Wimp

Wimp (pronounced whimp)

(1) A weak, ineffectual, timid person.

(2) In particle physics, a speculative particle: Weakly Interacting Massive Particle.

(3) In computer science, a summary of the elements of the graphical user interface (GUI): (Windows, Icons, Menus (or Mice), Pointing device (or Pull-down menus).  

1915-1920: In the sense of "someone weak or timid", it's an Americanism of uncertain origin although etymologists have concluded it almost certainly is a back-formation from whimper.  The earliest known use in print dates from 1920 but it seems not to have re-appeared until 1960 although wimpish persisted.  In the US, the meaning must by the 1930s have had some currency because two pop-culture characters used a form of nominative determinism (a relationship between an individual's name and their qualities, habits or vocation) in their names: J. Wellington Wimpy who was devious but cowardly and the quiet, ineffectual Wallace Wimple.  The idiomatic form "wimp-out" is a synonym of "chicken out" and often used as "wimped out".  The use by the US Marine Corps (USMC) as the abbreviation for "weak in mountain phase" was a way of expressing an opinion of those cadets who lacked the endurance or other qualities demanded by the "mountain phase" of training conducted in Dahlonega, Georgia.  The use in computer user interfaces is said to date from 1980 and have been coined by computer scientist Merzouga Wilberts, about whom little appears to be known.  The name "Merzouga Wilberts" may have started as some sort of in-joke which has come to be spread by the internet (a la the "inventor of the toaster") and the credit for the pioneering work on computer GUIs is usually afforded to the work done by Xerox Corporation's PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) during the 1970s.  Less well-known use as an acronym in computing includes Windows Interface Manipulation Program, Windows impersonator and (as WiMP), Windows Media Player.  The spelling whimp was probably an imperfect echoic for the time when use was predominately oral.  Wimp is a noun, verb & adjective, wimping & wimped are verbs, wimpish & wimpy are adjectives; the noun plural is wimps.

The biggest data

Based on the biggest data sets ever gathered, cosmologists use mathematics to calculate the actual parameters of the universe and the numbers which have emerged from the equations suggest some ninety percent of matter (or energy) has yet to be discovered, observed or defined.  One possibility is mechanical; the math is wrong.  The other explanation is the data is incomplete because or means of measuring or observing the cosmos is not able to see anything.  Scientists, as impressed as economists by the beauty of their mathematical models, prefer the later.  To account for all that’s “missing”, they speak of dark matter and dark energy and divide their energies between looking for the dark stuff and developing theories which might explain its nature.

Weakly interacting massive particles (wimps) emerged as one theory; a speculative particle thought wholly or partially to constitute what is commonly referred to as "dark matter" but which may be "dark energy".  The theory suggests a wimp interacts via gravity and any other forces and is inherently non-vanishing in its strength.  For the theory to work, wimps must date from the earliest moments of the Universe and be "cold" dark something because modelling of a universe full of cold dark matter produces a distribution of galaxies close to what we today observe.  However, a simulation with hot dark matter reduces a universe to a sort of cosmic sludge.

Wimps may be out there and if they're they're there, they're everywhere.  Enhanced images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The term "weakly interacting massive particles" was coined by US theoretical physicist Pierre Sikivie (b 1949) in 1983 but the underpinnings of the concept lie in the work of two US theoretical physicists Howard Georgi III (b 1947) & US theoretical physicist Sheldon Glashow (b 1932) who in 1974 published what is considered the first “grand unified theory”, a framework which could accommodate “everything” in the universe and thus explain its structure and formation (though not the origin).  Immensely influential, physicists, cosmologists & mathematicians have since been “plugging-in” data and theories to this now much-modified framework.  Georgi & Glashow had proposed entities which behaved like stable, weakly interacting massive particles as a possible explanation for dark matter but it was Sikivie who came up with the memorable term.  In the way these things happen in science, there are also now SWIMPs (super weakly interacting massive particle) and GIMPs (a class of SWIMP which interacts only gravitationally).

String theory: Lindsay Lohan in string bikini, Mykonos, Greece, August 2014.

In the mysterious world of particle physics, this stuff is understood by a relative few and even among them there are disagreements but the hypothetical WIMPS can be described as particles which interact through the weak nuclear force and gravity, but not through electromagnetic or strong nuclear forces, which is why they are considered “weakly interacting”.  Speculative theories in physics have become not uncommon because, although in the last hundred-odd years the understanding of the universe has been transformed, the “standard” model of the place contains anomalies and into these gaps, theories are plugged.  WIMPs however are like the various flavours of string theory in that while there’s a perfect internal logic, not only have the notions never been tested but it not possible to design a test.  Despite that, such is the mathematical elegance that some hypothetical entities and structures are so compelling that adherents cling to them with the driven intensity of seventeenth century Jesuit priests.  Still, the WIMP is an attractive candidate as at least part of the explanation for dark matter because, as described, they fulfil a number of what all in the field agree are critical criteria:

Stability & longevity: To exist as imagined, WIMPs must be very long-lived and inherently stable, enabling them persist throughout cosmic history.  That doesn’t contradict the notion of “nothing lasts forever” because need last only between time beginning and ending and it’s assumed both states either have happened (perhaps many times) or will happen.

Abundance: There is nothing to suggest any reason why WIMPS couldn’t have been produced in the earliest moments of the universe and thus been an inherent part of cosmic inflation, meaning they might exist in sufficient quantities to account for the observed amount of dark matter.

