Radome

Radome (pronounced rey-dohm)

A dome-shaped device used as a protective housing for a radar antenna (although the word is loosely used and applied to structures of varied shapes in which radar equipment is installed).

1940–1945: A portmanteau word, a blend of ra(dar) + dome.  In electronics, radar is a device for determining the presence and location of an object by measuring the time for the echo of a radio wave to return from it and the direction from which it returns and in figurative use refers to a means or sense of awareness or perception.  Dating from 1940-1945, radar was originally the acronym RADAR which was creation of US scientific English: RA(dio)D(etecting)A(nd)R(anging).  In the way English does things, the acronym RADAR came to be used with such frequency that it became a legitimate common noun, the all lower-case “radar” now the default form.  Dating from 1505–1515, dome was from the Middle French domme & dome (a town-house; a dome, a cupola) (which persists in modern French as dôme), from the Provençal doma, from the Italian duomo (cathedral), from the Medieval Latin domus (ecclesiae; literally “house (of the church)”), a calque of the Ancient Greek οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας (oîkos tês ekklēsías).  Radome is a noun & verb; the noun plural is radomes.

Spherical radomes at the Pine Gap satellite surveillance base, some 11 miles (18 km) south-west of Alice Springs in Australia's Northern Territory.  Officially, it's jointly operated by the defence departments of the US and Australia and was once known as the Joint Defence Space Research Facility (JDSRF) but, presumably aware nobody was fooled, it was in 1988 renamed the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG).  The Pine Gap facility is a restricted zone so it's not a tourist attraction which is unfortunate because it's hard to think of any other reason to visit Alice Springs.

Lindsay Lohan on the cover or Radar magazine, June-July 2007.  The last print-edition of Radar was in 2008; since 2009 it's been released on-line.

Radomes don’t actually fulfill any electronic function as such.  They are weatherproof structures which are purely protective (and on ships where space is at a premium they also protect personnel from the moving machinery) and are thus constructed from materials transparent to radio waves.  The original radomes were recognizably domish but they quickly came to be built in whatever shape was most suitable to their location and application: pure spheres, planars and geodesic spheres are common.  When used on aircraft, the structures need to be sufficiently aerodynamic not to compromise performance, thus the early use of nose-cones as radomes and on larger airframes, dish-like devices have been fashioned.

North American Sabre:  F-86A (left) and F-86D with black radome (right).

Introduced in 1947, the North American F-86 Sabre was the US Air Force’s (USAF) first swept-wing fighter and the last trans-sonic platform used as a front-line interceptor.  Although as early as 1950 elements within the USAF were concerned it would soon be obsolete, it proved a solid, versatile platform and close to 10,000 were produced, equipping not on US & other NATO forces but also those of a remarkable number of other nations and some remained in front-line service until the 1990s.  In 1952, the F-86D was introduced which historians of military aviation regard as the definitive version.  As well as the large number of improvements typical of the era, an AN/APG-36 all-weather radar system was enclosed in a radome which resembled an enlarged version of the central bosses previously often used on propellers.

What lies beneath a radome: Heinkel He 219 Uhu with radar antennae array.

The size of the F-86D’s radome is indicative also that the now familiar tendency for electronic components to become smaller is nothing new.  Only a half decade before the F86-D first flew, Germany’s Heinkel He 219 Uhu had entered combat as a night-fighter, its most distinctive feature the array of radar antennae protruding from the nose.  The arrangement was highly effective but, needing to be as large as they were, a radome would have been impossible.  The He 219 was one of the outstanding airframes World War II (1969-1945) and of its type, at least the equal of anything produced by the Allies but it was the victim of the internal politics which bedevilled industrial and military developments in the Third Reich, something which wasn’t fully understood until some years after the end of hostilities.  Remarkably, although its dynamic qualities should have made volume production compelling, fewer than 300 were ever built, mainly because Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945): (1) was less inclined to allocate priorities to defensive equipment (attack always his preferred strategy) and (2) the debacle of the earlier Heinkel He 177 Gref heavy bomber (which he described as “the worst junk ever manufactured) had made him distrustful of whatever the company did.

Peak dagmar: 1955 Cadillac Series 62 Coupe de Ville.

