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Announcing the VSI Roadshow 2016

This year, 2016, is a very special year for the Very Short Introductions (VSI) series. Not only is our 21st birthday, but we are also publishing our 500th VSI title in the autumn.

Since our launch in 1995, Very Short Introductions have been filling in the gaps of our knowledge with a VSI to almost everything. With subjects ranging from Climate Change to Complexity, Genes to Goethe, American Slavery to Agriculture and The Napoleonic Wars to Nothing, they have inspired our curious minds and grown our knowledge immeasurably. To celebrate, we are planning a VSI tour of the UK this year. We are taking our VSI authors on the road to share their vast subject knowledge at some exciting events and festivals.

If you would like to celebrate with us, please take a look at the interactive map to find an event near you.

Featured image credit: Mainland Britain / Wales by Jeff Djevdet. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

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Race: Jesse Owens and the African American tradition

Patterned on other sports dramas about race and the freedom rights struggle, such as Remember the Titans, Glory Road, We Are Marshall, The Express, and 42, Race tells the story of Jesse Owens’ preparation and stunning performance at the 1936 Summer Olympics at Berlin, Germany. However, while Owens follows a long tradition of unsung African American heroes, many remain unfamiliar with the details surrounding his rise to prominence.

Born on 12 September 1913, James Cleveland “Jesse” Owens was born the twelfth child to sharecroppers Henry Cleveland and Mary Emma, near Oakville, Alabama. Despite his later athletic success, Owen’s early childhood was marked with physical illness; having almost died from pneumonia, he was relieved of most demanding farm work until his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio in 1922.

Here, for the first time in his life, Owens received a consistent education and regularly participated in athletics. By the time he graduated from East Technical High School in 1933, he was a nationally renowned sprinter, widely recruited by northern universities with great track and field programs. However, wanting to stay close to home, Owens attended The Ohio State University at Columbus. He continued to excel in track and field and in the classroom, while also working part time to make up for not being offered an athletic scholarship.

In 1935, Owens set four world records in the 100 yard dash, the long jump, the 220 yard dash, and the 220 yard low hurdles at the National Intercollegiate Championship at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Michigan. Six weeks later, on 5 July 1935, he reached another milestone in his life, marrying his childhood sweetheart, Minnie Ruth Solomon, whom he would ultimately start a family with.

Jesse Owens at Olympics summer games 1936. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Following his incredible performance at the National Intercollegiate Championship, Owens fulfilled the popular prediction that he would be the favorite to make the US Olympic Team. Simultaneously, white supremacists on the International Olympic Committee (IOC), who argued that “politics had no place in sport”—such as the US Olympic Committee’s (USOC)/IOC’s Avery Brundage—hypocritically politicized the 1936 Summer Olympics, ultimately deciding the games would be hosted in Berlin.

This set the stage for Adolf Hitler to use the Games to promote the global reemergence of a powerful Germany, which at its center was the advancement of Nazi ideologies of Aryan supremacy. At the start of the Games, German athletes dominated the medaling, which led to the common perception that Germany would continue to dominate the gold medaling in most major events, and that Hitler’s propaganda would go unimpeded. That is, until Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the 100 meter sprint, the long jump, the 200 meter sprint, and the 4 x 100 meter relay team.

After the Olympics, Owens entered into obscurity and eventually became bankrupt, unable to profit from his short period of fame. During the 1968 Summer Olympics, he briefly reemerged as the first black USOC official. In this role, USOC/IOC President Brundage—who at the time led the movement to readmit Apartheid South Africa into Olympic competition—tasked Owens to manage and expel any black athlete from the Olympic Village who brought politics into the Games. Thus it was Owens who in fact publicly criticized Tommie Smith and John Carlos for what appeared to be Black Power salutes.

Four years later in his autobiography, I Have Changed (1972), Owens acknowledged the legitimacy and linkage of Smith’s and Carlos’ freedom rights tactics to the long tradition of underestimated and unrecorded black heroes for democracy and freedom. Smith and Carlos launched the wider movement that had started with Owens himself in 1936 Berlin, a movement in which they all played a major role in the freedom rights movement against racism in the United States and against fascism abroad.

Image Credit: “1936 Berlin Olympics Photograph – Listing Jesse Owens’ 100 and 200 Meter Sprint Victories” by Joe Haupt. CC BY SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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Celebrating 40 years of the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy

“The knowledge of the capabilities of antibiotics is still essential to control infections which nowadays are more complex and often occur in patients whose defences are compromised by other forms of medical and surgical treatment” wrote Professor J. D. Williams in his first Editorial in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (JAC) in 1975. As scientists continue to warn of a future without antibiotics, this statement is as relevant today as it was then.

