Asymmetric

Asymmetric (pronounced a-sim-et-rick)

(1) Not identical on both sides of a central line; unsymmetrical; lacking symmetry.

(2) An asymmetric shape.

(3) In logic or mathematics, holding true of members of a class in one order but not in the opposite order, as in the relation “being an ancestor of”.

(4) In chemistry, having an unsymmetrical arrangement of atoms in a molecule.

(5) In chemistry, noting a carbon atom bonded to four different atoms or groups.

(6) In chemistry (of a polymer), noting an atom or group that is within a polymer chain and is bonded to two different atoms or groups that are external to the chain.

(7) In electrical engineering, of conductors having different conductivities depending on the direction of current flow, as of diodes

(8) In aeronautics, having unequal thrust, as caused by an inoperative engine in a twin-engined aircraft.

(9) In military theory, a conflict where the parties are vastly different in terms of military capacity.  This situation is not in all circumstances disadvantageous to the nominally inferior party.

(10) In gameplay, where different players have different experiences

(11) In cryptography, not involving a mutual exchange of keys between sender a7 receiver.

(12) In set theory, of a relation R on a set S: having the property that for any two elements of S (not necessarily distinct), at least one is not related to the other via R.

1870–1875: The construct was a- + symmetric.  The a- prefix was from the Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-) (ἀν-) (an- if immediately preceding a vowel) and was added to stems to created the sense of "not, without, opposite of".  The prefix is referred to as an alpha privative and is used with stems beginning with consonants (except sometimes “h”); “an-“ is synonymous and is used in front of words that start with vowels and sometimes “h”.  Symmetric was from the Latin symmetria from Ancient Greek συμμετρία (summetría).  Symmetry was from the 1560s in the sense of "relation of parts, proportion", from the sixteenth century French symmétrie and directly from the Latin symmetria, from the Greek symmetria (agreement in dimensions, due proportion, arrangement", from symmetros (having a common measure, even, proportionate), an assimilated form of syn- (together) + metron (measure) from the primitive Indo-European me- (to measure).  The meaning "harmonic arrangement of parts" dates from the 1590s.  The suffix -ic was from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos & -ḱos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos & -ḱos.  The form existed also in Ancient Greek as -ικός (-ikós), in Sanskrit as -इक (-ika) and the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); A doublet of -y.  In European languages, adding -kos to noun stems carried the meaning "characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to" while on adjectival stems it acted emphatically.  In English it's always been used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning “of or pertaining to”.  A precise technical use exists in physical chemistry where it's used to denote certain chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a higher oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ous; (eg sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃).  Asymmetric & asymmetrical are adjectives, asymmetricity, asymmetricality, asymmetricalness & asymmetry are nouns and asymmetrically is an adverb; the noun plural is asymmetries.

The usually symmetrically attired Lindsay Lohan demonstrates the possibilities of asymmetry.

1975 Kawasaki 750 H2 Mach IV.

Manufacturers of triple-cylinder motorcycles traditionally used single (3 into 1) or symmetrical (3 into 2) exhaust systems (although, during the 1970s, Suzuki offered some of their "Ram-Air" models with a bizarre 3 into 4 setup, the centre cylinder’s header bifurcated) but in 1969 Kawasaki adopted an asymmetric addition for one of the memorable machines of the time.  The Kawasaki 500 H1 Mach III had two outlets to the right, one to the left and was a fast, lethally unstable thing which was soon dubbed the "widow maker".  Improvements to the Mach III made it a little more manageable and its successor, the 750 H2 Mach IV was claimed to be better behaved but was faster still and best enjoyed by experts, preferably in a straight line although, with a narrow power band which peaked with a sudden rush, even that could be a challenge.  The Kawasaki triples remain the most charismatic of the Japanese motorcycles.

1973 Triumph X-75 Hurricane.

Available only during 1972-1973 and produced in small numbers, the Triumph X75 Hurricane was typical of the motorcycles being produced by the British manufacturers which had neglected development and re-investment and consequently were unable adequately to respond to the offerings of the Japanese which had done both aplenty.  Whatever their charms, models like the X75 were being rendered obsolescent, some of the underlying technology dating back decades yet, without the capital to invest, this was as good as it got and some of the fudges of the era were worse.  The X-75 was however ahead of its time in one way, it was a “factory special”, a design influenced by what custom shops in the US had been doing as one-offs for customers and in the years ahead, many manufacturers would be attracted by the concept and its healthy profit margins.  The X-75 is remembered also for the distinctive asymmetric stack of three exhaust pipes on the right-hand side.

1986 Ferrari Testarossa (1984-1991) with monospecchio.

Some of Ferrari's early-production Testarossas were fitted with a single high-mounted external mirror, on the left or right depending on the market into which it was sold and although the preferred term was the Italian “monospecchio” (one mirror), in the English speaking-world it was quickly dubbed the “flying mirror" (rendered sometimes in Italian as “specchio volante” (a ordinary wing mirror being a “specchietto laterale esterno”, proving everything sounds better in Italian)).  The unusual placement and blatant asymmetry annoyed some and delighted others, the unhappy more disgruntled still if they noticed the vent on right of the front spoiler not being matched by one to the left.  It was there to feed the air-conditioning’s radiator and while such offset singularities are not unusual in cars, many manufacturers create a matching fake as an aesthetic device: Ferrari did not.  The mirror’s curious placement was an unintended consequence of a European Union regulation (and it doubtful many institutions have in a relatively short time created as many regulations of such collective length as the EU) regarding the devices and this was interpreted by the designers as having to provide 100% rearward visibility.  Because of the sheer size of the rear bodywork necessitated by the twin radiators which sat behind the side-strakes (another distinctive Testarossa feature), the elevation was the only way this could be done but it later transpired the interpretation of the law was wrong, a perhaps forgivable mistake given the turgidity of EU legalese.

