The power in the Stars

The National Ignition Facility in California was dedicated in March 2009.

(Seen here, the interior of the NIF target chamber )



From the NYTimes

Like the cathedrals of antiquity, it is built on an unrivaled scale with unmatched technology, and it embodies a scientific doctrine that, if confirmed, might lift civilization to new heights.
In theory, the facility’s 192 lasers — made of nearly 60 miles of mirrors and fiber optics, crystals and light amplifiers — will fire as one to pulverize a fleck of hydrogen fuel smaller than a match head. Compressed and heated to temperatures hotter than those of the core of a star, the hydrogen atoms will fuse into helium, releasing bursts of thermonuclear energy.

In February, NIF fired its 192 beams into its target chamber for the first time, and it now has the world’s most powerful laser, as well as the largest optical instrument ever built. But raising its energies still further to the point of ignition could take a year or more of experimentation and might, officials concede, prove daunting and perhaps impossible.
For that reason, skeptics dismiss NIF as a colossal delusion that is squandering precious resources at a time of economic hardship. Just operating it, officials grant, will cost $140 million a year. Some doubters ridicule it as the National Almost Ignition Facility, or NAIF
“If fusion energy works,” he said, “you’ll have, for all intents and purposes, a limitless supply of carbon-free energy that’s not geopolitically sensitive. What more would you want? It’s a game changer.”

Dr. Moses, who was put in charge of NIF a decade ago in an effort to right the struggling project, said that a decade from now, as NIF opened new frontiers, no one would remember the missteps. He compared the project to feats like going to the Moon, building the atom bomb and inventing the airplane.
“Stumbles are not unusual when you take on big-risk projects,” he said.
Dr. Moses added that the stumble rule applied to cathedrals as well.
Having grown up in Eastchester, close to New York City, he noted that the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, was still under construction after more than a century. Is it worthwhile, despite the delays?
“Of course it is,” he said. Taking on big projects that challenge the imagination “is who we are as a species.”

NIF Home page

(via kurzweilai.net )

On Legalizing Drugs

I've been following the recent developments around decriminalization of drugs (Marijuana mostly) with great interest. The counter intuitiveness of such measures is probably what makes it fascinating.

Anyway, the situation as of now - A few countries, mostly in Western Europe, are experimenting with legalizing the use of 'light' drugs like Marijuana.

In the Netherlands, production, import , export and large scale dealing are prohibited and will still land you in jail. However, personal possession of Marijuana will result in only a fine, at the most. Laws are not usually enforced, and several 'Cannabis Coffee shops' have sprung up where you can smoke your favourite weed without fearing the law. The irony is that normal cigarettes are banned! Apparently Cannabis coffee shops have boosted tourism and netted an extra $500 million in taxes for the govt . As a result of decriminalization, drug use does not seem to have gone up significantly. See this link for more details on the coffee shops

In Portugal, they decided to go all the way in 2001, completely legalizing possesion of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine. If people are caught with drugs, they are offered therapy and rehab, not jail. Offenders can actually choose whether to take up that offer or not. Time Magazine has a detailed article about this and its effects.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.

(Note: the cited paper was published by the Cato Institute- a strongly left leaning think-tank, so a bias towards legalisation is possible)

The major argument for legalizing drugs seems to be that prohibition has never been very effective. Prohibition usually leads to the banned trade going underground, leading to even more crime and violence. The liquor prohibition era in the U.S is a perfect example.


Incidentally, the U.S is seeing renewed debate over the possibilities of a softer drug regime. The U.S spends the most on fighting the narcotics trade, yet sees higher usage than most countires. Liberal organisations have called for a review of govt policy and some states are considering amending their laws.

Freakonomics had a recent article or 'quorum of experts' which examines different sides of the issue..

Among the people who participated were Robert Platshorn, a former marijuana smuggler, who says:

So for 29 years I lived in 11 prisons, costing you millions, as America’s longest-serving non-violent prisoner of the War on Weed. When Feds kicked in my door, I’d been retired from smuggling for two years. My ice cream and food concessions employed about 50 people. My Miami auto auction, body shop, and barbershop employed another 40. Good jobs and serious tax dollars — all gone in an instant.

