Journalists murdered by fundamentalists in France

Article originally published in the California Tech on January 12 2015

Journalists murdered by fundamentalists in France

Casey Handmer

On Wednesday, Jan. 7, the offices of Parisian satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo were stormed by three heavily armed attackers, killing 12 and injuring 11. This article is not a rehashing of the poorly informed and highly opinionated clickbait that tries to cash in on this sort of tragedy. This article is a condensed record of statements by the victims and survivors closest to the tragedy. Where needed, translations to English have been provided.

The dead

• Frédéric Boisseau, 42, a building maintenance worker for Sodexo and Krav Maga enthusiast. He was killed in the lobby.

• Franck Brinsolaro, 49, a police officer assigned as a bodyguard for Stéphane Charbonnier.

• Ahmed Merabet, 42, a police officer on patrol in the area. Wounded in the crossfire, a witness's video shows him approached by one of the attackers, who asked, "Did you want to kill me?" Merabet replied "No, it's OK, boss." He was then shot at point blank range.

• Mustapha Ourrad, 56, copy editor. "Two men have a dispute, they will then consult a Sufi sage to decide between them. The first puts his case; the wise man said, 'I understand you, you're right.' The second then presents his vision; 'Yes, I understand you,' said the wise, 'you're right.' A witness at the scene exclaims to the wise man in wonder, 'How can you tell both that they are right? It is not possible!' 'You're right,' replied the sage."

• Bernard Maris, 68, economist, editor, and columnist. "Let [economists] put on a pointed cap, a red nose, let them wag with their ears and tickle the armpits. What were economists for, one will ask a hundred years from now? To make people laugh."

• Stéphane "Charb" Charbonnier, 47, Charlie Hebdo editor-in-chief. Under guard since 2011, he stated on numerous occasions, "I am not afraid of reprisals, I have no children, no wife, no car, no debt. It might sound a bit pompous, but I'd prefer to die on my feet rather than living on my knees."

"Muhammed isn't sacred to me. I don't blame Muslims for not laughing at our drawings. I live under French law. I don't live under Koranic law."

• Jean "Cabu" Cabut, 76, Charlie Hebdo cofounder and cartoonist. "Sometimes laughter can hurt, but it is our only weapon, humor, derision…"

• Elsa Cayat, 54, psychoanalyst and humor/advice columnist. "The knowledge of the unconscious shows us something of the difficult-to-realize, the autonomous, and the power of life in us. The existence of a thought which transcends us, which arises from a singular mind, but also steps beyond and exists in the universality of the mind."

• Michel Renaud, 69, travel writer and founder of the Rendez-vous du Carnet de Voyage art festival, and a guest at the meeting.

• Georges Wolinski, 80, cartoonist. "Humor is the shortest road from one person to another."

"Luckily the world is evil. I could not bear to go wrong in a world that is well!"

• Bernard "Tignous" Verlhac, 57, cartoonist. "A caricature … is the hardest thing to get right. You have to put everything into a single image."

"My work never seems to be done."

The injured

• Philippe Lançon, 51, journalist, shot in the face and in critical condition

• Fabrice Nicolino, 59, journalist, shot in the leg

• Laurent "Riss" Sourisseau, 48, cartoonist, shot in the shoulder

• Simon Fieschi, 31, webmaster, shot in the shoulder

• Several police officers and a nearby driver whose car was struck as the attackers fled

The perpetrators

The attacks were carried out by three French nationals, identified as Hamyd Mourad, 18, who surrendered to police, and brothers Said Kouachi, 32, and Cherif Kouachi, 34. Cherif was convicted in 2008 of helping to recruit soldiers to fight for the Iraqi insurgency and served 18 months in prison. Both brothers had allegedly trained in Yemen and seen action in Syria. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has since taken responsibility for the attacks. On the street, following the attack, one of the attackers was heard to have said, "God is great. We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad. We have killed Charlie Hebdo!"