Published on behalf of The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, the JAC features articles that further knowledge and advance the science and application of antimicrobial chemotherapy with antibiotics and antifungal, antiviral and antiprotozoal agents. The Journal publishes primarily in human medicine, and articles in veterinary medicine likely to have an impact on global health. As declared in Professor Williams’ first Editorial, the Journal’s mission was to publish “data from the broad spectrum of disciplines which are involved in the use and development of antibiotics and related agents.” Over the coming year the Journal will reflect on, and celebrate, its contribution to the field as a whole.

We have created an interactive timeline for you to explore highlights from the past 40 years of the JAC, from highly cited articles to key milestones in the history of the Journal. We look forward to the next four decades and beyond.

// if (window.postMessage) { var tlMouseupFunc = function() { var tlFrame = document.getElementById("tl-timeline-iframe"); if (tlFrame.contentWindow && tlFrame.contentWindow.postMessage) { tlFrame.contentWindow.postMessage("mouseup","*"); } } if (typeof window.addEventListener != "undefined") { window.addEventListener("mouseup", tlMouseupFunc, false); } else if (typeof window.attachEvent != "undefined") { window.attachEvent("onmouseup", tlMouseupFunc); } } // ]]>Featured image: Bacteria by geralt. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.  

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Why Robert Mugabe continues to plod on

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe returned home from the Far East, where he had been for a month, on 22 January 2016. Mugabe was chipper and appeared physically fit, as he shook hands and exchanged greetings with a long queue of government officials, service chiefs and other ruling party dignitaries who converged on the Harare International Airport to welcome him home. This was Mugabe’s first public appearance since mid-December 2015. Mugabe’s reemergence put paid to long running speculation in and outside Zimbabwe that he had suffered a fatal heart attack in the Far East. Intense rumours about Mugabe’s alleged demise are not new. Indeed the frequency of these rumours once led Mugabe to boast that he had croaked and been brought back to life on numerous occasions: ‘I have died many times – that is where I have beaten Jesus Christ. Christ died once and resurrected once’.

Speculation about Mugabe’s well-being is unsurprising given that he turns 92 years old on 21 February 2016. His controversial leadership also polarises opinion in Zimbabwe and abroad, meaning that there are many who are eager to see him exit the political scene by any means. Mugabe is Africa’s eldest serving president and he has led Zimbabwe since 1980. Among current African leaders, only Cameroon’s Paul Biya, Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Mbasogo and Angola’s José dos Santos have governed their respective countries longer than Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe. While these three leaders have, like Mugabe, faced domestic political opposition to their long incumbency, none of them has encountered more Western disapproval and vilification of his rule than the Zimbabwean president. It is appropriate, then, to ask why Mugabe has remained a mainstay in Zimbabwean politics despite strong external and internal opposition. Here, let me outline four factors that perhaps best account for Mugabe’s political longevity.

The first of these factors is that some of Mugabe’s challengers have erroneously based part of their strategies against him on the assumption that death or his alleged poor health will aid them in bringing his reign to an end, sooner rather than later. For example, in the course of my research I have come across Western diplomats who are intent on adopting a wait and see approach to Zimbabwe, on the supposition that Mugabe’s health will soon fail, leading to his departure from office, which would then enable full Western re-engagement of the Zimbabwean government after over a decade of isolation. I have interviewed Mugabe, in addition to following him closely during his 2013 presidential election campaign. He is an old man, but his political acumen and determination to continue ruling Zimbabwe are not to be underestimated. Mugabe has every intention of running for re-election in Zimbabwe’s 2018 presidential poll. Persistent speculation about his ‘imminent’ death distracts his opponents from focusing on the electoral contest against him, which lies ahead. And, in an eerie way, each time Mugabe emerges from public seclusion looking in good health, following a tumult of rumours that he is dead, it only serves to enhance a myth of invincibility around him.

A second reason accounting for Mugabe’s continued hold on power is his authority over Zimbabwe’s security establishment, notwithstanding its internal divisions on the country’s presidential succession. Mugabe has effectively used the army, police and intelligence to see off his political rivals. Some have maintained, in recent years, that Mugabe has in fact become hostage to Zimbabwe’s military generals. The problem with this position is that it is not supported by any compelling evidence. The invention of the military generals’ authority blinds Mugabe’s adversaries to the real wellspring of power in Zimbabwe – himself!

The third element explaining Mugabe’s long incumbency is that he is not without popular support among some Zimbabweans. Political violence, intimidation and fear do not tell the complete story of how Mugabe has sustained his rule. Many Zimbabweans still regard him as a hero of the country’s struggle against colonialism and as a founding father of Zimbabwe’s independence. Mugabe never misses the opportunity to remind Zimbabweans and Africa more generally of this history of liberation, as a way of shoring up his legitimacy. Patronage, which is most evident in his violent seizure and redistribution of white-owned commercial farms to blacks from 2000 onwards, has also gone a long way towards maintaining loyalty to Mugabe.

