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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

applez101 - 11:13am May 26, 2001 EST (#4228 of 4238)

Possumdag - are you willing to pay a fee to use this free service? If so, the NYTimes may just consider it. :)

Furthermore, as a 'news' agency, there is something to the idea that archiving reader's opinions is a bit redundant as fresh issues abound. If you want this to happen, contact a contemporary anthropology/sociology department in academia that is willing to do that job and you may get what you want (even a finder's fee).

applez101 - 11:25am May 26, 2001 EST (#4229 of 4238)

Possumdag -

On nuclear fission -

To the contrary, fission is one of the more accurate 'true-cost' accounted forms of power generation out there...with a $ figure attached to every step from cradle to grave. Not so for fission power, or even some renewables for that matter.

The storage costs can be quantified for the next 10K+ years (depending on half-life of different scales of waste material) and processes for safe storage (extensive HVAC equipment, vitrification, etc.).

To be fair, the only part of fission that isn't accounted for very well is the insurance against incidence of accident during the life of the equipment. And given Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, one can argue that this is a serious cost indeed (but one that can be mitigated by good design, good construction, and continued best-practices). BNFL and the Japanese nuclear authority also serve as good examples of the risks associated with the full lifecycle of this energy option.

Go to the Economist.com, they wrote an article on the costing of fission power just this week.

rshowalter - 11:42am May 26, 2001 EST (#4230 of 4238)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Does it have to be in academia? (Not that having it done in academia isn't a fine idea. )

If if needs to be academy based, how about an english department interested in discourse practices, or a library science department, or a journalism department?

Does it necessarily have to be in academia?

I think this would be fine use of foundation grant funds.

What does archiving cost today? Not much, and the costs are going down fast.

If I were paying something like the real cost of having all the "Mysteries of the Universe" forums archived - with the old links working times a reasonable multiple - I'd sure try to find the money to do it. In storage space and labor, you're not talking much time, or money, or load on your computer.

We've discussed archiving of discourse, connected to newspaper stories, as a way of getting around the "culture of lying" fairly extensively on this thread. I think it would be an important thing to do, and could be a money-maker, and influence-enhancer for newspapers.

applez101 - 12:04pm May 26, 2001 EST (#4231 of 4238)

Rshowalter - it doesn't have to be academia per se, but the advantage is that an academic institution would be interested in the archive directly and would provide it all at-cost...and may even develop some useful search engines for it (next to gratis...amazing what people will do for ink on paper that isn't money).

Also, an academic institution is probably the last to jettison an archive if funding problems come around.

Any other organization would probably have higher costs and would want to generate revenue from the investment.

Lastly, what needs to be recognized is that with the advent of IT, even with falling archiving costs (cheaper hard drives, inexpensive CDs & burners), the sheer volume of work will grow exponentially and presents a cost that can spiral out of control.

One way of keeping that to a minimum is to edit what you archive, but that induces a labor cost.

Again, academia has numerous 'market' advantages on these counts.

applez101 - 12:05pm May 26, 2001 EST (#4232 of 4238)

I would add that an anthropology/sociology archivist would want to keep editing to a minimum, keeping maximum number of postings, including whacko commentaries (perhaps especially those) to provide a balanced record for academic use.

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