Yes, not only are we going to need increasing energy supplies going forward, both for expanding first world needs and increasing third world needs, but we need nuclear power for practical planetary space travel. Nuclear can be done very safely, and is already demonstrably the safest large-scale power source save perhaps solar.

As to Germany, it is about to start importing power from France, mainly generated by nuclear plants. It's a good deal for France I'm sure. ;-)

If discussing CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) there is a superior metric for this.

Simply ask the climate alarmist you're talking to if he or she supports vastly increased nuclear power generation, along with a reduction in fossil fuel power generation. If not, it's "fantasy-land" time.

Either the problem is severe enough to warrant the only workable solution, or it's not a real concern. Simple enough.

I'm glad you brought up Project Denver. It sounds exciting, but NVIDIA is sure being quiet about it. Have you seen any updates recently?

The results of Project Denver just might be enough for Apple to look at ARM for MacOS systems as well as iOS. Rumor has it that NVIDIA GPUs are back in favor at Apple these days.

The interesting thing about the Chinese nuclear program is that nobody outside of China knows much about it. If there is a large government on Earth that can run a secret program effectively, it's the Chinese - for a number of reasons.

How many nukes do the Chinese really have? Nobody actually knows besides some high-ranking Chinese.

To quote the Wikipedia article you referenced:

Because of strict secrecy it is very difficult to determine the exact size and composition of China's nuclear forces.

Not really, since the 747 flies above almost all weather. As long as it avoids thunderheads it should be effective. Granted, it would be better to put it on a specialty airframe (possibly a re-engineered 747 with much more wing surface and different engines) that could cruise at 70,000 feet or so - the thinner the atmosphere, the greater the effective range.

Sure, that's how MAD works - and it's how we successfully defeated the Soviet Union without firing a shot. They couldn't afford more defense buildup.

North Korea is a poster child for such an approach. Even with its current level of military spending, it can't afford basic necessities for it's people.

Absolutely not!

At a minimum, he should have requested a clarification first: "Do you mean free as in beer, or free as in freedom?" :-)

Wrong, for a couple of reasons. First off, reusable autonomous bombers would be much less expensive than missiles per ton of delivered ordinance. Second, you can communicate with autonomous aircraft without compromising their stealth. Even if they send data back, it can be quite stealthy (directional satcom), but this would likely not be needed continuously, or even often. Damage assessment could be done with video stored on the vehicle until landing, for instance.

Personally I would be cautious about allowing remote retargeting, since if your encryption scheme was compromised your own weapons could be turned against you. You could still enable a 'recall' command. If you did allow retargeting, that would seem to be the perfect spot for one time pad encryption.

The US Navy is already developing an autonomous bomber, based on the X-47 program.

The B-1 is a very underrated platform. I love the B1-R concept, which would upgrade the B-1 with F-22 engines, improved radar and a new rotary launcher for around 20 AMRAAM missiles. That would let it supercruise (possibly along with F-22 escorts) at around Mach 1.5 as it was originally designed to do, and it would have an insane air-to-air capability if needed as well.

The B-1 is already fairly stealthy, if new airframes were built for the B1-R program fairly minor enhancements could get it within shouting distance of the B-2. That kind of capability would be invaluable when (not if) we have to deal with a first-tier adversary.

The "problem" with the B-2 is that only 20 were built. That's an insanely low number given the engineering investment to produce them at all. When you have bombers named after states, you have far too few bombers. Just normal attrition is a big problem, we've lost at least one (5% of the total number) due to mechanical problems. Sadly, at this point I don't think there's any economical way to build more B-2s. The likely replacement will be an unmanned aircraft, which would lower costs quite a bit and provide better performance.

If more had been built, they would have approached your $750 million figure - which is really not such a bad deal considering a mundane 747 costs around $200 million.

The scene of the shooting was forensically examined, and GZ was questioned for several hours. There was also at least one eye-witness who corroborated GZ's story. So the decision of the police to not hold him was a lot less cavalier than you're making it out to be.

I'm also not sure if you're aware that at least one DA wanted to go forward with a prosecution, but it was also decided at that level that there wasn't enough evidence to convict.

"Stand your ground" is completely irrelevant to the situation. With no witnesses, the shooter could just as well claim to have retreated first before firing. "Stand your ground" does nothing but eliminate the requirement to attempt retreat before acting in self defense. Further, if the shooter was on the ground being beaten, he would likely claim an attempt was made to get away before shooting but it was impossible.