New York Times on the Web Forums Science

Missile Defense

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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

rshow55 - 04:32pm Apr 4, 2003 EST (# 11087 of 11091)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

better.

jorian319 - 04:07pm Apr 4, 2003 EST

"This whole thread is fairly fractal - look at one of your (collective) posts, and you seen 'em all."

- - -

You have and you haven't.

There is a lot of likeness, and interconnection - and a quite a lot of difference. And also (largely thanks to lchic's fine and wideranging postings) a lot of interconnection.

Patterns converge. Everything anybody knows, that fits into their heads, or works in language - converges by that kind of process.

To answer "Plato's Problem" - the most fundamental problem in philosophy for the past 2500 years - the way things focus is a basic piece of information - and some basic information is most important because it is so reliable - so ubiquitious.

(Water is important to a fish even though a fish in the ocean, surrounded and existing in water - may not notice it.)

If you've seen one "Sierpinski triangle http://math.bu.edu/DYSYS/chaos-game/node5.html you've seen them all" in some senses

( The facts of arithmetic are monontonous in a similar kind of way.)

But the basic patterns of order are useful.

Life, and hope, wouldn't even be thinkable without them.

And sometimes, there's reason to think some people with connections may care about this thread. Gisterme , for instance.

One can say with some justice, I think, that gisterme cared about it when I conceded that, after negotiation I talked a lot about , it was time to act - - anyway - this led me to think so.

10082 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.jx1RalHT6yz.507093@.f28e622/11627

"By Jove, I think you finally "get it", Robert! Whew! Getting you to understand that was harder than being dragged through a knothole.

Nobody every accused me of being paralyzed by humility, so far as I recall. But it seems to me that lchic and I are doing work on this thead that even the President of the United States ought to care about.

almarst2003 - 04:34pm Apr 4, 2003 EST (# 11088 of 11091)

Some Critical Media Voices Face Censorship - http://www.fair.org/press-releases/iraq-censorship.html

It became an open secret the US media is the most biased and narrowminded in the coverage of this conflict. Nothing coming out from Administration/Pentagon is questioned. Even the common sense is discarded. Not to mention showing and discussing nonconforming points of view from any source. No meaningfull World (besides buttle grounds) outside US seems to exist.

Did we already crossed the point of no-return on the road to Hell?

rshow55 - 04:41pm Apr 4, 2003 EST (# 11089 of 11091)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

Don't have to dispute your pointing out the narrowmindedness. A person could exaggerate my comfort with the Bush administration.

All the same, I don't think we're at "the point of no-return on the road to Hell."

Doesn't look that way to me, Almarst - - it seems to me that most of the world has a lot of power - and a lot of reasons to question questionable things.

For basic reasons of order - if the right to lie was reasonably constrained - or if people insisted on a right to check to closure when it mattered enough - a lot - and most of what people care about - would sort out much better.

If leaders of nation states had some courage - we'd do a lot better. Don't expect the presses of the world to be any more courageous than the policitians. You might hope for that. You won't generally or reliably get it.

almarst2003 - 04:52pm Apr 4, 2003 EST (# 11090 of 11091)

A role for the UN in postwar Iraq - http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,929514,00.html

(1 following message)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense