Rainbow

Rainbow (pronounced reyn-boh)

(1) An arc-shaped spectrum of color seen in the sky opposite the Sun, especially after rain, caused by the refraction and reflection of sunlight by droplets of water suspended in the air.  Secondary rainbows that are larger and paler sometimes appear within the primary arc with the colors reversed (red being inside). These result from two reflections and refractions of a light ray inside a droplet.  The colors of the rainbow are violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.  

(2) A similar bow of colors, especially one appearing in the spray of a waterfall or fountain.

(3) Any brightly multi-colored arrangement or display.

(4) A wide variety or range; gamut.

(5) A visionary goal, sometimes illusory (as in “chasing rainbows”).

(6) In diversity politics, as a modifier, of or relating to a political grouping together by several minorities, especially representatives from multiple identity groups, as those identifying variously by race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation.

(7) The flag of the LGBTQQIAAOP movement.

(8) In zoology, a descriptor used in some species (rainbow lorikeet, rainbow trout etc).

(9) In baseball jargon, a curveball, particularly a slow one.

(10) In the slang of poker (Texas hold 'em or Omaha hold 'em), a flop that contains three different suits.

(11) In the UK Girl Guide Association (as the Rainbow Guides), the faction containing the youngest group of girls (aged 5-7 years).

Pre 1000: From the Middle English reinbowe & reinboȝe, from the Old English reġnboga & rēnboga (rainbow), from the Proto-Germanic regnabugô (rainbow; literally rain +‎ bow (arch).  It was cognate with the Old Norse regnbogi, the West Frisian reinbôge, the Dutch regenboog, the German Regenbogen, the Danish regnbue, the Swedish regnbåge and the Icelandic regnbogi, all of which translated as “rainbow).

The Rainbow Flag

The rainbow flag is more commonly known as the gay pride or LGBTQQIAAOP (usually truncated to LGBTQI+) pride flag although it has been co-opted for other purposes.  It was designed in 1978 by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker (1951-2017) using eight colors but has long been displayed with six stripes, red at the top as it appears in a natural rainbow.  The original colors were assigned thus:

Hot pink: Sex
Red: Life
Orange: Healing
Yellow: Sunlight
Green: Nature
Turquoise: Art
Indigo: Harmony
Violet: Spirit

However, for technical reasons, hot pink proved difficult to produce in volume and was deleted, the first commercial release having seven stripes but within a year it was again modified.  When hung vertically from the lamp posts of San Francisco's Market Street, the centre stripe was obscured by the post and changing to an even number of stripes was the easiest fix.  Thus emerged the final version: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.

On its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2003, Gilbert Baker advocated the original design be restored but there’ was little support, the six-stripe standard clearly having reached critical mass although there have been one-off variations such as the addition of a black stripe symbolizing those community members lost to AIDS.  Aged sixty-five, Baker died in New York City on 31 March 2017.

Unfurling the flag: Emperor Dale on the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands.  The plaque in the sand contains the words of the kingdom's  declaration of independence.

In June 2004, activists from the G & L factions of the LGBTQQIAAOP collective sailed to Australia's almost uninhabited Coral Sea Islands Territory and proclaimed the now liberated lands independent, calling it the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands (GLK) with the rainbow flag its official standard.  It was a symbolic gesture with no validity in domestic or international law, the declaration in response to the Australian government's refusal to recognize same-sex marriage.  Undeterred by such tiresome details, the GLK immediately issued stamps, the official website listing tourism, fishing and philatelic sales as its only economic activities but that swimming, reef walking, lagoon snorkeling, bird-watching, seashell-collecting, and shipwreck-exploring were all GLK sanctioned non-economic activities.

The then Senator Eric Abetz.

Fearing it’s assertion of independence seemed not to be making much impression on the former colonial oppressor, on 13 September 2004 the GLK declared war on Australia.  Neither the declarations of statehood or war attracted much attention until February 2017 when, in a Senate estimates hearing on finance and public administration, Senator Eric Abetz (b 1958; senator for Tasmania (Liberal) 1994-2022) objected to the GLK's flag being hung in the Department of Finance’s building on the grounds that (1) government departments should take a neutral stand on political debates and (2) it was wrong to hang in government buildings the flag of an aggressive, hostile state (the GLK) which had declared war on Australia, the comparison presumably that the swastika wasn't hung in the White House or Downing Street during World War II (1939-1945).  The finance minister, Senator Mathias Cormann (b 1970; senator (Liberal) for Western Australia 2007-2020, minister for finance 2013-2020, Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) since 2021) agreed, assuring Senator Abetz he would ensure “…there are no flags of hostile nations anywhere in any government building.”

Stamps of the GLK authorized for issue by the edict of Emperor Dale Parker Anderson (b 1965).

Self-described as a "gay 22×-great-grandson of King Edward II (who was also born gay)" and a direct descendant of all English kings & queens down to King Richard III, the emperor traces his family back to the fifteenth century marriage of the Earl of Huntington to Princess Catherine of England.  Despite the emperor's illustrious lineage from an age of absolutism and the divine right of kings, the GLK was established as a constitutional monarchy.  While the GLK never released details about the extent to which it could be considered a democracy with institutions such as a representative & responsible legislative assembly or an independent judiciary, the spirit seemed not to be despotic.  As a new state, the GLK might even have appeared with a system as genuinely novel as monarchical anarchy.    

Fobbed off.

While no governments granted recognition to the GLK as a sovereign state or established diplomatic relations, the chief of staff in Queensland's Department of Premier and Cabinet did in 2004 write to Emperor Dale Parker Anderson which suggested at least a tacit acknowledgment of the existence of the GLK which sat off Queensland's east coast.  There's no record of further communication between any level of Australian government and the GLK and nor does it appear the GLK made any attempt to secure even observer status in any international bodies.  Following the Australian government voting to legalize same-sex marriage, the GLK was on 17 November 2017 dissolved and the state of war officially lapsed.  There were no casualties.

Slender rainbow: Lindsay Lohan in a vintage Hervé Leger bandage dress at the Gansevoort Hotel, NYC, May 2007.

The distinctive colors of the rainbow flag and their simple, geometric deployment in stripes have made the flag a popular design.  At the human scale it can be applied to just about any article of clothing and worn as a political statement either of self-identity or an expression of inclusiveness and although the motif can exist at the level of fashion, regardless of intent, the design is now so vested with meaning that probably it's always interpreted as political.

The Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, bathed in a rainbow flag projection during a vigil for victims of a shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, June 2016.

Bold, horizontal stripes on a rectangle are perhaps uniquely suited to being deployed at scale and can thus be an aspect of representational architecture but even structures in the built environment with little relationship to the straight lines and right angles of the rectangle offer a suitable canvas.  Because the stripes can flow across and around even the most complex curves and there's no inherent hierarchy in the significance of the colors, if a treated shape emphasizes some and minimizes others, it matters not because the meaning is denoted by the whole.

The progress flag

The concept of the rainbow flag continues to evolve.  Although the text string has been appended as the factions in sexual politics achieved critical mass in acceptability, while the "T" in LGBTQQIAAOP included the trans community, their flags and banners had been separate.  One suggestion to achieve more inclusive vexillological recognition was the "progress flag" (sometimes with initial capitals) which in its latest form is defined:

Red: Life
Orange: Healing
Yellow: New Ideas
Green: Prosperity
Blue: Serenity
Violet: Spirit
Black & Brown: People of Color
White, blue & pink: Trans people
Purple circle on yellow: Intersex

The intersex component was in 2021 interpolated by Valentino Vecchietti, an activist with the UK’s Intersex Equality Rights movement, building on the original progress flag designed in 2018 by US graphic artist Daniel Quasar who had added the five-striped chevron.  The element Vecchietti used was the intersex flag, first displayed in 2013 by Australian bioethicist Morgan Carpenter, the design rationale of which was the purple and yellow being positioned as a counterpoint to blue and pink, traditionally binary, gendered colors, the choice of the circle being to represent “…being unbroken, about being whole, symbolizing the right to make our own decisions about our own bodies.”  Carpenter has noted that statement is not an abstraction, non-consensual surgeries still being performed in many places.  The new design reflects recent internal LGBTQQIAAOP politics which have for some time focused on inclusivity underneath the broader LGBTQ+ umbrella, the feeling being intersex people have long been not only underrepresented but also visually undepicted in the Pride imagery ubiquitous in clothing, events and publicity materials.

Lavender

Lavender (pronounced lav-uhn-der)

(1) As a color, a pale bluish purple, similar to or variations of lilac & violet.

(2) Of or pertaining to something of the shade.

(3) In botany, any of the various Old World perennial shrubs or herbaceous plants or shrubs belonging to the genus Lavandula (family Lamiaceae (labiates)), of the mint family, especially Lavandula angustifolia, and cultivated for its spikes of fragrant mauve or blue flowers and as the source of a fragrant oil.

(4) The dried flowers or other parts of this plant placed among linen, clothes etc (usually in small, porous bags (called lavender bags)), for the scent or as a preservative.

(5) As lavender water (historically also called toilet water), a solution of oil of lavender, used sometimes as an aftershave.

(6) In informal use, of or relating to a homosexual orientation in men (archaic); an effeminate male (used as both noun & adjective).

(7) As lavender marriage, a type of marriage of convenience undertaken by gay man and lesbian women, often as a form of professional protection.

(8) In film production, a kind of film stock for creating positive prints from negatives as part of the process of duplicating the negatives (obsolete).

(9) A washer; one (especially a woman) who washes clothes (archaic).

(10) As a euphemism, a woman employed in prostitution or having loose morals (archaic).

