Leftover

Leftover (pronounced left-oh-ver)

(1) Usually as leftovers; food remaining uneaten at the end of a meal, especially when saved for later use.

(2) Anything left or remaining from a larger amount; remainder.

(3) A casual (and disparaging) term used in the People's Republic of China to describe women still un-married after the age of twenty-six. 

1878: A compound word left + over; the construct being a noun use of verb phrase left over.  The meaning is always in the sense of left (“remaining, abandoned”) + over (“excess”).  Left is from the Middle English left, luft, leoft, lift & lyft, from the Old English left & lyft (air, atmosphere) from the Proto-Germanic luft with which may be compared the compared the Scots left (left), the North Frisian lefts, left & leefts (left), the West Frisian lofts (left), the dialectal Dutch loof (weak, worthless), and the Low German lucht (left).  Over is from the Middle English over from the Old English ofer from the Proto-Germanic uber (over), from the primitive Indo-European upér, a comparative form of upo; akin to the Dutch over, the German ober & über, the Danish over, the Norwegian over, the Swedish över, the Icelandic yfir, the Faroese yvir, the Gothic ufar, the Latin super, the Ancient Greek ὑπέρ (hupér), the Albanian upri (group of peasants) and the Sanskrit उपरि (upári).  The hyphenated left-over (remaining, not used up) is from 1890 as a noun meaning "something left over" is from 1891.  The sense of (the almost always plural) leftovers “excess food after a meal" (especially if re-served later) dates from 1878.  In this sense, Old English had metelaf.

Leftover women

Sheng nu (剩女; shèngnǚ), most often translated as "leftover women" is a phrase (usually considered derogatory), which describes Chinese women who remain unmarried by their late twenties.  First promulgated by the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) as a promotion of government programmes, it’s been used in other countries but remains most associated with People's Republic of China (PRC).  As a demographic phenomenon, it was once unexpected because the conjunction of the PRC's one-child policy and the disproportionate abortion of female foetuses had led to a distortion in the historic gender balance.  Births in China since the one-child policy was introduced in 1979 have averaged 120 males for every 100 females compared to a global ratio of 103:107.

A bride with four suspected leftovers.

The term appears to have entered common-use in 2005-2006 and seems first to have appeared in the Chinese edition of Cosmopolitan.  Unlike most of Cosmopolitan’s editorial content, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took it seriously and instructed the ACWF (a kind of cross between the CWA (Country Women’s Association) and the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) to publish articles stigmatizing women still unwed by their late twenties.  Borrowing from Maoist tradition (if not theory), the ACWF provided a useful analysis of the problem, concluding that while “pretty girls” didn’t need much education to find a rich partner, “average or ugly” ones who seek higher degrees thinking it will “increase their competitiveness” in the marriage market are delusional; all that happens is they become old “…like yellowed pearls."  The rhetorical flourishes aside, they had a point.  As the numbers of highly educated women rose, the numbers of potential husbands they found acceptable did not.  What the distorted gender balance created by the one-child policy and the selective-sex abortion preferences had produced was an increasingly educated and middle-class female minority not impressed by a less schooled and more rural male majority. 

Geographic distribution of leftover women, People’s Republic of China.

“Leftover women” seemed the choice in print but on the internet, the punchier 3S or 3SW (Single, Seventies (referring to the then prominent 1970s birth cohort) and Stuck) was also used instead of sheng nu.  There is an equivalent term for men, guang gun (bare branches (ie men who do not marry and thus do not add branches to the family tree)); shengnan (leftover men) does exist but is rare.

CCP demographers had expressed concerns about the social and economic implications of the one-child policy as early as the 1990s.  In the new century, the policy was first selectively relaxed, then revised to permit additional children for those selected by the CCP as desirable breeders and, on 31 May 2021, at a meeting of the of the CCP Politburo, the three-child policy (三孩政策) was announced.  The session, chaired by Xi Jinping (b 1953; CCP general secretary 2012- & PRC president 2013-), followed the release of the findings of the seventh national population census which showed the number of births in mainland China in 2020, at twelve million, would be the lowest since 1960, an indication of the demographic trend causing the ageing of the population.  The Xinhua state news agency then announced the three child policy would be accompanied by supportive measures to “maintain China's advantage in human resources” but surveys suggested the section of the population the CCP would like to see produce three children per household were generally unwilling to have even two, the reason overwhelmingly the high cost of living in Chinese cities.  The announcement on 26 July 2021 permitting Chinese couples to have any number of children was thus greeted by most with restrained enthusiasm.

