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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.

fredmoore - 09:26pm Apr 18, 2003 EST (# 11335 of 11500)

'so what could NYC-City Market and sell ... or should it partly re-position itself ... elsewhere ???? '

That's the point isn't it? Government backed developers like ex mayor Guiliani are marketing condos. Bring in more people without providing social infrastructure ... like LONG term employment.

Its all "Take the profit" and F the people.

lchic - 03:05am Apr 19, 2003 EST (# 11336 of 11500)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

If only they'd put those Condos on wheels ... Wow !

lchic - 10:30am Apr 19, 2003 EST (# 11337 of 11500)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

The downtown Bagdahdie

Follows the cleric the new god

of elections

rshow55 - 07:06pm Apr 19, 2003 EST (# 11338 of 11500)
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.

Just saw the board, for the first time in a while. I'm up to a limited degree. I've been looking at the paper, and worrying about what I might say that might be constructive.

The Arts And Ideas section was beautiful today. I like to "connect the dots" and so I'm a fan of Erica Goode. A big fan of Emily Eakin, as well - who did beautiful work today, very much worth reading - work that I hope is influential.

This was fine

Journal's Closing Spells End of an Era By EMILY EAKIN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/17/books/17PART.html

and this especially so:

The Latest Theory Is That Theory Doesn't Matter By EMILY EAKIN (NYT) News http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/19/arts/19CRIT.html

Theory matters, of course, if it REALLY serves as a compact summary of experience. f = ma is as useful as it is. And beautiful things matter too.

I was personally touched by Eakin's piece on Damasio and his works: I Feel, Therefore I Am By EMILY EAKIN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/19/arts/19EMOT.html

I'd love a chance to talk to Damasio.

Damasio's work is described as "counterintuitive". That doesn't mean he's wrong. But is is human experience, I think, that patterns of ideas become coherent, and capable of being organized in ways that feel and effectively are intuitive, before they are fully satisfactory.

Some facts are hard to face, and some vivid ones need a clearer facing than they've had. When I was just a kid of 19, I was stunned, wrenched, when I came to understand, fully and in detail, how it was possible to build the ME262 jet fighter with slave labor. The people who did that - and understood the process in workable detail (I was taught by one of them) knew a LOT about the human conditions - and so did Mr Jamelske described in the article below. I've tried, with lchic, to find ways to make the world safer - and maybe the work hasnt' all been wasted. But if we're to find secure beauty - we have to face up to the facts about human abilities and limitations that the NAZIS knew so well, that Saddam and his followers knew well, if less well - facts that concerned Casey very, very deeply.

We need to make the world better- and for this we need disciplined hearts - and a willingness to understand the ugly as well as the beautiful - so that we can find ways to "turn away from the Holocaust."

Town Recluse Charged in Chilling Case of Sexual Captivity By ANDREW JACOBS (NYT) News http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/19/nyregion/19SLAV.html

The story bears careful, imaginative reading. The terrible thing about this story is how much NORMAL and USUAL human behavior was involved. To say that isn't to condone anything at all.

Many of the things that made the Holocaust possible made Jamelske's doings possible. Damasio studied defective people who could not, did not feel. Whole nations, very often, have been so defective in this way that we need to be wary. And sometimes most dangerous because they were cruel, but very, very perceptive. Anyone who has been anywhere near manufacturing has to respect, in a stark technical way, what the Germans were able to do to get combat airplanes built with large and important inputs of slave labor. And wrenched. I can remember being so - and am wrenched again whenever I remember some things I learned.

We're safer if we face how good we aren't, how independent we aren't, how wise we aren't, and both how perceptive and imperceptived we are. The world has been close, recently, to total destruction - and we aren't so far away now. Yet life can be be distinguished, beautiful, and hopeful, too.

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