The Blohm & Voss BV 141

Focke-Wulf Fw 189 Eurl (Owl)

In aircraft, designs have for very good reason (aerodynamics, weight distribution, flying characteristics, ease of manufacture et al) tended to be symmetrical, sometimes as an engineering necessity such as the use of contra-rotationg propellers on some twin-engined airframes, a trick to offset the destabilizing effects of the torque when very potent power-plants are fitted.  There has though been the odd bizarre venture into structural asymmetry, one of the most intriguing being the Blohm & Voss BV 141, the most distinctive feature of which was an offset crew-capsule.  The BV 141 was tactical reconnaissance aircraft built in small numbers and used in a desultory manner by the Luftwaffe (the German air force) during World War II (1939-1945) and although it was studied by engineers from many countries, none seem to have been inspired to repeat the experiment. The origin of the curious craft lay in a specification issued in 1937 by the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM; the German Air Ministry) which called for a single-engine reconnaissance aircraft, optimized for visual observation and, in response, Focke-Wulf responded with their Fw 189 Eurl (Owl) which, because of the then still novel twin-boomed layout, encountered some resistance from the RLM bureaucrats but it found much favor with the Luftwaffe and, over the course of the war, some nine-hundred entered service and it was used almost exclusively as the German's standard battlefield reconnaissance aircraft.  In fact, so successful did it prove in this role that the other configurations it was designed to accommodate, that of liaison and close-support ground-attack, were never pursued.  Although its performance was modest, it was a fine airframe with superb flying qualities and an ability to absorb punishment which, on the Russian front where it was extensively deployed, became famous and captured examples provide Russian aeronautical engineers with ides which would for years influence their designs.

The RLM had also invited Arado to tender but their Ar 198, although featuring an unusual under-slung and elongated cupola which afforded for the observer a uniquely panoramic view, proved unsatisfactory in test-flights and development ceased.  Blohm and Voss hadn't been included in the RLM's invitation but anyway chose to offer a design which was radically different even by the standards of the innovative Fw 189.  The asymmetric BV 141 design was eye-catching with the crew housed in an extensively glazed capsule, offset to starboard of the centre-line with a boom offset to the left which housed the single-engine in front with the tail to the rear.  Prototypes were built as early as 1938 and the Luftwaffe conducted operational trials over both the UK and USSR between 1939-1941 but, despite being satisfactory in most respects, the Bv 141 was hampered by poor performance, a consequence of using an under-powered engined.  A re-design of the structure to accommodate more powerful units was begun but delays in development and the urgent need for the up-rated engines for machines already in production doomed the project and the Bv 141 was in 1943 abandoned.

Blohm & Voss BV 141 prototype with full-width rear elevators & stabilizers.

Production Blohm & Voss BV 141 with port-only rear elevator & stabilizer.

Despite the ungainly appearance, test-pilots reported the Fw 141 was a nicely balanced airframe, the seemingly strange weight distribution well compensated by (1) component placement, (2) the specific lift characteristics of the wing design and (3) the choice of opposite rotational direction for crankshaft and propeller, the torque generated used as a counter-balance.  Nor, despite the expectation of some, were there difficulties in handling whatever behavior was induced by the thrust versus drag asymmetry and pilots all indicated some intuitive trimming was all that was needed to compensate for any induced yaw.  The asymmetry extended even to the tail-plane, the starboard elevator and horizontal stabilizer removed (to afford the tail-gunner a wider field of fire) after the first three prototypes were built; surprisingly, this was said barely to affect the flying characteristics.  Focke-Wolf pursued the concept, a number of design-studies (including a piston & turbojet-engine hybrid) initiated but none progressed beyond the drawing-board.

Asymmetric warfare

In the twenty-first century, the term “asymmetric warfare” became widely used.  The concept describes conflicts in which there are significant disparities in power, capability and strategies between opposing forces and although the phrase has become recently fashionable, the idea is ancient, based often on the successes which could be exploited by small, mobile and agile (often irregular) forces against larger, conventionally assembled formations.  Reports of such tactics are found in accounts of conflicts in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe from as early as reliable written records have been found.  The classic example is what came later to be called “guerrilla warfare”, hit-and-run tactics which probe and attack a weak spots as they are detected, the ancestor of insurgencies, “conventional” modern terrorism and cyber-attacks.  However, even between conventional national militaries there have long been examples of the asymmetric such as the use of small, cheap weapons like torpedo boats and mines which early in the twentieth century proved effective against the big, ruinously expensive Dreadnoughts.  To some extent, the spike in use of the phrase in the post-Cold War era happened because it provided such a contrast between the nuclear weapon states which, although having a capacity to destroy entire countries without having one soldier step foot on their territory, found themselves vulnerable to low-tech, cleverly planned attacks.

Although the term “asymmetric warfare” covers encompasses a wide vista, one increasingly consistent thread is that it can be a difficult thing for "conventional" military formations to counter insurgencies conducted by irregular combatants who, in many places and for much of the time, are visually indistinguishable from the civilian population.  The difficulty lies not in achieving the desired result (destruction of the enemy) but managing to do so without causing an “excessive” number of civilian causalities; although public disapproval has meant the awful phrase “collateral damage” is now rarely heard, civilians (many of them women & children) continue greatly to suffer in such conflicts, the death toll high.  Thus the critique of the retaliatory strategy of the Israel Defence Force (IDF) in response to the attack by the Hamas on 7 October 2023, Palestinian deaths now claimed to exceed 20,000; that number is unverified and will include an unknown number of Hamas combatants but there is no doubt the percentage of civilian deaths will be high, the total casualty count estimated early in January 2024 at some 60,000.  What the IDF appear to have done is settle on the strategy adopted by Ulysses S Grant (1822–1885; US president 1869-1877) in 1863 when appointed head of the Union armies: the total destruction of the opposing forces.  That decision was a reaction to the realization the previous approach (skirmishes and the temporary taking of enemy territory which was soon re-taken) was ineffectual and war would continue as long as the other side retained even a defensive military capacity.  Grant’s strategy was, in effect: destroy the secessionist army and the secessionist cause dies out.

In the US Civil War (1861-1965) that approach worked though at an appalling cost, the 1860s a period when ballistics had advanced to the point horrific injuries could be inflicted at scale but battlefield medical tools and techniques were barely advance from Napoleonic times.  The bodies were piled high.  Grant’s success was influential on the development of the US military which eventually evolved into an organization which came to see problems as something not to be solved but overwhelmed by the massive application of force, an attitude which although now refined, permeates from the Pentagon down to platoon level.  As the US proved more than once, the strategy works as long as there’s little concern about “collateral damage”, an example of this approach being when the Sri Lankan military rejected the argument there was “no military solution” to the long running civil war (1983-2009) waged by the Tamil Tigers (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)).  What “no military solution” means is that a war cannot be won if the rules of war are followed so the government took the decision that if war crimes and crimes against humanity were what was required to win, they would be committed.