(11) In sexual politics, an only briefly used and now obsolete descriptor: (1) pertaining to LGBT people and rights (as lavender collar which was replaced by rainbow collar (a reference to the gay pride flag)) and (2) a militant strain of lesbian feminism which opposed heterosexism.

1225–1275: From the Middle English lavendre, from the Anglo-French lavendre, from the Old French lavandiere (the lavender plant), from the tenth century Medieval Latin lavandārius & lavendula, a variant of livendula, a nasalized variant (unrecorded) of lividula (a plant livid in color).  The French forms may be from the Latin lividus (bluish; livid), but was certainly influenced by the French lavande and the Italian lavanda (a washing), from the Latin lavare (to wash), from the primitive Indo-European root leue- (to wash), the link being the flower being used to scent washed fabrics and as a bath perfume.  The Latin lavō (I wash, bathe; I wet, moisten) was from the Proto-Italic lawāō, from the primitive Indo-European lewhs (to wash).  It was cognates with the Ancient Greek λούω (loúō) & λοέω (loéō), the Albanian laj, the Old Armenian լոգանամ (loganam) and the Old English lēaþor (from which English gained lather).  Lavender is a noun & adjective, lavendering is a verb and lavendered is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is lavenders).

The adjective in the sense of “a pale purple color, of the color of lavender flowers” dates from 1840", the noun as a color noted since 1882.  The identical Middle English word meant both "laundress; washerwoman" and "prostitute, whore; camp follower", the origin of that probably being the roles being performed by the same personnel, one presumably before sunset, the other after.  In politics, lavender enjoyed a brief currency as (1) pertaining to LGBT people and rights (as lavender collar which was replaced by rainbow collar (a reference to the gay pride flag) and (2) a descriptor of a militant strain of lesbian feminism which opposed heterosexism.

Lindsay Lohan with lavender colored hair, smoking.

The surname does exist as Lavandar but the more common spelling is Lavender, regarded by genealogists as English but of early French origin.  Introduced by the Normans after the conquest of 1066 it is occupational and derived from lavandier, applied especially to workers in the wool industry employed to wash raw wool or rinse the cloth after fulling. Job-descriptive surnames originally denoted the actual occupation of the name-bearer and only later became hereditary when a son or perhaps a daughter followed the father into the same line of business.  The surname first recorded in 1273 on the “Hundred Rolls” of Cambridgeshire and the earliest known instance in the US record is from New York in 1846 although its likely (possibly with variations of spelling) there were earlier cases of immigration.  The first recorded spelling of the family name was la Lauendere which, dated 1253, was entered in the “Pipe Rolls” of Oxfordshire during the reign of Henry III (1207–1272; King of England 1216-1272) and over the centuries, in the British Isles, Europe, the US and the British Empire, the spelling evolved in several forks until the modern Lavender emerged as the most common.

Wedding day of film star Rock Hudson (1925–1985) & Phyllis Gates (1925–2006), Santa Barbara, California, 9 November 1955.They separated in 1957, the divorce granted the next year.

A lavender marriage is one between a man and woman undertaken as a marriage of convenience to conceal the socially stigmatized sexual orientation of one partner or both.  The color lavender had an association with gay men going back centuries and it’s thought the origin was based on the idea of a shade somewhere between pink (girl) & blue (boy).  Although there’s much evidence to suggest there’s a long tradition of the practice in many cultures, the term “lavender marriage” seems to date only from 1895 and came into wide use only in the mid twentieth century where it was used almost exclusively, knowingly to describe marriages in the Hollywood film industry between couples known not to be straight.  In some cases the marriages were a professional necessity because of contracts of employment which essentially proscribed all aspects of homosexuality.  Although in the west the structural reasons for lavender marriages have substantially been dismantled, they are known still to occur, especially in communities where social mores reflect the less progressive views of their countries of ethnic origin.

Baguette

Baguette (pronounced ba-get)

(1) In ad-hoc application, a descriptor (based on baguette in the sense of “stick” , “rod” or “wand”) for an object with a narrow, relatively long rectangular shape (applied in the past as baguette magique (magic wand), baguettes chinoises (chopsticks) & baguette de direction (conductor's baton)).

(2) In jewelry design, a small gem-stone in a rectangular shape, achieved by cutting & polishing.

(3) A gem-stone in this shape (used especially for diamonds).

(4) In architecture, a small convex molding (a narrow, relatively long rectangular shape, especially one in a semi-circular section.

(5) In zoology, one of the minute bodies seen in the divided nucleoli of some infusoria after conjugation.

(6) As an ethnic slur (can be mildly offensive, but also used neutrally or affectionately as an alternative to “frog”), a French person, or a person of French descent.

(7) A type of French bread, actually defined in law by the ingredients and methods of production but most associated with the long, narrow shape.

