The Off Topic Topic

[Syt]

Look at this fucking hipster

[Ed Anger]

The world's largest laser has just put a little more zing in its zap. On 15 March, the 192 laser beams of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, fired a record 1.875-megajoule shot into the laser's target chamber, surpassing its 1.8-megajoule design specification. The shot, which was just a demonstration and did not incorporate a target, nonetheless represents a milepost in an effort to get past the break-even point — ignition — in coaxing fusion energy from a tiny frozen fuel pellet.

"It's a remarkable demonstration of the laser from the standpoint of its energy, its precision, its power, and its availability," says Ed Moses, NIF director. He adds that the shot was 2.03 megajoules after passing through the final focusing lens — making the NIF the world's first 2-megajoule ultraviolet laser. Final diagnostic and other optics reduced the energy to 1.875 megajoules at the centre of the target chamber.

Most of the NIF's recent shots have maxed out at 1.6 megajoules. As recently as December, the team was still only 10% of the way towards creating the overall conditions for ignition. Moses declined to say when he will test the 1.875-megajoule capability on a target, but he says that the extra energy will allow more leeway in target designs. He adds that the damage on the laser optics was less than models predicted, and that the laser was able to fire another shot about 36 hours after the record-breaking one.

Riccardo Betti, director of the Fusion Science Center at the University of Rochester in New York, says that the shot represents a "great performance" from the laser, but that the extent to which the extra energy will improve the implosion of the carefully designed targets is unclear."The laser has been pretty much the star of the campaign — more so than the targets," he says.

The NIF is racing to achieve ignition before the end of the fiscal year, when a two-year ignition campaign ends. A larger question for the field of laser fusion is who will support it as a possible energy source. The construction and operation of the NIF has been supported by the US Nuclear Weapons Complex, which uses the facility to test the physics of nuclear bombs, and the US Department of Energy's fusion-energy budget goes almost entirely to an alternative approach that uses magnets rather than lasers to induce fusion.

As long as it pops my popcorn, it is ok in my book.

[Neil]

Fairness isn't the most important factor here.  Social order is.

And don't try and bring up the Soviet bloc.  The reason you guys are so fucked up isn't socialism, but rather the backwardness and barbarism of your people.  Even back when you were on the free market, you guys were still so much less than us.

Shut up.

What would you like me to shut up about?  The general failure of the flat tax model to operate in an advanced state (and the corresponding bankruptcy of libertarian economic thought), or the fact that the Eastern European states have never been the equals of their counterparts in the West?

[Neil]

Fair is subjective and irrelevant. Social order is more important than your extra 200 $ (yearly).

And anyways....


TRIANON! TRIANON! TRIANON!

If Tamas tells you to shut up, will he be more offended by your dismissal of his idea of 'fairness' as a key value in taxation, or of your dismissal of Hungarian nationalist ambitions?

[MadBurgerMaker]

Nooooooo I lost my sunglasses

[Eddie Teach]

Any Mexicans in the vicinity?

[Neil]

Nooooooo I lost my sunglasses

That happens a lot.  I hope you didn't sacrifice a bunch of money to the designer sunglasses industry.

Still, if you feel bad about it, maybe you can get together with Siegebreaker and talk about it.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Any Mexicans in the vicinity?

Something like 900,000 of them within the city limits.   

That happens a lot.  I hope you didn't sacrifice a bunch of money to the designer sunglasses industry.

Nah, $50.  Just sucks that I need to go find a new pair now. 

[Tamas]

Fairness isn't the most important factor here.  Social order is.

And don't try and bring up the Soviet bloc.  The reason you guys are so fucked up isn't socialism, but rather the backwardness and barbarism of your people.  Even back when you were on the free market, you guys were still so much less than us.

Shut up.

What would you like me to shut up about?  The general failure of the flat tax model to operate in an advanced state (and the corresponding bankruptcy of libertarian economic thought), or the fact that the Eastern European states have never been the equals of their counterparts in the West?

Now that I actually cared to read your comment: are you one of those people who suggest that the failure of communism was that it was tried in backward Russia? And, say, a French experiment at it would have been an astonishing success?

[Neil]

Fairness isn't the most important factor here.  Social order is.

And don't try and bring up the Soviet bloc.  The reason you guys are so fucked up isn't socialism, but rather the backwardness and barbarism of your people.  Even back when you were on the free market, you guys were still so much less than us.

Shut up.

What would you like me to shut up about?  The general failure of the flat tax model to operate in an advanced state (and the corresponding bankruptcy of libertarian economic thought), or the fact that the Eastern European states have never been the equals of their counterparts in the West?

Now that I actually cared to read your comment: are you one of those people who suggest that the failure of communism was that it was tried in backward Russia? And, say, a French experiment at it would have been an astonishing success?

Depends on what the goalposts for success are.  I rather doubt that they woul be as well-off as present France though.  I don't think that communism or robber-baron capitalism are especially good ways to organize an economy.

[Eddie Teach]

Now that I actually cared to read your comment: are you one of those people who suggest that the failure of communism was that it was tried in backward Russia? And, say, a French experiment at it would have been an astonishing success?

The French(and Swedish and even American) experiment with socialism has been a success.

[Caliga]

I was parked next to a car at work today with a weird emblem that I'd never seen before.  It was branded as a "Tuscani"... looked kind of like one of the smaller Ferrari models.  I did some googling and discovered that it's really a Hyundai Tiburon, but in some markets those are branded as a Tuscani, not a Hyundai.

[Ed Anger]

I was parked next to a car at work today with a weird emblem that I'd never seen before.  It was branded as a "Tuscani"... looked kind of like one of the smaller Ferrari models.  I did some googling and discovered that it's really a Hyundai Tiburon, but in some markets those are branded as a Tuscani, not a Hyundai.

I've ran across cars made for the Mexican market in parking lots.

[Ideologue]

Doc review is boring.  Why was I not warned?

[Ed Anger]

Jobs are not fun. FILM AT ELEVEN.