Leftover no longer: Lindsay Lohan's engagement ring.  Ms Lohan announced her engagement in 2021, marring the following year.  In 2023, a post confirmed reports of her pregnancy. 

The problem of re-production is not restricted to the PRC, the birth rate in South Korea now down to around .8 per woman while a rate around 2.1 is necessary if the population is to be sustained.  What exacerbates the problem in the PRC is the simple lack of women of child-bearing age, caused by the distorted male/female live-birth rates in the decades following the imposition of the one-child policy and any vague hope the long stretches of lock-downs may have encouraged procreation were not realized.  Despite that disappointment, the CCP wasn't discouraged and embarked on a new propaganda campaign making it clear to young women that having babies was part of their patriotic duty to the motherland: pregnancy was now compulsory.  In the West, the decline in the birth rate has for some time been thought a problem, largely because of the impending acceleration in the distortion between those of working age (paying into the system) and those not generating income (extracting from the system).  Of late however, influenced by the un-anticipated rapidity in the advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, theorists are re-visiting the models and pondering the implications.

Pencil

Pencil (pronounced pen-suhl)

(1) A slender tube, usually of wood, metal or plastic containing a core or strip of graphite (still referred to as lead) or a solid coloring material, sharpened to some extent, used for writing or drawing.

(2) A stick of cosmetic coloring material for use on the eyebrows, eyelids etc.

(3) Anything shaped or used like a pencil, as a stick of medicated material.

(4) In optics (from the seventeenth century), an aggregate or collection of rays of light, especially when diverging from or converging to a point.

(5) In geometry (from the nineteenth century), a set of geometric objects with a common property, such as the set of lines that pass through a given point in a projective plane.

(6) As a verb, to pencil in, to schedule or list tentatively, as or as if by writing down in pencil rather than in more permanent ink.

(7) In animation, as pencil-test, a first take of pictures, historically on black and white film stock, now emulated in software; also used to describe a test which assesses the viability of bralessness.

(8) In medicine, a small medicated bougie (from the nineteenth century and now archaic).

(9) A paintbrush (from the fourteenth century and now archaic).

1350–1400: From the Middle English pencel (an artist’s fine brush of camel hair, used for painting, manuscript illustration etc), from the Anglo-Norman and Old French pincil (artist's paintbrush) from the Old & Middle French pincel from the Medieval Latin pincellus, from the Latin pēnicillum & pēnicillus (painter's brush, hair-pencil (literally "little tail"), a diminutive of pēniculus (brush), a diminutive of penis (tail).  It’s from the old French variant pincel that Modern French gained pinceau (paintbrush).  The verb pencil emerged early in the sixteenth century as pencellen (apply (gold or silver) in manuscript illustration) and by the 1530s was being used in the sense of “to mark or sketch with a pencil-brush”, extended to work undertaken with lead pencils from the 1760s.  Despite the obvious similarity, there is no relationship with the word pen.  The obsolete alternative spelling was pensill.  Pencil is a noun, verb & adjective; the noun plural is pencils.

Pencils are produced in quite a variety and specialized types include the carpenter's pencil, the wax (or china) pencil, and the color pencil although what’s more precisely defined are the technical descriptions based on the specification of the graphite (HB, 2B etc), used to rate darkness and hardness.  A propelling pencil is one with a replaceable and mechanically extendable lead that wears away with use, designed to provide lines of constant thickness without requiring sharpening and typically featuring a small eraser at the end opposite the tip.  Pencil pouches and pencil cases are containers in which one stores ones pencils and related items (pencil sharpener, eraser et al); by convention a pouch was made of a soft material while cases tended to be fashioned from some hard substance (steel, wood, plastic etc) but the terms are used loosely.  A kohl pencil (also called an eyeliner pencil) is one with a kohl core (which can be sharpened in the usual manner) used for enhancing the eyes.  The golf pencil was originally designed for golfers and was about three inches (75 mm) in length though they’re now commonly used in situations where pencil turnover is high (election booths, gambling houses etc).  Pencil sharpeners are available in a variety of forms which range from the very simple (and cheap) to elaborate mechanical and electro-mechanical devices which can be expensive.  Good quality versions of any sharpener all produce exactly the same result but the more intricate (sometimes wondrously complex just to flaunt the engineering) do make popular gifts for nerds.  Pencil sharpeners seem only to have existed since 1854; prior to then, a knife or some other sharp blade was used.