Strength in interaction with other stuff: The WIMP’s weak interactions would explain why they’ve yet to be detected, such is the rarity with which they interact with ordinary matter.

So, although wimps remain wholly hypothetical, assuming the math is correct, wimps do successfully fill the astrophysical gaps and there is a near consensus today among cosmologists that most of the mass in the Universe is dark.  That said, the answer remains, “don’t know”.

Tsar

Tsar (pronounced zahr)

(1) An emperor or king.

(2) Title of the former emperors of Russia and several Slavonic states.

(3) Slang term for an autocratic ruler or leader.

(4) Slang term for a person exercising great authority or power in a particular field.

1545-1555: From the Old Russian tsĭsarĭ (emperor or king), akin to the Old Church Slavonic tsěsarĭ, the Gothic kaisar and the Greek kaîsar, all ultimately derived from the Latin Caesar (an emperor, a ruler, a dictator) while the Germanic form of the word was the source of the Finnish keisari and the Estonian keisar.  The prehistoric Slavic was tsesar, Tsar first adopted as an imperial title by Ivan IV (Ivan Vasilyevich, 1530–1584 and better remembered as Ivan the Terrible, Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia 1533-1584 & Tsar of all Russia 1547-1584) in 1547.  There’s a curious history to spelling tsar as czar.  Spelled thus, it’s contrary to the usage of all Slavonic languages; the word was so spelt by the Carniolan diplomat & historian Baron Siegmund Freiherr von Herberstein (1486–1566) in his work (in Latin) Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (Notes on Muscovite Affairs (1549)) which was such a seminal early source of knowledge of Russia in Western Europe that "czar" passed into the Western languages; despite that history, "tsar" definitely is the proper Latinization.  It still appears and some linguistic academics insist the lineage means it should be regarded as archaic use rather than a mistake and, as a fine technical point, that’s correct in that, for example, the female form czarina is from 1717 (from Italian czarina and German zarin).  In Russian, the female form is tsaritsa and a tsar’s son is a tsarevitch, his daughter a tsarevna.

Nicholas II (Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov, 1868–1918; last Tsar of Russia, 1894-1917).  He cut an imposing figure for the portraitists but his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Emperor & King of Prussia 1888-1918) reckoned the tsar's mental abilities rendered him most suitable to "a cottage in the country where he can grow turnips".  Wilhelm got much wrong in his life but historians seem generally to concur in this he was a fair judge of things.

Tsar and its variants were the official titles of (1) the First Bulgarian Empire 913–1018, (2) the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396), (3) the Serbian Empire (1346–1371), (4) the Tsardom of Russia (1547–1721) (technically replaced in 1721 by imperator, but remaining in use outside Russia (also officially in relation to certain regions until 1917) and (5) the Tsardom of Bulgaria (1908–1946).  So, although most associated with Russia, the first ruler to adopt the title was Simeon I (usually written as Simeon the Great; circa 865-927, ruler of Bulgaria 893-927) and that was about halfway through his reign and nobody since Simeon II (Simeon Borisov Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, b 1937; (last) Tsar of the Kingdom of Bulgaria 1943-1946) has been a tsar.  The transferred sense of "person with dictatorial powers" seems first to have appeared in English in 1866 as an adoption in American English, initially as a disapproving reference to President Andrew Johnson (1808–1875; US President 1865-1869) but it has come to be applied neutrally (health tsar, transport tsar) and use does sometimes demand deconstruction: drug tsar has been applied both to organised crime figures associated with the distribution of narcotics and government appointees responsible for policing the trade.  In some countries, some overlap between the two roles has been noted.

Comrade Stalin agitprop.

Volgograd, the southern Russian city was between 1925-1961 named Stalingrad (Stalin + -grad).  Grad (град in Cyrillic) was from the Old Slavic and translates variously as "town, city, castle or fortified settlement"; it once existed in many languages as gord and can be found still as grad, gradić, horod or gorod in many place-names.  Before it was renamed in honour of comrade Stalin (1878-1953, leader of the USSR 1924-1953), between 1589-1925, the city, at the confluence of the Tsaritsa and Volga rivers was known as Tsaritsyn, the name from the Turkic-related Tatar dialect word sarisin meaning "yellow water" or "yellow river" but because of the similarity in sound and spelling, came in Russia to be associated with Tsar.  Stalingrad is remembered as the scene of the epic and savage battle which culminated in the destruction in February 1943 of the German Sixth Army, something which, along with the strategic failure of the Wehrmacht in the offensive (Unternehmen Zitadelle (Operation Citadel) in the Kursk salient five months later, marked what many military historians record as the decisive moment on the Eastern Front.  It has become common to refer to comrade Stalin as the "Red Tsar" whereas casual comparisons of Mr Putin (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) don't often reach to Russia's imperial past; they seem to stop with Stalin.

Caesar (an emperor, a ruler, a dictator) was from the late fourteenth century cesar (from Cæsar) and was originally a surname of the Julian gens in Rome, elevated to a title after Caius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) became dictator and it was used as a title of emperors down to Hadrian (76–138; Roman emperor 117-138).  The name ultimately is of uncertain origin, Pliny the Elder (23–79) suggested it came from the Latin caesaries (head of hair) because the future dictator was born with a lush growth while others have linked it to the Latin caesius (bluish-gray), an allusion to eye color.  The "probity of Caesar's" wife (the phrase first recorded in English in the 1570s) as the figure of a person who should be above suspicion comes from the biography of Julius Caesar written by the Greek Middle Platonist priest-philosopher & historian Plutarch (circa 46–circa 123).  Plutarch related the story of how Julius Caesar divorced his wife Pompeia because of rumors of infidelity, not because he believed the tales of her adultery but because, as a political position, “the wife of Caesar must not even be under suspicion”.  That’s the origin of the phrase “the probity of Caesar’s wife, a phrase which first appeared in English in the 1570s.