The survivors

Corinne "CoCo" Rey, a cartoonist, had picked up her daughter from daycare. Approached by the armed and hooded men speaking perfect French, they threatened her daughter's life. "They said they wanted to go up to the offices, so I tapped in the code. They shot Wolinski and Cabu. It lasted five minutes. I had taken refuge under a desk."

Sigolène Vinson, a journalist, was spared at gunpoint. "I'm not killing you because you are a woman and we don't kill women, but you have to convert to Islam, read the Quran and wear a veil."

Two other people present at the meeting, Laurent Léger and Renaud's guest Gérard Gaillard, were not harmed. Another Sodexo employee accompanying Boisseau in the lobby was not harmed.

In a radio interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Caroline Fourest, a former writer with Charlie Hebdo, spoke about the attack and ensuring the magazine's work will continue.

"All the time when we met, we tried to make fun and joke about the crazy stupid people who were violent enough to be afraid of a simple cartoon. They can continue to be afraid, because there will be more cartoons.

"We have all decided, the journalists who survived and their ex-colleagues, that we are going to have a meeting tomorrow to publish the next Charlie Hebdo, because there is no way, even if they killed 10 of us, that the newspaper won't be out next week.

"[Fear and self-censorship] is what the jihadis want. They know that this is the way. You just have to kill a few people in every country, which is the easiest thing to do in the world. To have an automatic weapon and kill people is really easy. You don't need any talent to do that. You need talent to be a cartoonist. You need talent to be a journalist.

"Those people without any talent killed many talented people today just to create this emotion, this shock, this reaction of panic and hatred.

"Many of my friends who died today were very sweet people, very funny people, and very brave people, because they knew that they had to continue to smile and make others smile while defending freedom of the press. Many of my colleagues were under police protection for many years. Their lives changed completely after the [2005 Mohammed] Cartoon Affair. They were just dealing with that. There is no choice when you are a journalist and you want to be free and you refuse to be silenced just because a violent, stupid guy wants you to be silent. You continue to do what you do, what you know how to do, which is to be free."

Obama reaches emissions agreement with China

Originally published in the California Tech, January 7 2015.

Obama reaches emissions agreement with China

Casey Handmer

In mid-November it was announced that China and the US had reached a secretly negotiated carbon emissions deal that, for the first time, injected some hope into the apparently moribund issue.

In 2010, the US emitted around 5.5 gigatons of CO2, shrinking at about 1% per year. China emitted around 8 gigatons with 7% growth per year. The EU emitted about 4.5 gigatons, shrinking also at about 1% per year. While much of the US reduction has been due to the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent displacement of coal by gas, the EU, a signatory to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, has committed to reduce their emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030, and is already halfway there. Together, the US, China, and the EU account for half of the world's CO2 emissions. The US and China did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol and nearly two decades later the world is rapidly approaching the 1000 gigaton net CO2 limit understood to limit global temperature rise to below 2 °C.

Exceeding 2 °C global temperature rise will not fry people in the street nor end microbial life as we know it. Instead, we can look forward to a slow, agonizing death to be completed by the end of our children's natural lives. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), intensifying weather, changing rainfall patterns, and salt water incursions across much of the world's arable land will cause mass hunger, poverty, and war. A destabilized west-Antarctic ice sheet will break up and, over a decade or so, drown every coastal city beneath an ever-rising tide of up to 30 feet. Such a bleak future is not inevitable, however.

Under the new deal, the US commits to reduce emissions by 26% below its 2005 peak by 2025, and China commits to reach peak emissions by 2030, and to increase zero-carbon energy generation to 20%. Ipso facto it would seem the US got the raw end of the deal, but there is more to the Chinese commitment than meets the eye. With 7% annual growth in emissions, peaking by 2030 implies a rapid and concerted effort to decouple ongoing exponential economic growth from carbon emissions, to which such growth has traditionally been tied, since the industrial revolution. In other words, both parties will need to take positive and comprehensive action to bolster low- and zero-emission power generation methods.

