US military dealt with malcontents.  However it’s done, the person disappears without trace.

The Unpersoned

Unpersoning wasn’t invented in the Soviet Union but it was under comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) it was undertaken at scale, although, like later attempts on the internet, the process wasn’t always perfect because it was performed on extant physical material, some of which inevitably escaped attention.  The process interested critics in the West; in George Orwell's (1903–1950), dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), protagonist Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth where his job is to alter historical records to conform to the state's ever-changing version of history.  Done in the USSR mostly between 1928-1953, unpersoning was the physical modification of existing text and imagery, modified to erase from history those who had fallen from favor and it’s thought the most extensively unpersoned figure in the USSR was comrade Leon Trotsky (1879-1940).  Comrade Stalin had him murdered in Mexico, the assassin's choice of weapon an ice axe.

Erased from history: Before & after being unpersoned, Comrades Molotov (1890-1986) & Stalin with Comrade Nikolai Yezhov (1895-1940), head of the NKVD (one of the predecessors of the KGB); Comrade Stalin had him shot.

In the Soviet Union, the process was essentially as Orwell described and even in the age of digital editing it's probably often still done in a similar manner.  A photograph would be passed to the party's technicians with the comrade(s) to be unpersoned marked in some obvious way, the preferred technique apparently a black crayon.

Succeeding where others failed: Erasing crooked Hillary Clinton

The White House situation room, 2 May 2011 (official WH photo; left) and as depicted in Di Tzeitung (right).

Unpersoning can also be sex-specific (gender-based the currently preferred term).  In May 2011, the Orthodox Jewish news paper Di Tzeitung (a Brooklyn-based weekly) was forced to apologize after unpersoning the women in the photograph released by the White House showing President Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) and his staff monitoring the raid by US Navy Seals in which Osama bin Laden (1957-2011) was killed while in his Pakistani compound.  Unpersoned were then counterterrorism director, Audrey Tomason (b circa 1977) and then secretary of state, crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013).  Di Tzeitung's subsequent apologia was somewhat nuanced.  The publication reiterated it did not publish images of women and thus sent its “regrets and apologies” to the White House and the State Department, not because it had unpersoned women but because their photo editor had not read the “fine print” in the text issued by the White House (which accompanied the photograph) which forbid any changes.  Di Tzeitung further explained it has a “long standing editorial policy” of not publishing images of women because its readers “believe that women should be appreciated for who they are and what they do, not for what they look like and the Jewish laws of modesty are an expression of respect for women, not the opposite”.  They added that Di Tzeitung regarded crooked Hillary Clinton (a former US senator (Democrat) for New York who secured overwhelming majorities in the Orthodox Jewish communities) highly and “appreciated her unique capabilities, talents and compassion for all”.  It concluded by acknowledging it “should not have published the altered picture”.  Commentators noted the practice is not unusual in some ultra-Orthodox Jewish publications which regard depictions of the female form as “immodest”.  Neither the White House nor the State Department responded to the apology although there were cynics who wondered if the president wished it were that easy to get rid of crooked Hillary.

The Watergate tapes and the erased 18½ minutes

Looking over his shoulder: Richard Nixon and HR Halderman in the White House.

Tapes, audio and video, have played a part in many political downfalls but none is more famous than the “smoking gun” tape which compelled the resignation of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) after it revealed he was involved in the attempt to cover-up the involvement in the Watergate break-in of some connected to his administration.  Recording conversations in the White House had been going on for years and Nixon initially had the equipment removed, the apparatus re-installed two years later after it was found there was no other way to ensure an accurate record of discussions was maintained.  Few outside a handful of the president’s inner circle knew of the tapes and they became public knowledge only in mid-1973 when, under oath before a congressional hearing, a White House official confirmed their existence.  That was the point at which Nixon should have destroyed the tapes and for the rest of his life he must sometimes have reflected that but for that mistake, his presidency might have survived because, although by then the Watergate scandal had been a destabilizing distraction, there was at that point no “smoking gun”, nothing which linked Nixon himself to any wrongdoing.  As it was, he didn’t and within days subpoenas were served on the White House demanding the tapes and that made them evidence; the moment for destruction had passed.  Nixon resisted the subpoenas, claiming executive privilege and thus ensued the tussle between the White House and Watergate affair prosecutors which would see the “Saturday Night Massacre” during which two attorneys-general were fired, the matter ultimately brought before the US Supreme Court which ruled against the president.  Finally, the subpoenaed tapes were surrendered on 5 August 1973, the “smoking gun” tape revealing Nixon and his chief of staff (HR Haldeman, 1926–1993; White House chief of staff 1969-1973) discussing a cover-up plan and at that point, political support in the congress began to evaporate and the president was advised that impeachment was certain and even Republican senators would vote to convict.  On 8 August, Nixon announced his resignation, leaving office the next day.

