Bracing Ridicule

...Chesterton, John Betje-men, and Phyllis McGinley, whose sense of the ridiculous extends to their own foibles...

...He'd find our day more difficult than yours For industry has mixed the social drawers...

...Lawrence snarls at the bourgeoisie...

...whom three realms obey,/Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea...

...In the final stage, the thick flame interacts increasingly with the chamber walls and decelerates...

...Johnson magisterially defined the art as "a poem in which wickedness or folly is censured...

...Frederic Matekunas and Edward Groff...

...The researchers overcame this problem by using a probe with two orthogonal wires properly aligned with the direction of the mean flow...

...Matekunas to its staff in 1973, and Dr...

...The 18th century was a Golden Age for satire because a revival of interest in classical grandeur encouraged the feeling that Enlightenment England cut a poor figure beside ancient Athens or Rome, and writers had the freedom to ridicule modern shortcomings against their idealized notions of the past...

...In the combustion phase, tests were performed at over one hundred operating conditions of varied spark timing, spark plug location, engine speed and intake valve geometry...

...This book in one's stocking should take the saccharine out of the holiday season...

...Testing took place in a specially designed, single-cylinder engine equipped with a transparent piston to permit high-speed filming of the combustion event...

...and Ph...

...The significant measure of turbulence is its "intensity," defined as the fluctuating component of velocity...

...In most religions, solemn feasts or fasts are preceeded by a time of misrule mocking the pomp and circumstance of the coming day, so that all spieen and ill will may be purged...

...Grig-son agrees with the ancients that the chief function of satire is to deflate an inhibiting seriousness...

...Our forebears knew what we sometimes forget, that too much earnestness destroys our power to produce or enjoy anything...

...But when you go there it's ten to one she's out of everything you ask...

...Pr represents a pressure ratio accounting for combustion-induced compression of the unburned mixture...

...They divided the combustion event into four stages...

...Matekunas, "shows a satisfying resemblance to expressions for non-engine flames...

...Sycophantic letters from the father, Phil Fudge, a spy in the pay of Lord Castlereagh, assure the bloody-minded foreign minister that "the Irish, grateful nationl/Remember when by thee reigned over,/ And bless thee for their flagellation,/As Heloisa did her lover...

...A wicked satirist himself, Dr...

...Hot-wire anemometry was applied to measure the turbulent flows while the engine was operated without combustion...

...Detailed thermodynamic analyses were applied to the recorded cylinder pressures to calculate flame speeds throughout combustion...

...D. from Purdue University, where he completed graduate work in advanced optics applications...

...His "Letter to Lord Byron" longs nostalgically for a civilization that made some, any distinctions...

...It may even insure a Merry Christmas...

...The researchers separated their experiments into two phases...

...which, mild or no, does now and then cut with a half-concealed razor-blade...

...Grigson puts in a good word, too, for Byron's friend, Thomas Moore, "the neglected master" of "a milder satire...

...Although Grigson has included a few examples from the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, his selections make it plain that true English satire did not flower until the classical revival of the 17th century, when with exuberant wit John Donne revived the poetic forms of Horace and Juvenal to castigate his unfortunate enemies...

...High-speed films were analyzed frame by frame to validate flame speeds and to characterize how gas motions influence the initial flame...

...Who never said a foolish thing, —Nor ever did a wise one...

...Pope's description of some critic as "a bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,/with loads of learned lumber in his head," who "With his own tongue still edifies his ears," is a shoe that still fits many reviewers today...

...Many critics maintain that 19th century progressivism pushed satirical poetry into the literary shadows...

...The invective was supposed to banish evil spirits who might otherwise rob the phallus of its potency...

...D. from The Pennsylvania State University...

...Hood's "Our Village —by a Villager" pricks the pastoral ideal of rural bliss with descriptions of such gracious spots as "a shop of all sorts, that sells everything, kept by the widow of Mr...

...More than 400,000 pieces of data were processed for each ten-second measurement period...

...Groff in 1977...

...Dryden, who reinvented the pithy epigram in satire, loved lambasting rivals such as the hapless Flecknoe, who "In prose and verse, was owned, without dispute./Through all the realms of Nonsense, absolute...

...and we may be left only with complaints, invective, or denunciation...

