Compersion

Compersion (pronounced kom-pur-zhuhn or kom-pur-shuhn)

(1) The positive feeling of joy, happiness or empathy an individual experiences when their romantic partner(s) form new romantic or sexual connections with others; vicarious joy associated with seeing one's partner(s) have joyful romantic or sexual relation with others.

(2) By extension, in general use, the wholehearted participation in the joy of others.

1970s: A neologism coined by the Kerista Commune a mid-twentieth century polyfidelity community.  The word is a portmanteau, the construct said to have been comp(assion) + (conv)ersion.  Compassion in this context was used in the sense of “feelings of empathy and concern for the well being of others and sharing in their happiness” while conversion was co-opted to convey “change or transformation” specifically the transformation of the typically expected (in the circumstances) jealousy or insecurity into positive feelings of happiness and joy for one's partner's experiences.  Etymologists have speculated the word may be derived from the work of the French ethnologist & anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009), notably The Social Use of Kinship Terms Among Brazilian Indians in American Anthropologist, volume 45, number. 3, July-September 1943.  In that case the contract would have been the French compère (partner) + -sion (as a verb-forming suffix), based on an earlier use of the French compérage to denote the practice of brothers-in-law sharing wives as observed among Tupi people of the Brazilian Amazon.

Brother Jud.

In the tradition of utopian visions, the Kerista Commune was a communal living experiment founded in 1956 in New York City by John Presmont (formerly Jake Peltz, aka "Brother Jud" (although his birth name was thought to have been Jacob Luvich) 1923-2009).  The inspiration for the community apparently came from “a visionary experience” Brother Jud enjoyed in 1956 during which “an entity” instructed him to create a sexually experimental international community although it wasn’t until another experience in 1962 there was another vision of an island called Kerista and at that point, the name was adopted.  However, even before the revelation in 1956, Brother Jud had become a devotee of the works of Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) a US-based Austrian psychoanalyst with a difficult past who believed sexual repression was the root cause of many social problems.  Some of his his many books were widely read within the profession but there was criticism of his tendency towards monocausality in his analysis, an opinion shared by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) in his comments about Reich’s 1927 book Die Funktion des Orgasmus (The Function of the Orgasm), a work the author had dedicated to his fellow Austrian.  Freud sent a note of thanks for the personally dedicated copy he’d been sent as a birthday present but, brief and not as effusive in praise Reich as had expected, it was not well-received.  Reich died in prison while serving a sentence imposed for violating an injunction issued to prevent the distribution of a machine he’d invented: the orgone accumulator.

There are many (and varied) descriptions of the Kerista commune and it was a loosely structured concept rather than a distinct entity, its membership, practices and “rules” changing dynamically as people came and went but its core characteristics were based on the principles of communal living, polyfidelity, personal fulfillment and artistic self-expression.  By far the most discussed aspect of the commune was the acceptance of polyfidelity, something which aroused the suspicion and mistrust of the US establishment almost as much as the Marxist-sounding “group councils” with their collective decision making which, on paper, was soviet-like in theory if not practice.  Interestingly, while the group councils were concerned with things like trash management and vegetable production, there were parallel "intimate councils" which dealt with personal relationships within the community and it was this body that the concept of compersion emerged.  Compersion was less the process of polyfidelity than a description of the correct state of mind one should adopt in its milieu.  What the Kerista did however stress was that their ethos of group sex, partner swapping, and "bisexual bonding" was not a “swingers club” or mere “free love” but a community in which members existed in a relationship of "complex marriages", multi-stranded arrangements formed by romantic and sexual bonds which involved permanent, devotional obligations on a many-to-many basis. 

Although obviously able to be depicted as a subversive, Brother Jud seems not to have made any attempt to transform the Kerista community into a political movement and never did fulfill his wry promise (given in an interview) that he would supplant “the 10 commandments with 69 positions” but he did reduce his political agenda to a succinct 25 propositions, some of which have actually become legal orthodoxy in much of the West:

Legalize group marriage.  Legalize indecent exposure.  Legalize trial marriage. Legalize abortion.  Legalize miscegenation.  Legalize religious intermarriage.  Legalize marijuana.  Legalize narcotics.  Legalize cunnilingus.  Legalize transvestitism.  Legalize pornography.  Legalize obscene language.  Legalize sexual intercourse.  Legalize group sex.  Legalize sodomy.  Legalize fellatio.  Legalize prostitution.  Legalize incest.  Legalize birth control.  Legalize Lesbianism.  Legalize polygamy.  Legalize polyandry.  Legalize polygyny.  Legalize homosexuality.  Legalize voluntary flagellation.

Like many communes (and subject too to external opposition), internal tensions led to factionalism and although Kerista Communes were created in Oregon and California and Oregon, the conflicts proved too much and the lst of the communities was dissolved final . However, the community ultimately disbanded in the 1990s due to various internal conflicts and disagreements.