During the 1930s, the Hoover dam was built in Nevada to tame the Colorado and provide vast quantities of energy for Los Angeles. Much of the technical detail surrounding the high voltage transmission of power over long distances was developed at Caltech. Today, Caltech still occupies a position at the forefront of power generation innovation, and it is into the vacuum of a post-carbon future that many of today's students' efforts will be directed.

In 2009, world leaders met in Copenhagen to attempt a comprehensive UN treaty limiting carbon emissions enough to keep global temperature rise below 2 °C. The meeting failed due to an impasse between China and the US. In particular, limiting CO2 was seen as strongly economically deleterious and all parties bargained so aggressively that no deal was established. What has changed since then? While it is impossible to say for certain, the Chinese political landscape has evolved, while the ongoing environmental and health catastrophes wrought by fossil fuels in China are now impossible to ignore.

With that in mind, it seems more likely that the upcoming Paris accord will consist more of individual countries making their own commitments rather than a broad umbrella agreement on emissions. This approach gives each country more flexibility to tailor its response to its current and projected economic needs. Crucially, it also gives world leaders an opportunity to grandstand. Rather than submitting to a restrictive global deal, countries can enter a competition or rivalry, wherein technological prowess and political maturity can be proven on the world stage. And, unlike the space race, everyone is a winner.

The consequences of this deal go deeper than that, however. Today's technology-based economies, which include all the major carbon emitters, recognize that a post-carbon future is inevitable. Already the rising prices of resource extraction (to say nothing of the unpriced externality of exhaust dumping) have opened the market to utility-scale solar and wind generation. Regardless of timing, if civilization is to continue, it must necessarily transition away from finite fossil fuels. With that in mind, whoever gets there first will enjoy an enormous technological and economic advantage. For too long climate discussions and emissions targets have painted a picture of either economic stability and rising emissions, or economic collapse and a green future.

This need not be the case. Technologies both mature and emerging are beginning to illustrate a powerful future where our accomplishments as human beings are limited not by the width of an oil drill casing but only by the colossal power of the sun. There are substantial technical challenges to generating almost all our power from solar energy, but given a smart grid and distributed storage mechanism for responsive demand, solar farms covering but half the desert military bases in California and Nevada could power the entirety of North America. Similarly, solar panels covering the exclusion zone of a nuclear power plant would generate more power and at less than one-third of the amortized cost. Challenges remain, but never before has need, ability, and raw economic opportunity aligned in so powerful a way.

Today, five-sixths of the coal and oil reserves remaining must stay in the ground if we are to avoid the crucial 2 °C temperature rise. No fossil fuel producer, country, or mining company will accept anything other than an economic argument to discontinue mining. Investment in extraction today assumes profitable returns given a minimum coal price ten years from now, when infrastructure is in place and production can begin. Already, the Rockefeller group has led a partial divestment in fossil fuels, perhaps due to moral obligation but more likely due to economic expedience. Consumer-level solar deployment such as SolarCity and Varengo is leading the charge to drive up future fuel price uncertainty, but many pieces of the puzzle remain unsolved. A future in which coal is as uneconomic to mine as sand is the future in which we leave the planet for our indefinitely many descendants better than when we found it.

Colour Analysis

A friend/colleague wrote a thing: https://medium.com/@mokounkova/color-in-online-art-images-becc9ee517d4 about colour variability in digitized art.

I thought it was super cool and wanted to give it a go in my weapon of choice Mathematica. But I got distracted, because Mathematica.

I started with one of my favourite paintings, "The visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon", by Sir Edward John Poynter, in 1890. I am very late romantic, afterall. High resolution version here: http://tinyurl.com/oj7tfhn

Low resolution version here:

Each pixel has an RGB value which can be translated into a position in 3D space. Here is a very schmick diagram of the same image, with the points coloured appropriately. 

What we see here is that the palette is overwhelmingly red, red, red, and mostly in the middle area.

Clearly my taste in art needs work, so I took Masha's promised (but not delivered) example, Botticelli's "Primavera" 1482, oh so early Renaissance.