Uher 5000 reel-to-reel tape recorder used by a White House secretary to create the tape (20 June 1972) with the 18½ minute gap.  (Government Exhibit #60: Records of District Courts of the United States, Record Group 21. National Archives Identifier: 595593).

To this day, mystery surrounds one tape in particular, a recording of a discussion between Nixon and Halderman on 20 June 1972, three days after the Watergate break-in.  Of obviously great interest, when reviewed, there was found to be a gap of 18½ minutes, the explanations offered of how, why or by whom the erasure was effected ranging from the humorously accidental to the darkly conspiratorial but half a century on, it remains a mystery.  Taking advantage of new data-recovery technology, the US government did in subsequent decades make several attempts to “un-delete” the gap but without success and it may be, given the nature of magnetic tape, that there is literally nothing left to find.  However, the tape is stored in a secure, climate-controlled facility in case technical means emerge and while it’s unlikely the contents would reveal anything not already known or assumed, it would be of great interest to historians.  What would be even more interesting is the identity of who it was that erased the famous 18½ minutes but that will likely never be known; after fifty years, it’s thought that were there to be any death-bed confessions, they should by now have been heard.  Some have their lists of names of those who might have "pressed the erase button" and while mostly sub-sets of Watergate's "usual suspects", one who tends not to appear is Nixon himself, the usual consensus being he was technically too inept to operate a tape machine though it's not impossible he ordered someone to do the deed.  However it happened, the suspects most often mentioned as having had their "finger on the button" (which may have been a foot-pedal) are Nixon's secretary and his chief of staff.

Basketweave

Basketweave (pronounced bah-skit-weev (U) or bas-kit-weev (non-U))

(1) A plain woven pattern with two or more groups of warp and weft threads are interlaced to render a checkerboard appearance resembling that of a woven basket; historically applied especially (in garment & fabric production) to wool & linen items and (in furniture, flooring etc), fibres such as cane, bamboo etc.

(2) Any constructed item assembled in this pattern.

(4) In the natural environment, any structure (animal, vegetable or mineral) in this pattern.

(5) In automotive use, a stylized wheel, constructed usually in an alloy predominately of aluminum and designed loosely in emulation of the older spooked (wire) wheels.   

1920–1925: The construct was basket + weave (and used variously as basketweave, basket-weave & basket weave depending on industry, product, material etc).  Basket was from the thirteenth century Middle English basket (vessel made of thin strips of wood, or other flexible materials, interwoven in a great variety of forms, and used for many purposes), from the Anglo-Norman bascat, of obscure origin.  Bascat has attracted much interest from etymologists but despite generations of research, its source has remained elusive.  One theory is it’s from the Late Latin bascauda (kettle, table-vessel), from the Proto-Brythonic (in Breton baskodenn), from the Proto-Celtic baskis (bundle, load), from the primitive Indo-European bhask- (bundle) and presumably related to the Latin fascis (bundle, faggot, package, load) and a doublet of fasces.  In ancient Rome, the bundle was a material symbol of a Roman magistrate's full civil and military power, known as imperium and it was adopted as the symbol of National Fascist Party in Italy; it’s thus the source of the term “fascism”.  Not all are convinced, the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary (OED) noting there is no evidence of such a word in Celtic unless later words in Irish and Welsh (sometimes counted as borrowings from English) are original.  However, if the theory is accepted, the implication is the original meaning was something like “wicker basket”, wicker one of the oldest known methods of construction.  The word was first used to mean “a goal in the game of basketball” in 1892, the use extended to “a score in basketball” by 1898.  In the 1980s, as operating systems evolved, programmers would have had the choice of “basket” or “bucket” to describe the concept of a “place where files are stored or reference prior to processing” and they choose the latter, thus creating the “download bucket”, “handler bucket” etc.  On what basis the choice was made isn’t known but it may be that baskets, being often woven, are prone to leak while non-porous buckets are not.  Programmers hate leaks.

A classic basketweave pattern.