School pencils are a useful way to convey important messages to children.

The pencil skirt is a close-fitting garment which classically was knee to calf length.  In explosives, a pencil detonator (also called a time pencil) is a timed fuse designed to be connected to a detonator or short length of safety fuse.  Pencil-thin is a term (usually in admiration) for an especially slender woman but it can be applied to any thin object (synonymous with stick-thin, thought to be a clipping of the earlier zoological phrase stick insect thin).  The phrase power of the pencil is from professional gambling and refers to an authority to charge a punter's gambling or other bills to the casino (the house).  The lead in one's pencil is slang which referred to the state of erection of one's penis; to put the lead into one’s pencil referred to some form of stimulation which induced such an erection.  To pencil something in is to make a tentative booking or arrangement (on the notion of being erasable as opposed to using ink which suggests permanence or something confirmed); the phrase has been in use only since 1942.  The derogatory slang pencil-pusher (office worker) dates from 1881; prior to that such folk had since 1820 been called pen-drivers, the new form reflecting the arrival at scale of mass-produced pencils.  The derogatory pencil neck (weak person) was first noted in 1973.

Lindsay Lohan in pencil skirts: The pencil skirt can be thought the companion product to the bandage dress; while a bandage dress ends usually above the knee (the more pleasing sometimes far above) a pencil skirt typically falls to the knee or is calf-length.

Technical terms for the grips with which a pencil is held.

The test pencil is a device with a small bulb or other form of illumination which lights up when an active current is detected.  Available in many voltages (the most common being 12, 24, 48 (for automotive and other low-voltage applications) and 110/120 & 220/240v), they work either by direct contact with the wire through which the current passes or (through the insulation) as a proximity device.  The "test pencil" should not be confused with the "pencil test" which is either (1) in animation, an early version of an animated scene, consisting of rough sketches that are photographed or scanned (now overtaken by technology which emulates the process in software and almost obsolete but the term is still used by graphic artists to describe conceptual sketches or rough takes), (2) in apartheid-era South Africa, a method of determining racial identity, based on how easily a pencil pushed through a person's hair could be removed and (3) a test to determine the necessity (some concede on the advisability) of wearing a bra, based on whether a pencil placed in the infra-mammary fold stays in place with no assistance (which sounds standardized but sources vary about whether the pencil test should be performed with the arms by the side or raised which can significantly affect the result.

The pencil test: In the West this photograph would be graded "fail"; in China it’s a "pass".

Although it sounds a quintessentially TikTok thing and did trend in 2016, the year the Chinese version of TikTok was released, re-purposing of the pencil test by Chinese women as the “true womanhood” test actually pre-dated the platform.  Like the best trends it was quick and simple and required only the most basic piece of equipment: a pencil (although a pen would do).  The procedure was the classic pencil test used to determine the viability of bralessness but, unlike the occidental original where the pencil falling to the ground was graded a “pass”, in the oriental version, that’s a “fail”, the implement having to sit securely in place to prove one is “a real woman”.  Millions of images were uploaded to Chinese social media channels as proof the challenge had been passed; this presumably will assist in ensuring one doesn’t become a leftover woman.

Prototype Dornier 17 V1, 1934.

One of terms of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), imposed on Germany after the World War I was that it was denied an air force.  Those familiar with the operations of sanctions in the twenty-first century will not be surprised that within a few years, there were significant developments in German civil aviation including gliding clubs which would provide the early training of many pilots who would subsequently join the Luftwaffe, even before the open secret of the organization’s existence formerly was acknowledged in 1935.  Additionally, under arrangements with Moscow which were well-concealed, German pilots underwent training in the Soviet Union, one of the many programmes in a remarkably flourishing industry of military exchanges undertaken even during periods of notable political tension.  In those years, the German aircraft industry also had its work-arounds, sometimes undertaking research, development and production in co-operation with manufacturers in other countries and sometime producing aircraft notionally for civil purposes but which could easily re-purposed for military roles.  An example was the Dornier Do 17, nicknamed the “flying pencil” in an allusion to the slender fuselage.