In the 1990s, a number of political and military theorists actually advanced the doctrine “give war a chance”, the rationale being that however awful conflicts may be, if allowed to continue to the point where one side gains an unambiguous victory, the dispute is at least resolved and peace can ensue, sometimes for generations.  For most of human history, such was the usual path of war but after the formation of the United Nations (UN) in 1945 things changed, the Security Council the tool of the great powers, all of which (despite their publicity) viewed wars as a part of whatever agenda they were at the time pursuing and depending on this and that, that meant their interests sometimes lay in ending conflicts and sometimes in prolonging them.  In isolation, such an arrangement probably could have worked (albeit with much “collateral damage”) but over the years, a roll-call of nations run by politicians appalled by the consequences of war began to become involved, intervening with peace plans,  offering mediation and urging the UN to deploy “peacekeeping” forces, something which became an international growth industry.  Added to that, for a number of reasons, a proliferation of non-government organizations (NGO) were formed, many of which concerned themselves with relief programmes in conflict zones and while these benefited may civilians, they also had the effect of allowing combatant forces to re-group and re-arm, meaning wars could drag on for a decade or more.

In the dreadful events in Gaza, war is certainly being given a chance and the public position of both the IDF and the Israeli government is that the strategy being pursued is one designed totally “to destroy” not merely the military capacity of Hamas but the organization itself.  Such an idea worked for Grant in the 1860s and, as the Sri Lankan military predicted they would, end-game there was achieved in 2009 on the basis of “total destruction”.  However, Gaza (and the wider Middle East) is a different time & place and even if the IDF succeeds in “neutralizing” the opposing fighters and destroying the now famous network of tunnels and ad-hoc weapons manufacturing centres, it can’t be predicted that Hamas in some form won’t survive and in that case, what seems most likely is that while the asymmetry of nominal capacity between the two sides will be more extreme than before, Hamas is more likely to hone the tactics than shift the objective.  The IDF high command are of course realists and understand there is nothing to suggest “the Hamas problem” can be solved and being practical military types, they know if a problem can’t be solved it must be managed.  In the awful calculations of asymmetric conflict, this means the IDF calculate that while future attacks will happen, the more destructive the response now, the longer will be the interval before the next event.

Capsule

Capsule (pronounced kap-suhl (U), kap-sool (non-U) or kap-syool (non U))

(1) In pharmacology, a gelatinous case enclosing a dose of medicine.

(2) In biology and anatomy, a membranous sac or integument; a cartilaginous, fibrous, or membranous envelope surrounding any of certain organs or parts, especially (1) the broad band of white fibres (internal capsule) near the thalamus in each cerebral hemisphere and (2) the membrane surrounding the eyeball.

(3) Either of two strata of white matter in the cerebrum.

(4) The sporangium of various spore-producing organisms, as ferns, mosses, algae, and fungi.

(5) In botany, a dry dehiscent (one that that liberates its seeds by splitting, as in the violet, or through pores, as in the poppy) fruit, composed of two or more carpels.

(6) A small case, envelope, or covering.

(7) In aerospace, a sealed cabin, container, or vehicle in which a person or animal can ride in flight in space or at very high altitudes within the earth's atmosphere (also called space-capsule).

(8) In aviation, a similar cabin in a military aircraft, which can be ejected from the aircraft in an emergency, complete with crew and instruments etc; an outgrowth of the original escape device, the ejector-seat.  The concept is used also by some sea-going vessels and structures such as oil-rigs where they’re essentially enclosed life-boats equipped for extended duration life-support.

(9) A thin cap or seal (made historically from lead or tin but now usually of plastic), covering for the mouth of a corked (ie sealed with some sort of stopper) bottle.

(10) A concise report; brief outline.

(11) To furnish with or enclose in or as if in a capsule; to encapsulate; to capsulize.

(12) In bacteriology, a gelatinous layer of polysaccharide or protein surrounding the cell wall of some bacteria and thought to be responsible for the virulence in pathogens.  The outer layer of viscous polysaccharide or polypeptide slime of the capsules with which some bacteria cover their cell walls is thought to provide defense against phagocytes and prevent the bacteria from drying out.

(13) In the fashion industry (as a modifier), a sub-set of a collection containing the most important or representative items (a capsule-collection).

(14) In chemistry, a small clay saucer for roasting or melting samples of ores etc, known also as a scorifier (archaic); A small, shallow evaporating dish, usually of porcelain.

(15) In ballistics, a small cup or shell, often of metal, for a percussion cap, cartridge etc.

1645–1655: From the Middle English capsula (small case, natural or artificial), from the French capsula (a membranous sac) or directly from the Latin capsula (small box or chest), the construct being caps(a) (box; chest; case) + -ula (the diminutive suffix).  The medicinal sense is 1875, the origin of the shortened form being that in 1942 adopted by British army quartermasters in their inventory and supply lists (eg Cap, ASA, 5 Gr (ie a 5 grain capsule of aspirin)).  The use to describe the part of a spacecraft containing the crew is from 1954, thought influenced by the number of military personnel involved during the industry’s early years, the sense from the jargon of ballistics meaning "shell of a metallic cartridge" dating from 1864 (although the word in this context had earlier been used in science fiction (SciFi or SF)).  Capsule has been applied as an adjective since 1938.  The verb encapsulate (enclose in a capsule) is from 1842 and was in figurative use by 1939 whereas the noun encapsulation didn’t appear until 1859 but was a figurative form as early as 1934.  Capsule is a noun & verb, capsuler, capsulization & encapsulation are nouns, encapsule, capsulizing, encapsulated & encapsulating are verbs, capsulated and capsuliferous & capsuligenous are adjectives; the noun plural is capsules.  In medicine, the adjective capsuloligamentous is used in anatomical science to mean "relating to a capsule and a ligament".

Science (especially zoology, botany, medicine & anatomy) has found many uses for capsule (because in nature capsule-like formations occur with such frequency) as a descriptor including the nouns capsulotomy (incision into a capsule, especially into the lens of the eye when removing cataracts), (the generation and development of a capsule), capsulorhexis (the removal of the lens capsule during cataract surgery) & capsulectomy (the removal of a capsule, especially one that surrounds an implant) and the adjective capsuloligamentous (of or relating to a capsule and a ligament).  Science also applied modifiers as required, thus forms such as intercapsule, pseudocapsule, microcapsule, macrosapsule & subsapsule.  Industry found a use: the noun capsuler describing "a machine for applying the capsule to the cork of a wine bottle" and the first "space capsules" (the part of spaceships with the life-support systems able to sustain life and thus used as the crew compartment) appeared in SF long before any were built or launched.  The derived forms most frequently used are encapsulate and its variations encapsulation and encapulated.  