 

In 3D colourspace, it looks like

Clearly Botticelli would have executed his art in such a style, if only he had the tools. What's cool about this is there seems to be some structure. The diagonal axis corresponds to the admixture of white or black paint to lighten or darken the original colour, and as such we see a number of diagonal spears of colour. From this angle the red central garment and blue of the sky are most prominent. 

Being a physicist, I ripped out the dimension of brightness as soon as humanly possible.

Here we see some broad colours varying only in hue, completely saturated. Let's rip out that dimension properly...

For some bizarre reason Mathematica requires 2D ListPlots to be joined if they are to be coloured, so we have lines of scribble. As before, the dominant colours are reds and purples, with a few greens thrown in. The blacks and darker colours are most likely hovering around the middle somewhere. 

Regarding the original question of colour differences between different digitizations of art, I speculate that principle component analysis should be able to reproduce the wide variety of images found on the internet.

2015 in review

With mere minutes remaining of 2014, I thought it a good time to reflect on the joy and wonder of the year.

2014 began with a flight in a blue Navion once owned by Errol Flynn to Catalina Island. This turned out to be an excellent summary (Russian style) for how the year would go. Two and four days later I completed my cross-country solos as part of my pilot's license. Both were incredible learning experiences that I none-the-less survived. On the latter I encountered the most severe turbulence I've ever experienced, as well as some intermittent mechanical problems. Props to my CFI RT for preparing me so well.

By the end of January I'd also made a quick jaunt to the old country - Australia - though I'm not certain when next I shall return. One highlight was exploring the innards of the Sydney Town Hall Organ, the largest non-electric pipe organ in the world, and one of only two with an actual 64' stop.

Three weeks later RENT opened, a terrific show largely orchestrated by MG, DS, and JLL, who later left me for Boston. Building set and singing and dancing and acting is some of the most fun.

I somehow found time to take a few field trips, with the geologists to Zion and Mono Lake, and with the Caltech Y to Yosemite, Washington DC, and a five day induction/indoctrination trip for incoming frosh in the Sierras.

Around Easter ET visited from sunny Seattle, and we did our best to go bananas, with trips to JPL, Catalina Island, and the Mt Wilson 60" telescope to coincide with Mars' opposition. We saw polar caps and the dark plains of Syrtis Major. 

Around this time I procrastinated on flying long enough to 3D print a bunch of jewelry and scientific models, and began a tradition of flying tiny quadcopter drones around TAPIR, the physics department. 

When the drone batteries were exhausted I reluctantly did some work, and went so far as to present it at the APS April meeting in Savannah, Georgia, followed by a few days break with KH in NY and JH in Philadelphia. While in NY I walked down Wall Street wearing my Occupy Mars teeshirt, which was pretty fun.

Back at Caltech I got stuck into satellite control software, eventually succeeding in getting the AAReST mirror to work with MD, T, YP, IH, et al.

The sublime tended to the ridiculous when on the third attempt I managed to outsmart weather and mechanical issues to sit, and pass, my private pilot license checkride, burning cash and old dinosaurs to coast serenely above the LA traffic while occasionally pulling 0gs.

The academic year wound to a close as Fluid Dynamics recorded a studio album (New Tones https://soundcloud.com/fdacappella/) featuring one of my less clunky arrangements. Summer was upon us. Work was completed at a feverish pace, some of it even related to my PhD. In the meantime my old housemate BM had finished his PhD(s) and was walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain. I flew in and intercepted him in Pamplona, walking for 6 days and also finding time to check in on TN, who was resting up in Gijon. 

Returning via a 9 hour layover in Belgium, I prepared feverishly for my first expedition to Burning Man. About this I will relate little except to flag my wonder and amazement when first the Coup de Foudre Tesla coil came to life beneath my fingers.

September saw a visit from LO, turning 27 = 3^3, and the publication at long last of a substantial paper representing the bulk of my academic work for the last three years. Read and cite, people: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1406.7029

October brought some sober reckoning and romantic reconfiguration, but ended promisingly as my outrageously talented brother MH dropped in for a few days, fresh from a big medical conference in SF. The weather was unkind but we managed to fit in a Tesla test drive, a JPL tour, a SpaceX tour, and about 6 hours in a tiny plane buzzing southern California.