A final cause of Mugabe’s political endurance is the averageness of the Zimbabwean political opposition. This is not to disregard the considerable repression and other underhand tactics Mugabe has employed against opposition. It is simply to say that the Zimbabwean opposition has made important missteps, which have contributed to the extension of Mugabe’s rule. Take for instance how the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party failed to build on their 4 years (2009-2013) as part of Zimbabwe’s power-sharing government, to claim a decisive electoral victory in the 2013 post unity government poll. Mugabe is certainly a shrewd political technician but this shrewdness has been exaggerated by the intrinsic limitations of his domestic political rivals.

Featured image credit: Robert Mugabe, 12th AU Summit via Wikimedia Commons.

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Platonic reception: that obscure object of desire

Of all the things we could possibly care about, why should we care about the reception of Plato? Wars rage round the world. The planet is in the process of environmental meltdown. Many remain mired in poverty, oppression, and disease. Surely this is a most obscure, not to say obscurantist, pursuit. But perhaps we are too hasty. Not to say that all the issues listed above are not urgent, and arguably more urgent than our scholarly pursuits, but if we take the example of the way Plato was read by French feminists in the 1970s and 1980s, we start to realize that what seem impossibly recondite arguments about the gendered nature of western metaphysics in fact were laying the groundwork for not only for women’s studies, gender studies, and queer studies, but also for the social movements that came in their wake and inspired them. We start to realize that these arguments have fundamentally changed the way we see ourselves and our societies. Luce Irigaray’s reading of Plato’s myth of the cave, for example, may not be stuff of everyday conversation, but Speculum: De l’autre femme spawned an intellectual earthquake in France, whose reverberations can be felt not only in our seminars but also in movements for marriage equality and the political acceptance of the LGBT community. The reception of Plato in fact has real consequences. Why?

Let us take for granted the importance of Plato’s Socrates in the foundation of not only western philosophy, but also political thought, literary theory, educational theory, and rhetoric. Beyond that, the French feminists and their interlocutors represent the intellectual substructure of the basic theoretical and philosophical reflection that has been central to work in literature, cultural studies, political theory, gender studies, feminism, and to a lesser, but not insignificant, degree architecture, art history, musicology, critical legal studies, and anthropology for the past thirty years. And thus in examining the relation of Plato’s texts to the thought of thinkers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva, and their dialogues concerning these texts with a variety of interlocutors including Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, as well as, Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault, we are looking at nothing less than a major portion of the basic intellectual equipment of postmodern culture in its most fundamental relation to the history of western thought. These are the thinkers and the dialogues that consciously or unconsciously have determined our assumptions about the nature of meaning, consciousness, sexuality, gender, and even truth. There are other dialogues that participate in that construction and they should not be neglected—Russell, Wittgenstein, and Rorty; Ghandi, Said, and Achebe, to name a few—but in the end it is hard to see how any of these discussions, no matter how difficult, could be imagined as obscure.

Image credit: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, drawing by Veldkamp, Gabriele and Maurer, Markus. CC-BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

However, I would want to go a step further and argue that the reception of Plato has not only had a critical impact on how we understand the world, and hence on how we live in it, but also that the reception of Plato and other ancient thinkers will continue to be a matter of some urgency as we seek to respond to the most pressing issues of our world. If we are to know where we come from and imagine where we might go, we must understand the structures of thought that determine our current possibilities, and by coming to know those delimitations in depth, we must seek their beyond. This is the fundamental calling of reception studies. A true thought from the outside, a true moment of thinking differently, can only emerge from the most profound genealogy of the present. The ancient, modern, and postmodern authors named above have all played significant roles in structuring the thought-world in which virtually every contemporary scholar of the humanities operates. This does not mean that we do or should share their values. It does not mean that they embody timeless or universal truths that must impress upon others.

The writers of the ancient world, and indeed of the premodern world, do not as a rule share our assumptions about human rights, gender equality, or slavery, and yet our most basic conceptions of beauty, justice, goodness, and the good life all trace their genealogy to these same writers. The recognition of this fact should serve as a cautionary tale in two specific senses: first, we are perhaps ourselves a good deal less free, tolerant, and enlightened than we imagine (as the continuing legacies of fascism, colonialism, and totalitarianism would suggest); and second, the positive legacy of western culture may have less to do with a presumed inheritance of universal themes or values, and more to do with a certain quality of attention, a certain critical relation of the self to itself, and a certain ethic of care that makes possible the creation of complex systems of reflection that are both resistant to dogmatic reduction and capable of producing moments of genuine utopian imagination. In studying the reception of these texts we assume an active and responsive stance toward them. They become a means of reflection and an incitement to imagination. Plato’s texts, in short, are good to think with.