The Capsule in Asymmetric Engineering

Focke-Wulf Fw 189 Eurl (Owl).

Unusual but far from unique in its structural asymmetry, and offset crew-capsule, the Blohm & Voss BV 141 was tactical reconnaissance aircraft built in small numbers and used in a desultory manner by the Luftwaffe during WWII.  A specification issued in 1937 by the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM; the German Air Ministry) had called for a single-engine reconnaissance aircraft, optimized for visual observation and, in response, Focke-Wulf responded with their Fw 189 Eurl (Owl) which, because of the twin-engined, twin-boomed layout encountered some resistance from the RLM bureaucrats but it found much favor with the Luftwaffe and, over the course of the war, some nine-hundred entered service and it was used almost exclusively as the German's standard battlefield reconnaissance aircraft.  In fact, so successful did it prove in this role that the other configurations it was designed to accommodate, that of liaison and close-support ground-attack, were never pursued.  Although its performance was modest, it was a fine airframe with superb flying qualities and an ability to absorb punishment which, on the Russian front where it was extensively deployed, became famous and captured exampled provide Russian aeronautical engineers with ides which would for years influence their designs.

Arado Ar 198.

The RLM had also invited Arado to tender but their Ar 198, although featuring an unusual under-slung and elongated cupola which afforded for the observer a uniquely panoramic view, proved unsatisfactory in test-flights and development ceased.  Blohm and Voss hadn't been included in the RLM's invitation but anyway chose to offer a design which was radically different even by the standards of the innovative Fw 189.  The asymmetric BV 141 design was intriguing with the crew housed in an extensively glazed capsule, offset to starboard of the centre-line with a boom, offset to the left, housing the single-engine in front and tail to the rear.  Prototypes were built as early as 1938 and the Luftwaffe conducted were operational trials over both the UK and USSR between 1939-1941 but, despite being satisfactory in most respects, the Bv 141 was hampered by poor performance, a consequence of using an under-powered engined.  A re-design of the structure to accommodate more powerful units was begun but delays in development and the urgent need for the up-rated engines for machines already in production doomed the project and the Bv 141 was in 1943 abandoned.

Blohm & Voss BV 141 prototype.

Blohm & Voss BV 141.

Despite the ungainly appearance, the test-pilots reported the Fw 141 was a nicely balanced airframe, the seemingly strange weight distribution well compensated by (1) component placement, (2) the specific lift characteristics of the wing design and (3) the choice of rotational direction of both crankshaft and propeller, the torque generated used as a counter-balance.  Nor, despite the expectation of some, were there difficulties in handling whatever behavior was induced by the thrust versus drag asymmetry and pilots all indicated some intuitive trimming was all that was needed to compensate for any induced yaw.  The asymmetry extended even to the tail-plane, the starboard elevator and horizontal stabilizer removed (to afford the tail-gunner a wider field of fire) after the first three prototypes were built; surprisingly, this was said barely to affect the flying characteristics.  Focke-Wolf pursued the concept, a number of design-studies (including a piston & turbojet-engine hybrid) initiated but none progressed beyond the drawing-board.

Lindsay Lohan's promotion of Los Angeles-based Civil Clothing's capsule collection, November 2014.  The pieces were an ensemble in black & white, named "My Addiction".

The capsule on the circuits

Bisiluro Damolnar, Le Mans, 1955.

The concept of the asymmetric capsule made little impact in aviation but it certain made an impression on “Smokey” Yunick (Henry Yunick 1923–2001).  Smokey Yunick was American mechanic and self-taught designer who was for years one of the most innovative and imaginative builders in motorsport.  A dominant force in the early years of NASCAR where his team won two championships and dozens of races, he continued his involvement there and in other arenas for over two decades including the Indianapolis 500, his car winning the 1960 event.  During WWII, Yunick had piloted a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress for the 97th Bombardment Group (Heavy), flying some fifty missions out of Amendola Field, Italy and on one run, he’d had seen in the skies over Germany a Blohm & Voss BV 141 and was intrigued by the outrigger capsule in which sat the crew, immediately trying to imagine how such a layout would affect the flying characteristics.  The image of the strange aircraft stayed with him and a decade later he noted the Bisiluro Damolnar which ran at Le Mans in 1955, the year of the horrific accident in which eighty-four died.  He must have been encouraged by the impressive pace of the Bisiluro Damolnar rather than its high-speed stability (it was blown (literally) of the track by a passing Jaguar D-Type) and to contest the 1964 Indianapolis 500, he created a capsule-car.

Hurst Floor Shifter Special, Indianapolis, 1964.

Like many of the machines Yunick built, the capsule-car was designed with the rule-book in one hand and a bucket of the sponsor’s money in the other, Hurst Corporation in 1964 paying US$40,000 (equal to circa US$335,000 in 2021) for the naming rights.  Taking advantage of the USAC’s (the Indianapolis 500’s sanctioning body) rules which permitted the cars to carry as much as 75 gallons (284 litres) of fuel, some did, the placement of the tanks being an important factor in the carefully calculated weight-distribution.  The drawback of a heavy fuel load was greater weight which, early on, decreased speed and increased tyre wear but did offer the lure of less time spent re-fueling so what Yunick did was take a novel approach to the "fuel as ballast" principle which balanced the mass by placing the driver and fuel towards the front and the engine to the rear, the desired leftward bias (the Indianapolis 500 being run anti-clockwise) achieved by specific placement.  His great innovation was that using a separate, left-side capsule for the driver, he created three different weight masses (front, rear and left-centre) which, in theory, would both improve aerodynamic efficiency and optimize weight distribution.

Hurst Floor Shifter Special, Indianapolis, 1964.

Despite the appearance, the capsule-car was more conventional than intended.  The initial plan had been to use a turbine engine (as Lotus later would, almost successfully) and a single throttle/brake control but, for various reasons, it ended up using the ubiquitous Offenhauser power-plant and a conventional, two-pedal setup.  Upon arrival at the track, it made quite an impression and many understood the theories which had inspired the design.  Expectations were high.  Unfortunately, the theories didn’t work in practice and the car struggled to reach competitive speeds, an attempt at a qualifying lap delayed until the last available day.  Going into turn one at speed, a problem with the troublesome brakes caused a loss of control and the car hit the wall, the damage severe enough to preclude any chance of repairs being made in time for the race.

Hurst Floor Shifter Special, Indianapolis, 1964.

