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Science
Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's
war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars"
defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make
the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an
application of science be successful? Is a militarized space
inevitable, necessary or impossible?
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  (724 previous messages)
lchic
- 06:58pm Mar 20, 2002 EST (#725
of 730)
Literature isn't Science ?
PostModernIsm :
The debates center around these six major issues:
-the relation of artwork to social context
-the relation
of art and of theory to political action and to the dominant
social order
-the relation of cultural practices to the
transformation or maintenance of society in all its aspects
-the relation of the collapse of traditional philosophical
foundations to the possibility of critical distance from and
effective critique ofÏ the status quo
-the relation of an
image-dominated comsumer society to artistic practice
-the
future of a Western tradition that now appears more heterogenous
than previously thought even while it appears insufficiently
tolerant of (open to) multiplicity
In attempt to sum up the entire concept:
"At the very least, postmodernism highlights the
multiplication of voices, questions, and conflicts that has
shattered what once seemed to be (although it never really was)
the placid unanimity of the great tradition and of the West that
gloried in it."
So... in attempt to reduce this very broad mode of thought and
study, we can see Post Modernism as essentially attempting to
define and understand our present complex social issues, and
acknowledge how they have been affected by past behaviors of our
culture and how they will form our future. http://educ.queensu.ca/~qbell/update/tint/postmodernism/defin.html
Ah so GI agrees that much regarding Nuclear Missiles lies in
HEADS ... the MIND dominates this board ... much more than the
technical boondoggle antique side of the debate ... So GI has moved
towards RATIONALITY
{the state of having good sense and sound
judgment; "GI's rationality may have been previously impaired"; "GI
formerly relied less on reason than on rousing our emotions" }
http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=rationality
lchic
- 07:19pm Mar 20, 2002 EST (#726
of 730)
Let the KILLING begin ....
revealing a system that will closely resemble courts-martial
but will not give full right of appeal. Some tribunals may take
place on naval vessels for security reasons.
Defendants will be granted a military lawyer and will have the
right to hire a civilian counsel. To secure a conviction, the
panel of between three and seven officers must vote by a majority
of at least two-thirds. A death sentence will require a unanimous
vote.
lchic
- 07:44pm Mar 20, 2002 EST (#727
of 730)
Leaders - negotiators
Seven principles of breakthrough negotiation
Principle 1: Breakthrough negotiators shape the structure of
their situations
Principle 2: Breakthrough negotiators organize to learn
Principle 3: Breakthrough negotiators are masters of process
design
Principle 4: Breakthrough negotiators foster agreement when
possible but employ force when necessary
Principle 5: Breakthrough negotiators anticipate and manage
conflict
Principle 6: Breakthrough negotiators build momentum toward
agreement
Principle 7: Breakthrough negotiators lead from the middle
rshow55
- 07:58pm Mar 20, 2002 EST (#728
of 730) 
Looks to me like all but one of the necessary conditions for a
breakthrough negotiation are in place. The one that isn't,
that is absolutely necessary, is sufficient, properly validated,
force.
If leaders of nation states wanted RIGHT ANSWERS on questions of
technical fact -- clear enough to be beyond politics - and
convincing to a VERY wide range of people -- who might disagree on
much else -- that sufficient and properly validated force would
quickly come to exist. Much of it would exist in the form of media
interest.
A key reason to want the technical answers is that those answers
would move toward larger answers to questions the whole world needs,
and is coming to know it needs:
What is the real national interest of the United
States? Not just the interest of the military-industrial complex.
and
Can the United States be honest enough and
trustworthy enough about what it asks for, and agrees to,
so that its interests can be reasonably, efficiently, justly
accomodated by the rest of the world?
The technical issues of "missile defense" are a good place to
start -- because those technical answers are so clear -- and
answering them forces these larger questions to be adressed.
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