In late nineteenth century US slang, a sheriff was "the great seizer" an allusion to the office's role in seizing property pursuant to court order.  The use of Caesar to illustrate the distinction between a subject’s obligations to matters temporal and spiritual is from the New Testament: Matthew 22:21.

They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

Christ had been answering a question posed by the Pharisees to trap Him: Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar (Matthew 22:15–20)?  To answer, Jesus held up a denarius, the coin with which pay the tax and noted that on it was the head of Caesar, by then Caesar had become a title, meaning emperor of Rome and its empire.  It was a clever answer; in saying "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and render unto God that which is God's", Jesus dismisses the notion of believers being conflicted by the demands of the secular state as a false dilemma because, one can fulfil the requirements of the sate by a mere payment of coin without any implication of accepting its doctrines or legitimacy.  Over the years much has been made of what is or should be "rendered unto Caesar", but more interesting is inference which must be drawn: if we owe Caesar that which bears his image, what then do we owe God?  It can only be that we owe God that which bears the image of God, an impressive inventory listed in the book of Genesis and now interpreted by some Christians as "the whole universe".  To Caesar we can only ever owe money; to God we owe ourselves.

In the Old English the spelling was casere, which would under the expected etymological process have evolved into coser, but instead, circa 1200, it was replaced in the Middle English by keiser, from the Norse or Low German, and later by the French or Latin form of the name.  Cæsar also is the root of German Kaiser, the Russian tsar and is linked with the Modern Persian shah.  Despite the common assumption, "caesar" wasn’t an influence on the English "king".  King was from the Middle English king & kyng, from the Old English cyng & cyning (king), from the Proto-West Germanic kuning, from the Proto-Germanic kuningaz & unungaz (king), kin being the root.  It was cognate with the Scots keeng (king), the North Frisian köning (king), the West Frisian kening (king), the Dutch koning (king), the Low German Koning & Köning (king), the German König (king), the Danish konge (king), the Norwegian konge (king), the Swedish konung & kung (king), the Icelandic konungur & kóngur (king), the Finnish kuningas (king) and the Russian князь (knjaz) (prince) & княги́ня (knjagínja) (princess).  It eclipsed the non-native Middle English roy (king) and the Early Modern English roy, borrowed from Old French roi, rei & rai (king).

The Persian Shah was from the Old Persian xšāyaθiya (king), once thought a borrowing from the Median as it was compared to the Avestan xšaϑra- (power; command), corresponding to the Sanskrit (the Old Indic) kṣatra- (power; command), source of kṣatriya (warrior).  However, recent etymological research has confirmed xšāyaθiya was a genuine, inherited Persian formation meaning “pertaining to reigning, ruling”.  The word, with the origin suffix -iya was from a deverbal abstract noun xšāy-aθa- (rule, ruling) (Herrschaft), from the Old Persian verb xšāy- (to rule, reign).  In the Old Persian, the full title of the Achaemenid rulers of the First Empire was Xšāyaθiya Xšāyaθiyānām (or in Modern Persian, Šāhe Šāhān (King of Kings)), best as "Emperor", a title with ancient, Near Eastern and Mesopotamian precedents.  The earliest known instance of such a title dates from the Middle Assyrian period as šar šarrāni, used by the Assyrian ruler Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243–1207 BC).

Tsar Bomba: the Tsar bomb

Tupolev Tu-95 in flight (left) and a depiction of the October 1961 test detonation of the Tsar Bomb.

Царь-бомба (Tsar Bomba (Tsar-bomb)) was the Western nickname for the Soviet RDS-220 hydrogen bomb (Project code: AN602; code name Ivan or Vanya), the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated.  The test on 30 October 1961 remains the biggest man-made explosion in history and was rated with a yield of 50-51 megatons although the design was technically able to produce maximum yield in excess of 100.  For a long time the US estimated the yield at 54 megatons and the Russians at 58 but after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was confirmed the true yield was 50-51 megatons.  Only one was ever built and it was detonated on an island off the Russian arctic coast.  The decision to limit the size blast was related to the need to ensure (1) a reduced nuclear fall-out and (2) the aircraft dropping the thing would be able to travel a safe distance from the blast radius (the Kremlin's attitude to the lives of military personnel had changed since comrade Stalin's time).  No nuclear power has since expressed any interest in building weapons even as large as the Tsar Bomb and for decades the trend in strategic arsenals has been more and smaller weapons, a decision taken on the pragmatic military grounds that it's pointless to destroy things many times over.  It's true that higher yield nuclear weapons would produce "smaller rubble" but to the practical military mind such a result represents just "wasted effort".

Progress 1945-1961.

The Tupolev Tu-95 (NATO reporting name: Bear) which dropped the Tsar Bomb was a curious fork in aviation history, noted also for its longevity.  A four-engined turboprop-powered strategic bomber and missile platform, it entered service in 1956 and is expected still to be in operational use in 2040, an expectation the United States Air Force (USAF) share for their big strategic bomber, the Boeing B-52 which first flew in 1952, the first squadrons formed three years later.  Both airframes have proven remarkably durable and amenable to upgrades; as heavy lift devices and delivery systems they could be improved upon with a clean-sheet design but the relatively small advantages gained would not justify the immense cost, thus the ongoing upgrade programmes.  The TU-95's design was, inter-alia, notable for being one of the few propeller-driven aircraft with swept wings and is the only one ever to enter large-scale production.  It's also very loud, the tips of those counter-rotating propellers sometimes passing through the sound barrier.