Yunick wasn’t discouraged and remained confident a year was enough time to develop the concept and solve the problem the shakedown on the circuit had revealed but the capsule-car would never race again, rule changes imposed after a horrific crash which happened early in 1964 race meaning it would have been impossible for it to conform yet remain competitive.  Effectively rendered illegal, the capsule-car was handed to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, where it's sometimes displayed.

Japanese Hotels: The Pod and the Capsule

The term "capsule hotel" is a calque of the Japanese カプセルホテル (kapuseru hoteru).  The capsule hotel is a hotel with very small accommodation units which certainly can’t be called “rooms” in any conventiona sense of the word although the property management software (PMS) the operators use to manage the places is essentially the same (though simplified because there’s no need to handle things such as mini-bars, rollaway beds et al).  Although not exclusive to Japan, it’s Japanese cities with which the concept is most associated, the first opened in Osaka in 1979 and they were an obvious place for the idea to emerge because of the high cost of real estate.  Although the market has softened since the “property bubble” which in 1989 peaked with Tokyo commercial space alone reputedly (at least as extrapolated by the theorists) worth more than the continental United States, the cost per m² remains high by international standards.  Because one typical hotel room can absorb as many m³ as a dozen or more capsules, the optimized space efficiency made the economic model compelling, even as a niche market.

Anna in Capsule 620.

Many use the terms “pod hotel” (pod used here in the individual and not the collective sense) & “capsule hotel” interchangeably to describe accommodation units which compact sleeping spaces with minimal additional facilities but in Japan the industry does note there are nuances of difference between the two.  Both are similar in that structurally the design is one of an array of small, pod-like sleeping units stacked side by side and/or atop each other in a communal space.  In a capsule hotel, the amenities are limited usually to a bed, small television and usually some (limited) provision of personal storage space with bathroom facilities shared and located in the communal area.  The target market traditionally has been budget travellers (the business as well as the leisure market) but there was for a while the phenomenon of those booking a night or two just to post the images as something exotic on Instagram and other platforms.  Interestingly, "female only" capsule hotels are a thing which must be indicative of something. 

Entrance to the world of your capsule, 9h nine hours Suidobashi, Tokyo.

The “Pod Hotel” came later and tended to be (slightly) larger, some 10-20% more expensive and positioned deliberately as “upmarket”, obviously a relative term and best thought of as vaguely analogous with the “premium economy” seats offered by airlines.  Compared with a capsule, a pod might have adjustable lighting, a built-in entertainment system supporting BYD (bring your own device) and somewhat more opulent bedding.  Demand clearly existed and a few pod hotels emerged with even a private bathroom and additional storage space although the sleeping area tended to remain the same.  It’s part of Japanese urban folklore that these more self-contained pods are often used by the famous “salarymen” who find them an attractive alternative to finding their way home after an evening of karaoke, strong drink, the attention of hostesses and such.  That aspect of the salaryman lifestyle predated the 1980s and capsules and pods were just a more economic way of doing things.  Not however predicted in a country which had since the mid-1950s become accustomed to prosperity, full-employment and growth were the recessions and consequent increase in unemployment which became part of the economy after the bubble burst in 1990.  In this environment, the capsules and especially the pods became low-cost alternative accommodation for the under-employed & unemployed and while estimates vary according to the city and district, it may be that at times as many as 20% of the units were rented on a weekly or monthly basis by those for whom the cost of a house or apartment had become prohibitive.

Squoval

Squoval (pronounced sqwoh-vuhl)

(1) In cosmetology, a description applied mostly to describe the shape of certain fingernails and faces; essentially an oblong (a rectangle with partially ovoid shorter sides).

(2) In commerce, a trademark of the bicycle company Cervélo, describing the cross sectional shape of the downtube used in frame construction.

1984: A portmanteau word, sq(uare)- + oval.  Square was from the Middle English square, sqware & squyre from the Old French esquarre & esquerre, (which survives in modern French as équerre), from the Vulgar Latin exquadra, derived from the Latin quadro, from quadrus (square), from quattuor (four).  Oval was from the Late Latin ovalis, from ovum (egg); it was cognate with the French and Italian ovale and the Dutch ovaal.  Used both as noun and adjective, coinage is credited to Paula Gilmore, a noted manicurist (nail technician) and owner of Tips Nail Salon in San Mateo, California.  Squoval is a noun & verb, squovaled & squovaled are verbs and squovallike is an adjective; the noun plural is squovals.

Art of the fingernail

A pleasing creation, sqoval is misleading because it’s used to reference a shape which is actually a rectangle with the shorter sides defined by curves which tend to the semi-circular.  In geometry, such a shape is called a stadium, discorectangle or an obround.  It’s not to be confused with a square with rounded corners which, despite frequent use, is neither a "quartic" nor a "sqound".  A quartic is “an algebraic equation or function of the fourth degree or a curve describing such an equation or function” and sqound (a portmanteau word, the construct being sq(uare) + (r)ound is the ultimate niche word, the only known use by collectors of C4 Chevrolet Corvettes (1984-1996) describing the shift in 1990 from round to "square with rounded corners" taillights.  Mathematicians insist the correct word for a "square with rounded corners" is "squircle" (in algebraic geometry "a closed quartic curve having properties intermediate between those of a square and a circle").  The construct of squircle is squ(are) +c(ircle).  Few etymologists (and certainly no lexicographers) appear to have listed sqound as a "real" word but it's of interest because it's a rare example of a word where a "q" is not followed by a "u"; such constructs do exist but usually in the cases where initialisms have become acronyms such as Qantas (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services).  Such words do appear in English language texts but they tend to be foreign borrowings including (1) qat (or khat) (a plant native to East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, often chewed for its stimulant effects, (2) qi (a term from Chinese philosophy referring to life force or energy), qibla (the direction Muslims face when praying, towards the Kaaba in Mecca and (4) qiviut (the soft under-wool of the musk-ox, valued when making warm clothing).  

Squoval is thus a commercial descriptor in the fingernail business rather than a precise geometric description.  The basic rectangle metaphor is important in fingernail shaping because manicurists borrow from art and architecture the golden ratio which suggests humans find most aesthetically pleasing, shapes with an aspect ratio of about 1.6:1 which, coincidentally, is the relationship between a kilometre and a mile.  Nails can be shaped beyond the nominally perfect 1.6:1 but tend either to be thought exaggerated or created purely for artistic display, often to create a large surface for designs.  Manicurists, certainly in the Instagram age, are an imaginative profession and there’s been a proliferation of terms to describe species.  However, within the fingernail family, there are eight basic genera, practitioners inventing or classifying species as they emerge.  To date, the lipstick is the only widely-used form which is asymmetric.

The classic oval is said to be a symmetrical ellipse where the curve of the tip exactly mirrors the curve of the cuticle but, in real-world conditions, the former usually only tends to the latter.  The shape is natural, flattering and adaptable to both long and short nails.

Long coffins.

A natural coffin demands long nails with the fragility that implies.  The nail needs to be sufficiently long so both sides can be filed to a tapered point something like a stiletto before the tip is squared-off.  Because of that, they’re often constructed with acrylics.  Coffin in this context is actually a modern appropriation to describe what was historically known as the ballerina, a descriptor some European fashion houses still prefer but the Instagram generation has moved on and like coffin.  Coffins are rare worn in the elongated form.

Square nails provide a shape which is less susceptible to damage than many but doesn’t suit all shapes.  It’s best adopted by those with a narrow nail bed because the flat tip creates an optical illusion of additional width, making nails appear wider than they are.  Rarely seen variations include the cut out (a twin-peaked effect), the lipstick (uniquely, with an asymmetric tip) and the trapeze or flare (where the metaphor is the bell-bottom trouser leg).

A statement shape, something of a triumph of style over functionally, the stiletto gains its dramatic effect from long and slender lines and can be shaped with either fully-tapered or partially square sides.  They’re vulnerable to damage, breaking when subjected to even slight impacts and almost never possible with natural growth.  True obsessives insist they should be worn only with stiletto heels and then only if the colors exactly match.

Squovals in Dior 999.

With straight sides and a curved top, the squoval, while not as dramatic as a coffin, is good, functional engineering because its softer edges are less prone to snagging and tearing than those of a square and break less the more more delicate almonds.  Technically, the squoval is just a species of the square but its popularity meant it came to be classified as its own genus.

Usually very long, the almond has an elongated shape and a tapered tip.  Even when applied to nails with a narrow bed, they’re inherently weak at the tip so most are constructed from acrylics.  It’s a style which attracts many variations on the theme, often tending to a truer emulation of the nut at which point some should probably be classified as pointed.

Realistically, pointed nails, certainly in their more extreme iterations (sometimes called mountain peaks, edges, arrow-heads, claws or talons), are more for short-term effect than anything permanent.  Best used with acrylics, the knife-like style can be a danger to the nail itself and any nearby skin or stockings.  Those contemplating intimacy with a women packing these should first ponder the implications.

Lindsay Lohan with rounds, 2006

Rounds are less a style than a detailing of the natural human shape.  Usually worn short and simple and rarely needing an acrylic overlay, it’s a classic look with the added benefit of durability and low maintenance.

Broad

Broad (pronounced brawd)

(1) Of great breadth.

(2) A quasi-standard expression of lineal measurement (from side to side).

(3) Of great extent; large; extensive, ample, spacious, vast.

(4) Wide-open; full (applied usually to daylight).

(5) Not limited or narrow; of extensive range or scope (applied to knowledge, experience etc).

(6) Liberal; tolerant (semi-institutionalized as one of the three factions of the Anglican Church (Low, broad & high).

(7) A generalized summary of something (often as broad outline); general rather than specific.

(8) Something made plain or clear; outspoken.

(9) Indelicate; indecent, vulgar (now rare).

(10) Of conversation, rough; countrified, unrefined.

(11) Unconfined; unbridled; unrestrained.

(12) In linguistics, of pronunciation, strongly dialectal; the most exaggerated of its type; consisting of a large number of speech sounds characteristic of a particular geographical area or social class.  As applied to Gaelic languages: velarized (ie palatalized).

(13) In phonetics, of a transcription, using one basic symbol to represent each phoneme; of or relating to a type of pronunciation transcription in which symbols correspond approximately to phonemes without taking account of allophonic variations.

(14) In (mostly historic US & Canadian) slang, a usually disparaging term for a women, often one that hints at promiscuity (but not prostitution); often in the plural.

(15) In film & television production, an incandescent or fluorescent lamp used as a general source of light in a studio.

(16) A type of wide-bladed battle sword.

(17) A gold coin of England and Scotland, minted first in 1656 and issued by James I and Charles I; equal to 20 shillings.

(18) As broadband, a term now vague in meaning which implies a high-speed internet connection but which has been applied to any service rated faster than the highest speed possible using a single analogue modem connected with a conventional phone line (copper pair (Cat3)).

(19) In public finance, as broad money, denoting an assessment of liquidity including notes and coins in circulation, bank holdings, most private-sector bank deposits, and certain bank-deposit certificates; usually classed as M3 in the (sort of) standardized system by which OECD countries measure the money supply.

(20) In UK dialectal use, a river spreading over a lowland (in East Anglia, a shallow lake).

(21) In woodworking, a wood-turning tool used for shaping the insides and bottoms of cylinders.

(22) In the UK, a common pronunciation of B-road (a secondary road).

Pre 1000: From the Middle English brood, brode, brod & broad from the Old English brād (broad, flat, open, extended, spacious, wide, ample, copious; not narrow), from the Proto-Germanic braidi, from the Proto-West Germanic braid, from the Proto-Germanic braidaz (broad), of uncertain origin.  It was cognate with the Scots braid (broad), the West Frisian breed (broad), the Saterland Frisian breed (broad), the Low German breet & breed (broad), the Dutch breed (broad), the German & Old High German breit (broad, wide), the Danish, Swedish & Norwegian Bokmål bred (broad), the Norwegian brei (broad), the Icelandic breiður (broad, wide), the Old Norse breiðr (breithr), the Old Frisian brēd and the Gothic braiths & brouþs.  The word is not found except in Germanic languages and there has never been any clear distinction between broad & wide although there are conventions of use but they vary widely (and presumably in some places broadly) by geographical region.  Related and sometimes synonymous words include deep, expansive, full, large, vast, comprehensive, extensive, far-reaching, sweeping, universal, wide, wide-ranging, clear, explicit, straightforward, radical, improper, indecent & roomy.  Broad is a noun & adjective, broadly is an adverb; broadness is a noun, broaden is a verb, broadening is a noun & verb and broadest & broadish are adjectives; the noun plural is broads.    

Circa 1300, broad also had the specific meaning "breadth", now obsolete, which was from broad the adjective.  The sense of "shallow, reedy lake formed by the expansion of a river over a flat surface" was a Norfolk dialect word from the 1650s and broad had assumed its (broad) meaning as "the broad (wide) part" of anything by 1741.  The broad-brim hat was first described in the 1680s and the phrase “broad-brimmed” or “broad-brimmer” was eighteenth & nineteenth slang for a "Quaker male", so described because of their characteristic attire.  Broad-minded (in the sense of open-minded, liberal, less judgmental) was from the 1590s but this abstract mental sense of broad existed also in Old English as bradnes which meant both "breadth" & "liberality".