In general use, in English the word has come to be used to as an antonym of jealousy, Schadenfreude (from German meaning “taking pleasure in the misfortune of others” and adopted in the English-speaking world with joyful relish) or the rare epicaricacy (a word of Greek origin with essentially the same sense as Schadenfreude).  It’s thus not necessarily (and presumably rarely) specifically applied happily to celebrate polyfidelity as did the Keristaists but, filling a gap in English, is there to be used to describe feeling pleasure when others, known or not, enjoy happiness or good-fortune.  Although dour, miserable English lacked such a word, other languages recognise the emotion and it must be part of Jewish tradition because the Hebrew firgun and the Yiddish Naches both convey the sense.  From the Pāli and Sanskrit there’s also मुदिता (muditā) which while sometimes used generally to mean “joy”, is most often used to convey the sense of a vicarious joy, the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people's well-being, a pure happiness unadulterated by any self-interest.

Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton.

As the glossies, socials & tabloids gleefully documented, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton (b 1981) had their differences but Ms Lohan’s recent announcement she was with child seemed to elicit from Ms Hilton some feeling of compersion, a congratulatory note quickly sent and earlier she’d expressed similar feelings when, from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Ms Lohan announced her engagement.  Having recently become a mother, Ms Hilton will presumably be also a source of helpful tips.

Paris: The Memoir (Harper Collins London, (2023), pp 336, ISBN 0-0632-2462-3).

Also helpful in many ways is Ms Hilton’s recently published book Paris: The Memoir, which while genuinely a memoir is interesting too for the deconstruction of the subject the author provided in a number of promotional interviews.  There have over the years been many humorless critics who have derided Ms Hilton for “being famous merely for being famous” but the book makes clear being the construct that is Paris Hilton is a full-time job, one which demands study and an understanding of the supply & demand curves of shifting markets; a personality cult needs to be managed.  She displays also a sophisticated understanding of the point made by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) who once explained the abstraction of a personality cult by pointing to his huge portrait and saying “…you see, even I am not Stalin, THAT is Stalin!”  In the acknowledgments, Ms Hilton thanked the ghostwriter who “helped me find my voice.”

Ulotrichous, Leiotrichous & Cymotrichous

Ulotrichous (pronounced Ulotri-c-hous)

Having crisp, woolly or curly hair.

1827: From the New Latin ulotrich(ī) (curly hair) from the Ancient Greek οὖλος (oulos) (curly) + the root τριχ (trikh) of θρίξ (thríx) (hair) +‎ -ous.  The -ous suffix was from the Middle English -ous, from Old French -ous & -eux, from the Latin -ōsus (full, full of) and a doublet of -ose in unstressed position; it was used to form adjectives from nouns, to denote possession or presence of a quality in any degree, commonly in abundance

Leiotrichous (pronounced leiotri-c-hous)

Having smooth (straight) hair.

1827: From the New Latin leiotrich(i) (smooth hair) from the Ancient Greek λεῖος (leîos) (smooth) + the root τριχ (trikh) of θρίξ (thríx) (hair) +‎ -ous.  The -ous suffix was from the Middle English -ous, from Old French -ous & -eux, from the Latin -ōsus (full, full of) and a doublet of -ose in unstressed position; it was used to form adjectives from nouns, to denote possession or presence of a quality in any degree, commonly in abundance

Cymotrichous (pronounced cy·motri·c·hous)

Having hair somewhere between curly and smooth; includes the wavy spectrum.

1827: From the New Latin cymotrich(i) (wavy hair) from the Ancient Greek κῦμα (kûma) (wave) + the root τριχ (trikh) of θρίξ (thríx) (hair) +‎ -ous.  The -ous suffix was from the Middle English -ous, from Old French -ous & -eux, from the Latin -ōsus (full, full of) and a doublet of -ose in unstressed position; it was used to form adjectives from nouns, to denote possession or presence of a quality in any degree, commonly in abundance

Lindsay Lohan: Ulotrichous.

That these three words exist is due to the French military officer, naturalist and politician Jean-Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent (1778-1846).  A biologist and geographer, his early academic interests lay in volcanology and botany and in the early nineteenth century he travelled extensively in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean studying plants, the need to document and classify his findings meaning he became expert in systematics and this skill he adapted to the classification of people into races.  For a number of reasons, his 1825 volume Essai zoologique sur le genre humain (Zoological essay on the human race) is now just a footnote in the discipline but was for decades influential.  The book was an attempt to classify humans with straight hair into the Leiotrichi and those with woolly or tufted hair into the Ulotrichi, with many sub-groups below these headings, a third category, the Cymotrichi, later added, apparently to accommodate those inconsiderate to have hair not quite straight yet not sufficiently curly to be properly ulotrichous.