Weave was from the Middle English weven (to weave), from the Old English wefan (to weave), from the Proto-West Germanic weban, from the Proto-Germanic webaną, from the primitive Indo-European webh (to weave, braid).  The sense of weave as “to wander around; not travel in a straight line” was also in the early fourteenth century absorbed by the Middle English weven and was probably from the Old Norse veifa (move around, wave), related to the Latin vibrare, from vibrō (to vibrate, to rattle, to twang; to deliver or deal (a blow)), from the  Proto-Italic wibrāō, denominative of wibros, from the primitive Indo-European weyp- (to oscillate, swing) or weyb-.  The root-final consonant has never been clear and reflexes of both are found across Indo-European languages.  The verb sense of “something woven” dates from the 1580s while the meaning “method or pattern of weaving” was from 1888.  The notion of “to move from one place to another” has been traced to the twelfth century and was presumably derived from the movements involved in the act of weaving and while it’s uncertain quite how the meaning evolved, it’s documented from early fourteenth century as conveying “move to and fro” and in the 1590s as “move side to side”,  In pugilism it would have been a natural technique from the moment the first punch was thrown but formally it entered the language of boxing (as “duck & weave”) in 1918, often as weaved or weaving.  By analogy, the phrase “duck & weave” came to be used of politicians attempting to avoid answering questions.  In the military, weave was also used to describe evasive maneuvers undertaken on land or in the air but not at sea, the Admiralty preferring zig-zag, as the pattern would appear on charts.  The fencing method known as teenage is a kind of basketweave.  Basketweave is a noun & adjective and (in irregular use) a verb and basketweaver is a noun; the noun plural is basketweaves.

Attentive basketweavers: Students in a lecture  (B.A. (Peace Studies)) at Whitworth University, Spokane, Washington, USA.

A basketweaver is of course “one who weaves baskets” but in idiomatic use, basketweaver is used also to mean “one whose skills have been rendered redundant by automation or other changes in technology”.  The term “underwater basketweaving” is used of university course thought useless (in the sense of not being directly applicable to anything vocational) and is applied especially to the “studies” genre (gender studies, peace studies, women’s studies et al).  Beyond education, it can be used of anything thought “lame, pointless, useless, worthless, a waste of time etc”.  Basketweaving is also a descriptor of a long and interlinked narrative of lies, distinguished from an ad-hoc lie in that in a basketweave of lies, there are dependencies between the untruths and, done with sufficient care, each can act to reinforce another, enabling an entire persona to be constructed.  It’s the most elaborate version of a “basket of lies” and can work but, like a woven basket, if one strand becomes lose and separates from the structure, under stress, the entire basket can unravel, spilling asunder the contents.

Official portrait of Representative the honorable George Santos.

A classic basketweaver is George Anthony Devolder Santos (b 1988) who, in the 2022 mid-term elections for the US Congress, was elected as a representative (Republican) for New York's 3rd congressional district.  Although he seems to have passed untroubled through the Republican Party’s candidate vetting process, after his election a number of media outlets investigated and found his public persona was almost wholly untrue and contained many dubious or blatantly false claims about, inter-alia, his mother, personal biography, education, criminal record, work history, financial status, ancestry, ethnicity, sexual orientation & religion.  When confronted, Mr Santos did admit to lying about certain matters, was vague about some and ducked and weaved to avoid discussing others, especially the fraud charges in Brazil he avoided by fleeing the country.  Although a life-long Roman Catholic, Mr Santos on a number of occasions claimed to be Jewish, even fabricating stories about his family suffering losses during the Holocaust.  Later, after the lies were exposed, he told a newspaper “I never claimed to be Jewish.  I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.”  In the right circumstances, delivered on-stage by a Jewish comedian, it might have been a good punch-line.

Few are laughing however and Mr Santos is under investigation by both Brazilian and US authorities.  However, despite many calls (from Republicans and Democrats alike) that he resign from Congress, Mr Santos has refused and the Republican house leadership, working with an unexpectedly paper-thin majority, has shown no enthusiasm to pursue the matter.  What Mr Santos has done is expose the limitations of the basketweaving technique.  While a carefully built construct can work, it relies on no loose threads being exposed and while this can be manageable for those not public figures, for anyone exposed to investigation, in the twenty-first century such deceptions are probably close to impossible to achieve and Mr Santos was probably lured into excessive self-confidence because, in relative anonymity, he had for years managed to deceive, fooling many including the Republican Party and perhaps even himself.  In retrospect, he might one day ponder how he ever thought he’s get away with it.  One thing that remains unclear is how he should be addressed.  Members of the House of Representatives typically are addressed as "the honorable" in formal use but this is merely a courtesy title and is not a requirement.  The use is left to individual members and as far as is known, Mr Santos has not yet indicated whether he wishes people to address him as “the honorable George Santos”.

Borrani wire wheels on 1972 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 (Daytona) coupé (far left), “Hotwire” wheels on 1974 Holden Torana SL/R 5000 (centre left), “Basketweave” wheels on 1990 Jaguar XJS coupé (centre right) & 1986 Holden Piazza (far right).

Basketweave wheels remain popular (although some feelings may be strained when it comes time to clean the things) but the use of “basketweave” to describe the construction was a bit of a stretch and some prefer “lattice” which seems architecturally closer.  Were the motif of the classic basketweave to be applied to a wheel it would look something those used on the Holden Piazza, briefly (1986-1989) available on the Australian market.  Because it’s not easy successfully to integrate something inherently square or rectangular into a small, circular object, such designs never caught on although variations were tried.  The “basketweave” wheels which did endure owed little to the classic basketweave patters although there are identifiable hints in the construction so people understand the connection and rather than thought of as a continuation of the design elements drawn from the traditions of weaving, the wheels really established a fork of the meaning.  As a design, they were an evolution of the “hotwire” style popular in the 1970s when was a deliberate attempt to echo the style of the classic spoked (wire) wheels which, being lighter and offering better brake cooling properties than steel disk wheels, were for decades the wheel of choice for high performance vehicles.  That changed in the 1960s as speeds & vehicle weight rose and tyres became wider and stickier, a combination of factors which meant wire wheels were no longer strong enough to endure the rising stresses.  Additionally, the wire wheel was labor intensive to make in an era when that beginning to matter, wheels cast from an alloy predominately of aluminum were cheaper to produce as well as stronger.

Lindsay Lohan in Miami, clothes by Amiparism, Interview Magazine, December 2022.  The car is a Jaguar XJS convertible with the factory-fitted basketweave (or lattice) wheels.

1988 Porsche 911 (930) Turbo Cabriolet (left) and Hans Stuck (1900–1978) in Auto Union Type C (6.0 litre V16), Shelsley Walsh hill climb, Worcestershire, England, June 1936 (right).

The Porsche is fitted with three-piece, 15 inch BBS RS basketweave wheels with satin lips: The rear units are 11 inches in width (running 345/35 tyres) while at the front the wheels are 9 inches wide (mounted with 225/50 tyres).  Although advances in electronics since 1988 have made the behaviour of the most powerful rear-engined Porsches easier to tame, in 1988, the best way to ameliorate the inherent idiosyncrasies of the configuration was to fit wider wheels, increasing the rubber’s contact area with the road.  The idea was not new, both the straight-eight Mercedes-Benz W125 and the V16 Type C Auto-Union Grand Prix cars of 1937 using twin rear tyres when run in hill climbs.  The Porsche 930 (1975-1989) quickly gained the nickname “widow maker” but the Auto Union, which combined 520 horsepower and a notable rearward weight bias with tyres narrower than are these days used on delivery vans, deserved the moniker more.  Fitting the second set of rear wheels did help but the handling characteristics could never be made wholly benign and it wasn’t until the late 1950s that mid-engined Grand Prix cars became manageable and notably, they had about half the power of the German machines of the 1930s.

Rorschach

Rorschach (pronounced raw-shack)

(1) A canton and town in Switzerland.

(2) A personality test using ink-blots

1927: The ink-blot based personality analysis was first published in codified form in 1927, the genesis of which was a 1921 paper by Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach (1885-1922).  Rorschach (Wahlkreis) is a constituency of the canton of Saint Gallen, Switzerland and Rorschach is its largest town.  The town lies on the Swiss side of Lake Constance, the construct of the name an early form of the German Röhr (reeds) + Schachen (lakeside).

The Rorschach test was for some time a standard clinical diagnostic tool in psychology & psychiatry.  It was a collection of ten “ink blots”, five rendered in grey scale, two in grey & red and three in color, all printed on separate cards and presented to the subjects who were asked (1) What might this mean? & (2) What parts of the card made you say that?  The usual protocol was to provide a pencil and have the subject write their responses in the space underneath the image although, depending on the circumstances, a clinician might engage with the subject and obtain more of their thoughts or the tests could immediately be taken for analysis.  Fond of jargon, the profession even took the opportunity to coin a word to describe specific responses, a subject thought to be especially demonstrative in their response to a Rorschach ink blot said to be exhibiting "extratensive" tendencies.  As an adjective it was thus a synonym of "extroverted" and is occasionally seen outside of psychology where it probably adds little but confusion.  It served also as a noun, the relevant subjects being labelled "extratensives".

Lindsay Lohan in Rorschach Ink-Blot Test inspired gold beaded cocktail dress at the Source Code premiere, Crosby Street Hotel, New York City, March 2011.  The dress was paired with black patent ankle strap platform pumps shoes and matching opaque tights.

The idea of using indeterminate and ambiguous shapes as a way of assessing an individual's personality had been around for centuries before Dr Rorschach began his research and in the nineteenth century there were even popular parlor games which used the idea although they were designed to amuse rather than analyze.  What made Dr Rorschach’s work different was the sheer quantity of the data with with he worked, his research encompassing some 300 patients in mental institutions (with a control group of 100 “normal” subjects) to whom to he exposed over 400 ink-blots before selecting the ten which had proved to be of the greatest diagnostic utility.  Although the method was not greatly different from the games, the Rorschach test was genuinely scientific in its design and the systematic approach linking impressionistic responses to ambiguous shapes, this producing evidence of certain tendencies.  Within the still embryonic psychiatric profession, his approach was thought novel and initially received little support.  His book (a 174-page monograph Psychodiagnostik (Psychodiagnostics)), when eventually published in 1921 contained the structure of the ink-blot tests and the results of the 300 patient survey yet it attracted more interest from intrigued literary reviewers than the medical journals and he died little more than a year after its release.  Even the appearance of reviews in the odd literary magazine however did little to stimulate appeal because the book was very much a work by a scientist for other scientists and Dr Rorschach had made no attempt to make his findings accessible to a general audience.  It wasn’t until the work was republished and others began to refine the methodology that others saw potential, especially after professional mathematicians added rigor to the statistical models used to generate the scores from which conclusions were drawn.