German broadsword, Waloon pattern, circa 1650.

Some swordsmiths insist the only true broadsword is one of the “basket-hilted swords”, characterized by a basket-shaped guard at the hilt which protects the hand, an elaboration of the quillons added to swords' cross-guards since the later Middle Ages.  What everybody else now calls the broadsword is a bladed weapon of the early modern era (sixteenth-seventeenth century), the construct in Old English being brad + swurd and, exclusively a battlefield weapon, they were always distinguished from rapiers and other dueling swords by their wide and often long & thick blades.

The term broadsheet was first used to describe a newspaper in 1705 when the distinguishing characteristic was being a “large sheet of paper printed on one side only”; by 1831 the usual phrase was “"a broadsheet newspaper" which in the twentieth century evolved into a distinction between the sober publications of record, reflection and reporting (The Times of London, The New York Times, The Manchester Guardian etc) and the popular tabloid press concerned with entertainment, sport and (increasingly) celebrity culture (the News of the World, The Sun, the New York News etc), based on the former being printed in larger formats, the latter half-sized (tabloid in printer’s jargon.  Even when some broadsheets switched to the smaller format, the phraseology remained and seemed to have survived even where some have abandoned print editions entirely, tabloid journalism still something simultaneously popular and disreputable.

Lindsay Lohan on Broadway, attending the production MJ The Musical, New York, July 2022.

Broadway (like High Street or Main Road) became a common street name apparently as early as circa 1300, applied obviously to particularly wide roads or streets, the allusive use for "New York’s theater district" dating from 1881.  The derivative “off broadway” (sometime with initial capitals) described smaller theatres in the New York City area, those with fewer than 300 seats, or a production in such a theater, usually away from the "Broadway" theater district and which operated under special rules from the theatrical unions which permitted productions to be mounted at much lower cost.  Use of off-broadway was first noted in 1953 as the volume of productions began greatly to expand in the buoyant post war economy and off-off & off-off-off (etc) broadway followed, the number of “offs” hinting progressively at the diminishing size of the budget, theatre and reputations of those associated with the production.

Broadcasting in the modern understanding of the word attained critical mass first in the 1920s as medium-wave AM radio became popular as the cost of vacuum tube radio transmitters and receivers fell to affordable levels.  Broadcasting was based on the idea in agriculture of broad-sowing, the casting of seeds over a broad area and was electronic communication on a one-to-many basis, as opposed to earlier radio, telephone, and telegraph models which were one/few to one/few.  Although the technology and the distribution platforms have since much evolved, broadcasting remains conceptually the same but the technological changes have greatly affected the behavior of audiences and much of what “broadcasters” now do is really stranded narrowcasting, the content designed not for the large-scale, even nation-wide catchments which once were available but aimed instead at specific demographics also served by the narrowcasters proper.  So changed is the environment that the terms are now less useful than when there were clear distinctions between them.

Dean Martin (1917-1995) and Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) carry "strike" signs demanding "Free Broads" as part of a gag during a show at the Sands' Copa Room, Las Vegas, 1960.

Although the "rat pack" persona was cultivated as something edgy and anti-establishment, their audience was politically conservative and, by the 1960s, part of an older generation which mostly didn't approve of young people marching with protest signs.  For a couple of old pros playing Las Vegas, this was an easy laugh and, by the standards of the time, self-deprecating.

The apparently etymologically baffling use of broad to describe a woman with some suggestion of promiscuity has attracted speculation.  It’s been suggested it might be an alteration of bride, especially through influence of the cognate German Braut, which was used in a similar sense (young woman, hussy) and there was the Middle High German brūt (concubine) but, especially given it came to be noted as a generalized slang term for women only circa 1911 in US use, etymologists prefer to link the development to the earlier slang “abroadwife”, used to mean both “woman who lives or travels without her husband" and “woman maintained in another place by a man and unknown to his wife”.  It’s now a dated form, used sometimes ironically but has often been misapplied with a suggestion of prostitution.  Because of these negative associations, and the increasing popularity of women's athletics, the name of the track and field “broad jump” (dating from 1863) was changed to “long jump”, beginning in the US in 1967 and soon adopted by athletics federations worldwide.

Some broadband is more broad than others: Indicative speed (January 2022) of internet connections in selected countries based on Ookla’s speedtest.net data, the informal standard for consumer-level speed testing.

The noun broadband actually dates from the 1620s in various senses from dressmaking to engineering.  It was used in electronics from 1956 with the meaning "a band having a wide range of frequencies" but the now most familiar use is as a descriptor of high-speed internet access.  Although the term broadband had since the 1970s been used in the technical language of the then embryonic industry of networking and distributed communications, it was little known by the public until the first standards were published for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), a consumer-level version of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology.  Ever since, it’s been used in the sense of “high-speed internet” but except for some local (and usually quickly outdated) legislated definitions, it’s never had a universal or even generally accepted meaning beyond the very early implementations when it was understood to imply a connection faster than the fastest service attainable by a single (8000/8000 baud; V.92; 56.0/48.0 kbit/s down/up) analogue modem connected with a conventional phone line (untwisted copper pair (UTP-Cat3)) which was usually accepted to be 56 kbit/s.  That soon was not a great deal of help and now, unless in a jurisdiction where use of the term broadband requires the maintenance of minimum up & download speeds, it’s really just an advertising term and unless a service so advertised turns out to be so slow that the use might be held to be deceptive or misleading, is often little more than “mere puffery”.  Hotels which in the 1990s and early 2000s spent a lot of money to install the hardware and software to support what was then “broadband” which they advertised as such soon, faced complaints as rapid advances in technology rendered their infrastructure quickly obsolescent and slow, the only solution sometimes to replace all the equipment although many instead took advantage of the profit-sharing industry which emerged, third-parties handling the installation and support, the hotel taking just a commission on total revenue.  Just as a precaution, some gave up on advertising “broadband” and instead offered the even more vague “hi-speed” which definitely meant nothing in particular.     

Contemporary art museum The Broad, Grand Avenue, Los Angeles.  The building's name is a reference not to the architecture but the philanthropists Eli (1933-2021) & Edythe (b 1936) Broad, who paid for it and provided the core of the collections exhibited.  It opened in September 2015, the architecture generally well-received.