As early as 1941, the US car industry had with enthusiasm taken to adorning the front of their vehicles with decorative conical devices they intended to summon in the minds of buyers the imagery of speeding artillery shells, then something often seen in popular publications.  However, in the 1950s, the hardware of the jet-age became the motif of choice but the protuberances remained, some lasting even into the next decade.  They came to be known as “dagmars” because of the vague anatomical similarity to one of the early stars of television but the original inspiration really had been military field ordnance.  Cadillac actually abandoned the use of dagmars in their 1959 models (a rare example of restraint that year) but concurrent with that, they also toured the show circuit with the Cadillac Cyclone (XP-74) concept car.

1959 Cadillac Cyclone (XP-74) concept car.

Although it was powered by the corporation’s standard 390 cubic inch (6.5 litre) V8, there was some adventurous engineering including a rear-mounted automatic transaxle and independent rear suspension (using swing axles, something not as bad as it sounds given the grip of tyres at the time) but few dwelt long on such things, their attention grabbed by features such as the bubble top canopy (silver coated for UV protection) which opened automatically in conjunction with the electrically operated sliding doors.

1958 Edsel Citation Convertible (left) and 1964 GM-X Stiletto, a General Motors (GM) "dream car" built for the 1964 New York World's Fair.

Most innovative however was a feature which wouldn’t reach volume production until well into the twenty-first century: Borrowing from the North American F86-D Sabre, two radomes were fitted at the front, housing antennae for a radar-operated collision avoidance system (ROCAS) which fed to the driver information on object which lay in the vehicle’s path including distance and the length it would take to brake, audible signals and a warning lights part of the package.  Unfortunately, as was often the case with the concept cars, the crash avoidance system didn't function, essentially because the electronics required for it to be useful would not for decades become available.  As the dagmars had, the Cyclone’s twin radomes attracted the inevitable comparisons but given the sensor and antennae technology of the time, two were apparently demanded although, had Cadillac more slavishly followed the F-86D and installed a single central unit, the response might have been even more ribald, the frontal styling of the doomed Edsel then still being derisively compared to female genitalia; cartoonists would have had fun with a Cyclone so equipped seducing an Edsel.  In 1964, there's never been anything to suggest GM's designers were thinking of the anatomical possibilities offered by an Edsel meeting a Stiletto.

Paste

Paste (pronounced peyst)

(1) A mixture of flour and water, often with starch or the like, used as a glue to cause paper or other material to adhere to something.

(2) Any soft, smooth material or preparation which has characteristics of plasticity.

(3) In cooking and baking, a transitional state of some doughs, especially when prepared with shortening, as used for making pie crust and other types of pastry.

(4) Any of various semisoft fruit confections of pliable consistency (almond paste; guava paste etc).

(5) In manufactured food, a preparation of fish, tomatoes, or other food reduced to a smooth, soft mass, as for a relish or for seasoning (eg fish-paste).

(6) In pasta making, a transitional phase during preparation.

(7) A mixture of clay, water etc, for making pottery or porcelain.

(8) In jewelry manufacture, a brilliant, heavy hard lead (glass), (as strass), used for making artificial gems; an artificial gem of this material.

(9) In slang, a hard smack, blow, or punch, especially on the face; used figuratively (usually as “a pasting”) to describe a decisive defeat by a large margin in political, commercial or sporting contexts.

(10) In narcotics production, a by-product of the cocaine refinement process, later sold as a product and the basis for other forms.

(11) To fasten or stick with paste or the like.

(12) To cover with something applied by means of paste.

(13) In computers, to insert something cut or copied (text, images, links etc) into a file.

(14) In physics, a substance which behaves as a solid until a sufficiently large load or stress is applied, at which point it assumes the characteristics of a fluid.

(15) In mineralogy, the mineral substance in which other minerals are embedded.

(16) An alternative name for both pasta and pastry (both long obsolete).