Footage of the Tsar Bomb test de-classified and released after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1922-1991).

The Tsar Bomb was in a sense the “ultimate” evolution of the centuries long history of the bomb although it wasn’t the end of innovation, designers seemingly never running out of ideas to refine the concept of the device, the purpose of which is to (1) blow stuff up and (2) kill people.  Bomb was from the French bombe, from the Italian bomba, from the Latin bombus (a booming sound), from the Ancient Greek βόμβος (bómbos) (booming, humming, buzzing), the explosive imitative of the sound itself.  Bomb was used originally of “projectiles; mortar shells etc”, the more familiar “explosive device placed by hand or dropped from airplane” said by many sources to date from 1908 although the word was in the former sense used when describing the anarchist terrorism of the late nineteenth century.  As a footnote, the nickname of Hugh Trenchard (1873-1956), the first Marshal of the Royal Air Force (RAF) was “boom” but this was related to his tone of voice rather than an acknowledgement of him being one of the earliest advocates of strategic bombing.

The figurative uses were wide, ranging from “a dilapidated car” (often as “old bomb”, the use based presumably on the perception such vehicles are often loud).  The bombshell was originally literally a piece of military equipment but it was later co-opted (most memorably as “blonde bombshell) to describe a particularly fetching young women.  So, used figuratively, “bomb” could mean either “very bad” or “very good” and in his weekly Letter from American (broadcast by the BBC World Service 1946-2004), Alistair Cooke (1908–2004) noted a curious trans-Atlantic dichotomy.  In the world of showbiz, Cooke observed, “bomb” was used in both the US & UK to describe the reaction to a play, movie or whatever but in the US, if called “a bomb”, the production was a flop, a failure whereas in the UK, if something was called “quite a bomb”, it meant it was a great success.

I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

I Know Who Killed Me bombed (in the traditional US sense) but in the way these things sometimes happen, the film has since enjoyed a second life with a cult-following and screenings on the specialized festival circuit.  Additionally, DVD & Blu-Ray sales (it's said to be a popular, if sometimes ironic, gift) meant eventually it generated a profit although it has never exactly become a "bomb" (in the UK sense).  However, while it now enjoys a following among a small sub-set of the public, the professional critics have never softened their view.

Cannon

Cannon (pronounced kan-uhn)

(1) In ordnance, heavy artillery: a mounted gun for firing heavy projectiles; a gun, howitzer, or mortar,

(2) In machinery, a heavy tube or drum, especially one that can rotate freely on the shaft by which it is supported (also known as a quill).

(3) In armor, a cylindrical or semi-cylindrical piece of plate armor for the upper arm or forearm; a vambrace or rerebrace (the avant-bras in French and sometimes known as lower cannons in the Middle Ages).

(4) In saddlery, as cannon bit or canon bit, the part of a bit in the horse's mouth.

(5) In the design of bells, the metal loop at the top of a bell, from which it is hung.

(6) In zoology, as the cannon bone or the part of the leg in which the cannon bone is located.

(7) In billiards, a British term for a carom (a shot in which the cue ball is caused to contact one object ball after another); the points scored by this; a rebound or bouncing back, as of a ball off a wall.

(8) In underworld slang, a pickpocket (archaic).

1375–1425: From the late Middle English canon, from the earlier Anglo-Latin and Anglo-French canon, from the Italian cannone (large-tube barrel), the construct being cann(a) (tube) + -one (the augmentative suffix).  The Ancient Greek κάννα (kánna) (reed) was from the Akkadian qanû (reed), from the Sumerian gi.na; a doublet of canyon.  The original meaning was an "artillery piece, mounted gun for throwing projectiles by force of gunpowder" the spelling canon in a variety of languages all from the Italian cannone, augmentative of the Latin canna but the use of the double -n- spelling didn’t emerge until circa 1800.  Cannon is a noun and the plural is cannons but, in military use, when speaking of cannons collectively (especially when assembled in a battery), cannon is often used.

The artillery piece revolutionised warfare, the famous walls which for centuries had protected Constantinople were breached soon after cannon were first deployed and the city fell.  The weapon also influenced language.  Cannon fodder, first noted in 1847, describes the infantry or cavalry deployed against cannon-fire and exists in German as kanonenfutter, echoing William Shakespeare's (1564–1616) “food for gun powder” speech in Henry IV, Part 1 (circa 1596), Act 4 Scene 2) where Falstaff dismisses concern for his soldiers by saying they’re “good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder. They’ll fill a pit as well as better”.  Cannon-shot (distance a cannon will throw a ball) is from the 1570s and was an important measure in admiralty and (embryonic) international law, the old three-mile (and the later twelve-mile) maritime limits of national borders reflect the range of shore-based cannons at various times.  It was used also from the 1590s to describe the iron-ball fired from a weapon but this by the 1660s came to be replaced by cannon-ball.  A cannonade (a continued discharge of artillery) is from the 1650s as a noun and as a verb (attack with artillery), a decade later.  The contemporary French was cannonade and the Italian cannonata, the related forms being cannonaded and cannonading.  Cannonade was exclusively a army term which was later replace by barrage; the Admiralty always preferred broadside.