Battle of Britain era Dornier Do17 E, 1940.

In 1934, Dornier’s initial description of the Do 17 as a passenger plane raised a few eyebrows in air ministries around the continent but in an attempt to justify the ruse, the company submitted the design to Deutsche Luft Hansa, the airline admiring the speed and flying characteristics but rejecting the proposal on the reasonable grounds the flying pencil had hardly any room for passengers.  To all observers, the thing was obviously a prototype bomber and one of the fastest and most advanced in the world but to maintain the subterfuge, Dornier instead claimed it was now a “fast mail transport”.  That fooled few but so soon after the Great War, there was little appetite in Europe for confrontation so Dornier was able to continue to develop the Do 17 as a bomber, adding a glazed nose, provision for internal armament and an internal bomb bay.

Dornier Do 217 E, 1943.

The deployment as part of the Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) provided valuable information in both battle tactics and the need for enhanced defensive armaments and it was these lessons which were integrated into the upgraded versions which formed a part of the Luftwaffe’s bomber and reconnaissance forces at the start of World II.  They provided useful service in the early campaigns against Poland, Norway & the Low Countries but the limitations were exposed when squadrons were confronted by the advanced fighters of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the Battle of Britain (July-September 1940).  However, in the absence of a better alternative, they played an important part in the early successes Germany enjoyed in the invasion of the Soviet Union but such was the rapidity technological advances that by 1942 the Do 17 was obsolescent and withdrawn from front-line service, relegated to training and other ancillary roles.  The slim frame which had in 1934 helped provide the flying pencil with its outstanding performance now became a limitation, preventing further development even as a night-fighter, the role assigned in those years to many airframes no longer suitable for daytime operations.  Its successor, the Do 217 was notably fatter in the fuselage but even it was soon rendered obsolete and by 1944 had been withdrawn from front-line service.

Persian pencil place.

Mohammed Rafieh opened Medad Rafi in Tehran in 1990, specializing in color pencils.  The stock numbers in the thousands but Mr Rafieh has no need for databases, barcodes or lists of part-numbers, having committed to memory the place of every pencil in his shop which is said to include every known color available anywhere in the world.  Mr Rafieh's shop is located in the vast bazaar which sits between the two mosques in Tehran's district 15.  Medad (مداد) is the Persian for pencil and Rafi the affectionate diminutive of Rafieh so in translation the shop is thus "Rafi's Pencils".

Mr Rafieh at work.

The pencil in its modern, mass-produced form is surprisingly modern.  Quills made from bird feathers and small brushes with bristles from a variety of creatures were used long before chalk or lead pencils.  Sticks of pure graphite (commonly (if chemically inaccurately) known as "black lead") were used in England for marking stuff from the mid sixteenth century while the wooden enclosure was a contemporary innovation from the Continent and it seems to have been in this era the word pencil was transferred from a type of brush to the newly encapsulated "graphite writing implement".  The modern clay-graphite mix, essentially little different to that still in use, was developed in the early nineteenth century, mass-production beginning in mid century, something made possible by the availability of cheap, precision machine tools.  The inventor of the handy innovation of an eraser being attached to the end opposite the sharpened lead was granted a patent in 1858.

The Faber-Castell production process.

Knownothingism

Knownothingism (pronounced noh-nuhth-ing-is-uhm)

A humorous coining to describe the American Party (1855 on) based on a stock reply the members were instructed to use if asked probing questions.

1855: A compound word, know + nothing+ -ism.  Know is from the Middle English knowen, from the Old English cnāwan (to know, perceive, recognise), from the Proto-Germanic knēaną (to know), from the primitive Indo-European ǵneh- (to know).  Nothing is from the Middle English noon thing, non thing, na þing, nan thing & nan þing, from the Old English nāþing & nān þing (nothing (literally “not any thing”)) and was equivalent to no +‎ thing (and can be compared with the Old English nāwiht (nothing (literally “no thing”)) and the Swedish ingenting (nothing (literally “not any thing”, “no thing”)).  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).