However, those who inherited the work also shifted the goal posts.  While Dr Rorschach had always intended the ink-blots to be only a helpful tool in the diagnosis of schizophrenia, such was the expansion of the profession in the inter-war years that many became interested and, by 1938, the test had been adapted and was being promoted as a kind of “personality testing kit”.  It was quite a departure from Dr Rorschach’s original vision which had been designed deliberately to maintain some ambiguity in the images, his belief that the diagnosis of schizophrenia lay in the margins between the possible responses whereas when used as a personality testing tool, the answers took on the character of a parameter which, when collectively assessed with the provided statistical tool, placed patients in categories.

The Rorschach cards

The test in that form proved highly successful, its proliferation assisted by the demands of wartime and the military’s need for psychological testing, the Rorschach kit easily produced, more popular with subjects than many other methods and, as a piece of mathematics, able easily to be collated into the big data sets electronic machines were beginning to make possible.  It had that those qualities the military so adore: Speed, standardization and simplicity.  It was therefore by the mid 1940s a standard part of psychological testing, used in everything from job applications to assessing an inmate’s eligibility for parole so it was perhaps inevitable it would be applied to the defendants in the Nuremberg trial (1945-1946).  Even before the International Military Tribunal (IMT; which would conduct the trial) assembled, the authorities in charge of the Nazis in custody insisted on psychiatrists and psychologists being available as soon as the prisoners had been assembled.  There were a number of reasons for this, notably that they wanted to ensure the prisoners had the support necessary to dissuade them from attempting suicide and there was the need also to ensure all were mentally competent to stand trial.  Additionally, there was genuine curiosity about the Nazis because never had there been such an opportunity to subject to tests two-dozen odd who were responsible for what was becoming clear were the greatest crimes in history.  The question then, as now was: Are “normal ordinary people” able to be drawn to commit evil acts or are some people evil.

The Rorschach tests were of course only one of the tools the clinicians assigned to Nuremberg used and the conclusion drawn was that all defendants were sane in the sense they were legally sane and thus mentally competent to stand trial even if they were depressed psychopaths (that seemed to be the most common phrase).  Quite what part the tests played in this isn’t clear but the test results themselves assumed a life independent of the trial because of a dispute between the two clinicians most involved in the testing and it wasn’t until the 1990s they were (almost) all published.  This psychological time capsule proved irresistibly tempting for one of the US’s foremost Rorschach experts who over the years had assembled records which could be used as an extraordinarily diverse control group which included (in the hundreds) medical students, Unitarian ministers, psychology students, criminals, business executives and random patients from private practice.  From this were selected the clerics and psychiatric outpatients, the purpose of a comparison with the Nuremberg Nazis being a critique of a recently published analysis of the test results which had concluded the defendants (as individuals and a representatives of the whole Nazi hierarchy) were “cursed beyond redemption” and thus profoundly of “the other”.  Their work was not entirely conventional by accepted scientific standards and they tacitly acknowledged some of the long acknowledged limitations of the test but never wavered from their finding “…the Nazis were not psychologically normal or healthy individuals”.

Defendants in the dock, Palace of Justice, Nuremberg, 1945-1946.

That was as controversial a view in the 1990s as it had been fifty years earlier and if a blind test could not distinguish of the Nazi’s data from the two control groups, at least some doubt would be cast.  Accordingly, ten Rorschach experts were assembled and asked to assemble them into three groups.  All that did was identify the high, medium and low-functioning of each group but there was nothing in them which separated the Nazis.  That was interesting but what was probably definitive was that even when told the nature of the data, the experts were unable to discern any difference between the responses which would enable the Nazis to be identified.  Perhaps sadly, the Nazis may have been as ordinary as they appeared in the dock, the implication being we're all capable of evil, given the right temptation, a nod to an earlier memorable phrase spoken of them: "The banality of evil".  