1350–1400: From the Middle English paste (dough for the making of bread or pastry), from the Middle French paste (dough, pastry (and source of the French pâte)), from the Late Latin pasta (dough, pastry cake, paste), from the Ancient Greek πάστα pastē, pásta & pastá (barley porridge), a noun use of the neuter plural of pastós, verbid of pássein (to strew, to sprinkle).  The sense of a "glue mixture, a dough used as a plaster seal" dates from circa 1400, the meaning extended by circa 1600 to "a composition just moist enough to be soft without liquefying".  The use to refer to the heavy glass (made from ground quartz etc) and used most often costume jewelry (imitation gem stones) began in the 1600s.  A pasta was originally a kind of gruel sprinkled with salt, gaining the name probably by association with baste.  Paste is a doublet of pasta and patty.  Paste had actually been in use as a surname since the mid-twelfth century.  The present participle pasting and the past participle pasted & pasted.  In the context of adhesive agents, the synonyms include cement, fix, gum, plaster, stickum & glue.

The verb paste (to stick with paste or cement) dates from the 1560s and was derived from the noun, the meaning "apply paste to, cover by pasting over" emerging circa 1600.  The slang sense "hit hard" was first noted in 1846, probably an alteration of baste (in the sense of "beat" and thus related in meaning to lambaste) influenced by some sense of paste.  The form in the Middle English was pasten (to make a paste of; bake in a pastry).  The noun “paste-up” was first used in 1930 in the printing trades to refer to "a plan of a page with the position of text, illustrations etc indicated", a direct formalization of the oral phrase, the adoption of the “pasteboard” on which the positions were marked, a simultaneous development (since the 1540s, pasteboard had been a type of thick paper, gaining the name from the original method of construction being several single sheets pasted together).  The term pastiness (resembling paste in consistence or color) dates from the 1650s and was typically applied to someone looking slightly grey (a la the flour & water mix of paste) and thus ill, rather than someone with a pale complexion.

Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Paste Magazine is a monthly music and entertainment digital publication, the evolution of which is emblematic of the effect the internet has exerted on the industry.  Taking advantage of the low-cost entry to global distribution offered by the conjunction of weightless production and the roll-out of broadband, Paste began in 1998 as a website which, as revenue grew, was able, between 2002-2010, to expand to include glossy print editions.  However, the decline in subscriptions and the always low newsstand sales forced it, like many, to revert to an exclusively on-line presence.  Focused on its target demographic, the content is what some analysts describe as: “middlebrow pop-culture, beyond a fanzine, short of academic analysis.”

The pastry in the sense of “food made with or from paste or having it as a principal ingredient” was first described as such in the mid-fifteenth century although as a dish, it’s an ancient recipe.  It wasn’t originally limited to sweet & fruit-filled creations and the adoption by the Middle English paste is thought to have been influenced by the Old French pastoierie (pastry (source of the Modern French pâtisserie)), from pastoier (pastry cook) or else the Medieval Latin pasteria (pastry).  There had been pastry cooks and chefs since the 1650s but the now-familiar specific sense of "small confection made of pastry" didn’t become standardized until the years immediately before the First World War (1914-1918).  Toothpaste (also as tooth-paste) was first sold in 1832.  Earlier there had been tooth-powder (from the 1540s) and tooth-soap (circa 1600), both of which followed the tradition method used for centuries to make a paste for cleaning which was to mix powdered charcoal (or soot) with salt and water until the desired consistency was achieved.

The adjectival sense “cut-and-paste” (made or composed by piecing together existing parts) actually pre-dates computers, noted first in 1938 to refer to edited photographs (also known as ”trick photography”).  The phrase was borrowed in the mid-late 1950s to describe either outright plagiarism or work created variously in haste, carelessly, or without any sense of originally or inspiration and was applied especially to journalism.  The companion term “copy and paste” in the 1970s joined “cut and paste” as technology evolved; in the 1980s, the two processes were integrated into computer operating systems, the two steps usually mediated by the user.  To illustrate the practice, this blog makes great use of "copy and paste", reveals little which is original and seems not at all inspired.  

Rubber pasties on dagmars: 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham.

Pasties were adhesive patches women wore over the nipples, the purpose either (1) to permit exotic dancers to perform while still conforming with local ordinances or (2) as a modesty device to prevent unwanted protrusions through clothing; the devices had been long available but were first recorded as being sold using the plural diminutive from the verb in 1957 and a rubber analogue was sometimes used on the dagmars which had been added to US automobiles since the 1940s.  Often supposed to have been inspired by the propeller hubs of twin-engined fighter aircraft, the designers were actually invoking the motif of a speeding artillery shell and it was only later they came to be associated with anything anatomical.  By the mid-1950s they'd developed to become increasingly large and prominent, the dagmar’s rubber pastie protecting both the device and whatever (or whomever) it might hit.