1720–1730: From the French baguette (or baguet) (a type of architectural ornament, based on the sixteenth century sense of the word as “a wand, rod, stick”), from the Italian bacchetta (literally “a small rod” and the diminutive of bacchio (rod), from the Latin baculum (a stick or walking-stick (and linked to the later bacillus)).  The construct was bacch(io) + -etta.  The –etta suffix (the feminine of –etto), as well as indicate the feminine was used also with inanimate nouns ending (usually ending in –a) to create a literal diminutive (such as with boteca (shop, store), rendering botechetta (small shop).  The term was first used in gem-stone cutting in 1926 and in countries where the French colonial history left some linguistic trace, baguette is applied to some items such as the gun-stick (the rod for forcing ammunition into the barrel of a gun and in Louisianan Cajun, it referred to the barrel itself).  Like English, Danish, German, Spanish and Swedish adopted the French spelling which in other languages the variations included the Czech bageta, the Greek μπαγκέτα (bagkéta), the Hebrew בגט‎ (bagét), the Norwegian (Bokmål & Nynorsk) bagett, the Portuguese baguete, the Romanian baghetă, the Russian баге́т (bagét) and the Turkish baget.  Baguette & baguet are nouns; the noun plurals are baguettes & baguets.

Beware of imitations: The baguette de tradition française.

In France, a true baguette (Baguette artisanale) is made from ingredients and with a method defined in law while the famous shape is a convention.  Typically, baguettes have a diameter between 50-75 mm (2-3 inches) and are some 610-710 mm (24-26 inches) in length although the 1 m (39 inch) baguette is not unusual, popular especially with the catering trade.  It’s a little misleading to suggest the baguette was invented because for centuries loaves in the shape existed in many places around the world and recipes for the mixing of dough were constantly subject to changes imposed by the success of harvests, economics, supply-chain disruptions and simple experimentation.  The baguette instead evolved and its popularity was a thing of natural selection; it survived because people preferred the taste, texture and convenience of form while other breads faded from use.  It seems clear that the long, stick-like direct ancestors of the baguette began to assume their recognizably modern form in French towns and cities in the eighteenth century although doubtless there was much variation between regions and probably even between bakers in the same place.  The daily bread being the classic market economy, bakers would be influenced by losing sales to a more popular shop and so would adjust their mixes or techniques to attract customers back.  In this way a standardized form would have emerged and, in the French way, by 1920 the assembly had passed a law codifying the critical parameters (weight, size and price), formalizing the popular name baguette.  In 2003, the jocular slang "freedom bread" emerged to describe the baguette, an allusion to the "Freedom Fries" which replaced "French Fries" in US government staff canteens while there was tension between the White House and the Élysée Palace over France's attitude to the proposed invasion of Iraq.   

Lindsay Lohan in promotion for @lilybakerjewels, 2020.  The Rainbow Baguette Ring (centre) using stones cut in a true “baguette” rectangle whereas the Rainbow Bracelet used squares.

Globalization and modern techniques of mass production however intruded on many aspects of French lives and bakeries weren’t immune from the challenge of the cheap “baguette” sold by supermarkets.  Even among the boulangerie (a French bakery in which the bread must, by law, be baked on-premises) there were some who resorted to less demanding methods of production to compete.  As a matter of cultural protection, the assembly in 1993 enacted Le Décret Pain (The Bread Decree) which stipulates that to be described as pain maison (homemade bread), a bread needs to be wholly kneaded, shaped, and baked at the place of sale.  To limit the scope of the supermarkets (some of which were importing frozen, pre-prepared dough), rules also defined what pain traditionnel français (traditional French bread) may be made from and banning any pre-made components from baguettes.  Also retained was the relevant provision of the 1920 labor legislation which prohibits the employment of people in bread and pastry making between ten in the evening and four in the morning.  So, when visiting a boulangerie, it’s recommended to ask for a baguette de tradition française (usually as baguette de tradition) which is made from wheat flour, water, yeast, and common salt (reflecting modern practice, one may contain up to 0.5% soya flour, up to 2% broad bean flour and up to 0.3% wheat malt flour) and the dough must rest between 15-20 hours at a temperature between 4-6^o C (43-46^o F).  The less exalted baguettes ordinaires, are made with baker's yeast and a less exacting specification.

The French Ministère de la Culture’s (Ministry of Culture) National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage included the baguette in its index in 2018 and in 2022, the artisanal know-how and culture of the baguette was added to UNESCO’s (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.  Already preserving the information about some 600 traditions from more than 130 countries, UNESCO noted the addition by saying it celebrated the French way of life, something of which the baguette, as a central part of the French diet for at least 100 years, was emblematic.  With some 16 million consumed in France every day, the “…the baguette is a daily ritual, a structuring element of the meal, synonymous with sharing and conviviality", a statement from UNESCO read, concluding it was “…important that these skills and social habits continue to exist in the future."

Valhalla

Valhalla (pronounced val-hal-uh or vahl-hah-luh)

(1) In Norse mythology, a dwelling in Asgard, the Norse heaven, the hall of Odin, reserved to receive the souls of those who fell in battle and others who died heroic deaths.

