Cordon

Cordon (pronounced kawr-dn)

(1)  A line of police, sentinels, military posts, warships, etc., enclosing or guarding an area.

(2) A cord or braid worn for ornament or as a fastening.

(3) A ribbon worn usually diagonally across the breast as a badge of a knightly or honorary order.

(4) A projecting course of stones at the base of a parapet.

(5) The coping of a scarp.

(6) In architecture, a stringcourse, especially one having little or no projection.

(7) A cut-stone riser on a stepped ramp or the like.  Also called a string course or belt course, an ornamental projecting band or continuous moulding along a wall.

(8) In horticulture, a fruit tree or shrub trained to grow along a support or a series of such supports.  Tree consists of a single stem bearing fruiting spurs, produced by cutting back all lateral branches

(9) To surround or blockade with or as with a cordon (usually followed by off).

(10) In cricket, the arc of fielders on the off side, behind the batsman; the slips and gully (but not the more distant third man).

1400–1450: Borrowed by Middle English from Middle French cordon (ribbon), diminutive of the Old French corde (string), derived from the Classical Latin chorda (gut) and Ancient Greek (Doric) χορδή or khordḗ (string of gut, cord, string of a lyre).

The meaning "cord or ribbon worn as an ornament” dates from the 1560s.  Sense of "a line of people or things guarding something" is from 1758.  The form cordon sanitaire (sanitary cordon), first noted in 1857, was a public health measure in the French Second Empire (Napoleon III), a guarded line between infected and uninfected districts during outbreaks of infectious disease.

The Cordon Sanitaire in Geopolitics

Originally a public health measure to contain the spread of infectious diseases, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929; Prime Minister of France 1906-1909 & 1917-1920) conjured the phrase as a geopolitical metaphor in March 1919.  He urged the newly independent border-states, stretching from Finland to the Balkans (also called limitrophe states) that had seceded from the Russian Empire (and its successor the USSR) to form a defensive union and thus quarantine Western Europe from the spread of communism.

The concept evolved and was in its most politically and geographically defined form during the cold war when buffer states gave shape to the so-called iron curtain between east and west.  Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK Prime Minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) didn’t invent the phrase but made it famous in his address at Fulton, Missouri in March 1946 when he noted that “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”  This was the opposite of Clemenceau’s vision of protecting west from east; instead the buffer-states existed to protect the USSR from any prospect of another invasion from a resurgent Germany, a dominant theme in early post-war Soviet foreign policy.

Comrade Stalin's Cordon Sanitaire: the Cold-War Buffer States

The buffer states were a construct of Comrade Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR, 1924-1953), his words backed first by four-hundred divisions and later the Soviet nuclear arsenal.  They lasted more than forty years, the system beginning to fracture only in the mid-1980s when USSR Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev (b 1931; leader of the USSR, 1985-1991) retreated from adherence to the Brezhnev (Leonid Brezhnev; 1906–1982; leader of the USSR, 1964–1982) Doctrine which held that if socialism was threatened in any state, other socialist governments had an obligation to intervene to preserve it.  Gorbachev initiated the policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring), both of which exposed the contradictions inherent in the Soviet system.  By 1989, long an economic failure, the eastern bloc began politically to crumble and a wave of revolutions began.  In 1991, the USSR was dissolved.

Crowd control cordon creation: Metal outside & the velvet rope within, Mean Girls Premiere, Los Angeles, April 2004.

Temporary cordons are often not sufficiently robust physically to act as an effective barrier against a breach induced even by mild force and rely on their symbolic value in the same way the red, amber & green traffic signals controlling intersections usually achieve the desired effect even though pieces of illuminated colored plastic inherently can't stop a car.  Respect for them (coupled with a fear of the consequences if flouted) is what makes them effective.  The cordoning of crowds at events often works the same way.  While facilities such as stadiums or race tracks usually have permanent fences or other structures difficult to cross, ad-hoc events in spaces intended for other purposes use relatively flimsy temporary barriers which wouldn't withstand much pressure and rely on the cooperation (and again, fear of consequences) of those cordoned off.  Outside, cordons typically are created with movable metal or plastic modular fencing while inside, the favored form is the "velvet rope", strung between stanchions (although lengths of plastic chain are sometimes seen).  These have the advantage of being able to re-configure a cordon at short notice and when not in use, demand little space to store.         

Riband

Riband (pronounced rib-uh-nd)

(1) A decorative ribbon, especially one awarded for some achievement.

(2) A flat rail attached to posts in a palisade

(3) In heraldry, a narrow diminutive of the bend, thinner than a bendlet.

(4) An archaic form of ribbon with excrescent -d.