The figurative “loose cannon” seems to have be popularised from its appearance in Victor Hugo's (1802–1885) late Ninety Three (1874) to describe someone “wildly irresponsible, unpredictable or freed from usual restraint", based on the literal sense of dread sailors on old warships felt when a cannon already primed to fire became detached from its mounts and began rolling about the deck.  When a loose cannon discharges, bloody carnage can ensue. 

Naval Cannons

USS Iowa firing nine-gun broadside in an August 1984 test-firing during the sea-trials conducted after being recommissioned as part of the military build-up ordered during Ronald Reagan's (1911-2004, US president 1981-1989) first term.

The US Navy’s four Iowa-class battleships, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin & New Jersey (the commissioned Illinois and Kentucky were never launched because of the changing nature of naval warfare) were the last battleships used in US fleets, all other dreadnoughts & super-dreadnoughts decommissioned by 1947 and when finally retired, they had for three decades been the last battleships afloat.  Noted for their longevity, their service variously lasting (including periods in reserve) from 1943 until 1992, they’re among the best-remembered battleships but they were neither the biggest (and certainly not the widest, the beam at around 108 feet (33 m) dictated by the need to pass through the Panama Canal) nor the most heavily gunned.  The Iowas were built with nine 16 inch (406 mm) naval cannons in three 3-gun turrets and could fire both high explosive and armour-piercing shells around 23 nautical miles (27.6 miles; 44.5 km).  A novel later innovation was an adaptation of the W19 nuclear artillery shell was adapted to suit the 16-inch bore.  With a yield of 15 to 20 kilotons of TNT (roughly the same as the A-bomb used against Nagasaki), they remain the world's largest nuclear artillery although, because of the Pentagon’s policy of refusing to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weaponry aboard its ships, it’s unknown if any of the shells were ever carried while the ships were in active service.  Like the US Marine Corps (USMC), the navy was never much enthused at the prospect of nuclear weapons being carried by the surface fleet, regarding the weapons as ideally suited to submarines.  The entire US nuclear artillery inventory was later decommissioned and (officially) dismantled.

Yamato, 1944.

The Imperial Japanese Navy’s Yamato-class battleships, Yamato and Musashi, in service between 1942-1945, were bigger and heavier than the Iowas and also used bigger cannons, each having nine 18.1 inch (460 mm) guns in three triple turrets with a shell-range of 26 miles (42 km).  The big guns had been considered for the Iowas during the design process but were sacrificed as part of the speed/range/armour/firepower compromise which naval architects have to apply to every warship.  Interestingly, for a variety of reasons, even the Iowa's never-built successors (the Montana-class), maintained the 16-inch armament, designed around twelve cannons arrayed in four 3-gun turrets.

German conceptual H-45 battleship.

Before reality bit hard, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) left physics to the engineers and wasn't too bothered by economics.  After being disappointed the proposals the successors to the Bismarck-class ships would have their main armament increased only from eight 15-inch (380 mm) to eight 16 inch cannons, he ordered OKM (Oberkommando der Marine; the Naval High Command) to design bigger ships.  That directive emerged as the ambitious Plan Z which would have demanded so much steel, essentially nothing else in the Reich could have been built.  Although not one vessel in Plan Z ever left the slipway (the facilities even to lay down the keels non-existent), such a fleet would have been impressive, the largest (the H-44) fitted with eight 20-inch (508 mm) cannons.  Even more to the Führer’s liking was the concept of the H-45, equipped with eight 31.5 inch (800 mm) Gustav siege guns.  However, although he never lost faith in the key to success on the battlefield being bigger and bigger tanks, the experience of surface warfare at sea convinced Hitler the days of the big ships were over and he would even try to persuade the navy to retire all their capital ships and devote more resources to the submarines which, as late as 1945, he hoped might still prolong the war.  Had he imposed such priorities in 1937-1938 so the German Navy could have entered World War II (1939-1945) with the ability permanently to have 100 submarines engaged in high-seas raiding rather than barely a dozen, the early course of the war might radically have been different.

Sidewinder

Sidewinder (pronounced syde-whine-der)

(1) A North American rattlesnake (Crotalus cerastes), also known as the horned rattlesnake and sidewinder rattlesnake, a venomous pit viper species belonging to the genus Crotalus (rattlesnakes) and found in the desert regions of the south-western United States and north-western Mexico. 

(2) An air-to-air missiles of US design.

(3) In nautical use, a type of middle-distance deep-sea trawler widely used during the 1960s and 1970s.

(4) In slang, a person thought untrustworthy and dangerous.

(5) In the slang of hand-to-hand combat, a heavy swinging blow from the side which disables an adversary (now rare).

(6) In the slang of baseball, a pitcher who throws sidearm.

(7) In the slang of certain photographers, a certain aspect used to photograph certain models in certain dresses or tops.