Packed as a tablet and approved by the US FDA (Federal Drug Administration) in April 2019, Gelesis’s (a biotech company) Plenity is an oral, non-systemic, superabsorbent hydrogel developed for the treatment of overweight and obesity.  It's listed by the FDA as a medical device rather than a medicine because it achieves its primary intended purpose through mechanical modes of action.  The content of the tablets is made with citric acid and cellulose to create a non-toxic paste.

Gelesis released Plenity into a buoyant market for tech stocks, underwritten by a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Corporation).  Results however, dependent essentially on commission-based sales staff marketing the paste pills directly to family doctors (GPs), proved disappointing and in early 2022 the company announced layoffs.  In common with many tech stocks, valuations of the so-called "SPAC merger deals", sharply have plummeted.

Good things can be wrapped or covered in pastry.  Lindsay Lohan’s chicken pot pie with leeks and veal meatballs appears in Jamie’s Friday Night Feast Cookbook (Penguin Books, 2018).  It serves 8.

Ingredients

2 onions
2 carrots
2 small potatoes
2 medium leeks
Olive oil
300g free-range chicken thighs, skin off, bone out
300g skinless boneless free-range chicken breast
4 rashers of higher-welfare smoked streaky bacon
1 knob of unsalted butter
50g plain flour
700ml organic chicken stock
2 tablespoons English mustard
1 heaped tablespoon creme fraiche
A ½ bunch (15g) of fresh woody herbs
White pepper
3 sprigs of fresh sage
300g minced higher-welfare veal (20% fat)
1 large free-range egg
300g plain flour, plus extra for dusting (for pastry)
100g shredded suet (for pastry)
100g unsalted butter (cold) (for pastry)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 180C (350F).  Peel and roughly chop the onions and carrots, then peel the potatoes and chop into 2cm (¾ inch) chunks.  Trim, halve and wash the leeks, then finely slice.

Place a large pan on a medium heat with one tablespoon of oil.  Chop chicken into 3cm (1¼ inch) chunks, roughly chop bacon and add both to the pan.  Cook for a few minutes, or until lightly golden. A dd the onions, carrots, potatoes and leeks, then cook for a further 15 minutes or until softened.  Add the butter, then stir in the flour to coat.

Gradually pour in the stock, then add the mustard and creme fraiche.  Tie the woody herb sprigs together with string to make a bouquet garni and add to the pan. Cook for 10 more minutes, stirring regularly, then season with white pepper.

Meanwhile, for the pastry, put the flour and a good pinch of sea salt into a bowl with the suet; cube and add the butter. Using the thumb and forefingers, rub the fat into the flour until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs.

Slowly stir in 100ml of ice-cold water, then use the hands to bring it together into a ball without over-working.  Wrap in clingfilm and place in the fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes, during which, make the meatballs.

Pick and finely chop the sage, season with salt and pepper, then with the hands scrunch and mix with the veal.  Roll into 3cm (1¼ inch) balls, gently place in a large pan on a medium heat with half a tablespoon of oil and cook for 10 minutes or until golden all over, jiggling occasionally for even cooking.

Transfer the pie filling to a large (250 x 300mm (10-12 inch)) oval dish, discarding the bouquet garni.  Leave to cool, then dot the meatballs on top.

Roll out pastry on a clean, flour-dusted surface until it's slightly bigger than pie dish. Eggwash edges of dish, then place the pastry on top of the pie, trimming off any overhang, pinching the edges to seal and make a small incision in the centre. Use any spare pastry to decorate the pie if preferred.  Eggwash the top, bake for 50 minutes or until the pastry is golden and the pie is piping hot.  Leave to stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Solidifying coca paste.

As late as the mid-1970s, in the United States, the medical establishment and scientists working the field entertained few concerns about cocaine, essentially because (1) thousands of years of use in South & Central America suggested the base ingredient was not harmful, (2) there were any number of narcotics flooding the US market which were of greater concern, (3) cocaine was anyway so expensive that it was used only by a tiny number of people and (4) alcohol and tobacco use produced outcomes in society a thousand time worse (doctors emphasizing the last two points by pointing out that while clinicians would regularly see cirrhosis of the liver, most would spend their entire careers never seeing a case induced by vintage champagne).