1350–1400: From the Middle English ribane, (the spelling ryban does exist in the record but it seems not to have attained much currency and may simply have been a mistake which spread briefly) from the Old French riban (ribbon), a variant of reuban & ruban, probably from a Germanic compound whose second element is related to band, similar to the Middle Dutch ringhband (necklace). The familiar modern spelling first appeared in the mid-sixteenth century, originally to describe as stripe in a fabric or material.  The spelling riband endures as descriptor of awards, often in polo or other equestrian hobbies of the horsey set although the informal phrase “blue riband event” is applied also to what is considered the premier contest in a particular competition.  This includes things like the men’s 100m sprint at the Olympics, the Melbourne Cup during the Spring Racing Carnival or the Monaco Grand Prix in the Formula One calendar.  The origin of this use is in the wide blue ribbon worn by members of the highest order of knighthood, L'Ordre des chevaliers du Saint-Esprit, instituted by Henri III (1551–1589; King of France 1574-1589) in 1578, an order colloquially known as “Le Cordon Bleus” (the Blue Ribbons).  From this the world of cooking adopted Cordon Bleu, the famous French cooking school, founded in 1895, where chefs wear blue cord on their aprons, a color scheme still seen in many chefs’ uniforms.

USS United States.

Although not formalized until 1935, the Trans-Atlantic Blue Riband is the honor awarded to the passenger liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean in regular service with the highest speed.  Thirty-five Atlantic liners have held the record, the accolade first (retrospectively) won by the British SS Sirius in 1838 which crossed at 8.03 knots (14.87 km/h), the last by the USS United States which in 1952 made 35.59 knots (65.91 km/h).  The 1952 mark remains unbroken; those which subsequently have achieved higher speeds being specialized vessels and not liners in the Atlantic passenger service and other awards have been created to acknowledge the absolute speed records in various classes of competition.  The advent of the jet-age ended the era of the fast ocean-liner.  The Boeing 707 and Douglas DC8 both began regular trans-Atlantic services in 1958 and the business of the big ships went into decline, revived periodically during periods of economic buoyancy as cruise liners with an emphasis on packaged tourism for the middle-class and luxury for the rich rather than speed.  The Record of the USS United States seems unlikely to be broken.

Lindsay Lohan in Phillip Lim Runway Tiered Ribbon Shell; shoes are Yves Saint Laurent Tribute Pumps in black.

Tiered ribbon constructions are based on the idea of successive layers of ribbons assembled (usually horizontally) to create a fabric which can be used for any form of design.  The term is used also in the wedding cake business where a thick ribbon is used to encircle each layer of the cake, the idea usually that it ties in thematically some way with the ceremony, the bridesmaid's dresses or the table napkins being wise choices.  With the bride, the table cloths and the cake icing all in white, navy blue is a good choice.     

Ribbon dates from the 1520s and was a variant of the Middle English riband & riban.  The modern spelling was (more or less) standardized in the sixteenth century, describing a “stripe in fabric”, the sense of a "narrow woven band of some find material" for ornamental or other purposes known by the 1520s while the familiar meaning (long, thin, flexible strips) dates from 1763.  The use to describe the "ink-soaked strip wound on a spool for use on a typewriter" was from 1883 and the idea of a “torn strip of anything” was in use by 1820 and as a verb (adorn with ribbons), use dates from 1716.  The custom of wearing colored ribbon loops on the lapel to declare support for a cause (pink for breast cancer, copper for herpes etc) began is 1991 with AIDS red ribbons and there’s now such an array that of the hundreds of causes now ribboned, there are many duplications so the ribbons sometimes include text, the other differentiation being to use multiple colors, teal & purple for example claimed by suicide awareness.

Philadelphus

Philadelphus (pronounced fil-ah-del-fiss)

(1) Any shrub of the temperate genus Philadelphus, cultivated for their strongly scented showy flowers (family Hydrangeaceae).

(2) As Philadelphus coronaries (mock orange), a deciduous, early summer-flowering shrub with arching branches that bear racemes of richly scented, cup-shaped, pure white flowers in profusion with finely toothed, bright green foliage.  The plant is grown for its ornamental value.

(3) A male given name with origins in the Ancient Greek.

1600s (in botanical use): From the Ancient Greek Φιλάδελφος (Philádelphos) (brotherly love) & philadelphon (loving one’s brother).  Philadelphus is a proper noun.

Philadelphus coronaries (mock orange) in flower.