...As one satirist to another, Auden laments to Byron: You lived and moved among the best society And so could introduce your hero to it Without the slightest tremor of anxiety...

...Grigson disagrees, and his anthology makes a strong case for the unbroken tradition of the splenetic art...

...But if one name were to lead the rest among satirical modern poets, it would be W.H...

...A Romantic contemporary, Thomas Hood, fits Grigson's definition better...

...A similar ritual persists in certain cultures today at weddings, where scurrilous, bawdy jokes are meant to insure the fruitfulness of the marriage...

...No wonder Robinson Crusoe was satisfied with only heathen company on his island...

...An eminently social form, satire flourishes in a culture that upholds ethical standards and permits criticism of its own faults...

...One can say gravely that satire postulates an ideal condition of man or decency, and then despairs of it, and enjoys the despair, masochistically...

...ITHOUT TURBULENCE, the highly agitated motion of cylinder gases, combustion would take place too slowly for the gasoline engine to function...

...This helps link complex engine combustion phenomena to the existing body of knowledge on turbulent flames...

...cummings weeps over a conscientious objector, "more brave than me: more blond than you," sacrificed by a warmongering nation, but all this is distinctly unfunny...

...Without the joke everything goes...

...Because he was your hero and you knew it, He'd know instinctively what's done, and do it...

...Because conditions in the cylinder are both transient within cycles and variant between cycles, separating the fluctuating and mean components of velocity is inherently difficult...

...So it has, yet in the case of a poet as urbane as Auden, satire can be resurrected to discover form in our fragmented society...

...As good as his word, he has produced a most entertaining collection (far better-tempered poems, in the main, than those Kingsley Amis chose for the crabby New Oxford Book of Light Verse...

...THE MEN BEHIND THE WORK Drs...

...Donne did not master the epigramatic brevity of later practitioners, but the gusto of his fulminations is infectious: Sir, though (I thank God for it) I do hate Perfectly all this town, yet there's one state In all ill things so excellently best That hate, toward them, breeds pity toward the rest...

...In the second stage, the flame accelerates and thickens in response to the turbulent field...

...More beguiling satires have been produced by genial conservatives like Hilaire Belloc, G.K...

...But many were too angry with his cruel policies to find him a source of humor...

...Most aspirants sound simply vexed or miserable rather than amusing...

...all of which may be poetry, but of another kind...

...Seventeenth-century satirists managed to make up in fertility of insult what they lacked in subtlety...

...The court of the Merry Monarch, Charles II, abounded in satirists, like the scandalous John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, much of whose verse is too pornographic to reprint in a family anthology even today...

...His rapier thrust is so lightning quick that the enemy is dead before we realize he had entered the field...

...in the second phase, they determined flame speeds over a broad range of operating conditions...

...The researchers also observed that the burning velocity in the second stage increases in proportion to flame radius, and that in predicting the energy release rate from the burning velocity equation, it is necessary to account for the finite flame-front thickness...

...The initiation stage begins with ignition and ends as the flame grows to consume one percent of the fuel mass...

...libertarian eras lack the shared values that keep satirists from sounding merely petty and disagreeable...

...His doctoral thesis explored the combustion of liquid metals...

...In "The Vision of Judgment" he sketches a devastating cartoon of Poet Laureate Robert Southey bumptiously trying to sweet-talk his way into either heaven or hell: He had written Wesley's life:—here turning round To Satan, 'Sir, I'm ready to write yours, In two octavo volumes, nicely bound, With notes and preface, all that most allures The pious purchaser...

...The variable u' is the turbulence intensity...

...Snubbed by the devil, this unquenchable hack offers the same services to the heavenly host, instead...

...The dimension-less factor B accounts for the effect of spark timing on geometric distortion of the flame which occurs during the first combustion stage and persists into the later stages...

...New knowledge of how turbulence affects flame speed has been revealed in fundamental studies conducted at the General Motors Research Laboratories by Drs...

...The era's greatest champion is unquestionably Lord Byron, represented by a generous selection of poisoned barbs...

...But the joke must not be lost...

...In the first phase, they measured turbulence in the engine cylinder...

...from California Institute of Technology and a Ph...

...Predicting combustion behavior in order to design engines with greater fuel efficiency depends upon understanding the relationship between vital, turbulent gas motions and burning rate...