And thank goodness that our reception of Plato is not simply passive, is not simply a function of our effacement before its transcendental power and penetration. Because if truth or wisdom or beauty or justice or love were really an unchanging inert possession that could be passed from one person or generation to the next, then our individual lives, our desires, our pursuit of wisdom would be meaningless. Philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the arts would be nothing more than a series of choreographed moves in pursuit of a pre-established end, with regard to which any individual variation would be either superfluous or perverse. If absolute interpretive anarchy is the denial of meaning, a rigid orthodoxy, the imposition of an unchanging law, does the same. Meaning is produced precisely in the moment of play, in the moment of seeking, in the moment of love and desire. That is when the way forward is revealed, and that is why Plato’s texts remain so powerful, because they force us time and again to interrogate ourselves and others, not so as to produce a superficial perplexity, but always in order to find the next step, the move beyond: the vision that points beyond itself.

Headline image credit: Plato’s Academy mosaic by unknown. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Nadia Boulanger, teaching Stravinsky to David Conte

Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) remains one of the most influential music teachers to have ever assigned counterpoint exercises. She was largely responsible for the training that made composers as diverse as Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, and Elliott Carter sound the way they do—each inherently unique, each an easily identifiable Boulanger pupil. And of those living composers championed by Boulanger, Igor Stravinsky held pride of place. Stravinsky represented all that Boulanger valued in the world—brilliant artistry drawn from a genius of a man. Dr. David Conte of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music studied with Boulanger from 1975-1978. He sat down with me recently to discuss his former teacher and what he learned of Stravinsky from her.

Boulanger often drew connections between analysis and performance. I wonder if you experienced this emphasis in your studies with Boulanger. 

I think the main connection Boulanger wanted to make was that analysis serves to illuminate the architecture of a piece of music, and this was helpful when memorizing a piece that one was performing or conducting. Her analysis was very focused on tonal structure—determining what key a given passage was in and how the movement through various keys was related to the tonic of the piece. In other words, every piece has a “tonal plan,” which requires that the composer is listening in such a way as to make each choice accountable to what has come before, and to what is coming after.

Nadia Boulanger, Fontainebleau 1964, Louise Talma Papers, Music Division, Library of Congress. Used with permission.

Did you happen to study any of Stravinsky’s works with Mademoiselle and if so, which pieces? 

I was at Fontainebleau for the summers of 1975 and 1976, and in the Paris Analysis Class from 1976-1978. Boulanger emphasized a few works by Stravinsky that she had been teaching for many decades: the Symphony of Psalms, the Mass, the Duo Concertante. We also used Stravinsky’s manuscript score of Orpheus for score reading practice in the Saturday morning Keyboard Harmony class, which was attended by about 6 of her more advanced students. We performed the Kyrie and Agnus Dei from the Mass in the Chorale in the summer of 1975. She coached the piece, and student Brian Davenport conducted. I remember her pointing out the larger tonal plan of the Symphony of Psalms, with so many “G’s” in the first e minor chord of the first movement, leading to the final cadence on “G” of that movement, setting up c minor for the second movement double fugue, leading ultimately to the final C major chord at the end of the first movement.

New facts have recently come to light about Boulanger’s biography and personal life. What do you find the most challenging of these claims? 

What is challenging for me involves speculations about Boulanger’s private life. I think some biographers have handled the subject with respect and dignity. But I think that it’s very difficult for modern people to enter fully into the idea that Boulanger saw herself as a “bride of music,” much as Catholic nuns see themselves as “brides of Christ.” It’s hard to believe that a person as passionate as Boulanger didn’t have “romantic” feelings for others, including Stravinsky. But she had the moral force to channel her energies completely into being of service to the art of music through teaching, and through championing the work she believed in—above all, that of Stravinsky.

David Conte. Used with permission.

Do you think there is room in present-day music classrooms to do what Boulanger did, combining analysis, performance, and history when tackling newly-composed works?

Analysis reveals the way that a composer handles language. Theory serves to describe practice. Boulanger said: “Music is nothing more than an incalculable number of solutions based on a limited vocabulary.” In-depth analyses of music can reveal how one composer resembles another, how they have assimilated various influences, and what it is that is unique to their handling of the language. Boulanger believed that there were timeless principles that transcended style and taste. The mastery of these principles can allow any individual composer to express his or her own unique musical personality.

I think that there is very little truly illuminating analysis of musical works today. I analyze my own works according to Boulanger’s methods, and I have tried to guide analysts of my music toward a more illuminating kind of analysis, but this has been difficult. The training simply doesn’t exist anymore, even in our most prestigious graduate programs.