The mock orange plant has long been valued for its decorative and functional properties.  Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826; US president 1801-1809) was a keen gardener and horticulturalist of some note and on 19 April 1807 noted in his “garden book”: “Planted 9 Philadelphus coronarium, Mock orange in the 4 circular beds of shrubs at the 4 corners of the house.”  Although the origin is uncertain, biologists suspect the strong growing, medium-sized shrub is native either to northern Italy, Austria & Central Romania or Central & North America and Asia; in Europe & North America it has been cultivated at least the sixteenth century.  Before modern standards of taxonomy were codified in the eighteenth century, the plant was classified under the genus Syringa (covering the species of flowering woody plants in the olive family or Oleaceae (commonly called lilacs) and a typically comprehensive description was recorded by Lady (Jean) Skipwith (circa 1748–1826), a Virginia plantation owner and manager still celebrated among botanists for her extensive garden, botanical manuscript notes, and library, the latter reputedly the largest at the time assembled by a woman.  Lady Skipwith called the plant a “Syringa or mock orange” while the US naturalist, explorer & explorer William Bartram (1739–1823) preferred the former, reflecting a scientist’s reverence for anything Greek or Latin.  Syringa was from the stem of the Latin syrinx, from the Ancient Greek σῦριγξ (sûrinx) (shepherd's pipe, quill), the name reflecting the use of the plant's hollow stem to make pipes, flutes & tube.  In modern use, “Mock Orange” tends to be preferred by most, the name derived from the fragrance of the flowers being so reminiscent of orange blossoms.  The origin of the scientific name “Philadelphus” (first applied in the early seventeenth century) is attributed usually to being a tribute to Ptolemy II Philadelphus (Ptolemaîos Philádelphos (Πτολεμαῖος Φιλάδελφος in the Ancient Greek) 309-246 BC, pharaoh (king) of Ptolemaic Egypt (284-246 BC), said to be a keen gardener (which can be translated as “he kept many slaves to tend his gardens”).

The literal translation of the Greek philadelphon was “loving one’s brother”, something used in the sense of “brotherhood of man” as well as when referring to family relationships.  For the pharaoh, the use was a little more nuanced because, after some earlier marital problems, he married his older sister Arsinoe II (316-circa 269 BC).  This appalled the Greeks who condemned the arrangement as incestuous and the couple thus picked up the appellation Philadelphoi (Φιλάδελφοι in the Koinē Greek (sibling-lovers)).  Historians however are inclined to be forgiving and suggest the union was purely for administrative convenience, Egyptian political & dynastic struggles as gut-wrenching as anywhere and there’s no evidence the marriage was ever consummated.  Just to make sure there was the appropriately regal gloss, the spin doctors of the royal court circulated documents citing earlier such marriages between the gods (such as Zeus & Hera).  It certainly set a precedent and the intra-family model was followed by a number of later Ptolemaic monarchs and the practice didn’t end.  The scandalous marriage of Heraclius (circa 575–641; Byzantine emperor 610-641) to his youthful niece Martina resulted in her becoming “the most hated woman in Constantinople” and it was a union certainly consummated for “of the nine children she bore her husband, only three were healthy, the rest either deformed or died in infancy.”

The Philadelphi corridor

The Latin proper noun Philadelphi was the genitive/locative singular of Philadelphus.  In 2024 use spiked because the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) use “Philadelphi Corridor” as military code for the narrow (14 km (9 miles) long & 100 m (110 yards) wide) stretch of land used to separate the Gaza Strip from Egypt; it runs from the Mediterranean coast to the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel and includes the Rafah crossing into Egypt.  The IDF created the corridor (from Gaza territory) as a “buffer zone” (or “cordon sanitaire”), ostensibly to prevent the Hamas, the PIJ (Palestine Islamic Jihad) and others smuggling weapons and other contraband into Gaza through a remarkable network of underground tunnels.  The corridor assumed great significance after Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982 and later after its disengagement from Gaza in 2005; it has long been among the more contested spaces in the Middle East.  According to the IDF, the term “Philadelphi Corridor” was allocated during a routine military planning conference and the choice was wholly arbitrarily with no historical or geographical significance related to the region or any individual.

Just because a military say a code-name has no particular meaning doesn’t mean that’s true; the IDF is no different to any military.  The most obvious possible inspiration for the “Philadelphi corridor” was the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus but one influence may have been cartographic, the geographic shapes of the Gaza Strip (left) and the US city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (right) quite similar and were the monstrosities Northwest, West & Southwest Philadelphia to be annexed by adjacent counties, the shapes of the two would be closer still.  

Lindsay Lohan in Philadelphia, 2012.

The Philadelphi corridor has assumed a new importance because Benjamin Netanyahu (b 1949; Israeli prime minister 1996-1999, 2009-2021 and since 2022) has added Israeli control of it to his list of pre-conditions for any ceasefire in negotiations between his government and the Hamas.  It was designated as a demilitarised border zone after the withdrawal of Israeli settlements and troops from Gaza in 2005, prior to which, under the terms of Israel’s Camp David peace treaty with Egypt (1979), the IDF had been allowed to maintain limited troop formations in corridor but without heavy weapons or heavy armour.  Old Ariel Sharon (1928–2014; prime minister of Israel 2001-2006) arranged the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza subsequently forming the Kadima (Forward) political party because he could persuade the Likud (The Consolidation) party to follow his vision.  Very much a personal vehicle for Mr Sharon, Kadima did not survive his incapacitation from a stroke while the Likud fell into the hands of Mr Netanyahu.  Following the Israeli withdrawal, responsibility for the corridor’s security fell to Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, this maintained until the Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007; it was seized by Israel in May 2024 as the IDF’s Gaza ground offensive extended into Rafah.

