mimoSite Programming and some other things

The tunes of Phoenix Legend, a duo from the song-and-dance troupe of China’s strategic missile force, are hugely popular

The Economist in ‘Dancing queens’

[if the entire world were to impose a grain embargo on China] certainly it would be because we ourselves had committed some huge and dreadful crime against heaven. Even if there were grain to eat, it would not be good times for the Chinese people

Chinese economist Mao Yushi, quote by The Economist in ‘Daily bread’

And I hope that [the report] will reassure everyone that human influence is having a major impact on the Earth's climate.

Rajendra Pachauri, IPCC chairman in an interview with the BBC

Continued Existence of Cows Disproves Central Tenets of Capitalism?

Title of an economics research paper.

Although personally I am quite content with the existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement

Winston Churchill, quoted by The Economist in ‘Two man race’

In this do not fail. For such is our pleasure.

King Louis XIII in a letter to Samuel Champlain, quoted in 'Champlain Dream' by David Hackett Fisher

..the financier...who claimed to have found a way to banish risk when in fact they had simply lost track of it

The Economist in 'Crash course'

I did not find anything ‘pre cooked’ to convert my billiard simulator to use special relativity, so I started to work on the necessary math from scratch – that turned out to be problematic (to say the least).

For example, the collision of a ball with the side of the table become something like this:

because – in the frame of reference of the table – the ball contracts along its direction of motion. This deformation affects the computation of the collision time and changes the dynamic of the collision. The same collision seen in the frame of reference of the ball becomes instead:

because now it is the distance from the ball to the side that contracts, changing the collision angle.

A ball-ball collision is even worse, being something like this (in the table frame of reference):

I found some pretty good notes on relativistic dynamics by an Oberlin college professor. The last chapter has a section about ‘hard sphere forces’ – e.g. billiard balls – that concludes that the whole idea of handling them within special relativity is ‘ludicrous’. At the same  time I found one article about rigid bodies in special relativity. I think that some kind of solution should be possible, but I have to study more.

For the moment being I am going through the relativistic dynamics notes (including the exercises!) and then I’ll have a look at the rigid body article.

We buy junk and sell antiques

Slogan of a flea market in Perth, Ontario

Mrs Merkel is likely to stick to her usual television style, of talking soothingly without saying anything

The Economist in 'Dog eats dog'