1875: A creation of US English to describe the small horned rattlesnake found in the south-west near the border with Mexico, the construct being the adjective side + the agent noun of wind, so called in reference to its "peculiar lateral progressive motion".  The first known use was in an 1875 US Army report detailing the zoology of the western US.  Dating from 1888, there are also references to the snake as the "sidewiper".  Side was from the Middle English side, from the Old English sīde (side, flank), from the Proto-Germanic sīdǭ (side, flank, edge, shore), from the primitive Indo-European sēy- (to send, throw, drop, sow, deposit).  It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian Siede (side), the West Frisian side (side), the Dutch zijde & zij (side), the German Low German Sied (side), the German Seite (side), the Danish & Norwegian side (side) and the Swedish sida (side).  As an adjective (as in sidewinder) it's used to mean (1) being on the left or right, or toward the left or right; lateral & (2) indirect; oblique; incidental.  The construct of winder was wind + -er and was from the Middle English wynder, from the Middle English wynd & wind, from the Old English wind (wind), from the Proto-West Germanic wind, from the Proto-Germanic windaz, from the primitive Indo-European hwéhtos (wind), from hwéhts (wind), from the present participle of hweh- (to blow).  The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought most likely to have been borrowed from the Latin –ārius where, as a suffix, it was used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals.  In English, the –er suffix, when added to a verb, created an agent noun: the person or thing that doing the action indicated by the root verb.   The use in English was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant -our), from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  When appended to a noun, it created the noun denoting an occupation or describing the person whose occupation is the noun.  Sidewinder is a noun; the noun plural is sidewinders.

A sidewinder taking lunch (left) and sidewinding (right).

The snake’s common name, sidewinder, alludes to its unusual form of locomotion, which is thought to give it traction on windblown desert sand, but this peculiar specialization is used on any substrate over which the sidewinder rapidly can move. As its body progresses over loose sand, it forms a letter J-shaped impression, with the tip of the hook pointing in the direction of travel.  The species is nocturnal during hot months and diurnal during the cooler times of its activity period, which typically extends from November to March (though often longer in the southern part of its range, subject to seasonal variation).

The AIM-9x Sidewinder and the Vympel K-13

AIM-9x Sidewinder Air-to Air missile being launched.

The AIM-9x Sidewinder is a short-range air-to-air missile developed by the US Navy which entered service in 1956.  One of the most widely used missiles, it equips both western and (notionally) non-aligned air forces as well as (indirectly), the many nations which use the Soviet-era Vympel K-13, a reverse-engineered clone.  More than 110,000 Sidewinders have been produced and it’s considered outstanding value for money, being one of the less expensive weapons of its type.  Aside from cost, it owes its longevity to a simple, easy-to-upgrade design, long shelf life, robustness and famously high reliability; the US military say it’s possible the Sidewinder will remain in service until late this century, the one basic design might thus endure over one-hundred years.  One of the early mass-produced guided missiles, the Sidewinder name was selected in 1950 because the venomous snake uses infrared sensory organs to hunt warm-blooded prey.  The Sidewinder was first developed by the US Navy (USN) and later adopted by the US Air Force (USAF), both branches still using what is essentially the same design, the critical components of which are (1) an infrared homing guidance section, (2) an active optical target detector, (3) a high-explosive warhead and (4) rocket propulsion.  The attraction of infrared units is their low-cost, ease of maintenance and the ability to be used day and night.  According to the 2021 fiscal year Department of Defense (DoD) budget, AIM-9x Sidewinders are costed at around US$430,000 for Navy use & US$472,000 for the Air Force, the difference accounted for by the cost of the mounting system which attaches to and aircraft’s hard-points.  The DoD’s numbers are not necessarily accurate but the comparative values are probably at least indicative.

The rollerons on the fins of the early AIM-9.

Although in production since 1956, the Sidewinder is now a much changed device, product development meaning parts interchangeability between an original and one from the 2020s is limited to the odd screw.  In that, the missile can be compared to something like the Volkswagen Beetle in that while the first in 1938 and the last in 2003 were recognizably related and conceptually the same (rear-mounted air-cooled flat-four engine, rear-wheel drive (RWD), separate chassis etc), the only mechanical carry-overs would be some of the nuts & bolts.  In the 1950s, the technology to permit the Sidewinder's fins to act as self-stabilizer didn't exist.  While it would have been possible to build an electro-mechanical device which could fulfil the function, it would have been prohibitively large and heavy and, when subject to the stresses of launch, anyway too fragile to provide the reliability the military required.  Instead, "rollerons" were fitted to the tips of the fins.  Rotating at 100,000 rpm, these provided gyroscopic stabilization, a solution similar to that adopted by the Germans for their big World War II (1939-1945) ballistic missile (The Aggregat 4 (A4), better known as the V2 (or V-2) (Vergeltungswaffe (Retaliation (ie vengence) Weapon 2)) although being bigger and flying for a greater distance in a more complex trajectory, the V2 was fitted also with controllers on the rocket engine's vanes which compensated dynamically for directional variations.  The issue of directional stability was the most challenging aspect of the V2's development. 

Lindsay Lohan sidewinder shots, 2007.  Where possible, photographers like to take both SFW (suitable for work, left) shots and NSFW (not suitable for work, right) shots so they have product for both market niches.  Paul Smith shot these as part of a sequence at the General Motors Annual Ten Event Fashion Show, Los Angeles, February 2006.

The use of Sidewinders in dog-fights between Chinese and Taiwanese (from the renegade province of Taiwan) pilots during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis (1958) was the first use of air-to-air guided missiles in combat and the Vympel K-13 (NATO reporting name: AA-2 (Atoll)) was reverse-engineered (ie pirated) by the Soviet Union, using a Sidewinder launched from a Taiwanese F-86 Sabre during the Crisis which became lodged, unexploded, in the fuselage of a Chinese MiG 17.  The MiG landed safely and although Sino-Soviet relations weren’t at the time ideal, some sort of deal was done between Peking and Moscow which resulted in the missile being delivered to Soviet weapons scientists who deconstructed and replicated it, allowing the Vympel to enter the arsenals of Warsaw Pact nations.  The USSR had something of a tradition of doing this with Western hardware (their Boeing B29 clone legendarily almost identical to Boeing’s original) and the Chinese soon became masters of the technique.  By 1961 the K-13 was in full-scale production and so diligent were the Soviets in their duplication that even the part-numbers stamped on the components were replicated.