...General Motors welcomed Dr...

...Instantaneous velocities were calculated from the anemometer signals and simultaneous measurements of gas temperature and pressure...

...Aud-en's...

...Typically, a poem consisted of the Satirist, presenting himself as a simple, peace-loving, honest man, confronting the "Adversareus," whose vices or stupidity demanded exposure...

...and there's no ground for fear, for I can choose my own reviewers: So let me have the proper documents, That I may add you to my other saints...

...Rochester's most famous satire, however, is a quatrain on his royal master (who, whatever his moral faults, was certainly tolerant of abuse): God bless our good and gracious King, — Whose promise none relies on...

...The form of our burning equation," says Dr...

...More plebian, but equally sharp tongued, Daniel Defoe concentrated not on the court but on the character of his fellow Englishmen, "So sullen in their sorrows that 'tis known/ They'll rather die than their afflictions own;/And if relieved, it is too often true/That they'll abuse their benefactors too...

...Satiric verse came into its own with the Romans, whose pride in their civilization did not exclude pillorying its most fatuous or corrupt aspects...

...Thus he begins an attack on the British judicial system, including a plagiarist lawyer who "eats my meat, though it be known/The meat was mine, th'excrement is his own...

...I met Murder on the way—/He had a mask like Castlereagh—" wrote Shelley, whose "Mask of Anarchy" is one of the few poems of pure indignation Grigson includes as satire...

...Task...

...The foolishness of the last Stuart monarch is pinpointed exactly: "Great Anna...

...Groff, "as a significant step toward optimizing fuel economy in automotive engines...

...Moore, a Celt, was outraged at England's draconian treatment of Ireland, and his comic epistolary poem, "The Fudge Family in Paris," smuggles in politics along with the social satire...

...Part of the humor of satire stems from the conflict between the poet's well-meaning pose and his evident enjoyment of his own malice...

...Groff (left) received an M.S...

...Elegance in invective developed with the 18th-century literary society, dominated by those vituperative giants, Swift and Pope...

...Pope, especially, compensated for his physical deformity with a peculiar grace in demolishing his targets...

...English and American neoclassicists relished the form as a way of settling literary scores: Dryden's "Mac Flecknoe," James Russell Lowell's "A Fable for Critics" and Pope's "Dun-ciad" are still read with delight today, long after many of their targets have sunk into well-deserved oblivion...

...Castlereagh, a man poets loved to hate, was the most popular satirical target of his time...

...Matekunas (right) received his M.S...

...Recent advances at the General Motors Research Laboratories provide a new basis for determining what degree of turbulence will get the most work from each drop of fuel...

...he 20th century has been largely devoid of great satirists...

...The third stage exhibits peak flame speed...

...At ancient Greek festivals, the leaders of Phallic songs heaped abuse on the bystanders with verse insults...

...OvER THE RANGE of turbulent intensities encountered in engines, the researchers were able to describe the turbulent burning velocity, St, during the critical third stage of combustion with the expression: St = 2.0Sl + 1.2 u'PrO^/S Sl, the laminar flame speed—a known function of pressure, temperature and mixture composition—is the flame speed that would exist without turbulence...

...Both researchers hold undergraduate and graduate degrees in the field of mechanical engineering...

...Edgar Lee Masters whines about hypocrisy in small towns...

...TheTbrbulence Parameter Energy-efficient operation of the internal combustion engine requires the highly turbulent movement of fuel and air in the chamber...

...Totalitarian societies suppress the art as subversive...

...We see this extension," adds Dr...

...Their investigative results have been incorporated into a model that successfully predicts the effect of engine design and operating conditions on power and fuel economy...

...The challenge is to quantify this relationship—a complex task made more difficult by the requirements of measuring a transient event occurring in a few milliseconds within a small, confined space...

...Matekunas and Groff are senior engineers in the Engine Research De-' partment at the General Motors Research Laboratories...

...T JL...

...Geoffrey Grigson's selections demonstrate that the ancients were right—satirical verse is life-giving...

...Geoffrey Grigson, editor of The Oxford Book of Satirical Verse (Oxford, 440 pp., $22.00) insists that it must also be entertaining...

...The researchers used these measured flame speeds, turbulence intensities, and the conditions under which they occurred to formulate a burning law for engine flames...