Over the years, the tunnel complex has proved a remarkably effective means by which to facilitate cross-border smuggling of weapons, other materiel, fuel and a variety of stuff including food, medicine and consumer goods, despite many attempts by the IDF and Egyptian authorities to end the traffic, the latter perhaps a little less fastidious in their endeavours.  The tunnels are impressive pieces of civil engineering, including electricity, ventilation systems, air-conditioning and communications facilities; some are sufficient large to allow heavy trucks to pass and there has long been speculation about the extent to which financial and logistical support for tunnel construction, maintenance & repair is channelled from the Gulf Arab states.  In Cairo, the government viewed the IDF’s seizure of the corridor with some alarm and remain a “status quo” power, insistent that an ongoing Israeli presence will “endanger” the Camp David peace treaty, no small matter because the “ripple effect” of the 1979 agreement had profound consequences in the region.

Pointing the way: Mr Netanyahu (left) explains the Philadelphi corridor (right).      

Still, Mr Netanyahu has made clear he intends to maintain a military presence in the corridor (including the Rafah crossing) and that remains an unnegotiable condition for a ceasefire with the Hamas; opposition to this stance has come from Cario, the Hamas and some of the third parties involved in the negotiation.  In Tel Aviv, that would not have been unexpected but there is now an increasingly persistent protest movement among Israeli citizens, the allegation being the prime-minister is cynically adding conditions he knows the Hamas will be compelled to reject because as long as the war continues, he can remain in office and avoid having to face the courts to answer some troubling accusations pre-dating the conflict.  Mr Netanyahu responded to this criticism by saying as long as the Hamas remained a threat (later refined to “as long as Hamas remained in control of Gaza”), the offensive needed to continue.  One of the great survivors of Middle East politics, Mr Netanyahu recently assured the more extreme of his coalition partners (described as “right-wing” which, historically, is misleading but descriptive in the internal logic of Israeli politics) by engineering a vote in cabinet binding Israel to retaining control of the corridor.  Despite this, opposition within the cabinet to the ongoing “moving of the goalposts” to prevent any possibility of a ceasefire is said to be growing.  The opposition accused the prime-minister of being more concerned with placating the extremists in his government than securing the release of the remaining hostages seized by the Hamas in the 7 October 2023 attack and left unstated but understood by implication was the message Mr Netanyahu regards them as the “collateral damage” in his manoeuvres to avoid the courts.

Quarantine

Quarantine (pronounced kwawr-uhn-teen or kwor-uhn-teen)

(1) In historic English common law, the period of 40 days during which a widow was entitled to remain in her deceased husband's home while any dower is collected and returned.

(2) A strict isolation imposed to prevent the spread of disease and (by extension), any rigorous measure of isolation, regardless of the reason.

(3) A period, originally 40 days (the historic understanding of the maximum known incubation period of disease) of detention or isolation imposed upon ships, persons, animals, or plants on arrival at a port or place, when suspected of carrying some infectious or contagious disease; a record system kept by port health authorities in order to monitor and prevent the spread of contagious diseases.  The origin was in measures taken in 1448 in Venice's lazaret to avoid renewed outbreaks of the bubonic plague.

(4) In historic French law, a 40-day period imposed by the king upon warring nobles during which they were forbidden from exacting revenge or to continue warfare.

(5) A place where such isolation is enforced (a lazaret).

(6) In international relations, a blockade of trade, suspension of diplomatic relations, or other action whereby one country seeks to isolate another.

(7) In computing, a place where files suspected of harboring a computer virus or other harmful code are stored in a way preventing infection of other files or machines; the process of such an isolation.

(8) To withhold a portion of a welfare payment from a person or group of people (Australia).

(9) To quarantine someone or something.

1600–1610: From the Middle English quarentine (period a ship suspected of carrying contagious disease is kept in isolation), from the Norman quarenteine, from the French quarenteine, from the Italian quarantina, a variant of quarantena, originally from the upper Italian (Venetian) dialect as quaranta giorni (space of forty days, group of forty), from quaranta (forty) from the Medieval Latin quarentīna (period of forty days; Lent), from the Classical Latin quadrāgintā (four tens, forty) and related to quattuor (four), from the primitive Indo-European root kwetwer (four).  The difference between quarantine and isolation is one of context; while people might for many reasons be isolated, quarantine is a public health measure to deal with those exposed to or at risk of having been infected by a communicable disease, the duration of the quarantine being sufficient to ensure any risk of spreading the infection has passed.  The name is from the Venetian policy (first enforced as the 30 day edict trentino in 1377) of keeping ships from plague-stricken countries waiting off its port for forty days to ensure no latent cases remained aboard.  The extended sense of "any period of forced isolation" dates from the 1670s.  A doublet of carene and quadragene.