Lindsay Lohan: Leiotrichous.

The terms he used to describe the method of racial classification for the purpose of human taxonomy added to existing systems of classifications, Bory (the shorthand in the literature which references his work) in his 1825 book adding leiotrichi, japeticus, arabicus, indicus, scythicus, sinicus, hyperboreus, neptunianus, australasicus, columbicus, americanus, patagonicus, oulotrichi, aethiopicus, cafer, hottentotus & melaninus.  His classification was a technically competent exercise in systematics and was thought a scientifically orthodox document, seriously studied for most of the nineteenth century and quoted by many noted figures including TH Huxley (1825–1895) and Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and his classifications remain used by many specialists in zoology and even botanists for their vivid, illustrative value.  The politics of language does however intrude on the zoologists and some, especially in the United States, prefer lissotrichous (smooth-haired from the Greek lissos) because of the history attached to Bory. 

Lindsay Lohan: Cymotrichous.

What later became controversial was the adoption of the scheme, especially the word ulotrichous (having crisp, woolly or curly hair) by nineteenth century anthropologists to create a division of humankind encompassing those with crisp, woolly or curly hair.  Because of the racial association, the words are no longer in general use in human classification although the system still has a role in the technical language of pathology and forensic medicine.  Other than those specialized fields, while not extinct, they’re rare and for most, it’s no loss, smooth, surly and wavy being adequate for all except hairdressers who, needing precision, have a classification of hair in a dozen categories (1A to 4C).

Factoid

Factoid (pronounced fak-toid)

(1) Something fictitious or unsubstantiated that is presented as fact, devised especially to gain publicity and accepted because of constant repetition.

(2) An insignificant, surprising or trivial fact (frequently used, especially in the clickbait business; probably now the accepted meaning).

1973: A compound word, the construct being fact + -oid.  Fact dates from the 1530s and was from the Old French fact, from the Latin factum (something done, an act, deed, feat, exploit etc (which in Medieval Latin was used also to mean “state, condition, circumstance”)), a noun use neuter of factus (done or made), the past participle of facere (to do; to make) and perfect passive participle of faciō (do, make), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European dhe (to put, place, set).  When in the early sixteenth century fact entered the Middle English it was used with the sense of “an action, a thing performed, anything done, a deed (thus a neutral word of action in that the deeds could be for good or ill) but later and predominately during the 1600s, the understanding of fact was “an evil deed or crime” (the legacy of this preserved in legal jargon ex post facto (retrospective), post factum (after the crime (literally (after the act)) etc.  The Old & Middle French later evolved into faict & fait and the Latin was the source also of the Spanish hecho and Italian fatto.  The suffix -oid was from a Latinized form of the Ancient Greek -ειδής (-eidḗs) & -οειδής (-oeidḗs) (the “ο” being the last vowel of the stem to which the suffix is attached); from εἶδος (eîdos) (form, likeness).  It was used (1) to demote resembling; having the likeness of (usually including the concept of not being the same despite the likeness, but counter-examples exist), (2) to mean of, pertaining to, or related to and (3) when added to nouns to create derogatory terms, typically referring to a particular ideology or group of people (by means of analogy to psychological classifications such as schizoid).  Factoid is a noun (the noun factoidism is non-standard) and factoidal is an adjectival; the noun plural is factoids.

The modern understanding of what constitutes a fact (except for the Trump White House where the Orwellian “alternative facts” were sometimes helpfully provided) is something “empirically proven, known to be true; what actually happened”.  In the early seventeenth century, under the influence of the development of what later came to be known as the “scientific method”, this began to replace the earlier sense which was really a statement or belief although the word had picked up such an association with acts of crime that it for a while wasn’t clear if the choice by the scientists was wise.  However, by the early eighteenth century London’s Royal Society effectively formalized the modern vocabulary of knowledge (theory, fact, disproof, experiment, hypothesis etc) and the lawyers happily retained their phrases.  The modern use as standardized in science was thus innovative because in Middle English there was no noun, the closest expression from earlier centuries being a phrase like “a thing proved true”.  Dictionary entries as early as 1707 included an entry for “facts” as the “real state of things; in reality” but the reality of the nature of scientific progress was acknowledged in 1729 by the entry “something presented as a fact but which might be or is false”.

Beauty and the Beast

Marilyn Munroe (1926-1962).

Factoid was coined by Norman Mailer in the 1973 “biography” of Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn: A biography), a collection of photographs for which Mailer provided the captions and some supporting short-form text), a factoid something “…that looks like a fact, could be a fact, but in fact is not a fact” and yet comes to be accepted as one, usually because it’s at least plausible, and (certainly in the pre-Internet age), either difficult or time-consuming to verify.