And finally, what do you think is the characteristic that most commonly distinguishes a Boulanger alumnus and where do you think Boulanger’s pedagogical legacy lives on most vibrantly? 

Boulanger always linked music theory and analysis with “hands-on” work at the piano. For her, the fingers led the ear and the brain. One had to have absorbed the principles of classical voice leading in all keys to the point of being able to realize complex materials at sight. An important core of her training that isn’t really recognized are what we called “The Boulanger Cadences.” While at Fontainebleau, we had a class every Wednesday with Mlle Annette Dieudonné for two hours, the goal of which was to memorize these cadences in all keys, modulating to all closely related keys and those keys related through simple mixture, while singing—not playing—any given voice, while playing the other three, and sometimes reversing the hands. In this way, the student’s perception of both vertical and horizontal relations was remarkably sharpened. Having known these progressions by heart for over 40 years, I can attest to their great value. My 2010 lecture on these cadences at the European American Music Alliance (EAMA) has since been posted online with an explanation by Derek Remes.

So Boulanger alumni share a more thorough grounding in harmony, counterpoint, keyboard harmony, score reading, and all the related skills. Most music school curriculums are unable to provide enough time to master these skills at the level she demanded. EAMA seeks to impart this information to its students and represents the most organized and thorough program available at present. Its founder and director, Dr. Philip Lasser, looks at music as a language, with a grammar and syntax. By focusing on these things, questions of “style” or “innovation” or “avant-garde” or “reactionary” become irrelevant. This is very much Boulanger’s approach.

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The surprising history of Britain’s elephants

England’s first and most surprising elephant was given to Henry III in 1235 by the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, probably to mark his betrothal to Henry’s sister Isabella. Frederick had elephants to spare – he took several on his journeys round Europe along with lions, leopards, dromedaries, camels, falcons, and bearded owls. This was an African elephant (recognized by its big ears), not a more docile semi-domesticated Indian elephant – one wonders if it had been born in captivity.

As the East India Company enlarged its operations in the Far East, elephants began to arrive in England in ever increasing numbers, unlike large cats which required fresh meat, elephant calves were relatively easy to maintain on a diet of hay and less likely to sustain damage than, say, deer or antelopes, on the long, perilous voyages by sailing ship, which usually took at least six months, sometimes as much as a year. In 1675 an Indian elephant calf, only five feet high, was brought to England from Bantam in Java by the Company, its recipient Lord Berkeley immediately put it up for auction, it was ‘sold by the candle’ for the immense sum of £2,000. Its new owner made the most of his investment by exhibiting it in pubs in and around London and probably also taking it round the south of England as far as Oxford. Four years later, Robert Hooke saw another elephant which had been taught to “wave colours, shoot a gun, bend and kneel, carry a castle and a man”, at Bartholomew Fair.

‘The Sultan’s Elephant, Horse Guards Parade, London’, by CGP Grey. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

At least eleven elephants arrived in Britain during the reigns of Queen Anne and Georges I and II; some of them died soon after arrival. One, which had “travell’d most part of Europe”, was drowned in a ditch when being walked from Edinburgh to Dundee. Its skeleton was anatomised and displayed in the ‘Hall of Rarities’ in Dundee; another, on show in the City of London, died from the ignorance of its keepers who left it in the cold and wet and gave it unsuitable food. Yet a third (intended for the 2nd Duke of Richmond) had an even more spectacular end—before it could be disembarked at Blackwall on the Thames from the ship which brought it from India, a spark from a candle fell among some bags of saltpetre, the ship exploded and the elephant was incinerated.

Queen Charlotte was the happy recipient of at least six Indian elephants over a period of ten years, which were kept at her home, Buckingham House, the forerunner of Buckingham Palace, where, like her zebra (known disrespectfully as the Queen’s Ass) they could be viewed, for free, by members of the public. When they died their corpses were, rather conveniently, given to her physician William Hunter and his surgeon brother John Hunter for dissection—some of their parts were preserved in their famous anatomical collections.

In 1793, shortly after taking over the menagerie at the Exeter Change in the Strand, Gilbert Pidcock purchased his first elephant; at 1,000 guineas, it was a good investment—seven years later this ‘sagacious’ animal—

“At the command of his keeper will take up the smallest piece of money, a watch etc and lodge it in the pocket of any lady or gentleman… he will likewise take it out and return it to his keeper. He will take up a tankard of any kind of liquor, particularly ale, and blow it into his mouth… will take up a broom with his proboscis and sweep after his keeper doing the same…”

By 1806 Pidcock had owned at least five Indian elephants, sometimes taking one on tour around the country, an operation which involved the construction of a massive caravan drawn by eight powerful horses.

Becoming increasing restive he killed one of the keepers, the inquest verdict was accidental death and Chunee was fined a shilling.