(2) In casual use, by extension from the classic meaning, an abode of the gods or afterlife in general.

1696: From the New Latin Vahalla, from the Old Norse Valhöll, the construct being val(r) (the slain in battle (and cognate with the Old English wæl)) + höll (hall).  The heavenly hall in which Odin receives the souls of heroes slain in battle appears often in Norse mythology and the word Vahalla was introduced into English in Archdeacon William Nicolson’s (1655–1727) English Historical Library (1696).  Valr (those slain in battle) was from the Proto-Germanic walaz (source also of Old English wæl (slaughter, bodies of the slain)) from the Old High German wal (battlefield, slaughter), from the primitive Indo-European root wele (to strike, wound (source also of Avestan vareta- (seized, prisoner), the Classical Latin veles (ghosts of the dead), the Old Irish fuil (blood) & the Welsh gwel (wound)). Höll (hall) is from the primitive Indo-European root kel- (to cover, conceal, save).  Nicolson’s work was long known only to scholars and it wasn’t until the word was re-introduced in the eighteenth centuries by antiquaries there was any revival of interest but it was the work of Richard Wagner (1813–1883) in the next century that popularised the Norse myths and, in some circles, made Valhalla a cult.  The familiar figurative sense has been used since 1845.  Vahalla was also spelled Valhall, Walhalla & Walhall; the plural is Valhallas (and not always with the initial capital).

Hermann Burghart's (1834-1901) design of Valhalla and the rainbow bridge for the staging of Das Rheingold, Bayreuth, 1878.

Valhalla is the great hall where the god Odin houses the dead whom he deems worthy of dwelling with him.  In the Old Norse poem Grímnismál (The Song of the Hooded One), the architecture of Valhalla is described as honouring military tradition, the roof of the “gold-bright” Valhalla made from the shields of fallen warriors with their spears its rafters.  Around the many feasting tables are chairs made from breastplates and the gates are guarded by wolves, eagles circling above but there are different depictions and there's no one view of where Valhalla was.  In some Old Norse literature, it’s said to be located in Asgard, the gods’ celestial fortress yet other texts suggest it was underground, one of the many places of the underworld.

The dead who reside in Valhalla, the einherjar (the ɛinˌherjɑz̠, (those who fight alone, literally "army of one")), live on as warriors, fighting among each-other and enjoying vivid adventures during the day.  Yet every evening, their wounds are healed, and, restored to full health, they feat on roasted wild boar (Saehrimnir (from the Old Norse Sæhrímnir of unknown origin)) and a mead from the udder of the goat Heidrun (from the Old Norse Heiðrun of unknown origin), all the while waited on by the same beautiful Valkyries who circled the battlefields on which they were slain.  But the einherjar are doomed because Odin has recruited only the bravest soldiers for he wants them for his army in his struggle against the wolf Fenrir during Ragnarok, a battled which Odin and the einherjar are fated to lose.

Robert Lepage's (b 1957) design of Valhalla for the staging of Das Rheingold, Met Opera, New York, 2010.

Like the mythology of Greek and Roman antiquity, it’s possibly some of what was passed down during the middle ages is just one variation of the original myth(s) and it’s only in the poetry of Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241) that there’s a statement of the path of the fallen to Valhalla.  Snorri’s Prose Edda (circa 1220), a four-volume work drawn from many sources remains the most complete and extensive collection of the Norse mythology known still to exist but the author was also a lawyer and politician and scholars have noted he wrote long after the old Norse paganism had been replaced by Christianity; there’s the suspicion this may have been an influence in the way he synthesized strands from earlier traditions with Christian teaching.  Snorri said those who fell on the field of battle ascend to Valhalla, while those who die a less heroic death are consigned to hell, the underworld.  That does seem unfair (and probably bad public policy) and elsewhere in the Edda, he’s not above allowing the odd fudge, just as Roman Catholic theologians would invent limbo, their own medieval conjecture to tidy up the margins of God’s mysterious ways.  Snorri makes no attempt to justify his (actually quite blatant) contradictions and it’s thought what he wanted to achieve was a kind of lineal alignment between the pagan ways and the Christian, Valhalla and Hel the same diametric opposite as Heaven and Hell in Christian eschatology.  However, as many surviving fragments from earlier texts attest, the tidy, systematized paganism described by Snorri was not entirely that which had been practiced.

Skeuomorph

Skeuomorph (pronounced skyoo-uh-mawrf)

(1) An ornament or design on an object that mimics the form of the object when made from another material or by other techniques, usually one that reflects a previously functional element.

(2) In digital technology. a design or design element, as an icon on a digital device, that mimics the three-dimensional look or the sound of a physical object, even if that object is obsolete.