Norman Mailer (1923–2007).

Writing in the particular milieu of the America of Nixon and Agnew, Mailer regarded factoids with some suspicion, thinking them things “…which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the silent majority.”  He made this observation without obvious irony, despite admitting some of what he wrote in the book of Marilyn Munroe’s photographs was “speculative”.

However, even before the ubiquity of the internet, the meaning had begun to morph, with the new eventually supplanting rather than existing in parallel with Mailer’s creation, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defining factoid as (1) an item of unreliable information that is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact and (2) a brief or trivial item of news.  The newer meaning was first popularized by the Cable News Network (CNN) (although in this newer sense it seems first to have appeared in Canada) in the 1980s when they presented bizarre or obscure, but nevertheless true snippets as "factoids" during newscasts.

A modern factoid site.

Some purists attempted a rescue.  William Safire (1929–2009) advocated factlet for CNN’s color pieces and it was adopted by up-market publications like The Guardian and The Atlantic but the popular press like factoid and it’s become a staple of internet clickbait.  That’s how English works, meanings of words like factoid and decimate shift over time according to use, sometimes coming even to mean the opposite of their original form.  The –let suffix was from the Middle English –let & -elet, from the Old French -elet, a double diminutive from the Old French –el & -et.  It was used to create diminutive forms and in English is widely appended (booklet: a small book, applet: a small computer application, piglet: a young pig et al).  It’s applied almost exclusively to concrete nouns and except in jocular use (and unusually for a diminutive) never with names. When used with objects, it generally denotes something smaller; when used with animals, it is of their young form; when used of adult persons, it’s usually depreciative, connoting pettiness and conveying contempt.  A special use was in suits of armor where it denoted a piece of the larger whole, this sense carrying over to some aspects of military uniforms.  The other suggestion was factette though that may have fallen victim to historic association.  The –ette suffix was from the Middle English -ette, a borrowing from the Old French -ette, from the Latin -itta, the feminine form of -ittus.  It was used to form nouns meaning a smaller form of something and thus, because factette could be seen as an inferior form of fact, the inference might be draw that “inferior” and the feminine forms of words were also inferior.

Riparian

Riparian (pronounced ri-pair-ee-uhn or rahy-pair-ee-uhn)

(1) Of, relating to, or situated or dwelling on the bank of a river or other body of water.

(2) In law, a person who owns land on the bank of a natural watercourse or body of water; denoting or relating to the legal rights of the owner of land on a river bank, such as fishing or irrigation

1849: From the Latin rīpārius (feminine rīpāria, neuter rīpārium) (of the banks of a river) from riparia (shore), later used in reference to the stream flowing between the banks, from ripa ((steep) bank of a river, shore)), probably understood literally as "break" (and indicating the drop off from ground level to the stream bed), or else "that which is cut out by the river", from the primitive Indo-European root rei- (to scratch, tear, cut), source of the Ancient Greek ereipia (ruins) & eripne (slope, precipice), the Old Norse rifa (break, to tear apart), the Danish rift (breach), the Middle High German rif (riverbank, seashore) and the English riven & rift.  Riparian is a noun & adjective and riparianism is a noun; the noun plural is riparian.

For technical reasons etymologists treat the construct as rīpāri(us) +‎ -an rather than rīpār(ius) +‎ -ian although ian was a euphonic variant of –an.  The suffix -an was from the Middle English -an (regularly -ain, -ein & -en), from the Old French –ain & -ein (or before an “i”, -en (used in modern French as –ain & -en (feminine –aine & -enne))), from the Latin -ānus (feminine -āna), used to form adjectives of, belonging or from a noun (and cognate with the Ancient Greek -νος (-nos), preceded by a vowel, from the primitive Indo-European -nós).  It was cognate with the English -en.  In English, it was an adjectival suffix widely appended (most frequently to nouns) and most associated with words of Latin origin; when a word ends in "a", a -n is instead appended.  It can also be used to form agent nouns and historically the male forms were constructed with -an, the females with -(i)enne but increasingly the male formations are treated as gender-neutral.  The suffix -ian was a euphonic variant of –an & -n, from the Middle English -an & -en.

In English law riparian rights and liabilities evolved over centuries, both arising as a consequence of the ownership of land abutting natural water and it matters not whether the water is tidal or non-tidal, all that is critical is that the physical property has some contact with the water course during the day.  The operation of law applied most obviously to the flows which occur naturally by riparian ownership can arise when streams and watercourses are channeled through artificial constructions although different aspects of the law may need to be applied to determine the ownership of the riparian rights.