The most famous elephant associated with the Exeter Change arrived from Bengal in 1811 and was immediately put on stage at Covent Garden as the principal performer in the pantomime of Padmanaba, or the Golden Fish, but lasted for only two performances, before being acquired by Pidcock’s successor Stephen Polito, who leased it out to the New Pavilion Theatre to appear in the Baghvan-Ho (‘an entirely new Equestrian and Pedestrian Legendary Melo-Dramatic Spectacle’).

By the end of 1812 the elephant’s theatrical career was over—Chunee (as he was later named) walked up a ramp to the first floor of the Exeter Change, and there he remained for the next fourteen years in the care of Polito’s successor, Edward Cross. The problem was that he grew and grew and grew—he was so closely confined that he could scarcely lie down; becoming increasing restive he killed one of the keepers, the inquest verdict was accidental death and Chunee was fined a shilling. Not surprisingly his behaviour went from bad to worse, on several occasions he nearly destroyed his cage, threatening to bring down the ceiling and release the big cats. When, fearing for his own life, a carpenter refused to repair the cage, drastic action was called for and it was decided that Chunee had to be killed, but 152 musket balls fired by guardsmen called in from nearby Somerset House, only infuriated him further. He was finally dispatched by a poisoned harpoon. Silence. Chunee lay in a monstrous bloody heap, surrounded by the fallen timbers of his cage, his head, as in life, upright. Hundreds of visitors came to ‘pay their respects’, but soon the stench of his enormous cadaver became so overpowering that the shoppers in the arcade below fled. Chunee’s mounted skeleton was eventually displayed in his ruined cage; it ended up in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons only to be destroyed when the College was bombed in 1942.

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More on idioms: “kick the bucket”

Last week, in discussing the antiquated idiom hang out the broom, I mentioned kick the bucket and will now return to it. In the entry bucket2, the OED, usually reticent about the origin of such phrases, mentioned what Murray considered might be the most plausible idea. I am writing this essay for two reasons. First, the OED suggested a certain etymology of kick the bucket as a possibility, while numerous books copied the suggestion without any warning signals, added bells and whistles to it, and presented the carefully worded hypothesis as fact. Second, next to the whole nine yards, this is the idiom about which I have been asked most often. Apparently, people are interested in this strange saying (and it is indeed strange). Of course, there is a third reason: perhaps some of our readers have new ideas.

Before immersing myself in the proverbial bucket, I can perhaps be allowed to say something about idioms as a “genre.” Some of them need no explanation. They are picturesque metaphors, for instance, let off steam, pull the strings, square accounts, or even it is not over until the fat lady sings. Anyone who knows the meaning of the individual words (steam, string, account, lady, and the rest) will understand such idioms. Children need some time to learn that, while dealing with them, their parents often need to let off steam, even though grownups are unlike engines or boiling kettles. The same is true of all cases in which a name is transferred from one object to another (consider something like “Death, and his brother Sleep). Other metaphors are more complicated than let off steam and foot the bill. Such are to laugh on the wrong side of one’s mouth or the shoe (boot) is on the other foot. Lose one’s marbles is even harder, because its meaning cannot be guessed. Kick the bucket belongs to the same group, but it is completely opaque. Although we may be ready to associate marbles with brain cells, we are at a loss to explain what dying has to do with a bucket and why we kick it before joining the choir invisible. The idiom is unmotivated to the speakers of Modern English, and in this respect it is like most words. Why bucket, why kick? Why kick the bucket? Etymology tries and often fails to answer exactly such questions.

An obscure idiom may sound like gibberish (for instance, all my eye and Betty Martin “nonsense”) or have an odd referent (grin like a Cheshire cat, as black as Itchul, as stiff as Tommy Harrison, and a myriad others). The additional difficulty with kick the bucket is that every European language has numerous bizarre synonyms for “to die.” The idea of death is so frightening that people often try to disguise their fear of the grim visitor by periphrasis and macabre gibes. The more successful they are, the harder it is to see through their intention. Hence croak, go west, peter out, cash in, and so forth. Kick the bucket surfaced in print only at the end of the eighteenth century, and a legend spread “in the slang fraternity” almost at once that a certain person “who, having hung himself to a beam while standing on the bottom of a pail, or bucket, kicked the vessel away in order to pry into futurity, and it was all up with him from that moment.” The story looks like folk etymology, but Murray did not reject the idea outright that kick the bucket originated with suicide.

Kicking the bucket is fun.