In November I achieved the lifelong goal of stranding an ex on a desert island when I flew TK, S, and MB out to Catalina for a birthday camping trip. And, I might add, back the following day with an ad-hoc diversion to Hawthorne-Northrop airfield.

In December I had had enough and decided to spend the month in bed recuperating. Ha! I reveled in the wonders of Interstellar, bought my first thermal camera, and visited DC, Seattle, and Arizona in one of the more unusual trips I've ever done.

What will 2015 hold? My operational priorities include graduating, flying a lot, being mindfully (and mindlessly) generous and less mean, doing Burning Man again, learning much more about computers and quadcopters, and finding a real job doing something I love.

Ukraine - 2014 in review

This article originally published in the California Tech November 26 2014.

Ukraine - 2014 in review

Casey Handmer

In November 2013, Ukraine's then president Viktor Yanukovych, playing EU and Russia off each other in an attempt to secure necessary foreign investment to counter nine years of economic stagnation following the 2004 Orange Revolution, reneged on an agreement for stronger economic and political ties with the EU in favor of Russia. Ukraine's capital, Kiev, is located in the more pro-EU western side of the country, and protests broke out.

By February 2014, the Maidan square protests had intensified. A series of violent escalations blamed variously on the U.S., NATO, Ukraine, Russia, and the Illuminati culminated in Yanukovych fleeing Ukraine for Russia, followed by the instatement of a provisional government, the reversion of the constitution to an earlier state, and new presidential elections. Yanukovych's private palaces were opened to the press and public, underscoring Ukraine's ongoing struggle with official corruption and releasing thousands of private records to public knowledge and analysis.

Yanukovych could not be described as a uniformly pro-Russian agent, but his loss in favor of parliamentary power sent shockwaves through the Russian military establishment, particularly since Ukraine's ongoing lease of port facilities in Crimea's Sebastopol are of vital importance to the Russian Black Sea fleet.

This concern led to the shadow annexation of Crimea shortly afterwards. Begun by pro-Russia paramilitary forces, many led by veterans of the Bosnian conflict in the mid 1990s, green-clad troops lacking identifying insignias or names rapidly seeded Crimea.. Their presence catalyzed the peaceful co-option or withdrawal of the Ukraine military presence in the Crimean peninsula, which subsequently declared de facto independence. On March 16, a referendum was held in which residents were asked to choose between aligning with Russia or adopting Crimea's 1992 constitution, in which it was a semi-autonomous state within the Soviet union. The status quo was not an option. In classic Russian style, 79% of residents voted to become part of Russia despite a 38% turnout.

Meanwhile, the far eastern Ukraine provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk (known collectively as Donbass) had seen pro-Russia unrest, culminating in the occupation of several government buildings. At the time, these buildings formed the net total of land administered by the (internationally unrecognized) Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), but that was about to change. A series of pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine protests occurred but, as in Crimea the general desire was the maintenance of peace. Ethnically Russian and Ukrainian people have lived peacefully side by side in Donbass for decades.

A steady trickle of troops and equipment reinforcing the pro-Russian DPR and LPR arrived across the border. Despite Russia's official insistence that Ukraine's internal issues had nothing to do with them, these troops were less disciplined than the ones now formally acknowledged to have intervened in Crimea, and numerous cases of GPS-tagged Facebook photos show Russian soldiers "on the wrong side of the border." These incursions were opposed by Ukraine's army, and were localized to a few towns and cities within a few miles of Russia's border.

By July 14, the separatists had gotten hold of Russian-made BUK surface-to-air missiles and wasted no time defending their airspace. Over the next few days, they publicly announced shooting down several Ukraine military An-26 aircraft, including one on July 17. Shortly after it became obvious that July 17's shoot down was actually of MH17, making a bad year worse for Malaysia Airlines.