As a general principle, a riparian owner is entitled access to the water, certainly for what are (in the context of place) ordinary purposes which may be for domestic or agricultural purposes.  This right of access may also include the ability to pass over the foreshore or a river bed to get to the water and even to temporarily moor vessels adjacent to riparian land to load or unload them.  Interestingly, this does not of necessity confer a right permanently to moor a vessel, reflecting the ancient common law position in England that the right of anyone to proceed along the nation’s highways and byways does not always imply a similar right to stay in any one place.

In the case of natural channels, such as streams and rivers, where water flows from one riparian owner’s property to another, the downstream owner is entitled to the flow of water in its natural state, both as to quality and the quantity, a specific expression of a concept in English law known as “natural enjoyment of a right”.  This means the upstream owner may take water or construct a dam but in so doing may not materially interfere with the flow and quality of water enjoyed by the downstream owner.  A special riparian right is the ability to drain land to a watercourse which can impact significantly on downstream rights holders and is thus often subject to separate negotiation.  In the case of natural flows, all downstream owners are obliged to accept the flow of water onto their land.  These well-established principles in English domestic law are used often as the basis for negotiations between nations where rivers cross borders; the results of these discussions can vary between amicable agreement and declarations or war.

There are also riparian liabilities.  Apart from not unduly interfering with the flow of water, riparian owners can be required to accept flooding on their land, even if that is caused by natural obstructions downstream and, again dependent on place, a liability can be imposed on riparian owners to manage the risk of flooding.  Because flood risks in England is managed nationally by statutory authorities such as regional drainage boards, the liabilities can very geographically, the power vested in these organisations to require riparian land to be used for flood management and mitigation.  Where water is artificially channeled, some interplay of different laws may be required to determine ownership of fights and liabilities.  As with just about any property rights, a riparian owner can take actions in court to prevent interference with rights, such as by requiring the removal of an obstruction or to stop an adjoining riparian owner from drawing too much water.

Lindsay Lohan, pondering riparian rights in Georgia Rule (2007).

Most associated with the US, riparianism was a doctrine of property rights, based on the principle that the owners of riparian land (riparians) had the right to remove reasonable amounts of water from the river, but others did not.  Because of the various property of rivers (moving in a sense, static in a sense, abutting land, able by natural action to increase and decrease the size of that land, used also as (often pubic) waterways for transportation etc), riparian rights have frequently been considered by courts and the gradual path has been one of a retreat from the classic position such rights accrued absolutely to the land owner as a property right.  An illustrative example was the decision of the High Court of Australia (HCA) in Commonwealth v Tasmania (HCA 21, (1983) 158 CLR 1) which concerned an attempt by the Commonwealth to prevent the state government of Tasmania building a dam on the Gordon River which would have flooded a large area of wilderness, including part of the Franklin River.  The HCA held the Commonwealth had the power to prevent the construction of the dam, based on its constitutional powers: (1) to regulate interstate trade and commerce and (2) its “external (foreign) affairs” power triggered by an obligation to protect sites declared by the United Nations (UN) to be “World Heritage” (by virtue of the Commonwealth having entered into certain treaties).  Also considered were riparian rights and the court held that riparian rights were not absolute and they could be limited by the public interest.  The reasoning was because the construction of the dam would interfere with the natural flow of the river and the ecology of the area, the court had to consider competing interests and in this case the public interest in preserving the area's natural values outweighed the riparian rights of the Tasmanian Government.  Use of the external affairs power was controversial but so was the expansion of the scope of the public interest in relation to riparian rights because it limited the rights of landowners to use waterways for their own purposes.  It was a case with significant implications for environmental law in Australia and beyond, overseas courts citing the judgment when holding that (public) environmental considerations can outweigh (private) property rights.

Ossuary

Ossuary (pronounced osh-oo-er-ee or os-oo-er-ee)

(1) A structure dedicated to the storage of the bones of the dead.

(2) Any container for the burial of human bones, such as an urn.

(3) By extension, a place for discarded or broken items or (figuratively), of abandoned concepts or ideas. 

1650-1660: From the Late Latin ossuārium (charnel house; receptacle for bones of the dead), a neuter of ossuārius (of or for bones) and variant of ossārium, the construct being oss- (stem of os) (bone (plural ossua)) + -ārius (the adjectival suffix giving the sense “of or related to”).  The Latin os was from the primitive Indo-European ost (bone).  The model for the word was mortuarium, and the alternative form remains ossuarium.  Ossuary and ossuarium are nouns and ossuarius is an adjective; the noun plural is ossuaries.

The Sedlec Ossuary at Starosedlecká, Kutná Hora, in the Bohemian region of the Czech Republic lies about 42 miles (70 km) east of the capital, Prague.  A medieval town, much of the baroque architecture was build between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries from the wealth generated by the adjacent silver mine.  On architectural grounds alone Kutná Hora is worthy of its status as a UNESCO World Heritage site but, in the suburb of Sedlec is the Church of All Saints which probably deserves a separate listing.