As that might indicate, like many tests in psychology, the Rorschach is probably useful if its limitations are recognized and the interpretations thought valid decades ago are no longer treated as proven science.  For example there may be something which can be deduced from a subject assessing the whole image in their response which is different for one who picks just a section or who finds something different in different parts but whether there’s anything substantive in the difference between seeing moth and a butterfly may be dubious.  The test is still widely used although many have abandoned it though it’s famously a cult in Japan where it’s one of the profession’s standard tools.  Elsewhere use is mixed.  Interestingly, while the fourth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV (1994) did not endorse or recommend the use of any particular projective test, it did note many were used in clinical practice but cautioned that the validity and reliability of these tests had not been firmly established, urging caution.  Neither the DSM-5 (2013) nor DSM-5-TR (2022) make any reference to the Rorschach test.

Thumbnail

Thumbnail (pronounced thuhm-neyl)

(1) The (finger)nail of the thumb.

(2) As thumbnail sketch, anything quite small or brief, as a small drawing or short essay, a précis or summary.

(3) In printing, a small, rough dummy.

(4) In journalism, a half-column portrait in a newspaper (also called the porkchop).

(5) Something quite small or brief; concise.

(6) Concisely to describe (something or someone).

(7) In computing (on the graphical user interfaces (GUI) of operating systems), a small image used as a preview of the original which loads upon clicking the thumbnail.  Unlike an icon, which is (Usually) a representative symbol, a thumbnail is a smaller copy of the original larger image (although technically, a thumbnail can be constructed which reports a smaller file size than the original).

1595–1605: The construct was thumb + nail.  Thumb was from the Middle English thombe, thoume & thoumbe, from the Old English þūma, from the Proto-West Germanic þūmō, from the Proto-Germanic þūmô from Proto-Indo-European tūm- (to grow).  The spellings thum, thume & thumbe were still in use in the late seventeenth century but are all long obsolete.  Nail was from the Middle English nail & nayl, from the Old English næġl, from the Proto-West Germanic nagl, from the Proto-Germanic naglaz, from the primitive Indo-European hnogh- (nail).  The earliest known instance of the phrase “thumbnail sketch” in the sense of "drawing or sketch of a small size" (though usually not literally the size of a thumbnail) dates from 1852, the verb usage adopted in the 1930s.  Thumbnail is a noun & adjective; thumbnailer is a noun, thumbnailed is a verb & adjective and thumbnailing is a verb; the noun plural is thumbnails.

Fifteen images of Lindsay Lohan’s thumbnails.

The term "thumbnail sketch" began with architects, designers and artists who quickly would create small, conceptual sketches of their ideas so they could be tested without the time or effort required to render at full-scale.  While it’s possible some may literally have been the size of a actual thumbnail, most would have been larger and the term was chosen just as something indicative of “smallness”.  The practice or architects and others creating small sketches was of course ancient and may even have been associated with prehistoric cave painting but it was in the mid-nineteenth century the term “thumbnail sketch” came to be used.  The use of the thumbnail sketch (including the companion “pencil test” in graphic design) is now universal in industries where images need to be created and the techniques learned proved useful in the 1980s when icons became widely used in the on were used on graphical user interfaces (GUI) of operating systems.  In text, in the 1950s, the thumbnail sketch came to be applied to any a précis or summary and has always been prevalent in publishing and criticism (as brief plot summaries, reviews etc) and as short-form biographical data, especially when assembled in a list of those so profiled.

Thumbnail sketches of recent Australian administrations

Kevin Rudd (right) & Cardinal Pell (left), 2010.

Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010 & 2013): There have been few Australian prime-ministers who entered office with such goodwill as that enjoyed by Kevin Rudd and none who have so quickly squandered it all.  Mr Rudd’s win in 2007 was a testament to his personal popularity and a reasonable achievement given that, by any standards, on paper, the previous government shouldn’t have lost office, there being no crisis, an outstandingly good fiscal position, low unemployment and no serious scandals.  Essentially, the electorate seemed bored by a decade-odd of dull competence and Mr Rudd was new, presentable and in his nerdy, weird way, appealing and thus the country voted.  His honeymoon wasn’t noticeably short but he had the misfortune to be prime-minister when the global financial crisis (GFC) hit and while for many reasons, Australia was relatively unaffected, the stresses it induced revealed tensions in his government and his background as a public servant wasn’t useful whenever decisiveness was required; long used to providing advice to others who made decisions, his government stuttered under the weight of committees and boards of enquiry.  A contrast with this intellectual timidity was his reputation for arrogance and abrasiveness when dealing with his colleagues and this didn’t help him maintain their support; he lost an internal party vote in 2010 and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) choose another leader.  In 2023, it was announced Dr Rudd would be Australia’s next ambassador to the United States and there are rumors he’s negotiated a secret, back-channel deal whereby he reports directly to the prime-minister and not, as is usual, to the foreign minister.

Julia Gillard (left) & Kevin Rudd (right), 2013.

