I had no idea we were developing a new generation of thermo-nuclear warheads, capable of wiping human-kind from the planet entirely....cool!
LOS ANGELES --AP-- The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the San Francisco Bay area and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are competing to design the nation's first new nuclear bomb in two decades.
Congress approved the new bomb, known as the reliable replacement warhead, with bipartisan support in 2005 as part of a defense spending bill. The weapon would, by law, have the same explosive power as existing warheads.
While I agree that we should have reliable weapons in our arsenal as a deterrent, it's kind of difficult, diplomatically and politically, to insist that North Korea, Iran and others abandon their nuclear ambitions while we update ours.
I know what you're thinking, "Ed, why are you drawing a moral equivalance between the U.S. and two of the three members of the axis of evil?" There's no moral equivalance in my take: the U.S. is good, and those other guys are evil...there's a big difference between us. We would only use our weapons defensively, or at worst pre-emptorily against a clear and present danger, but North Korea and Iran very well might use theirs offensively. That's the difference between the good guys and the bad guys when you're talking about nuclear weapons possession. I'm just making the diplomatic argument, that when we are in the middle of delicate negotiations with the Iranian madman to abandon his country's nuclear weapons program, we might want to downplay building ours up.
Trivia quiz: Who can name the movie, the character's name, and the 'game' referred to in the title of this post?
8 comments:
Movie: Wargames
Character's name: Matthew Broderick and the WOPR
Game: Global Thermalnuclear war
Excellent...give the player a cookie.
Ditto to what the first anonymous said...I had that one too.
But I do have to ask.. Ed ..What did you delete? Did someone say something OFFENSIVE? to you? Please don't delete. If you can post and be sarcastic and offensive, can't we as well?
Ed,
I've been accused of watching too much T.V. - childhood years of course, as T.V. today is mostly nonsense.
Anonymous 1
This is in reply to anonmyous at 9:52.
Your indignance betrays you. Apparently you would like it if I had deleted a comment I didn't like. How wonderful the possibility catching me in a fit of censorship.
Sadly I'm afraid, that's not the case. I hit the Publish button twice by mistake and the same comment posted twice...it looked kind of silly so I deleted the second one.
I will never delete a comment left by a reader, unless it contains excessive profanity or is otherwise not family-friendly.
In the interest of encouraging more reader interaction, my suggestion would be to sign your comments (with an assumed name, but the same name each post) so that people, and I, can get to know your style and comment on your comments, directing them at an identity rather than the safer "anonymous".
How did my indignance betray me? I do not post as anonymous because it's safe...I do it because it's easy. I will choose a name and post as such from now on but you have to admit that it appears that you deleted something you did not want seen.
My apologies. Your indignance at my apparent unfair deletion seemed to betray an eagerness to catch me censoring a reader when I don't censor myself. Admittedly, it may appear that way, but I assure you that is not the case. Unless a comment is profane, I will not delete it.
My suggestion for a name is just so that I, and other readers, have an identity to respond to as there may be many "anonymous" readers. Just click the "Other" identity button and you can make up whatever screen name you wish to be known by, without having to log in.
Thanks, Ed
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