Knowing nothing

A nineteenth century US political phenomenon, the Know Nothing Party was originally a secret society known as the Order of the Star Spangled Banner (OSSB) which, like organisations such as the Freemasons or the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d’Or, featured rites of initiation, passwords, hand signs and demanded of its members a solemn pledge never to betray the order.  One practical measure was an instruction to members, if asked probing questions about the society, to answer only “I know nothing.”  The phrase was widely reported and members of the OSSB, despite many name-changes, were always known as “the know nothings”.  As a tactic in politics, there is much to commend it, as easy as it is for one to talk one’s way into trouble, it’s easier still to avoid it by saying nothing.

The roots of the party lay in New York City politics, emerging in 1843 as the American Republican Party, spawning a number of forks in different states which in 1853 merged, becoming the OSSB.  In this form, seeking national influence, it was re-branded, firstly in 1854 as the Native American Party and a year later, the American Party.  Sounding surprisingly modern, Trumpesque even, (as opposed to emulating Crooked Hillary Clinton which would be described as "knoweverythingism") the platform supported deportation of foreign beggars and criminals, a twenty-one year naturalization period for immigrants and mandatory Bible reading in schools.  Their stated aim was to restore their vision of what America should look like: a society underpinned by temperance, Protestantism and self-reliance with the American nationality and work ethic enshrined as the nation's highest values; a kind of Make America Great Again vibe.  Their especial concern was the infiltration of Roman Catholics and the influence of the Pope and they advocated the dismissal of all Catholics from public office.  In this vein, their catchy campaign slogan was “Rum, Romanism and Ruin”.

The Know Nothings in Louisiana (2018) by By Marius M. Carriere Jr, University Press of Mississippi, 230pp.

The Know Nothings were the American political system’s first major third party. In the early nineteenth century, the two parties leftover from the revolution were the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans.  Later would come the National Republicans, the Whigs, the Democrats and the Republicans but it was the Know Nothings which filled the political vacuum even as the Whigs were disintegrating.  They were the first party to leverage economic concerns over immigration as a major part of their platform and though short-lived, the values and positions of the Know Nothings ultimately contributed to the two-party system which has characterised US politics since the 1860s.

Vegan

Vegan (pronounced vee-guhn or vey-guhn)

(1) A vegetarian who omits all animal products from their diet and does not use animal-based or sourced products such as leather or wool.

(2) Someone from Vega, towns in Scandinavia, the US or (mostly in fiction) other places so named.

(3) A collective name adopted in the 1980s by fans of the singer-songwriter, Suzanne Vega (b 1959).

1944: A modern English construct, veg (contraction of vegetable) + an, coined by Donald Watson (1910-2005) to distinguish those who abstain from all animal products (eggs, cheese, etc) from those who merely refuse to eat the animals.  The -an suffix occurred originally in adjectives borrowed from Latin, formed from nouns denoting places (Roman; urban) or persons (Augustan) but now productively forms English adjectives by extension of the Latin pattern.  The suffix an, and its variant ian also occurs in a set of personal nouns, mainly loanwords from French, denoting one who engages in, practices, or works with the referent of the base noun (historian; theologian); this usage especially productive with nouns ending in ic (electrician; logician; technician ).  Vegan is a noun & adjective, vegansexual is a noun and veganism, vegansexualism & veganist are nouns; the noun plural is vegans.

Donald Watson was an English animal rights advocate who founded The Vegan Society in 1944.  Although the actual establishment of the society was either 5 or 12 November (the records are contradictory), World Vegan Day is each year celebrated on 1 November.  In 1984, a dissident faction broke from the group and formed The Movement for Compassionate Living and ever since, veganism has been a contested space, the factions including (1) radicals who pursue direct action against the slaughter industry and its customers, (2) purists who exclude to whatever extent possible the presence of animal products in their lives while variously tolerating, ignoring or disapproving of those who don't and (3), vegetarians who can't resist nice handbags and shoes.  Latest vegan news here. 

The Sexual Politics of Meat

While still an undergraduate at the University of Rochester, Carol J Adams (b 1951) was instrumental in having women's studies courses added to the syllabus.  A long-time vegan, she later gained a masters from Yale Divinity School but her core interest remained feminism and in 1990, building on earlier essays, she published The Sexual Politics of Meat, an exploration of her vegetarian-feminist, pacifist, intersectional critical theory.