Sedlec’s Church of All Saints is better known as the Sedlec Ossuary, the church of bones, said to contain the bones of between some forty and sixty-thousand dead.  Its origins were a mission by the abbot of the Sedlec Cistercian Monastery, sent by the King of Bohemia to Jerusalem.  The abbot returned with an urn of soil from the Golgotha, the place where Jesus Christ was said to be crucified and this earth he spread around the grounds of the church’s cemetery.  As word of the "Holy Soil" became known, from all over Bohemia, people began to ask to be buried at Sedlec’s Church of All Saints.

Such was the demand that by the fifteenth century, skeletal remains had to be exhumed from the cemetery, the town needing to expand and more space needed for the more recently dead.  In what may sound a little shocking (but must have been judged theologically sound), the bones lay stacked in the basement of the church until 1870 when František Rint (1835-circa 1895), a woodcarver and carpenter from the small town of Česká Skalice in northern Bohemia, was employed by the House of Schwarzenberg (the ruling family of the town) to organize and arrange them.  The results of his efforts were spectacular, the carpenter creating intricate sculptures, including several chandeliers and a copy of the Schwarzenberg coat of arms.  The most spectacular of the chandeliers is also technically interesting for anatomists, said to include at least one of every bone in the human body

The elaborate constructions may seem macabre but each is accompanied by religious displays arranged from bone, conveying to visitors the message that the chapel remains a respectful place of worship and indeed, regular masses continue to be held in both the upper and lower chapel.  Musical performances however are staged only within the church proper so what might prove the interesting acoustic properties of all those bones remains unexplored.  The site, opened to tourists early in the century proved popular, almost a quarter-million visiting in the last year before the pandemic and it quickly became the biggest attraction in central Bohemia.  The financial blessing has proved also a curse however, local residents complaining the volume of visitors often overwhelms the operations of what remains a functioning Roman Catholic church and cemetery.  It’s said there are tourists who treat the place as just another theme-park.

Still, such is the importance of the ossuary to the local economy, that the ancient site is often renovated, including some attention to the condition of the bones which sounds strange but it seems human bone is subject to discoloration over time and restoring them to a more brilliant white is thought greatly to enhance the tourists' visual experience.  Even if one’s taste doesn’t extend to the macabre, Kutná Hora remains one of the medieval treasures of Bohemia and within the same Cistercian complex as the ossuary is the Sedlec Cathedral, the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady and Saint John the Baptist.  Built between 1290-1320, the cathedral is one of the oldest remaining in the Baroque Gothic style and also enjoys a place on the UNESCO World Heritage list and a short distance from there is a truly secular attraction, the Kutná Hora's Chocolate Museum, a tiny homage to chocolate with exhibits dating from the early nineteenth century.  There are chocolate tasting sessions and private candlelit dinners can be booked.

The ossuary vibe: Lindsay Lohan wearing Alexander McQueen skull scarf, 2012.

So entrenched in fashion has the skull been for hundreds of years that not even its use (as the “Death’s Head”) by the Nazi SS (the Schutzstaffel (security squad), 1925-1945, also stylized as ᛋᛋ with Armanen runes) tainted it sufficiently to discourage its appearance on clothes, accessories and jewelry.  Seasonally, the popularity ebbs and flows but skulls are seemingly always at least a niche and the appeal is also cross-cultural, the skull variously a good luck charm and a symbol employed to ward of disease and evil spirits.  In the English-speaking world, the widespread use of the skull symbol seems to have begun in the Elizabethan period (1558-1603) although most acknowledge the practice began in Bohemia and came to England via sea-farers and traders, the original items being skull rings, either carved from a human jawbone or rendered from metal.  An especially popular form was the skull ring with the jawbone disappearing to create the illusion of a finger piercing the wearer's mouth, still a widely used pattern today.  One curious aspect of the appeal is that Satanists and Christians alike have both embraced the iconography, skulls a likely to be seen among Devil worshipers as they are to be in the mix with images of saints and crucifixes.  Of late though, while they haven’t disowned the medieval art, Christianity seems now less keen on skulls.  The Satanists remain committed.

Colossus

Colossus (pronounced kuh-los-us)

(1) A statue of gigantic size.

(2) Anything colossal, gigantic, or very powerful.

(3) The internal name for Google's file system, introduced in 2010 and optimized for use in big-machine databases stored in multiple server clusters.  