What was accomplished? The War on Weed that started in the 1970’s discouraged pot smuggling by small timers like me, and filled the void with drug cartels far more interested in the lucrative cocaine trade. Big profits bred violence, enough to make Miami the U.S. murder capital. Today, we see that same prohibition-fueled violence along our Mexican border.

Legalizing marijuana would deprive this dangerous black market of profits and relieve a ridiculous burden on taxpayers; it would allow police to focus on serious crime instead of arresting more than 800,000 Americans every year for pot ...

So, based on lies and distortions, we demonized a plant that’s proven effective in treating chronic pain, glaucoma, MS, arthritis, and the effects of chemotherapy, AIDS-wasting syndrome, and other chronic illnesses. Studies in at least five countries have shown marijuana to slow and often reverse the growth of cancer cells. All this from a plant less toxic than aspirin and less habit-forming than coffee or wine.

Paul Armentano, Dy Director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) points out that

" Further, the great irony of our existing policy is that nearly half of all Americans — including our nation’s three most recently elected U.S. presidents — have used, and many continue to use, pot despite the imposition of prohibition. Would this percentage be even higher if marijuana were legalized? Possibly, but not likely. "

On the other hand, a former top ranking DEA (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration) Official, Mike Braun, makes his case by presenting Alaska's experience with legal drugs

" In 1975, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that an adult’s possession of marijuana for personal consumption in the home was legal. Although the ruling applied only to persons 19 and over, teen consumption of the drug skyrocketed. A 1988 University of Alaska study found that the state’s 12- to 17-year-olds used marijuana at more than twice the national average for their age group. School equivalency test scores plummeted, as work place accidents, insurance rates and drugged-driving accidents went through the roof. Alaska’s residents voted to recriminalize possession of marijuana in 1990, demonstrating their belief that legalization and increased use was too high a price to pay."

Clearly, the debate is far from any signs of being resolved. The long term socio-economic impacts are not understood well. The same policy can produce different results in different countries and eras. The obvious political sensitivity of the issue makes objective assessments by governments very difficult...

But whatever the case, the time has come for the world to examine its long held positions and to tackle one of the biggest challenges of our times.

(I'll be updating this article very soon, with links to more sources and a look at actual figures..)

At BarCamp Kerala 5.0

It has been a while since I made my last post. I posted here for a while, then lost the interest and the energy...

Well, that changed last Sunday - Thanks to the BarCamp at Technopark, Kerala. Around 100 attendees - techies and non-techies alike, gathered for a day of presentations, sessions and discussions that were interesting throughout and at times brilliantly stimulating. 

I saw lots of very smart people, people with lots of energy and passion in them. And you had college students who were already running a company or two, hotshot entreprenuers, a guy who builds compilers for fun, another who led the development at Slideshare, another guy who set up a succesful venture after a lot of struggle and is now trying to bring in social change, and an evangelist from Opera. Plus there was a 70 year old farmer tuned blogger about whom a participant said- "I loved for e.g. the farmer dude who asked about iframes and its legal basis to a largely technical audience - that is a story I'll probably tell my grandchildren :-) "  

If this weren't enough, you had linux fans singgering whenever somebody made the mistake of mentioning 'microsoft'  :)  , others happily live twittering the full event, and people (like me) who were just content with taking in everything.

The whole thing kind of rejuvenated me - almost enough to make me quit my job and go build a startup....you know the kind of moment when all sorts of grand plans rush into your head, you think revolution...  (But then you wake up and find it's monday and you're late for office...)

Please visit the site to see the full list of sessions (a few of them didnt take place) and more about the event.

Of all the sessions, the one that really caught my attention was the calculation of Pi through distributed computing. While calculating Pi was an admirable end in itself, the fact that the distributed computing thing ran entirely on the browser ( in an elegant, simple way) just blew me away. I'm still thinking about how you could take that model and implement it elsewhere, but I'm pretty sure there are huge possibilities in it.  

More on all this very soon.....

Btw, this is the presentation on calculating Pi 

Peep Into Pi

View more presentations from vishnu.