Renewables can and will eventually replace coal, that is a GoodThing(TM), sure they have an ecological footprint but (like nuclear power) it's virtually zero compared to coal. The question isn't nukes vs solar, the question is what combination of current technologies will replace coal's market dominance, current nuclear technologies cannot do this alone for several reasons, expense, limited fuel reserves, plain old fear. Solar is now significantly cheaper and certainly much cleaner than imported brown coal, which is why India has embarked on a solar project to supply power to 400M people (40% of the population).

Replacing coal sounds like a massive task but consider that every coal plant on the planet was built during my lifetime, some were even built and rebuilt. The economics is such that I'm now confident they will be replaced with solar/wind farms in the next 50yrs. The hydro dams are already in place and there aren't many suitable sites left for new ones. All forms of power generation must match supply to demand on the grid, ie: they need a buffer to be able to match the "wavy" demand curve of a typical city. Coal produces a flat supply curve (so called "base load"), it already uses the existing dams as giant batteries by pumping water uphill during off-peak times and pulling it back onto the grid during peak times. As renewables start replacing coal why would they not also use the existing hydro infrastructure to similar effect?

The radiation is harmful to wildlife but no where near as harmful as plain old human habitation. Wildlife thrives in the Chernobyl exclusion zone not because the radiation is harmless but because there are no people. The DMZ on the korean peninsula is the same, no people, plenty of land mines and wildlife.

BTW: Coulter is a troll and Greenpeace did not kill nuclear power, Chernobyl did that, yes there were exceptional circumstances as there was with the BP oil spill but Joe Average doesn't give a shit about excuses when the inevitable mega-fuck-up occurs.

"W" is the 23rd letter of the alphabet, W = 23 = 2 X 3 = 6 : WWW = 666. Isaac Newton wrote almost a million words on the numerology of 666, in fact he wrote a lot more about theology than science. Thing is nobody remembers him for his prolific "contributions" to theology.

Believe what I say or I will hurt you

Not sure if it was opportunity or its twin, but one of them required a modem reset not long after landing.

I don't care if your bleeding from the eyeballs, leave my cigarettes alone!

My family treasure is box full of super-8 home movies from the early 80's and a projector that still works. There's about 3hrs worth of 3min films spliced together on 20min reels, the grandkids get a buzz seeing their parents as toddlers. The other bit of tech memorabilia I won't part with is my dad's 1976 HP21C calculator, still in it's original leather case, perfect working order but no manual, can't even find a copy on the internet. Most people I've shown it to have never heard of reverse polish notation, grandkids are unimpressed by it. :)

Another cool effort, in SimCity 3000.

Surely you can't be Sirious.

Nah, that's NCIS's job. Abby and Probie McGee will handle it!

"misogyny, racism, and homophobia" were all considered pollitically correct in their day, and that's exacty what was wrong with them. Political correctness in the opposite direction is no better because it's also predicated on an ideologically driven notion of "balance". Telling women they should be on WP is no different to telling them they belong in the kitchen.

Also why is it that WP should do more to appeal to females but FB doesn't need to do more to appeal to males? An individual or organisation that tries too hard to appeal to everybody, ends up appealing to nobody. Self exclusion is not discrimination, it plain old "personal taste".

The Jepordy stunt demonstrated Watson can filter out trolls better than humans and it does that by assigning credibility rankings to sources of data. Most of the work on Watson is directed at medical research, it's sources are things like the pubmed database, not slashdot comments.

IBM are sitting on a revolutionary advance in software engineering, they're not interested in selling it, they want to rent it and claim slice of whetever their "partner" organisations find. It will revolutionise research in the same way CAD/CAM and physics engines have revolutionised engineering over the last 3-4 decades and IBM look set to reap the enoumous potential of their billion dollar investment in basic research.

In a democratic republic, the president plays the role of emporer. Why does that surprise you?

I was giving her the benefit of the doubt but even with that advantage she doesn't have a leg to stand on.