1350-1400: From the Middle English, from the Latin colossus (statue larger than life), from the Ancient Greek κολοσσός, (kolossós) (statue or image, origin uncertain but thought most likely from a pre-Hellenic Mediterranean language) and the word was used by Herodotus to describe large Egyptian statues.  The figurative sense "anything of awesome greatness or vastness" is from 1794, taken from the adjective colossal (of extraordinary size, huge, gigantic), in use since 1712 although, colossic in the same sense is noted from circa 1600 and there are instances of colossean in the seventeenth century, both from the French colossal, from colosse, all forms from the Latin colossus from the Greek kolossós. The noun Colosseum dates from the 1560s, replacing the earlier Coliseum, the name in Medieval Latin for the classical Amphitheatrum Flavium (begun circa 70), noun use of the neuter of the adjective colosseus (gigantic), thought perhaps a reference to the big statue of Nero that for so long stood nearby. Colossus is a noun' the noun plural is colossi or colossuses.

The plural of colossus doesn't often come up in conversation but when it does, the choice is between colossi and colossusus, the latter there to be used by anyone who finds unwelcome, for whatever reason, the adoption in English of classical plural forms.  Not all words from Greek with a Latinised ending -us take the same pluralisation and there's no objection either to colossuses or the Latinized colossi; those who object to either probably suffer the condition known as hyper-correctionism and it is a real phenomenon (the squabble about octopuses, octopodes and the charming octopi) and is ongoing.  All that can be recommended is consistency; in a document, either adopt the English plural forms or use the classical form but don't mix.

Vaguely plausible rendering of how The Colossus of Rhodes may have appeared.

The Colossus of Rhodes was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  It was a very big statue, erected somewhere near the port of the city of Rhodes, the biggest settlement on what is the one of the larger Greek islands of the same name which lies off what is now Turkey’s Aegean coast.  Taking a dozen years to complete, the statue, construction of which began in 292 BC, was erected to honor Elios, the God of the Sun, who brought the inhabitants victory over Demetrius Poliorcetes (Demetrius I of Macedon; “The Besieger" 337–283 BC) who laid siege to Rhodes in 305-304 BC.  It stood for only sixty-odd years, collapsing during a severe earthquake which struck in 226 BC, contemporary reports indicating the structure fractured at both knees before toppling.  Remarkably, the mostly bronze wreckage was left substantially undisturbed for some eight-hundred years, becoming something of a tourist attraction before, in 654, it was salvaged by Arab invaders under the Muslim caliph Mu'awiya I (معاوية بن أبي سفيان‎, Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān; circa 600–680) who sold it to someone described as “a Jewish merchant from Damascus” who is said to have carted it off on a camel train of almost “a thousand beasts”.

Demetrios the Besieger had a scandalous private life but had a flair for military matters, noted too for innovations in engineering such as the machines and devices built by his armies as siege engines.  However, even the forces he was able at deploy in 305-304 BC weren’t sufficient to defeat the fortifications of Rhodes and eventually, Demetrios was compelled to retreat, abandoning the siege machinery on the island.  To give thanks to the Sun God, the Rhodians granted the commission to build a triumphal statue to Helios to the sculptor Chares of Lindos (Χάρης ὁ Λίνδιος, circa 330 BC-circa 280 BC), a pupil of Lysippos (Λύσιππος; fourth century BC) and, in the dozen years between 304-292 BC, he supervised the construction.

Digitally generated image of statue of Zeus by Phidias,

Before the Colossus, Rhodes had long been famous for its statues, the contemporary accounts probably as unreliable as any Roman histories but even if Pliny’s count of some three-thousand was an exaggeration, the writing of others do suggest there were doubtlessly a lot, many in stone, some in bronze, but nothing on the scale of the Colossus had even been attempted.  There was a titanic statue, as they’re now known, in Olympus, a chryséléphantine (one made from Gold and ivory) study of Zeus some 13 m (42 feet) high, another of the seven wonders although the sculptor Phidias (Φειδίας, circa 480–430 BC) had avoided the fragility inherent in a standing figure by having Zeus sit in a chair.  He had also built a chryshephantine statue of the goddess Athena but that stood but 9m (30 feet) high; by any standards, the titanic Colossus was truly colossal.

Logo of Lindsay Lohan's Rhodes Beach House.

Beach Structurally, the build was executed along the well-understood engineering principles of the age, the base of white marble first installed to which were affixed the feet and ankles, an iron and stone framework gradually formed as scaffolding and structure proceeded in unison upwards.  To permit the workers to reach the highest levels, an earth ramp was built because the heights involved meant a free-standing system of scaffolding would lack the needed stability; when the work was complete, the earth ramp was demolished and the soil carted off.  While the superstructure was built, workers cast the outer skin in bronze using plates, the metal formed with copper melted in large ovens, to which iron, making 10-20% of the mix, was added.  Then the mouton metal mixture was moved in large ladles to be distributed in clay molds, flat structures used to form sheets varying in thickness according to need. Once cast, the rough edges were ground away and the plates polished before they were transported to the building site where they were hammered to the desired shape to be attached to the iron structure,  The thickest and heaviest plates were those rendered for the feet and ankles, complex in the shape of their curves and needing more mass to afford greater stability.  Thus for a dozen years, the thin bronze skin was added to the growing body of stone, each plate fixed to the iron frame and then to the neighboring plate.  Once finished, it was polished to reflect the rays of the Sun so it would shine as intensely as possible, better to honor Helios. 