In the context the L'Ancien Régime (pre-revolutionary France), it was a calque of the French quarantaine, following the edicts of Louis IX (and formalized by the quarantaine du Roi (1704) of Louis XIV which was a mechanism of quieting squabbling nobles).  Quarantine was introduced to international relations as a euphemism for "blockade" in 1937 because the Roosevelt administration was (1) conscious of public reaction to the effects on civilians of the Royal Navy’s blockade of Imperial Germany during World War I (1914-1918) and (2) legal advice that a “blockade” of a non-belligerent was, under international law, probably an act of war.  The use was revived by the Kennedy administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962).  The verb meaning "put under quarantine" came quickly to be used in any sense including figuratively (to isolate, as by authority) dates from 1804.  Predating the use in public health, in early sixteenth century English common law, the quarentine was the period of 40 days during which a widow was entitled to remain in her dead husband's home while any dower is collected and returned.  The alternative spellings quarentine, quarantin, quaranteen, quarantain, quarantaine, quarrentine, quarantene, quarentene, quarentyne, querentyne are all obsolete except in historic references).  While not of necessity entirely synonymous, detention, sequester, separation, seclusion, segregation, sequestration, lazaretto, segregate, confine, separate, seclude, insulate, restrict, detach & cordon, are at least vaguely similar.  Quarantine is a noun & verb, quarantiner is a noun, quarantinable is an adjective and quarantined & quarantining are verbs & adjectives.

In scripture, the number 40 often occurs although Biblical scholars, always anxious to dismiss musings from numerologists, new age practitioners and crystal-wearing basket weavers, reject the notion it has any special meaning beyond the idea of a “period of trial or struggle”, memorably expressed in the phrase “forty days and forty nights”.  In the Old Testament, when God destroyed the earth in the Great Flood, he delivered rain for 40 days and 40 nights (Genesis 7:12).  After killing the Egyptian, Moses fled to Midian where he spent 40 years in the desert tending flocks (Acts 7:30) and subsequently he stood on Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights (Exodus 24:18) and then interceded on Israel’s behalf for 40 days and 40 nights (Deuteronomy 9:18, 25).  In Deuteronomy 25:3, the maximum number of lashes a man could receive as punishment for a crime was set at 40.  The Israelite spies took 40 days to spy out Canaan (Numbers 13:25), the Israelites wandered for 40 years (Deuteronomy 8:2-5) and before Samson’s deliverance, Israel served the Philistines for 40 years (Judges 13:1).  Goliath taunted Saul’s army for 40 days before David arrived to slay him (1 Samuel 17:16) and when Elijah fled from Jezebel, he traveled 40 days and 40 nights to Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19:8).  The number 40 also appears in the prophecies of Ezekiel (4:6; 29:11-13) and Jonah (3:4).  In the New Testament, the quarentyne was the desert in which Christ fasted and was tempted for for 40 days and 40 nights (Matthew 4:2) and there were 40 days between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension (Acts 1:3).  Presumably, this influenced Western medicine because it was long (and still by some) recommended that women should for 40 days rest after childbirth.

Plague, the Venetians and Quarantino

The Plague of Justinian arrived in Byzantine capital of Constantinople in 541, brought from recently conquered Egypt across the Mediterranean by plague-ridden fleas in the fur of rats on ships bringing loot from the war.  From the imperial capital it spread across Europe, Asia, North Africa and Arabia, killing an estimated thirty to fifty million, perhaps a quarter the inhabitants of the eastern Mediterranean.  Plague never really went away, localized outbreaks happening periodically unit it returned as a pandemic some eight-hundred years later; the Black Death, which hit Europe in 1347, claimed some two-hundred million in just four years and demographically, Europe would not for centuries recover from the Black Death.

There was at the time little scientific understanding of contagion but it became clear it was related to proximity so officials in Venetian-controlled port city of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik in Croatia) resolved to keep newly arrived sailors in isolation until it was apparent they were healthy.  Initially, the sailors were confined to their ships for thirty days, formalized in a 1377 Venetian law as a trentino (thirty days), which radically reduced the transmission rate and by 1448, the Venetians had increased the forced isolation to forty days (quarantine), which, given bubonic plague’s thirty-seven day cycle from infection to death, was an example of a practical scientific experiment.  The word soon entered Middle English as quarantine (already in use in common law as a measure of certain rights accruing to a widow), the origin of the modern word and practice of quarantine.  The English had many opportunities to practice quarentine.  In the three-hundred odd years between 1348 and 1665, London suffered some forty outbreaks, about once a generation (or every twenty years), the significance of this pattern something which modern epidemiologists would later understand.  Quarentine laws were introduced in the early sixteenth century and proved effective, reducing the historic medieval death-rates to about twenty percent.

Eggs à la Lohan

In self-imposed quarantine in March 2020, Lindsay Lohan was apparently inspired by a widely shared motivational poem by Kitty O’Meara (on the internet dubbed the "poet laureate of the pandemic") which included the fragment:

And the people stayed home.  And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still.  And listened more deeply.  Some meditated, some prayed, some danced.  Some met their shadows.  And the people began to think differently.

One of Lindsay Lohan's recommendations for a time of quarantine was to take the time to cook, posting a photograph of Eggs à la Lohan, a tasty looking omelet.  The poem also contained the words:

And the people healed.  And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.  And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.