In February 2023, the Sidewinder was briefly in the news after one was used by a USAF F-16 fighter to shoot down the balloon which infamously penetrated US airspace.  Depending on whose story one prefers, it was either a weather research device operated by Chinese meteorological authorities or a spy system run by the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) to gather data for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  Most observers not in fear of being sent to a re-education camp seem to tend to the latter but for the USAF it wasn’t that important; pilots just like shooting stuff with sidewinders.  Targeted at an altitude around 20,000 feet (6000 m), the balloon was brought down in the vicinity of Lake Huron above over Michigan and was the third such airborne object shot down in a three-day span, all at the time believed to be linked with the CCP.  Once the thing was downed, one of the main interests to those examining the wreckage was to work out how a relatively large object could have evaded the surveillance of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which uses visual contact, radar, and other tracking systems.

1997 Dodge Dakota Sidewinder Concept.

The Dodge Dakota Sidewinder was a one-off concept displayed at 1997’s SEMA Convention in Las Vegas.  It used a 640 hp (477 kW), 490 cubic-inch (8.0 litre) V10 Viper (LA) engine and was said to be capable of 170 mph (274 km/h) although it wasn’t clear whether this was (1) worked out on the back of an envelope, (2) calculated by computer simulation or (3) verified by some intrepid test driver.  Like most of Detroit’s more fanciful creations, it never reached production although Chevrolet later picked up the idea for their retro-styled SSR (Super Sport Roadster) pickup truck (2003-2006) which featured a retractable hard-top and between 2004-2006 Dodge did install the a 505 cubic inch (8.3 litre) version LA V10 in their Ram pick-up truck.  One of the crazier trucks and very much in the tradition of their 1964-1966 D-100 pick-up which used the 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Street Wedge V8, the limited-production V10 SRT-10 is still much in demand in the collector market.

Cimarron

Cimarron (pronounced sim-uh-ron, sim-uh-rohn or sim-er-uhn)

(1) A Maroon (an African or one of African descent who escaped slavery in the Americas, (or a descendant thereof, especially a member of the Cimarron people of Panama).

(2) In Latin America (1) feral animals or those which have returned to the wild, (2) rural areas (campestral) and the inhabitants there dwelling & (3) wild plants.

(3) A name used in the US for both rivers & as both a localities.

(4) A not fondly remembered small "Cadillac", built between 1981-1988.

1840–1850: From the Colonial Spanish cimarrón (a maroon (used also casually of feral animals, wild rams etc), from the Spanish and thought likely equivalent to the Old Spanish cimarra (brushwood, thicket), the construct being & cim(a) (peak, summit (from the Latin cȳma (spring shoots of a vegetable), from the Ancient Greek  + -arrón (the adjectival suffix).  Most etymologists appear to accept the Spanish cimarrón was a native Spanish formation from cima (summit, peak), referring to slaves who escaped to seek refuge in the mountains but the alternative theory is that it was a borrowing from Taíno símaran (wild (like a stray arrow)), from símara (arrow).  The feminine was cimarrona, the masculine plural cimarrones & the feminine plural cimarronas.  The verb maroon (put ashore on a desolate island or some isolate and remote coast by way of punishment) dates from 1724 and was from maroon (fugitive black slave living in the wilder parts of Dutch Guyana or Jamaica and other West Indies islands) which has always been assumed to be a corruption of the Spanish cimmaron & cimarrón.  Cimarron is a noun & proper noun (the adjective cimarific (based on Cimar(ron) + (horr)ific) was sardonic; a slur relating to the Cadillac); the noun plural is Cimarrons.

The Cadillac Cimarron, 1982-1988

For those who can remember the way things used to done: 1968 Cadillac Coupe DeVille convertible.

The path of the reputation of the unfortunate Cadillac Cimarron was unusual in the more it was upgraded and improved, the further it seemed to fall in the estimation of the motoring press.  Despite the impression which seems over the decades to have become embedded, the early critical reaction to the Cimarron was generally polite and even positive, while acknowledging the inadequacies of the original engine-transmission combinations.  The journalists may however have been in a mood to be unusually forgiving because in 1981, when the first examples were provided for press evaluation, that a Cadillac was for the first time since 1914 fitted with a four-cylinder engine and one with a displacement smaller than 2.0 litres (122 cubic inch) for the first time since 1908 was a sign how much the universe had shifted; not even ten years earlier every Cadillac on sale used an 8.2 litre (500 cubic inch) V8.  The ripples of the first oil shock would see the big-block V8 twice downsized but so much had rising cost (and the threatened scarcity) of gas scarred the consumer that even Cadillac owners wanted more efficient vehicles.  They still wanted to drive Cadillacs and while demand for the full-sized cars remained, it was obvious to General Motors (GM) that the segment was in decline and the alternatives proving popular were not the traditional Lincoln and Imperial but the premium brand Europeans, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and (as a niche player), Jaguar.

The cleverly engineered 1976 Cadillac Seville which hid its origins well.