Her most novel concept was the "absent referent", used to explain the consumption of meat and the objectification of women in pornography, the referent literally absent in the case of the life of the dismembered beast being consumed; metaphorically in the oppression of the life of the subjects of pornography.  Adams constructed parallels within the patriarchal system, men’s sense of entitlement over animals similar to their varying expectations of the right to abuse, exploit, or degrade women in the use of their bodies.  Structurally she noted, language is replete with terms and phrases which interchangeably can be used to describe either women or animals with a hierarchy of use based on speciesism depending on men’s perceptions of degrees of female attractiveness.  All such use she claimed, regardless of how else it could be classified, is hate speech.

Most graphic was the notion of the pornography of meat which drew a visual comparison between meat advertised for sale on shelves and the portrayal of women in various media; two different forms of consumption which use the same techniques of production and distribution.  Within the western consumer model, Adams found a construct of white male supremacy which relegated all others, different races, non-human animals and women, to inferior roles or places.

Linder Sterling in meat dress (1982).

Linder Sterling (b 1954) is a radical feminist artist.  In November 1982, as part of a punk performance in Manchester’s Haçienda club, she appeared in a dress made from meat, while packages of leftover raw meat wrapped in pornography were distributed to the audience.  The performance culminated with a quite aggressive critique of the exploitation of women which, at the time, seems genuinely to have been confronting.

Lady Gaga in meat dress (2010).

By 2010, the "waves" had made feminism diffuse, the inherently post-modern platform of social media had imposed on pop-culture an inevitable equivalency of value and there was perhaps no longer a capacity to shock, just to be photographed.  Lady Gaga’s (b 1986) meat dress (asymmetrical, with cowl–neck), worn at the MTV Video Music Awards is now remembered as just another outfit, named by many as the fashion statement of 2010.  While there was cultural comment, the piece's place in history is as a frock, not for any meaning, implied or inferred.  Lady Gaga though remained phlegmatic, quoted later as saying, "... it has many interpretations.”  She later clarified things by saying the meat dress wasn't significant as a piece of clothing but was intended as a comment on the state of the fashion industry and the importance of focusing on individuality and inner beauty rather than superficial appearances.  One implication may have related to impermanence; because the garment was made wholly from raw meat, it had to be preserved with chemicals before and after the event but there are limits to what's chemically possible and the parts of the garment which had decomposed were discarded before the remains were dried and a permanent coating applied.  The preserved dress has since been displayed.  Lady Gaga no longer wears "meat-based" clothing.  

Tash Peterson letting people know how sausages are made.

Something of a local legend in the world of vegan activism, Tash Peterson (b circa 1995) is an animal rights activist based in Perth, Australia.  Not actually in the militant extreme of the movement which engages in actual physical attacks on the personnel, plant & equipment of the industries associated with animal slaughter, Ms Peterson's form of direct action is the set-piece event, staged to produce images and video with cross-platform appeal, the footage she posts on social media freely available for re-distribution by the legacy media, her Instagram feed providing a sample of her work in various contexts. Ms Peterson is a vegansexual (a vegan who chooses to have sex or pursue sexual relationships only with other vegans).

Her events have included approaching people in the meat section of supermarkets, wearing a blood-soaked butcher's apron while carrying the simulated carcass of a chicken, donning a rather fetching cow-skin (presumably synthetic) bodysuit in front of a milk and yoghurt display while carrying a sign surmising the processes of industrial dairy farming in anthropomorphic terms, wearing bloodied clothing to fast food outlets while using a megaphone to address queues of customers, explaining the details of what's done to animals so they can enjoy their burgers and, eschewing even the sensible shoes she usually wears, adorned in nothing but a pair of knickers and liberally smeared with (what she claimed to be her own menstrual) blood, staging a protest in Perth's Louis Vuitton shop, shouting at the customers and calling them "animal abusers".

Tash Petersen on OnlyFans.

Ms Peterson was banned from all licensed venues in Western Australia after storming pubs and restaurants, her critique of course the content of the meals rather than their sometimes dubious quality; after that, she travelled briefly to the eastern states but has since returned to Perth.  She has an active and apparently lucrative account on OnlyFans with all that that implies but there is an element of animal rights activism even there so whether her two interests should be thought vertical or horizontal integration might be an interesting question for economic theorists.

