Ralf Goergens

Excerpts from ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’ by Ambrose Bierce

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The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce was published almost a century ago, but it makes for enjoyable reading. Bierce really merits a post of his own, for now just some excerpts from the DD at Project Gutenberg:

ABDICATION, n. An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the
high temperature of the throne:

Poor Isabella’s Dead, whose abdication
Set all tongues wagging in the Spanish nation.
For that performance ’twere unfair to scold her:
She wisely left a throne too hot to hold her.
To History she’ll be no royal riddle —
Merely a plain parched pea that jumped the griddle.

ABRIDGE, v.t. To shorten.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for
people to abridge their king, a decent respect for the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them to the separation.

Oliver Cromwell

ADAMANT, n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in
solicitate of gold.

APOSTATE, n. A leech who, having penetrated the shell of a turtle
only to find that the creature has long been dead, deems it expedient
to form a new attachment to a fresh turtle.

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P.J. O’Rourke on the Daily Show

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Viacom put the entire archive of Daily Show with Jon Stewart online last October. I haven’t seen many bloggers mention this, and no conservative blogger, so at least part of our readers may not heard about this yet. The Daily Show may be a bit too liberal for the taste of most Chicago Boyz contributors and readers, but there is a lot of good stuff there.

For example, there is this clip of P.J. O’Rourke presenting his new book, On the Wealth of Nations. O’Rourke has done something many eminent economists never managed or got around to, he worked his way through Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, or ‘The Wealth of Nations’, as it is more commonly called. And O’Rourke actually managed to get such a good grasp on this difficult subject matter that he was able to write a book of his own that makes it accessible to the general public.

The book is highly recommend, an excerpt from the first chapter can be found here.

(The first link to the Daily Show leads to the index page there, but it directly leads to the clip with P.J. O’Rourke, too, at least when I click on it).

Some cool, flash based physics engines

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Physics engines simulate physical processes in a more or less realistic way. Simulations that come up with results that are accurate enough for research purposes aren’t available in real-time yet, but faster computers and specialized hardware for just this purpose should make that possible in the near future.

These two flash based ones are two-dimensional and work in real-time, but results are certainly realistic enough for what they are supposed to do:

This one is especially cool, draw some shapes with your mouse and watch them fall and interact with each other. You can also errect simple structures on the ground and combine them to gte larger buildings.

This is one I had found a while ago via Reddit.com. It offers demonstrations of bridges, rag doll physics, compound shapes as well as simple engines and mechanisms.

I simply can’t wait for the three-dimensional versions that are sure to follow.

Classy, dear Rupert, real classy

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Ike Turner died last December. Besides being famous as a Rock ‘n’ roll musician, Turner also was notorious for the physical abuse of his ex-wife Tina.

So what kind of headline does the New York Post go for? The headline in the worst possible taste, of course:

IKE ‘BEATS’ TINA TO DEATH

The bar for tabloids is set at a subterranean level anyhow, but the New York Post dug right under it with ease.