How engineers would today build a 122 m (400 feet) high Colossus using modern techniques of structural engineering.  An interesting exercise although the Greek exchequer may have other fiscal priorities.

From the laying of the first stone to its toppling, building its destruction lies a time span of but sixty-seven years but the Colossus ranks as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world with Great Pyramid of Giza which still stands after almost five-thousand.  Such was the scale of the Colossus that the ruins still impressed, “…even lying on the ground, it is a marvel" wrote Pliny the Elder (24-79) who noted few men could wrap their arms around the fallen thumb and each finger alone would have stood taller than most other statues.  The earthquake which so damaged the city 226 BC broke the Colossus at its narrowest and thus weakest points, the knees, and given the mass which existed above, there was no chance it could survive.  Although it would be centuries before the list of the seven wonders would exist as the codified canon now familiar, the stature was already famous and the an offer to the pay the cost of restoration was extended by Ptolemy III Euergetes (Πτολεμαῖος Εὐεργέτης, Ptolemy the Benefactor; circa 280–222 BC) of Egypt.  However, an oracle was consulted and their judgement forbade any re-construction so the offer was declined.  Details of the oracle’s pronouncement are lost but it’s speculated the conclusion may have been the earthquake was the act of a wrathful Helios and the ruins should be left where they fell, lest anger again be aroused.  There is no otherwise compelling explanation to account for why so much valuable bronze wouldn’t for centuries be recycled.

A (fanciful) engraving of the Colossus of Rhodes (circa 1540) by Martin Heemskerck (1498-1574).

The exact location remains uncertain but the notion the Colossus straddled the entrance to Rhodes harbor with ships passing between its legs was a figment of medieval imagination, a thing famously vivid.  Given its method of construction, such a thing would have collapsed under its own weight even before it was complete and, had it stood over the water, not only would construction have been challenging but when it fell, it would have blocked the entrance to the Mandraki harbor.  Despite that, in the early 1980s when a large piece of rubble was discovered in the water, there were still romantics who hoped this might vindicate the medieval theory.  There’s little doubt the story of a 60m (200 feet) tall Colossus straddling the entrance to the harbor was the work of opportunist poets and artists, the engineers and architects of the time sufficiently acquainted with physics and metallurgy to have assured all of the impossibility of their vision yet it seems long to have captured the medieval imagination.  Despite all that, it still influenced many even at the dawn of modernity, being one of the inspirations for the Statue of Liberty but that was designed in a way to ensure greater strength and stability, the weight distribution and the dimensions of the base entirely different.  There’s no doubt the statue stood somewhere in the proximity of Rhodes harbor but archaeological excavations have thus far revealed nothing, not unsurprising given the footprint of a vertical structure is much less than a temple or other building, and the urbanization of Rhodes over two millennia mean the site may long ago have been built-over.  The Colossus though would have shared one noted characteristic with the Statue of Liberty: When copper rubs on iron, it creates electricity, especially in a costal environment with salty air.  Like Liberty, the Colossus of Rhodes made its own electricity.

Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen (1911–2005; Premier of Queensland 1968-1987) (left), Russ Hinze (1919–1991; Minister for this and that in Queensland state government, 1974-1988) (centre) & Bob Hawke (1929–2019; Prime Minister of Australia 1983-1991) (right).  Russ Hinze was a politician who served in the state parliament of Queensland, Australia between 1966-1988.  He held many portfolios, often simultaneously, one of which was minister for roads.  In honor of his impressive girth, he was dubbed The Colossus of Roads.

Wartime photograph of Colossus.

Colossus was the name of the world’s first electronic device which truly could be described a computer (being programmable, electronic and digital although the instructions were effected by switches, not stored programs).  It was built by the British in 1943 to break German military codes and was one of the mechanisms which provided the allies with the ultra decrypts, the importance of which to the war effort was of critical significance or merely helpful depending on the historian consulted.  During the war, twelve of the machines were assembled (which functioned independently; clusters and farms then an engineer's dream) but two didn't become functional until after the end of hostilities.  Colossus and the whole code-breaking operation remained a well-kept secret until the mid-1970s and the revelation induced some re-assessment of the strategic and tactical acuity of a number of political and military leaders, many of their decisions once through based on intuition or brilliance now understood as merely the use of good intelligence (ie "reading the enemy's mail").