Ukraine's internal struggles now became an international issue. With the international finger pointed at Russia, a series of spectacular backpedals occurred, during which it was claimed MH17 was shot down by Ukraine-operated fighter jets after being deliberately diverted into the conflict zone by corrupted European air traffic control, presumably to frame Russia. As usual, Russia's line is that all the weapons used by separatists were captured from Ukraine's army. Expert analysis has been unable to support these suggestions, finding instead no shortage of evidence that they had never been purchased or used by Ukraine. Russia's national media is every bit as uncritical and parochial as that of the U.S., however, so the deployment of such crude propaganda is still highly effective.

Through late July, separatists continued to lose ground as their promised full-scale Russian invasion force, massing at the border for months, failed to materialize. By mid-August, Ukraine looked poised to crush the last remnants of the rebels. However, by Aug. 23, reporting on MH17 had died down enough that Russia launched a "humanitarian intervention," rapidly retaking and holding roughly half of the Donbass region.

By early September, Ukraine pursued a ceasefire with the separatists, though Russia still officially denied involvement. On Sept. 13, a convoy from Russia arrived uninspected, undermining the already shaky ceasefire. Russia stated the convoy contained humanitarian supplies.

The humanitarian crisis surrounding the conflict is real enough, however. Much of Donbass will have insufficient food this winter due to economic and agricultural disruptions concordant with fighting all summer. For that reason, fighting since has focused on a number of known supply depots. Many countries keep large supply depots at logistic hubs in case of disaster. Luhansk and Donetsk airports are two such cases. Both large, modern international airports were occupied by Ukraine's army. Both airports have since been utterly destroyed by Russian artillery, though Donetsk's ruins are still defended by a band of fighters dubbed "the cyborgs" for their seemingly invincible, death-proof nature. That said, around 5,000 people, mainly military, have died since the September ceasefire at Donetsk airport and a few other hot spots in the otherwise cooling conflict. Mysteriously, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which oversees the ceasefire from white SUVs, seems never to be around when the bullets are flying.

Russia's original goal, stoked by a carefully maintained information bubble around key leaders, seems to have been the rapid annexation of Donbass and surrounding oblasts much like Crimea, totaling perhaps a third of Ukraine. Today, it is thought that the goal is to forge a land corridor between Russia and Crimea, either through or around Mariupol. Mariupol, once broadly pro-Russia, is now heavily fortified. It is clear that in this conflict, however, Russia has all the time, money, and weapons in the world. A rapid or decisive victory is unnecessary. Ultimately, Russia may support the reintegration of separatist regions into a new federalized Ukraine with semi-autonomy under a new constitution that would ensure Russia's ongoing influence in Ukraine's domestic politics. This outcome may be even better than wresting away some contentious and now shell-shocked territory.

Throughout the conflict, pro-Ukraine forces have openly requested military support from NATO and/or the EU. In particular, many U.S. commentators have suggested helping to arm Ukraine's army to provide the firepower needed to oppose Russia's artillery. Cooler heads have wisely suggested that doing so would provide material proof that Russia has needed to support its narrative of persecution by NATO, and thus far Western governments have resisted showering Ukraine with weapons. A less fraught suggestion is instead to shower Ukraine's NATO member allies and neighbors such as Bosnia with U.S.-made weapons so they can sell their Russian-made systems (with which the soldiers are already familiar) to Ukraine at a very reasonable price whilst avoiding accusations of direct interference.

In November 2014, the conflict is still very much ongoing. On Nov. 2, the separatist regions held elections. Ukraine stated such elections were in violation of the Minsk protocol, wherein Ukraine obtained independence at the end of the Soviet Union in return for giving up its substantial nuclear arsenal and permitting the Russian navy base in Crimea. On Nov. 7, NATO reported that Russia has deployed nuclear-capable weapons to Crimea. Current estimates place 7,000 Russian troops in Ukraine, and about 50,000 on the internationally recognized border. Through mid-November around 80 military vehicles (tanks, mobile artillery, etc.) have been moving through the separatist regions. It is unclear how the future will play out, or how well the separatist regions will weather the coming winter.