Unfortunately, viewed from early 2023, it would seem Ms O'Meara's hopes quarantine might have left us kinder, gentler and more thoughtful may not have be realized.  It may be Mr Putin didn’t read poem and just ate omelet. 

Dual & Duel

Duel Pronounced doo-uhl or dyoo-uhl)

(1) A prearranged combat between two persons, fought with deadly weapons according to an accepted code of procedure, especially to settle a private quarrel.

(2) Any contest between two persons or entities.

1585–1595: From the earlier English form duell (a single combat (also "a judicial single combat”), from the late thirteenth century Medieval Latin duellum (combat between two persons), a poetical variant of the old Latin form of bellum (war) (related to bellicose), probably maintained and given the sense “duel” by folk etymology with the Latin duo (two).  The Old Latin word was retained in poetic and archaic language, the fancied Medieval connection with duo organically creating the linguistic semi-coincidence.  In pre-Modern English, the Italian form duello was also used.  By the 1610s, the English word had taken on the specialized sense of "premeditated and pre-arranged single combat involving deadly weapons in the presence of at least two witnesses", the general sense of "any contest between two parties" dating from the 1590s.  The related verbs are duels, dueling & dueled , dueler & duelist are nouns and duelistic an adjective.  The US spelling favors the double “l”.

A cased pair of engraved, gold & silver-accented Durs Egg flintlock dueling pistols.  The case contains a three-way combination flask, rod, mallet head, worm, oiler, and “46” marked ball mold.

Dating from the early nineteenth century, this brace of duelling pistols was from the London shop of Durs Egg (1748-1831) and features an uncommon 90^o grip angle, similar to that used on the heavier “saw-handle” pistols.  The smooth-bore Damascus barrels features gold blade front sights, case-hardened breech plugs with dovetailed notch rear sights, platinum vent liners & dual gold bands.  This pair belong to the class of dueling pistols known as “detented” which were once damned by the dueling class as “unfair weapons which no gentleman would hold” but, such were the advantages, by the late flintlock era the design was close to universal.  The “detent” refers to the mechanism in a flintlock (or later, percussion cap) pistol built into the lock or trigger system and its purpose was to ensure a smoother, more controlled trigger pull, something obviously critical in duelling where a fraction of an inch or second might have been the difference between life & death.  The detent was a small, spring-loaded catch or resistance point in the trigger system which provided a subtle “stop” (ie a resistance point) before the trigger fully releases the hammer, affording a duelist greater control and awareness of exactly when the gun would discharge, minimizing accidental firings or flinching.  In formal duels, both participants had to fire under controlled, fair circumstances so the classic arrangement was for a matched pair of duel pistols to be provided by the man who had issued the challenge with the choice of weapon granted to the respondent.

In the West, although very much a clandestine activity, the classic duel did survive into the twentieth century, mostly in aristocratic and military circles.  One institution which did attempt a codified revival was Nazi-era (1922-1945) SS.  The SS (ᛋᛋ in Armanen runes; Schutzstaffel (literally “protection squadron” but translated variously as “protection squad”, “security section" etc) was formed (under different names) in 1923 as a Nazi party squad to provide security at public meetings (then often rowdy and violet affairs) and was later re-purposed as a personal bodyguard for Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).  The SS name was adopted in 1925 and during the Third Reich the institution evolved into a vast economic, industrial and military apparatus more than two million strong to the point where some historians (and contemporaries) regarded it as a kind of “state within a state”.  The Waffen-SS (armed SS (ie equipped with military-grade weapons)) existed on a small scale as early as 1933 before Hitler’s agreement was secured to create a formation at divisional strength and growth was gradual even after the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 and it was the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 which triggered the Waffen-SS’s expansion into a multi-national armoured force with over 900,000 men under arms.  As well as the SS’s role in the administration of the many concentration and extermination camps, the Waffen-SS was widely implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The head of the SS was Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945; Reichsführer SS 1929-1945) and while rightly infamous for his many crimes, he’s of interest also for his weirdnesses.  One idea he introduced was the duel as a way of settling “matters of honor” (ie squabbles over this & that) between SS members and twisted though the conception may have been, “honor” was in the SS a core tenet, the organization's motto being Meine Ehre Heisst Treue (My Honor Is Loyalty).  As things turned out, Himmler didn’t quite live up to that ethos but by 1945 maybe he regarded loyalty as something like what John Howard (b 1939; prime minister of Australia 1996-2007) would have called a “non-core promise”.  A few SS duels were fought before Hitler, who regarded the practice as archaic and inefficient, ordered it stopped although the Führer did though see a place for the duel.  Calling priests “those black crows” and believing all Germans must learn it was "shameful to be a lawyer", ruefully he observed he’d be quite content to see duelling added to the rituals of both professions.