1889: The construct was the Ancient Greek σκεῦος (skeûos) (implement, tool, vessel) + μορφή (morphḗ) (shape; form), modeled after the earlier zoomorph (resembling an animal) and phyllomorph (resembling a plant).  The suffix -morph was appended to words to denote “of or pertaining to shape or structure”.  Skeuomorph & skeuomorphism are nouns, skeuomorphic is an adjective and skeuomorphically is an adverb; the noun plural is skeuomorphs.

Magic Cap's start-up screen (1994).

The classic desktop metaphor, built with skeuomorphs, which was the start-up screen for the Magic Communicating Applications Platform (1994-2001 and commonly known as Magic Cap), an operating system for personal digital assistants (PDA) constructed wholly in the object oriented programming (OOP) model.  Loaded with good ideas and ahead of its time, Magic Cap failed because the planet's communication infrastructure was neither robust enough or sufficiently fast to realize the OS's possibilities.  Additionally, even as things evolved, there was never enough inter-operability with other systems and services which had achieved critical mass.

A skeuomorph is a design element in an object which mimics the design of a similar object made from another material or serving another function; it can thus be considered a derivative object which retains visual cues from the original object.  Quite when the idea emerged of the skeuomorph as something which consciously and deliberately “carries over” an earlier motif for some purpose beyond the functional is uncertain but in engineering and architecture, the technique pre-dates Antiquity.  Because architectural generations (expressed usually as eras or epochs) tend to extend over at least several human generations, what comes to be defined as “attractive” or “elegant” can become well-established but as technological advances make possible structures which are bigger, taller or able to be created with different materials or in different shapes, it had been common for motifs like familiar visual elements to be (explicitly or in detail) to be included in the new.  It softened the shock of the new.  In domestic architecture, this continues to this day, much to the disgust of architects who are appalled at the mash-up of influences which can appear in a McMansion (in which there will be chandeliers with electric bulbs emulating wax candles; a classic skeuomorph) but since modernity was delivered with the twentieth century, in big buildings and representational architecture, the shock of the new seems to have become the objective and skeuomorphs are regarded as sentimental or worse: bourgeois.

Instagram’s old skeuomorph (left) and the new flat logo (right).

In 2018 Instagram switched its logo from a skeuomorph UI to a flat UI.  It was a move which at the time surprised many because the retro brown and cream camera with a rainbow stripe (a nod to the Polaroid cameras which were such a symbol of the late twentieth century) had become instantly recognisable but the company insisted the new design reflected how the app had changed. When first released (as Burbn), the app was used almost exclusively for its photo filters and effects that lent digital images a “retro edge”, the dominant pattern of use then to use Instagram as handler to edit images which were then uploaded to a platform such as Facebook or X (then known as Twitter).  However, Instagram clicked with generation brought up on short-form content and static images and became suddenly a massive social phenomenon.  So, the logo changed because as the company put it: “We've been inspired by all the ways the community has grown and changed, and we wanted to create something that reflects how vibrant and diverse storytelling on Instagram has become”.  Exactly how all this was reflected in the new logo was neither immediately obvious nor expanded on by Instagram but the point probably was just that it was changed, the medium being the message.  In 2012 Facebook bought Instagram for US$1 billion which now sounds a bargain but back then, a billion US$ was still a lot of money.

Skeuomorphs in action: The Lindsay Lohan Quiz for iOS.

In the more ephemeral world of screen icons, graphical user interfaces (GUI) and app design where the life of a design can be closer in duration to that of the premiership of Liz Truss (b 1975; UK prime-minister Sep-Oct 2022) than something like Westminster Abbey, skeuomorphs proved popular because instantly they could adopt symbols which were unambiguous and universally understood; the sense of continuity with the past really wasn’t important at all, the retro-look just amusing.  Although using a representation of an old-style rotary-dial telephone on a screen icons does sound paradoxical, it made sense because the symbol was internationally recognized whereas were an image of cell phone (mobile) to be used, it would not have worked as well because it could be easily confused with a calculator or some other rectangular device.  Equally, envelopes and mail-boxes were used where E-mail was involved because nothing else could possibly be so evocative of “mail”.

Among software designers, the dominant theme in the early skeuomorphs was to create panels with a 3D appearance to gain some resemblance to physical buttons.  This was at least partially because designers tend wherever possible to exploit to the maximum whatever is permitted by the medium which is their platform but it was also partly the persuasive utility of the skeuomorph itself.  The alternative approach was the “flat design” which deliberately avoided imitating real-world textures or objects, a paradigm inherited from a school of art and design which rejected the idea of one thing imitation another.  Imitation however thrived, thus smartphones have digital cameras which produce the audible sound of a mechanical shutter when a photograph is taken and note-taking apps may emulate the appearance (in 2D) of textured bond paper.  The trends come and go and no approach has ever seemed to be dominant, both motifs (and hybrid forms) peacefully co-existing, frequently on the one device although in recent years things do seem to have moved to the darker and more minimalist.

Gild

Gild (pronounced gild)

(1) To coat with gold, gold leaf, or a gold-colored substance.