Julia Gillard (b 1961; Australian prime minister 2010-2013):  Julia Gillard is thus far the only woman to become Australia’s prime-minister and some of the treatment she endured in office might make a few women wonder if reaching the top of the greasy pole is worth the price to be paid.  That said, it’s still a good gig and many will try.  Metaphorically knifing her predecessor in the back meant her premiership didn’t start in the happiest of circumstances and it didn’t help and he made little attempt to conceal his thoughts on recent events.  The poison spread through the party and the healthy majority gained in 2007 was lost in the 2010 election, the Gillard government surviving only with the support of three independents, all of whom extracted their own price.  Bizarrely as it might seem to some, Rudd returned for a while as foreign minister, an unhappy experience for many.  It couldn’t last and it didn’t, Mr Rudd resigning and unsuccessfully contesting the leadership.  Still despite it all, on paper, the Gillard government managed things successfully in a tight parliament and although the actual achievements were slight, they probably exceed expectations.  Ms Gillard is probably best remembered for her “misogyny” speech which deservedly went viral because it was highly entertaining although it did reveal someone sensitive to criticism and one wonders if she’d ever reviewed some of things said about male politicians over the centuries.  It’s clearly a more sensitive age but nor did she appear to see any inconsistencies between the words spat at her and her use of “poodle” and “mincing” (with all that they imply) when decrying one of her male opponents.  As it was, Mr Rudd got his revenge, toppling her in 2013 although his victory may have seemed pyrrhic (his second coming lasting three months-odd), he was probably content.

Tony Abbott (left) & Vladimir Putin (right) with koalas, 2014.

Tony Abbott (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2013-2015): One probably disappointed that Ms Gillard was in 2013 replaced was Mr Abbott because all the indications were the Liberal-National coalition’s victory in the 2013 election would have produced a landslide-scale majority rather than the merely comfortable one achieved against Mr Rudd.  Still, the majority was sufficient for Mr Abbott easily to purse his objectives and he immediately set to reducing expenditure, cutting taxes, stopping irregular immigration (his famous “stop the boats” campaign lent three word slogans (3WS) a new popularity which endures to this day) and attacking trade unions.  He was a very different character from Mr Rudd but similarly inept in managing public perception of his government.  In his thoughts, there was a certainly of purpose Mr Rudd lacked but the core problem was that his world view seemed to have been set in stone by the Jesuits who taught him while he was training for the priesthood and while much had changed since the fourteenth century, he’d not moved on.  Thus created were the tensions which marked his government which was split between technocratic realists, right-wing fanatics, a genuinely liberal wing and his coalition partners, the National Party which was devoted to the horse trading necessary to extract the money required to pork-barrel their electorates.  Presiding over this lot as a leader with thoughts were more akin to the old Democratic Labor Party (DLP) than anything from the third millennium, it’s probably remarkable Mr Abbott lasted as long as he did.  The 2014 budget which made big cuts was blamed by many for his demise and while it’s true it was badly designed and poorly explained, it does appear Mr Abbott, while one of the most formidably focused and effective oppositions leaders, simply lacked the skills needed to be prime-minister.  In 2013, he lost an internal party ballot to the man he’d replaced in a similar vote in 2009.

Malcolm Turnbull (right) & Peter Dutton (left) roadside billboard (2016).

Malcolm Turnbull (b 1954; Australian prime minister 2015-2018):  There was an unusually great public optimism which immediately surrounded Mr Turnbull’s accession to office.  So encouraging were the polls that he probably should have gone to an early election as Anthony Eden (1897-1977; UK prime-minister 1955-1957) did in 1955, thus avoiding the grinding down of energy inevitable in “fag-end” administrations.  Instead he delayed, making the same mistake as Gordon Brown (b 1951; UK prime-minister 2007-2010) and John Gorton (1911-2002; Australian prime-minister 1968-1971) and the early support evaporated, the government surviving the 2016 election with only a slender majority.  Being from the liberal wing, Mr Turnbull really wasn’t a good fit as leader of the modern Liberal Party he’d been accepted only because he was rich, a virtue which in the party tends to mean other vices are overlooked (if not forgiven).  This allowed him sometimes to prevail but ultimately it was the corrosive and related issues of energy and an emissions reduction policy which proved his nemesis.  Even if the public didn’t fully understand the intricacies of the issue (and the especially complex mechanisms in the associated legislation), increasingly they were being persuaded by the science underlying climate change and just wanted the matter resolved.  The factions in the Liberal-National coalition had for more than a decade been torn asunder by climate policy and the divisions poisoned public perception of the government; Mr Abbott may have been wrong in how he handled the matter in 2013 but he was at least certain and decisive and was accordingly rewarded.  Support for Mr Turnbull eroded and in an amusingly chaotic leadership coup in 2018, he lost the leadership.  In retirement, he found common cause with Mr Rudd as they joined to complain about the undue influence Rupert Murdoch’s (b 1931) News Corporation exerts in Australian politics, especially the national daily The Australian which, despite a notionally small distribution, is highly effective in setting agendas, forcing other outlets to pursue News Corp's pet issues.