The most surprising thing about our “metaphor” is its late appearance in print. It hardly led an underground existence for too long. Who coined it? No “familiar quotation” offers itself as the source. Is bucket another name for Davy Jones’s locker? (I have a good file on this gentleman.) Nothing points to the idiom’s nautical origin. Or is it an allusion to the coffin? Compare the Russian phrase sygrat’ v iashchik, literally “to play into the box,” that is, “to die”—the same slangy register as in English. Finally, no foreign source suggests itself. Did the idiom once have a different meaning? A man from Kent wrote that he had frequently heard this expression in the sense of making a great noise, especially a great uproar among schoolboys. Could it start as school slang? More likely, some boys used the familiar phrase facetiously and enjoyed kicking a real bucket, as in the picture illustrating this post.

Farmer and Henley, the authors of the well-known book Slang and Its Analogues, were probably the first to popularize the idea that bucket is a Norfolk term for a pulley used when pigs are killed, and this is the hypothesis that Murray did not find improbable. I will quote part of a letter published in 1904:

“When a butcher slings up a sheep or pig after killing, he fastens to the hocks of the animal what is technically known in the trade as a gambal, a piece of wood curved somewhat like a horse’s leg. This is also known in Norfolk as bucker (sic)…. Bucket, I may add, is not only well known in Norfolk in this sense, and commonly used, but with some of our folk is the only word known for the article in question. To ‘kick the bucket’, then, is the sign of the animal being dead, and the origin of the phrase may probably, if not indisputably, be referred to this source.”

I see two objections to the proposed etymology. First, why should a technical expression from East Anglia’s slaughterhouses have suddenly gained national popularity at the end of the eighteenth century? Second, no one has shown that the butchers who slung up a sheep or a pig after killing ever said that the animal had kicked the bucket. One needs the idiom in actual use, rather than the custom that vaguely refers to it. Another explanation I have in my database is totally without merit, and I’ll cite it only for completeness’ sake. Restive cows sometimes upset the pail while they are being milked. This is indeed common experience, but crying over spilled milk is not the same as giving up the ghost.

Did our idiom originate in the slaughterhouses in Norfolk, England? If so, why?

Rather curious is the following note, written in 1947 and describing an old Catholic custom:

“After death, when the body had been laid out, a cross and two lighted candles were placed near it, and in addition to these the holy-water bucket was brought from the church and put at the feet of the corpse. When friends came to pray for the deceased, before leaving the room they would sprinkle the body with holy-water. So intimately therefore was the bucket associated with the feet of deceased persons that it is easy to see how such a saying as ‘kick the bucket’ came about. Many other explanations of this saying have been given by persons who are unacquainted with Catholic customs.”

The questions are the same as before. If such is the origin of the idiom, why do we never hear it in its proper context? Did anyone among those present ever say about the deceased: “He/she has kicked the bucket”? This is of course unimaginable, for the idiom seems to have arisen as humorous slang. It is also improbable that some enemy of the Catholics should have coined this idiom, because it has always been devoid of religious overtones. And again: Why did the expression come up so late and spread so fast?

I am afraid that none of the suggestions offered so far can be taken seriously. The etymology of an idiom should fulfill certain requirements. It is not enough to pinpoint an imaginary source. We have to understand why the phrase appeared when it did (or agree that it has “always” existed, which in our case is palpably wrong), in what social milieu it came to life, and, if we think we know where it first turned up, how it spread from its center of dissemination. In dealing with the idiom kick the bucket we are unable to answer a single one of those questions. Hence “origin unknown.” I am truly sorry.

Image credits: (1) Norfolk location map. CC0 via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Boy kicking the pail. (c) blueringmedia via iStock. (3) Pork meat hanged in a butchery. (c) MilosCirkovic via iStock.

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The trade-off between economic growth and climate change: Can it be avoided?

Europe’s economy has barely grown since the financial crisis broke in 2007. And unemployment, especially among the young, has soared in most countries. Eastern and Southern Europe, the least affluent regions, have suffered the most. Today, in the most affected countries, around one in two young adults seeking a job is not able to find one. If there is one recipe for social and political trouble in the years ahead, this is surely it.

To solve this, growth is needed. But higher growth may also lead to more emissions of greenhouse gases, deepening the climate crisis with disturbing long-run consequences, both economically and socially. There is a simple equation which illustrates this tradeoff. Growth of greenhouse gases emissions (g) is the sum of economic growth (y) and growth in the greenhouse-gas intensity (i): g = y + i. The greenhouse-gas intensity reflects how capable the economy of a country is in generating income without harming the climate. For a given greenhouse-gas intensity, there is a one-to-one tradeoff between emissions of greenhouse gases and economic growth: increased growth in order to reduce unemployment will therefore bring further harm to the climate.