(2) To render something with a bright, pleasing, or specious aspect; having the color or appearance of gold.

(3) Smear with blood; to make red, as with blood (archaic except in historic reference).

(4) To adorn in some way.

(5) In cooking, to render some surface with a golden appearance.

(6) To make appear drunk (now rare).

1300–1350: From the Middle English gilden & gulden (to gild, to cover with a thin layer of gold), from the Old English gyldan (akin to gold) and related to the Old Norse gylla (to gild), the Old High German ubergulden (to cover with gold) (the verb from gultham (gold)) and the Middle High German vergülden, from the Proto-West Germanic gulþijan, from the Proto-Germanic gulþijaną, from gulþą (gold).

1967 Cadillac Eldorado.

The figurative use of gild apparently began in the late sixteenth century.  The noun gilding (golden surface produced by gilding (the verb)" was from the mid fifteenth century, the verb pre-dating the form by some two decades.  The adjective gilded emerged 1400 as the past participle of the Middle English gilden and by the early fifteenth century was used also as a noun with the sense of "gilding".  The noun eldorado entered English in the 1590s from the Spanish El Dorado (the golden one ( the name given in the sixteenth century to the country or city laden with gold believed to lie in the heart of the Amazon jungle)); it was derived from the past participle of dorar (to gild), from Latin deaurare (to gild, to gild over), the construct being de- (probably used here as an intensifier) + aurare (to gild), from aurum (gold).  The legend began with the tales of early Spanish explorers and, regarding gold, there would once have been some truth in the story but, in the way of such things, there was embellishment (gilding the story as it were) until Eldorado was thought a city where the “streets were paved with gold” and for two centuries this drew explorers and adventurers.  Gild is a noun & verb, gilding is a verb & adjective, gilded is a verb, begild is a verb & adjective and begilded & gildable is an adjective.

In idiomatic use, the use as “gilded cage” refers to a place (and, by extension, a situation) which is superficially attractive but nevertheless restrictive (a luxurious trap) and appears to have been coined by the writers of the popular song A Bird in a Gilded Cage (1900).  In the slang of apothecaries, there was also “gild the pill”, the history of which is murky but it’s said to refer to the ancient practice of coating bitter tasting pills with a thin layer of metal, the modern version of the phrase being “sugarcoat the pill”.  In historic UK use, the noun gildsman was an alternative spelling of guildsman (a man who is a member of a guild).  To “gild the lily” is unnecessarily to adorn something already beautiful, either in poor taste (a modern expression of which is “bling”) or in an attempt to make something appear more valuable (it has also been used (though less satisfactorily) to mean “inordinately to praise someone”).  Despite often being credited with the coining, nowhere is the works Shakespeare does the phrase appear, Lord Salisbury’s words (King John, Act 4, Scene 2) actually being:

Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp,

To guard a title that was rich before,

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

To throw a perfume on the violet,

To smooth the ice, or add another hue

Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,

Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

Cartoon with a modern feeling: Chicago Labor Newspaper's (1894) critique of the policies of the Pullman railroad company.

The terms “gilded age” and “golden age” are sometimes confused, the former coined by Mark Twain (1835-1910) and Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900) as the title of their 1873 novel.  The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today was a novel which satirized greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America and it lent the name to the period of US history (circa 1870-circa 1900) immediately prior to the era of progressivism and reform when something was done about political corruption and the economic exploitation of the trusts.  A gilded age is thus suggestive of a time in which things seem superficially attractive and there is prosperity but the activity conceals the squalor and ugliness beneath.  Whenever there are periods of great social and economic inequality (such as that which has evolved in the West over the last four-odd decades (trickle-down economics and its better disguised successors) with aggregated wealth high but disproportionately held by a tiny minority), the term gilded age is often suggested as a descriptor: Gilded age 2.0 in the fashionably modern parlance).  A golden age differs in that it’s associated with a period of peace, prosperity and progress, often expressed by historians in phrases such as the “golden age of the Gupta dynasty” which referred to the Gupta Empire in India which existed between the fourth and sixth centuries. 

Diversity

Diversity (pronounced dih-vur-si-tee (U) or dahy-vur-si-tee (non-U))

(1) The state or fact of being diverse; difference; unlikeness; nonuniformity.

(2) The inclusion of individuals representing more than one national origin, color, religion, socioeconomic stratum, sexual orientation etc.

(3) In mathematical logic, the relation that holds between two entities when and only when they are not identical; the property of being numerically distinct.

(4) In politics, the social policy of encouraging tolerance for people of different cultural and racial backgrounds

(5) In politics as multiculturalism or more specific legislation mandating diversity, an attempt to redress historic discrimination.

(6) In biology, as biodiversity, the degree of variation of life forms within an ecosystem.

(7) In zoological taxidermy, as species diversity, the effective number of species represented in a data set.

(8) In genetics, as genetic diversity, the total number of genetic characteristics in the genetic makeup of a species.