Maps showing occupied territory on August 15 and August 28 (at end of article).

These pictures are intended to bracket the section discussing the post MH17 Russian military surge. They are sourced from https://mspolitics.quora.com/Update-ceasefire-basically-doesnt-exist, but the writer is not the originator. They contain attribution information on the bottom, to website: http://www.rnbo.gov.ua/ This is the Ukraine government National Security/Defence website. Complete list of maps: http://www.rnbo.gov.ua/en/news/?cat=2

August 15 and August 28.

Film review: Citizenfour moving, unsettling

Review originally published in the California Tech November 8 2014.

Film review: Citizenfour moving, unsettling

Casey Handmer

Films frequently aim to evoke an emotional response. Some of the best thriller or horror films provoke a shocking visceral reaction that stays with the viewer for hours or days. Even in the depths of fear, disgust, or anxiety, it is possible to undermine suspension of disbelief by reminding oneself that the film is, afterall, fiction.

Recently, I saw the documentary thriller Citizenfour. At nearly two hours, the twisted, compact plot unwinds like tightly coiled clockwork. Telling the story of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, suspense builds organically, an inexorable tide of paranoia and suspicion that cannot be wished away. Fiction this is not.

The film was produced and shot by the award winning American journalist Laura Poitras, who, present from the very first, has thoroughly documented the entire saga. Some months after 'citizenfour' first made contact, a still-anonymous Snowden gave Poitras and another journalist, Glenn Greenwald, directions to meet in Hong Kong. Meeting in a hotel lobby, Greenwald and Poitras were shocked at their source's young age. As soon as Snowden's door closed, Poitras' camera began to roll.

For the next hour, the audience is confined with the principal protagonists in the tiny,  claustrophobic hotel room. Scarcely larger than the bed it contains, overlooking a park in the central business district, we first meet Snowden explaining what he is doing and why. Eerily calm, his almost painfully skinny physique curled up on the bed while fielding endless questions from Greenwald and Guardian journalist Ewen MacAskill, the film is a masterclass in closed-room mystery and paranoia.

Much has been written of and about Snowden, and this is not the place to rehash those discussions. Earning universal critical acclaim, the film has also offered Snowden critics an authentic and first-hand view of the vilified American, delivering deep insight into his knowledge and persona. Despite near certainty that his hours of freedom are likely in double digits, Snowden appears calm and patient, all the more impressive considering Greenwald and MacAskill's astounding level of ignorance when it came to technical matters.

As we now know, Snowden managed to escape Hong Kong only to become trapped in Russia. Nevertheless, with help from Wikileaks he has, unlike Chelsea Manning, retained his liberty and his ability to participate in the ongoing discussion that is tending ever so slightly away from his worst fears of technologically-enabled totalitarianism.

For the vast majority of Poitras' audience, my fellow theatergoers, the film is about politics, about trust in government, about oversight, and about the process of modern journalism. For the technically literate, however, I took away a different message. Communications technology does not just appear. It is created by engineers. Caltech students become leaders, innovators, inventors. Today, if there is any capability for ordinary people to avoid dragnet surveillance, it's because today's technical innovators, hobbyists, and developers have created some privacy enabling methods ex nihilo. Today, if we have any idea about illegal classified government activities, it's because technical people with access and conscience have leaked the information to relevant journalists. Scientists are usually trained to think of knowledge and technology as apolitical, but this is only ever the case under the most relaxed assumptions.

Competing in the Physics Olympiad way back in 2005, the then head of the program told the assembled competitors that knowledge, and physics in particular, can be used for evil and it can be used for good. The subtext was obvious. Half the people in the room were the best and brightest from China, Russia, Iran, Israel, the USA, and other warlike nations, and physicists build the best bombs. While explosives are an essential component of a peaceful deterrent force, he insisted we must use physics for good. Science contains the tools of both technological emancipation and technological slavery. When we create new knowledge, it must never be without a consideration for its possible uses.