But the greenhouse-gas intensity is not constant. As a result of technological progress and changes in consumption patterns, most advanced economies emit less greenhouse gases per unit of GDP than they did some years ago. In Europe the intensity has declined by about 2% a year on average since 2000. Until the financial crisis struck, Europe’s GDP grew at about the same rate, so Europe’s total emission of greenhouse gases was roughly constant for a number of years. Since then, Europe’s economy has hardly grown at all, while the greenhouse-gas intensity has continued to decline, leading to reduced emissions. The problem is that if the economy starts to grow again at the same rate as before the crisis, the decline in emission of greenhouse-gases will most likely come to a halt.

Europe’s politicians pride themselves for being at the forefront in confronting the climate crisis. There was indeed some reduction in emissions in the early 1990s, mainly caused by the closure of polluting activities in former socialist countries in the East. But this tendency did not extend to the rest of Europe, nor did it apply in the years that followed (at least until the financial crisis struck). The goal that Europe’s politicians have announced for 2030 – a 40% reduction in emissions compared to the 1990 level – may not appear very bold. Indeed, more than half of that has been achieved already, to a large extent as a result of economic stagnation. However, the goals of a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, and a 80% reduction or more ten years later, are much more demanding. To meet these, green-house gas intensity has to decline much faster than it has done historically. For example, GDP growth in Europe of around 2% per year (which is relatively low by historical standards), would require at least a tripling in the annual reduction in climate gas intensity from 2030 onwards in order to reach the target. How to bring about a radical transformation of this order is clearly a crucial question.

  If the economy starts to grow again at the same rate as before the crisis, the decline in emission of greenhouse-gases will most likely come to a halt.

Arguably, if these ambitious long-run targets are to be met, it is not sensible to postpone the necessary changes until later, which is what European politicians, in spite of their rhetoric, seem inclined to. Doing a lot in a very short time later on will clearly be much more demanding (and perhaps not realistic). Thus, to reach the stated goals, the transformation to sustainability has to start at full speed right now. A range of different technologies, organizational arrangements and policies will be necessary, since there is no simple fix or solution. For example, putting a price on emissions will surely be necessary but not sufficient, and is very challenging to implement and mobilize support for (as the failure hitherto of EU’s trading scheme for greenhouse gas emissions, the ETS, clearly shows). Moreover, the necessary technological and organizational solutions for the transition to sustainability will have to be developed in time. Such systems often need several decades to reach the required level of efficiency, pointing to the urgency of the challenge. To succeed, innovation on an enormous scale will be required, and innovation policy will therefore have to be central in the overall policy mix. The extensive changes in transport, energy provision and use, heating, infrastructure and so on that the transformation requires will also require huge investments and innovative policies for mobilizing the necessary capital. One of the biggest challenges facing politicians today is to make investments in the transition attractive to investment funds and other actors in the capital market (which is currently brimming with funds in search of profitable investment opportunities).

What about the unemployed in the East and South of Europe? They will also gain from speeding up the transformation to sustainability, as the necessary investments in new solutions (and the required infrastructure) are bound to create considerable new employment. Moreover, the poorest parts of Europe, in the East and to some extent the South, emit far more greenhouse gases per unit of GDP than richer members of the union, and hence are more in need of such transformative investments. A European programme for sustainable growth, giving priority to the parts of Europe where the transition is most needed, can be a real game changer.

Headline Image credit: Industrielandschaft by dé.wé. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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Innovations from the ancient world

Beginning over two thousand years ago, the ancient Greeks and Romans innovated a surprising array of concepts that we take for granted today. It’s hard to imagine where we’d be without the Greek alphabet, Euclid’s geometric concepts, Roman concrete, and more. Many of the letters of the Greek alphabet originally came from Phoenician (called “Canaanite” in the Bible) sources early in the eighth century BCE. Through the centuries, regional letters came in and out of use, but by 370 BCE the whole Greek world had adopted the alphabet we know today.

While we know nothing about the actual life of Euclid, the Greek mathematician, his thirteen-volume Elements about mathematical theory and solid geometry was the standard “textbook” through the Medieval Age into the twentieth century. Known as opus caementicium, Roman concrete is one of the great achievements of ancient building materials. Its not-so-secret ingredient was volcanic deposits mixed in with the water and rock. Both cheap and flexible, concrete was used for monuments, homes, and architectural marvels the Roman Pantheon. It is not without irony that the buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were built with the ash and rock of Mount Vesuvius.

Check out the infographic below to learn some interesting facts about the influential civilization of the Greco-Roman world. Each fact has been taken from an article in the new, online Oxford Classical Dictionary. It was the Greek scientist Archimedes, while sitting in a tub, who cried, “Eureka! I’ve found it!” Find your own “eureka” moments in the online Oxford Classical Dictionary. But maybe wait until you’re out of the tub before you do.

Download the infographic as a PDF or JPG.

Featured image credit: View from Philopappos Hill in Athens, by A. Savin. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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