Broadcloth (also as broad-cloth) was a "fine woolen cloth used in making men's garments" and dates from the early fifteenth century, the name derived from its width (usually 60 inches (1.5m)).  The phrase “broad daylight” emerged in the late fourteenth century and broad was first applied to speech and accents during the 1530s. To be “broad in the beam” is to be overweight, the term, predictably, applied almost exclusively to women.  To have “broad shoulders” suggests an ability to take criticism, or accept responsibility, an allusion to the figure of Atlas from Greek mythology who was condemned to forever carry on his shoulders the weight of the world.  In admiralty jargon, “broad on the beam” is a nautical bearing 90° to the heading of a vessel while “broad on the bow” is a bearing 45° to the heading of a vessel.  Broadacre farming or agriculture is a generalized reference to activities undertaken on large-scale open areas as opposed to smaller, fenced enclosures and can be used to describe either cropping or animal production.  The expression, like “mileage” or “tons” has survived metrification; “broadhectare” does exist as jargon in the field of residential land supply but is not widely used.

The Anglicans

Some time ago, the ever-entertaining Anglican Church, sort of formalized their three warring factions as the low and lazy, the broad and hazy and the high and crazy:

The Low and Lazy

Like the high churchers, the low lot still believe in God but, their time not absorbed plotting and scheming or running campaigns to stamp out gay clergy and opposing the ordination of women, they actually have time to pray, which they do, often.  The evangelical types come from among the low and don’t approve of fancy rituals, Romish ways or anything smelling of popery.  Instead, they like services where there’s clapping, dancing and what sounds like country & western music with sermons telling them it’s Godly to buy things like big TVs and surf-skis.

The Broad and Hazy

The broad church is more a club than a church, something like the Tory Party at prayer.  The parishioners will choose the church they (occasionally) attend on the same basis as their golf club, driving miles if need be to find a congregation acceptably free of racial and cultural DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).  They’re interested not at all in theology or anything too abstract so sermons are preached to please the bourgeoisie.  The broad church stands for most things in general and nothing in particular, finding most disputes in Anglicanism baffling; they just can't see what all the fuss is about.

The High and Crazy

The high church has clergy who love dressing up like The Spice Girls, burning incense and chanting the medieval liturgy in Latin.  They disapprove of about everything that’s happened since the 1662 edition of the Book of Common Prayer and believe there’d be less sin were there still burnings at the stake.  Most high church clergy wish Pope Pius IX was still running the show from Rome and some act as though he’s still there.

Of money

All will be pleased to know there is narrow money and broad money.  Narrow money includes notes and coins in circulation and bank deposits (if available to conduct transactions).  Broad money includes all narrow money and other liquid assets that can be used to buy goods and services.  Collectively, the money circulating in an economy is called money supply, movements in which are tracked and sometimes manipulated governments and central banks.  There are economists who insist the distinction between narrow and broad money is mainly theoretical and they have a point in that the relationship between national wealth and (1) physical notes and coins and (2) the notion of asset backing (such as a gold standard) are both now somewhat abstract and the money supply can now be expanded without the effects of the physical economy which would once have been inevitable but the measures are still of great interest, as is the strange fact that the actual definitions of money used by governments and central banks in major trading economies vary from country to country.

The United States

The US Federal Reserve provides only two main measures of money M1 (narrow) and M2 (broad).  M1 consists of currency in circulation, travelers’ checks of nonbank issuers, demand deposits, and other checkable deposits (eg negotiable order of withdrawal accounts at depository institutions).  M2 is M1 plus savings deposits and money market deposit accounts, time deposit accounts below $100,000, and balances in retail money market mutual funds.  The interesting thing about the US is that the Fed’s M1 & M2 excludes a lot of what most economists regards as money but it’s very difficult to estimate how much, all agreeing only that it’s big number.

The Euro Zone

The European Central Bank (ECB) publishes M1, M2 & M3, each measure becoming progressively broader.  M1 includes currency in circulation plus overnight deposits.  M2 is M1 plus deposits redeemable at notice of up to three months and deposits with an agreed maturity of up to two years.  M3 is M2 plus repurchase agreements, money market fund shares, money market paper, and debt securities issued with a maturity of fewer than two years.

The United Kingdom

The Bank of England uses four measures of money, M0, M2, M4, and M3H, M0 the narrowest, M4 the broadest.  M0 is currency in circulation plus bankers’ deposits held by the Bank of England.  M2 is M0 plus deposits held in retail banks.  M4 is M2 plus certificates of deposits, and wholesale bank and building society deposits.  The mysterious M3H is a parity device which exists to allow the Bank of England to align their reporting for statistical purposes with the money supply measures published by the ECB and this is M4 plus foreign currency deposits in banks and building societies.

Australia

The Reserve Bank of Australia used to use M1, M2 & M3 but now publishes M1, M3 & Broad Money.  M1 is currency in circulation plus bank current deposits from private non-bank entities.  M3 is M1 plus other deposits from building societies and credit unions with banks.  Broad Money is M3 plus borrowings from the private sector by non-bank depository corporations excluding holdings of currency and deposits of non-bank depository corporations.

Japan

The Bank of Japan is a monetary classicist and publishes M1, M2, and M3, where M1 is the narrowest and M3 the broadest.  M1 includes currency in circulation plus deposits.  M2 is M1, plus certificates of deposit.  M3 is M2 plus savings and deposits at financial institutions and post offices.

For countries which run modern economies with convertible currencies and a high degree of interoperability and (usually), little (at least by historic standards) in the way of exchange controls, it may seem strange that the definitions of money vary to the extent they do, the only feature of commonality really that each maintains a measurable concept of narrow and broad money.  Only a few central banks, such as the Bank of England, include a device with which those interested in such things can align the numbers more accurately to compare one with another; it’s almost as if the central banks and governments like some vagueness in the system.

There is no direct relationship between the volume of the money supply and its value expressed as purchasing power.  German children during the hyper-inflation experienced in the Weimar Republic in 1923 would play with literally trillions, using bundles of currency with a face value in the billions (of the then current Papiermark) as toy building blocks.  Although the purposes for which it was originally set up have long been overtaken by events, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) still exists (which is interesting in itself) and although the BIS organizes interesting conferences and seminars and publish a wealth of meaty material, it’d be an interesting task for them to devise a standardized money supply model which could augment (ie not replace) the machinery to which the central banks would no doubt cling.  Even if restricted to members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it would be an interesting data-set to align with other charts but the chances of this seem remote.  It might frighten the horses.