The Turnbull administration is remembered also for imposing the "bonk ban", a consequence of one of the many extra-parliamentary antics of "bonking Barnaby" (Barnaby Joyce, b 1967; thrice (between local difficulties) deputy prime minister of Australia 2016-2022 and known also within the beltway as "the beetrooter", a nicknamed explained as (1) an allusion to this often florid complexion and (2) the use of "root" in Australia to refer to sexual intercourse).  Mr Turnbull was a keen student of etymology and having once worked as a journalist was fond of the alliterative phrase so when writing his memoir (A Bigger Picture (2020)) he included a short chapter entitled "Barnaby and the bonk ban".  As well as the events which lent the text it's title, the chapter was memorable for his inclusion of perhaps the most vivid thumbnail sketch of Barnaby Joyce yet penned:

"Barnaby is a complex, intense, furious personality.  Red-faced, in full flight he gives the impression he's about to explode.  He's highly intelligent, often good-humoured but also has a dark and almost menacing side - not unlike Abbott (Tony Abbott (b 1957; prime-minister of Australia 2013-2015)) - that seems to indicate he wrestles with inner troubles and torments."

Mr Turnbull and Mr Joyce in parliament, House of Representatives, Canberra, ACT.

The substantive matter was the revelation in mid-2017 the press had become aware Mr Joyce (a married man with four daughters) was (1) conducting an affair with a member of his staff and (2) that the young lady was with child.  Mr Turnbull recorded that when asked, Mr Joyce denied both "rumors", which does sound like a lie but in the narrow sense may have verged on "the not wholly implausible" on the basis that, as he pointed out in a later television interview, the question of paternity was at the time “...a bit of a grey area”.  Mr Joyce and his mistress later married and now have two children so all's well that end's well (at least for them) and Mr Turnbull didn't so much shut the gate after the horse had bolted as install inter-connecting doors in the stables.  His amendments to the Australian Ministerial Code of Conduct (an accommodating document very much in the spirit of Lord Castlereagh's (1769–1822; UK foreign secretary 1812-1822) critique of the Holy Alliance) banned ministers from bonking their staff which sounds uncontroversial but was silent on them bonking the staff of the minister in the office down the corridor.  So the net effect was probably positive in that staff having affairs with their ministerial boss would gain experience through cross-exposure to other portfolio areas although there's the obvious moral hazard in that they might be tempted to conduct trysts just to engineer a transfer in the hope of career advancement.  There are worse reasons for having an affair and a bonk for a new job seems a small price to pay.  It's been done before.

Scott Morrison (left) & Grace Tame (right), 2022.

Scott Morrison (b 1968; prime-minister 2018-2022): There are a few candidates who deserve to be regarded as Australia’s worst prime-minister (some of them quite recent) but the uniquely distinguishing feature of assessments of Mr Morrison’s term is that so many view it with such distaste.  His narrow victory in the 2018 election was a remarkable personal achievement but that proved the high-water mark of his administration.  Many critiques noted his lack of background, his experience limited to sales, marketing and slogans which has its place but did seem to result in him viewing a democracy rather as a sales manager views his employer’s customer loyalty programmes: Just as only good customers are entitled to the benefits of membership, in the Morrison government it seemed only electorates which returned coalition members were deserving of funding.  That did change in the run-up to an election; then marginal electorates which might elect coalition members attracted largess and while all parties do this, few have been so so blatant or extreme as Mr Morrison.  He also blundered in foreign affairs, publicly and pugnaciously calling for an international enquiry into the origins of the SARS-COV-2 virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.  That was a good idea but it should have been handled through the usual channels, not as foghorn diplomacy and the assumption of most was he was looking forward to going to his church (one where they clap, sing, strum guitars and the preacher assures the congregation God approves of surf-skis and big TVs) and telling everyone he’d stood up to the Godless atheists in the Chinese Communist Party.  Then there was the matters like the way a submarine contract was cancelled (costing the taxpayer a few hundred million) and the “robodebt” scandal (which turned out to be unlawful) which cost an as yet uncertain millions more.  Robodebt also exposed the contrast between his attitude to poor people who might be entitled to small welfare payments and that towards corporations which benefited from COVID-19 payments intended for those suffering certain defined losses in revenue.  When it was pointed out many companies which had received millions actually increased their revenue during the pandemic, Mr Morrison made it clear they could keep the money.  Maybe poor people should become Liberal Party donors.

Thumbnails of Lindsay Lohan image files in a sub-directory.