Hitler was of the school which believed the world would become a fine place "when the last lawyer was strangled with the guts of the last priest" (one of the variants of the phrase attributed to the French Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784): "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.").  Diderot picked up his notion from Mémoire contre la religion (Memoir against religion, a work of over 600 pages written circa 1729 but uncovered only posthumously) which was the final testament of French Catholic priest Jean Meslier (1664–1729) who, it transpired, secretly was an atheist, an intellectual position believed to be held by a number of rationalist cardinals in the Roman curia although, being obviously a sensitive issue in a place like the Vatican, it'd be a challenge to do the research and get the numbers.  Meslier wrote: “Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre; Au défaut d'un cordon pour étrangler les rois” (And his hands would weave the priest's entrails; For lack of a rope, to strangle kings), the most appealing fragment in that vein being: “Je souhaiterais que tous les grands de la terre et tous les nobles fussent pendus et étranglés avec les boyaux des prêtres” (I wish that all the great ones of the earth and all the nobles would be hanged and strangled with the guts of the priests).  Plenty of academics and revolutionaries have needed many more words (sometimes several volumes) to say much the same thing.  What the SS was allowed to retain was the “honourable” option of suicide for members in disgrace (ie found to be a bit of a homosexual), something of which George V (1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India 1910-1936) would have approved.  Gay SS members who declined the generous offer were sent to a concentration camp where routinely they were processed with the traditional EWEF (Erschossen während eines Fluchtversuchs (shot while attempting to escape)) method.

In bizarre circumstances, Himmler almost was given the opportunity to prove his prowess as a duelist.  In 1938, knowing Hitler was unimpressed by the attitude of both Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg (1878–1946; minister of war 1933-1938) and Generaloberst (colonel-general, equivalent to general (four-star) in UK & US use) Werner von Fritsch (1880–1939; commander-in-chief of the German Army 1934-1938) towards his foreign policy and plans for war, in a series of internal machinations, Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) and Himmler engineered the removal of from the army of both.  Göring coveted the war ministry and Himmler was seeking to weaken the army in order to strengthen the role of his SS.  Blomberg mistake was to marry an attractive young woman with some history of prostitution (appalling Hitler whose lower-middle class views on morality never left him) while Fritsch was accused of being a homosexual on the basis of evidence which Himmler knew to be a concoction.  Prior to the marriage, Göring had been told of the bride’s past but, with Hitler, happily attended the wedding as a witness, knowing he had the tool with which to procure Blomberg’s demise while Fritsch was cleared by a military court of honor, the evidence so obviously fake the verdict quickly was delivered, delayed only by an adjournment necessitated by the German invasion of Poland which triggered World War II (1939-1945).

However, the accusation was enough to end his career and although rehabilitated, he wasn’t restored to office but, following the old Prussian code, Fritsch challenged Himmler to a duel with pistols.  Realizing a duel would make the unfortunate situation even worse for the army, the general to whom Fritsch gave the letter containing the challenge choose not to deliver it to Himmler so one of history’s more potentially significant duels was never fought.  Most analysts have assumed the result would not have been in doubt, Fritsch a fine shot and Himmler more used to pen & paper.  When, in January, 1945 Himmler’s ineptitude as a military commander was exposed by his brief command of an army group, Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945), with typical acerbity, noted in his diary: “The Reichsführer may be a fusspot but he’s no warlord.”  The greatest loss to history in the duel never being fought was that Goebbels never had the opportunity to leave a tart comment about Fritsch’s service to the world in ridding it of Himmler.  As a footnote, there has always been speculation that Fritsch may have been a bit of a homosexual, based both on his bachelorhood and Blomberg telling Hitler Fritsch “…was not a lady’s man”.  There is however no evidence to support this and the general’s correspondence reveals only a deep misogyny, felt apparently towards to whole species except his mother, something he had in common with the Führer although Hitler’s attitude was more a dismissive uninterest than hatred.

Dual (pronunced doo-uhl or dyoo-uhl)

(1) Of, relating to, or denoting two.

(2) Composed or consisting of two people, items, parts, etc., together; twofold; double; having a twofold, or double, character or nature.

(3) In the formal grammar of Old English, Old Russian, Arabic and Ancient Greek, denoting a form of a word indicating that exactly two referents are being referred to (a form in the dual, as the Old English git (you two), as opposed to ge (you) referring to three or more.

(4) In mathematics and formal s logic (of structures or expressions) having the property that the interchange of certain pairs of terms, and usually the distribution of negation, yields equivalent structures or expressions

1535–1545: From the Latin duālis (containing two, relating to a pair), the construct being du(o) (two) + -ālis (-al) The Latin duo was from the primitive Indo-European root dwo (two).  The General sense of "relating to two, expressing two, composed or consisting of two parts" is from 1650s.  The general sense of "division into two" has been in use since 1831.  The noun duality (two-fold nature, state of being two or divided in two) is a late fourteenth century form from the Late Latin dualitas.  The noun dualism dates from 1755 as a term in philosophy, the sense being "a way of thinking which explains phenomena by the assumption of two independent and absolute elements," from the French dualisme (1754).  The theological adoption to describe the doctrine of “two independent divine beings or eternal principles” was first noted in 1847.  Duel & dueling are nouns & verbs, dueler & duelist are nouns, dueled is a verb and dually is an adverb; the noun plural is duels (duelers & duelists now rare expet in historic contexts).  The adverb duely is an obsolete spelling of duly. 