(9) In agriculture, as crop diversity, the variance in genetic and phenotypic characteristics of plants used in agriculture.

(10) In electronic communications, the principle of the deployment of multiple channels or devices to improve reliability.

(11) In electrical engineering, as diversity factor, the ratio of the sum of the maximum demands of the various part of a system to the coincident maximum demand of the whole system.

(12) In law, a term often used in equal-opportunity legislation when codifying specific metrics.

1300–1350: From the Middle English diversite (originally "variety; range of differences" and by the late fourteenth century "quality of being diverse, fact of difference between two or more things or kinds; variety; separateness; that in which two or more things differ" (usually in a technical or neutral sense), from the Old French diversité (difference, diversity, unique feature, oddness (and when used in a degoratory sense "wickedness, perversity; contradiction") (which survives in the Modern French as the twelfth century diversité), from the Latin diversitatem (nominative dīversitās) (contrariety, wickedness, perversity, disagreement (and in a secondary sense "difference, diversity")), the construct being  diversus (past particle of divertere) (contradiction, difference; turned different ways (and in Late Latin "various") +‎ tas.  The Latin tas suffix was from the primitive Indo-European tehts, from the Ancient Greek της (tēs) and Sanskrit ताति (tāti).  In English, the construct uses the suffix ity which is used to form abstract nouns indicating a state of being.  Suffix is from the Middle English ite, a borrowing from the Old French ité and directly from the Latin itatem (nominative itas).  As used as a suffix denoting state or condition, in Latin it was built with a connective i + tas.   Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1926) notes that in English, a word with the ity suffix usually means the quality of being what the adjective describes, or concretely an instance of the quality, or collectively all the instances whereas a word with an ism appended means the disposition, or collectively all those who feel it.  Diversity is a noun, diverse is an adjective (and collective a noun) and diversely is an adverb; the noun plural is diversities.

Diversity: Old & New

A distinct negative meaning "perverseness, being contrary to what is agreeable or right; conflict, strife; perversity, evil" existed in English from late fourteenth century but was obsolete after the seventeenth (although the twenty-first century critiques of wokeness and political correctness has seen "diversity" again used in this way in certain quarters.  Diversity as a virtue in the political construction of nation-states was an idea which grew as modern democracies developed in the decades after the French Revolution (1789) because it was though essential to prevent one faction from arrogating all power (and discussed in The Federalist (now usually called The Federalist Papers) 85 essays published in 1788 and written by some of the Founding Fathers of the United States to advocate ratification of the constitution.  The word however was also used under the Raj where many of the British colonial "fixes" (at which they excelled) used existing divisiveness (which they encouraged and sometimes enhanced) as part of the principle of "divide & rule".  Diversity under the Raj was real, cross-cutting and multi-layered but for from the modern sense in which ethnicity, gender and sexual identity are the typical determinates, this use emerging as now understood in the early 1990s, the original purpose being to provide for the "inclusion and visibility of persons of previously under-represented minority identities".

Projecting diversity: Lindsay Lohan in rainbow T-shirt, the T-shirt of the T-shirt created through Yoshirt's portal.

Although the use of diversity (in a positive sense) as applies to race, gender etc. appears to date only from 1992, the term "affirmative action", as government policy designed to promote or achieve diversity in various aspects of life, was first used in an executive order signed by US President Kennedy in 1961.  That was a decree which required that government contractors "…take affirmative action to ensure applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin".  Such policies have become widespread, especially since the 1980s and, in the west, are applied exclusively for the benefit of groups or individuals thought disadvantaged.  Beyond the west, other countries have adopted such policies although sometimes they’re applied for the benefit of a defined majority.  Increasingly, in the US, affirmative action policies are being challenged, sometimes by groups themselves defined as "diverse". 

In the West, not all approve of diversity positive initiatives.  In March 2018, the University of Sydney Union issued a statement noting the application of an affirmative action policy to its debating team would promote diversity and prevent domination by “affluent, white, privately educated students”.  The union’s press release was prompted by a report in the Murdoch press that the new affirmative action policies will mean the university would be sending not necessarily its best team to the annual debating tournament, but one “…meeting quotas for women, people of colour, and others oppressed by the white male supremacy”.

Former senator Eric Abetz

Anxious always to expose conspiracies by communists, LGBTQQIAAOP agitators, Trotskyists, trade unionists and other malcontents, then Senator Eric Abetz (b 1958; senator for Tasmania (Liberal) 1994-2022) labelled the move “Stalinist dogma’’ dressed up as progressive thinking, adding the union’s move was evidence of “stifling political correctness’’ which threatened to “damage the future generations who are taught this nonsense as fact’’.  The former senator was perhaps not someone good at recognizing white privilege or understanding its implications for those from diverse backgrounds but he did take a Churchillian stand defending the nation when the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands declared war on Australia so there's that.

To illustrate a corporate commitment to workplace diversity, always include a brunette in photos.