Fellow club member Lindsay Lohan who remained a carnivore.

Veganism can be merely a personal choice and there are many who have adopted at least the dietary aspects simply because they believe there are benefits for their health but it can also be a political statement and political statements need publicity, the preferred modern form being the celebrity endorsement and if need be, one paid for.  In 2010, the animal rights organisation PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) offered to subsidize Lindsay Lohan's stint in rehab, on the condition she became a vegan.  For PETA, it was the chance to make the point that while undergoing treatment for substance addiction, Ms Lohan would be able also to rid herself "... of one more toxic substance: meat.", adding "As you know, a crucial part of any recovery is showing charity to others. One way to do this is to be kind to animals, the Earth, and your own body. You'll never regret it." 

Ms Lohan had previously attracted the attention of the organization, in 2008 making their "worst dressed list" after being photographed wearing fur.  According to E! Online, PETA offered to contribute US$20,000 towards the US50,000 cost of the court-ordered stay, half to be paid for adopting the vegan diet while in rehab, the remainder if the diet was followed for one year following her release.  The encourage acceptance of the offer, it was accompanied with a vegan-care pack including a DVD about the slaughter industry called Glass Walls (narrated by Paul McCartney (b 1942)) and a vegetarian/vegan starter kit.  While rehab went well, the offer apparently wasn't taken up and although she seems to now eschew fur, her Instagram feed continues to feature much leather (handbags & shoes) and meat (the odd recipe provided including a chicken pie and machboos, a favorite in the Middle East).

Burger

Burger (pronounced bur-ger or bur-gha)

(1) A clipping of hamburger.

(2) A disc-shaped food patty (or patty on a bun), sometimes containing ingredients other than beef including vegetarian concoctions.

(3) In Pakistani slang (usually derogatory), as burger or hamburger, a stereotypically well-off Pakistani aspiring to a westernized lifestyle.

(4) In Internet slang (apparently beginning on 4chan), an American (as in a white, US citizen); of or relating to Americans.

(5) In computer graphical user interfaces (GUIs), as hamburger button, an icon with three horizontal lines (the resemblance being to the stacked ingredients of a burger).  The hamburger label was applied retrospectively, the original idea being to represent a list, the icon’s purpose being to open up a list of options; it’s thus also known as the “collapsed menu icon”.

1939: An invention of US English, extracted from hamburger by misunderstanding (ham + burger).  Use of the noun hamburger is not exclusive to fast food.  As early as 1616 it was noted as being the standard description both of someone “a native of the city of Hamburg" and also of ships “registered with Hamburg as their home port").  From 1838 it was the name of a black grape indigenous to Tyrolia and after 1857, a variety of hen.  Technically the meat product is a specific variation of shaped, ground beef (minced meat); as a meatball is a sphere and meatloaf is a rectangular cuboid, hamburgers (and burgers) are discs.

Co-incidence of names: Earl Warren (1891–1974; Chief Justice of the US 1953-1969 (right)), Richard Nixon (1913-1994; President of the US 1969-1974 (centre)) & Warren Earl Burger (1907–1995; Chief Justice of the US 1969-1986 (right), Washington DC, June 1969: Official photo released after the formal ceremony making Burger the fifteenth chief justice.  Neither judge, both appointed by Republican presidents, much pleased the conservatives and the state of the court today is the consequence of decades of pressure and some fortuitous timing in judicial expiry. 

Not that the burger is even exclusively fast food.  Some very expensive burgers have been created although, compared to their availability, there’s considerably less publicity about their sales.  As pieces of conspicuous consumption they must have a niche but Netherlands diner De Daltons‘ (Hoofdstraat 151, 3781AD, Voorthuizen) opted to couple indulgence with a good cause, the proceeds of their Golden Boy burger donated to the local food bank.  Emphasizing quality rather than sheer bulk, the Golden Boy was actually a good deal less hefty than some of the huge constructions burger chains in the US have offered to satisfy the gulosity of some (burgers with names like Heart Attack, XXXL, 55 oz Challenge, One Pound of Elk, Sky-high Scrum, Monster Thickburger & Killer hardly subtle hints at the target market).

Golden Boy.