Apparently, at the premiere of Disney’s The Parent Trap (1998), then CEO Michael Eisner (b 1942; chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of The Walt Disney Company, 1984-2005), believing the central parts in the film had been played by identical twins asked her “Where's your twin?”.  She told him she didn’t have one and that she should have been paid double.

Dualism in Philosophy

In Metaphysics, dualism holds there are two kinds of reality: the physical world (material) and the spiritual world (immaterial).  In the philosophy of mind, Dualism is the position that mind and body are in some categorical way separate and that mental processes and phenomena are, at least in some respects, non-physical.  Both positions are radically different from even nuanced flavors of monism (which, at its most pure, maintains there is but the universe and that any form of division of the whole is artificial and arbitrary) and pluralism suggests there are many kinds of substance and not just dualism’s two.  In the pre-enlightenment age, dualism had some appeal but it’s now of only historic interest except as a device to train the mind to explore speculative paths.

Dualism in Carburetion

1967 Shelby C7zx dual quad-aluminum intake manifold for Ford 427 FE.

From the late 1950s, Detroit’s V8s, with a sudden and increasing rapidity, grew bigger and more thirsty, the most rapacious of the engines out-pacing the capacity of the carburetors brought from outside suppliers, with the result the only solution was to use two or even three carburettors.  The manufacturer did eventually produce units with sufficient throughput but it took a while for supply to meet demand.  For street use, triple induction was for some time quite a good solution because the three-in-a-row layout lent itself to a good compromise, the engine most of the time being fed only by the central two-barrel carburetor, the outer two used only when the throttle was pushed wide open.  It meant engines with great available power were actually surprisingly economical most of the time although the delicate business of tuning could be a challenge, especially in conditions where there were notable variations in temperature or humidity.  For the high performance engines however, the best cost-performance equation (ignoring the fuel consumption which was the customer's problem) was dual induction, two four barrel carburettors, mounted either in-line or side-by side, the air-flow dynamics of the latter delivering the optimal top-end-power.

Short & Long-Ram Sonoramic dual quad intake manifolds.  The difference was that the short versions had 15 inch (380 mm) tuned intake runners while the long rams had their entire 30 inch (760 mm) length tuned.  

Most dramatic in appearance of all the dual quad setups were the Sonoramics, offered by Chrysler on a handful of models between 1959-1963.  Sonoramic was a linguistic novelty but the engineering principles of tuned resonance in thermal dynamics had been known for decades, the trick being to create a shape which essentially caused the fuel-air mixture to “bounce around”, emulating a low-boost “ram-air” effect.  There were two different versions which looked externally similar but differed internally, the rare so-called “short-ram” tuned for top-end power, the “long-ram” for the mid-range torque which was ideal for street use because the additional performance was delivered in the speed-ranges at which highway passing manoeuvres typically were undertaken.

Jaguar E-Type 4.2 with triple SUs (top) & with dual Strombergs (bottom).

From its introduction, the Jaguar E-Type (1961-1974 and in the US known also as XK-E or XKE) used triple SU HD.8 carburetors but in 1967, to conform to US emission control rules, models built for the North American market were switched to dual Zenith Stromberg 175 CD2SEs.  Unlike some manufacturers which applied the such changes globally, Jaguar maintain the triple assembly for sale in place with less rigorous rules which, at the time, was the rest of the world.  Ominously, power and torque dropped a bit, especially higher in the rev range, a prelude to the malaise which would affect so many in the 1970s.  The dual Zenith Stromberg were one element in a series of changes phased-in during 1967 and culminated in all of them appearing in the re-designated Series 2 (S2) E-Type, released as a 1968 model.  Again necessitated by US legislation, the most obvious modifications were (1) the carburetors, (2) the slight truncation of the cigar-shaped tail & the substitution of the elegant tail-lamps with rather more agricultural-looking units, (3) the use of safer, softer rocker switches on the dash instead of the stylish but sharp toggle switches and (4) the deletion of the lovely, fared-in head-lamp covers, the slightly elevated  replacements lending the car a not exactly bug-eyed look, but combined with the gaping "mouth", perhaps something which recalled a wide-eyed catfish scanning the waters.  There were a host of other changes, most of which made the Series II a better car but it was just a bit slower and didn't look as good.  The unofficial (but helpful and semi-codified) designation used to refer to the two distinct phases of the transitional Series 1 (S1) cars was 1.25 & 1.5, now an accepted part of the E-Type lexicon.

The lovely, pure lines of the S1 Jaguar E-Type (1961-1967, left).  It's not certain Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) really did say it was "the most beautiful car ever made" but he never denied it and was a fair judge of such things.  Visually, the S2 cars (1968-1971, right) were a little more cluttered although they were available with air-conditioning, something which for most owners was more important than the superior throttle response above 100 mph (160 km/h) delivered by the triple SUs.