The Europeans produced very different machines to the Cadillacs and it would have taken much time and money to match them in sophistication but what could be done quickly and at relatively low cost was to make a Cadillac out of a Chevrolet and that was the path chosen, the long-serving Chevrolet Nova re-styled, re-trimmed, re-engined (with the 5.7 litre (350 cubic inch) Oldsmobile V8) and re-badged as the Cadillac Seville.  On paper, it didn’t sound promising but on the road it actually worked rather well, essentially because Chevrolet had done a creditable job in making the Nova drive something like a Cadillac with some Mercedes-like characteristics.  So, the task for Cadillac’s engineers wasn’t that onerous but they did it well and the Seville was a great success, something especially pleasing to GM because the thing retailed at some four times what Chevrolet charged for Novas.  That made the Seville one of the most famously profitable lines ever to emerge from Detroit which was good but what was not was that most people who bought one weren’t conquests from Mercedes-Benz or BMW (and definitely not from Jaguar) but those who would otherwise have bought a Cadillac.  Still, the Seville did its bit and contributed to brief era of record sales and high profits for GM.

Cadillac’s new enemy: 1982 BMW 320i (E21).

By the early 1980s however, Cadillac decided it need to do the same thing again, this time on a smaller scale.  A second oil shock had struck in 1979 and this time the US economy wasn’t bouncing back as it had in the mid-1970s and the recession of the early 1980s was nasty indeed.  One market segment which was a bright spot however was what was called the “small executive sedan” dominated then by the BMW 3-Series, soon to be joined by what would become known as the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, compact, high-quality and high-priced cars being bought by what to Cadillac would be a most attractive demographic: the then newly defined YUPIEs (young upwardly-mobile professionals).  Cadillac had nothing which appealed to this market and their plans for an entry were years sway even from the initial design phases.  The economic situation of the time however had made the matter urgent and so, at a very late stage, Cadillac was appended to GM’s ambitious programme to use the one “world car” platform to be used in the divisions which produced cars in the planet’s major markets (the US, UK, Europe, Japan & Australasia).  This one front-wheel drive platform would provide a family sized car in Japan, the UK and Europe, a medium-sized entrant in Australasia and a small car in the US with the highest possible degree of component interchangeability and a consequent reduction in the time and cost to bring the lines to production.

1982 Holden Camira SL/E (1982-1989), the Australian version of the “World Car”.

The longevity of the GM “World Car" (the J-Car (J-Body the US nomenclature)), the last produced in 2005, attests to the quality of GM’s fundamental engineering and over the decades, over 10 million would be sold as Vauxhalls (UK), Opels (Europe), Holdens (Australia & New Zealand), Isuzus and even Toyotas (Japan) and Chevrolets, Buicks, Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs & Cadillacs (US).  By the standards of the time they were good cars (although they did prove less suited to Australian driving conditions) but they could not, and certainly not in the eleven months available, be made into what would be thought of as “a Cadillac”.  To do that, given the technology available at the time, ideally the platform would have been widened, a small version of one of the corporate V8s (perhaps as small as 3.5 litres (215 cubic inch) fitted and the configuration changed to accommodate rear-wheel drive (RWD) and independent rear suspension (IRS).  The J-Body could have accommodated all this and, thus configured, coupled with the lashings of leather expected in the interior, GM would have had an appropriately sized small executive sedan, executed in an uniquely American way.  Like the Seville, it may not have made much of a dent in the business Mercedes-Benz and BMW were doing but it would have had real appeal and it’s doubtful it would have cannibalized the sales of the bigger Cadillacs.  Additionally, it would have been ideally place to take advantage of the rapid fall in gas prices which came with the 1980s “oil glut”.  Alas, such a thing would have taken too long to develop and it would have been such an expensive programme Cadillac would have convinced the GM board they may as well accelerate the development of their own small car.  So, needing something small to put in the showrooms because that’s what Cadillac dealers were clamouring for, the decision was taken to tart up the J-Body.

1982 Cadillac Cimarron (1982-1988), the origins of which were obvious.

That, for the 1982 model year, was exactly what was done.  The Cadillac Cimarron was nothing more than a Chevrolet Cavalier with a lot of extra stuff bolted or glued on.  Apparently, the name “Cimarron” was chosen because it had in the US been used to refer to the wild and untamed horses which once roamed freely in the American West, the company hoping to add the idea of an “untamed spirit” to the (even if by then slightly tarnished) reputation for luxury and elegance once associated with Cadillac.  Whether much thought was given to the name’s association with slavery isn’t known.  That aside, the spirit wasn’t exactly untamed because the already anaemic performance of the Chevrolet was hampered further by all the extra weight of the luxury fittings which adorned the Cimarron, something which was tolerated (indeed probably expected) in what Chevrolet was selling as an “economy car” but luxury buyers had higher expectations.

Cadillac found that bigger was better: Yuppie Lindsay Lohan entering Cadillac Escalade, May 2012.

Most would conclude it made things worse.  Had it been sold as the Chevrolet Caprice II (a la Ford’s approach with the LTD II), the Cimarron would probably have been a hit and while there would have been the same criticisms, in a car costing so much less, they would have been less pointed.  However, that would have meant the Cadillac dealers not having product to put in their showrooms which was of course the point of the whole Cimarron venture.  As it was, sales never came close to Cadillac’s optimistic projections, numbers influenced presumably by the Seville’s stellar performance a few years earlier and this time the mark-up was less, a Cimarron only twice the cost of a Cavalier.  That wasn’t enough however and nor were the constant upgrades, the most notable of which was the introduction of the Chevrolet’s 2.8 litre (173 cubic inch) V6 in 1985 and that did induce a surge in sales (though still to nothing like the once hoped for levels) but it was short lived and after production ended in 1988, Cadillac offered no replacement and they’ve not since attempted to build anything on this scale.