By comparison, the price tag of €5,000 (US$5,100) aside, the Golden Boy seems almost restrained, though hardly modest, presented on a platter of whiskey-infused smoke, its ingredients including Wagyu beef, king crab, beluga caviar, vintage Iberico Jamon, smoked duck egg mayo, white truffle, Kopi Luwak coffee BBQ sauce, pickled tiger tomato in Japanese matcha tea, all assembled on two Dom Perignon infused gold-coated buns.  The chef insists it still just a burger and should be eaten using the hands, a nice touch being that because the buns are covered in gold leaf, fingers will be golden-tinted when the meal is finished.  A Golden Boy must be ordered two weeks in advance and a deposit of €750 (US$765) is required.

People around the world had no doubt for centuries been creating meatloaves, meatballs and meat patties before they gained the names associated with them in Western cuisine.  The idea is simply to grind-up leftover or otherwise unusable cuts, add diced vegetables & spices to taste and then blend with a thickening agent (flour, breadcrumbs, eggs et al) to permit the mix to be rendered into whatever shape is desired.  The hamburger is no more an invention of American commerce that the sandwich was of the English aristocracy.

Lindsay Lohan masticating burger, Blank Magazine, May 2011.

The words however certainly belong to late-stage capitalism.  Hamburger is noted in the US as describing meat patties in the late nineteenth century (initially as hamburg steak), the connection apparently associative with German immigrants for whom the port of embarkation was often Hamburg although there is also a documented reference from 1809 in Iceland which referred to “meat smoked in the chimney” as Hamburg beef.  There are a dozen or more stories which speculate on the origin of the modern hamburger but, in the nature of such an ephemeral craft, there is little extant evidence of the early product and there’s no reason not to assume something so obvious wasn’t “invented” in many places at much the same time.  The earliest known references which track the progression seem to be hamburger sandwich (1902), hamburger (1909) & burger (1939) although burger was by then an element in its own right, acting as a suffix for the cheeseburger (1938).  The culinary variations are legion: baconburger; cheeseburger; fishburger; beefburger; bacon & egg burger; whale burger, dog burger & dolphin burger (those three still a thing in parts of the Far East although not now widely publicized); vege burger; vegan burger; kangaroo burger, camel burger & crocodile burger (the Australians have a surplus of all these fine forms of animal protein), lamb burger, steakburger, soyburger, porkburger etc.  Opportunistic constructions like burgerlicious are created as required.  The homophones are Berger & burgher (in English use a middle-class or bourgeois person).  The noun plural is burgers.

Blogger Dario D had noticed the Big Macs he bought from random McDonalds outlets didn’t quite live up to the advertising.  That’s probably true of much industrially produced food but what was intriguing was what was revealed when he applied a tape measure to his research.  It seems Big Macs can’t be made exactly like they look in the advertising because then they would be too big to fit in the packaging.

The Big Mac Index (BMI) was created by the Economist newspaper in 1986.  The BMI is a price index which provides an indicative measure of purchasing power parity (PPP) between currencies and uses movements in the price to suggest whether an official exchange rate is over or under-valued.  The newspaper has never claimed the BMI is an authoritative economic tool and has always documented its limitations but many economists have found it interesting, not so much the result on any given day but as a trend which can be charted against other metrics.  It was an imaginative approach, taking a single, almost standardized commodity available in dozens of countries and indexing the price, something which should in each place be most influenced by local factors including input costs (ingredients & labour), regulatory compliance, corruption and marketing.  Even those who don’t agree it has much utility as an economic tool agree it’s fun and other have published variations on the theme, using either a product made in one place and shipped afar or one made with locally assembled imported components.

The BMI also brought to wider attention the odd quirk.  Although its place in the lineup has been replaced by a chicken-based dish, the Big Mac used to be on the McDonald's menu in India although, in deference to Hindu sensitivities (and in some states actual proscription), it was made not with beef but with lamb.  Apparently, it tasted exactly the same which seems a remarkable achievement.   

Burgers can be thematic.  These are based on the seven wonders of the ancient world:

The Colossus of Rhodes (that’s a big burger with Greek lamb)

The Great Pyramid of Giza (has an Egyptian sauce)

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (vegetarian (lettuce hanging out of it))

The Lighthouse of Alexandria (a lighter burger)

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (traditional high calorie burger)

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia (has a very, very hot sauce)

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (made with square or rectangular bun)

Lindsay Lohan with burger.