I know few people who could calmly throw away their entire life for the sake of telling ordinary people about morally questionable actions done in their name and with their tax revenue, but Snowden was clearly one such person. For him, and for anyone else in a similar position, this is by far the most difficult decision that a person will ever face in their entire professional or personal life. It may come tomorrow or decades in the future but, once encountered, cannot be avoided or ignored. Citizenfour is a terrific primer for thinking about that ultimate decision and the sort of created world in which you want to live.

Elon Musk’s twitter: Time to unveil the D

Originally published in the California Tech October 27 2014.

Elon Musk's twitter: Time to unveil the D

Casey Handmer

On Oct. 1, Elon Musk tweeted "... time to unveil the D ..." Unlike previous mysterious tweets, the substance of this one was guessed reasonably quickly. Two years after the release of the revolutionary Tesla Model S, an updated version is available.

D stands for dual motors. The current Model S has only one motor, and the fastest version, the P85+, does 0-60 in a staid, lumbering 4.2 seconds. If there's one thing everyone can agree on, it's that this is embarrassingly slow. More seriously, the dual motor approach is more efficient at a range of speeds and forms an important test of the powertrain for the upcoming Model X crossover.

The new model looks the same but can reach 60 mph from a standing start in 3.2 seconds, pulling an average of 0.9 gs. The number of road-legal cars that can do this can be counted on one hand. There's the Bugatti Veyron and a handful of other supercars which cost in excess of a million dollars. There are a few electric one-offs, including the Wrightspeed X-1 (2.9 seconds), the Rimac Concept 1/Volar E (2.8 seconds) and the White Zombie, a converted 1972 Datsun that reaches 60 mph in 1.8 seconds and dispatches the quarter mile in 10.24 seconds. But none of them seat five with cargo, and none are controlled by a giant touchscreen.

Also, none of them have autopilot. What? Tesla also unveiled their rapid (less than a year since starting) progress with car autopilot. Rather than aiming for complete autonomy, like Google or the DARPA grand challenge, Tesla has decided to pick a bunch of cheaper, more versatile sensors, then gradually upgrade the software that translates their input to car control. Tesla's sensor array includes GPS, forward-looking radar, omnidirectional ultrasound (sonar), and a forward looking camera. In combination, they work well enough to hold or change lanes, perform adaptive cruise control, check for cars or objects in blind spots, recognize speed limits, and automatically brake the car to avoid a collision. It remains to be seen how well this system works in practice, or how effective it actually is in combating driver fatigue and carelessness.

Image courtesy teslamotors.com

What's the big deal with Tesla anyway? It's a relatively tiny startup that makes cars. Fancy, shiny, and extremely expensive cars. If there's one thing cities in the US don't need, it's more cars. Given that cars will continue to exist and make modern lifestyles possible, Tesla plans to introduce a cheaper mass market car in 2017, codenamed Model 3. Probably a scaled down Model S, it will rely on mass production and innovative battery construction to lower costs to around the $35,000 mark, which is quite affordable when you factor in reduced cost of ownership. To get there, Tesla is building a battery "Gigafactory" in Nevada. Tesla once chose the 18650 cell to exploit its ubiquity and availability - today producing 30,000 cars a year, Tesla consumes more than 60% of world supply. Getting battery costs below $100/kWh is seen as essential for their wide adoption, and certainly their use in more facets of life is part of the Tesla/SolarCity master plan. Solar generation can be buffered at every scale in a future smart grid with the introduction of in-home battery packs with incredible and affordable capacity.

In the more distant future, electric propulsion has the potential to revolutionize air transport too. Battery energy density need to improve by a factor of 3 to 10, and powering light planes or even long-haul flights electrically is certainly possible. But more than that - electric motors have a much higher power-to-weight ratio than almost any other type of engine. The explosion of toy quadcopters is a testament to this fact. An airplane with a power-to-weight ratio greater than one is capable of vertical takeoff and landing and, with appropriate turbine design, supersonic flight. For the first time, humans may fly in planes that aren't immediately analogous to birds.