Indeed, in the late 1970s, the only people concerned about cocaine use in the US seemed to be politicians who equated the drug’s widespread depiction in film and television as a glamorized thing associated with wealth, power and decadence, with an actual popularity of consumption.  Hence the origins of the moral panic around cocaine, something perhaps inevitable after the white power was “rediscovered” earlier in the decade after being barely noticed by law enforcement agencies since the 1940s.  Many US scientists even advocated legalization.  What changed both the concerns and the consequences in the US was paste.  Known in Peru and Bolivia as pasta basica de cocaina (or more commonly) basé or basuco, paste was a glutinous substance that oozed from the solvent-soaked coco leaves during the manufacture of the white powder ultimately sold in North America, Europe and other first-world markets.  Once discarded as a unwanted by-product, those with access to the paste had begun drying it to crumble in cigarettes.  Smoked, it was absorbed almost instantly through the air sacs of the lungs (which have the surface area the size of a tennis court) a vastly more efficient mechanism compared with the nasal membranes which are the passage for the traditional "snorting" of cocaine.  Reaching the brain within twenty seconds, the difference was extraordinary, users reporting a hit which offered an intensity of pleasure like no other.  Unfortunately, there was a price to pay, the rush lasting only minutes, replaced as it dissipated by a craving as intense as the initial experience had been, addiction instantaneous.

Paste however wasn’t suitable for distribution in rich markets because it truly was an industrial waste product with side-effects, containing residues of not only the toxic solvents used in the process such as kerosene and battery acid but stuff as diverse as lead and cement dust.  What was needed was a marketable, mass-produced form of paste because it had which had the two characteristics which cocaine lacked, an intense high and an irresistible addictiveness (like LSD, cocaine really isn’t addictive).  The solution emerged in the US in the early 1970s in a relatively straight-forward process which removed the hydrochloride salt from the refined powder, thereby freeing the cocaine base which could be heated and inhaled, hence the slang “freebasing”.  Chemically however, that was inefficient and made no economic sense so freebasing remained restricted to dealers, chemists (amateur & professional) or those with a lot of disposable income so inclined.

Rare though the economics of the early process made use, the consequences were noted and it was clear to researchers that if ever it became possible to produce an inhalable paste at scale and a lower price, there would be an epidemic of use.  A combination of circumstances, including the change by the Carter administration (1977-1981) of long-practiced US policies towards the helpful (if distasteful) administrations in Central America and the subsequent actions of the Reagan administration (1981-1989) in the region, meant that’s exactly what happened.  By the early 1980s, increases in volumes and improvements in distribution had seem the street price of cocaine in the US collapse, inducing producers to create a variation of paste, “crack” cocaine (named because of the sound it made while being consumed) which could be sold in tiny, conveniently packaged quantities to a vastly expanded market which, given the extraordinarily addictive properties, created its own inertia.  As a business model, it was good; cheap, transportable and enjoying a long shelf life, crack was highly profitable and the scourge of many US cities for more than a decade after the early 1980s.  Crack transformed the demographics of cocaine consumption in the US; what had been the preserve of an upper-middle class elite shifted to be the choice of the lowest-income communities and the effects were profound, including a reaction to the disparity in sentencing between the few cocaine users actually prosecuted and those imposed on huge numbers of crack users.

Still controversial are the allegations the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved with the distribution of crack in US cities as a by-product of the need to generate the funds needed to help effect regime change in Nicaragua, the money needed after the Congress shut off US assistance to the Contras, the rebel movement opposing the Sandinista government (which begat also the Iran-Contragate scandal).  An internal CIA investigation found that while there had been some involvement in trafficking narcotics to fund the Contras, there was nothing to link the agency with distribution in US cities.  Journalist Gary Webb's (1955-2004) 1998 book about the allegations (Dark Alliance) is an engaging but difficult read (a companion dramatis personae would help).  It covers so much that unless one is an expert in the history of the trade, it's hard to draw conclusions.  Relying on the reviews, one is inclined to be skeptical about many of the linkages he made.