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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 - 01:35am May 12, 2003 EST (# 11594 of 11609)

Rob ...

If any of the things you link to were true and impending then the evil groups you disclose would not allow you to undress them in public.

The fact that you CAN post at all is not only proof you are shall we say ' misguided' but also proof that free speech is an inalienable item here on these forums. The minute you are not allowed to post we will know the sky is falling.

Keep on posting!

PS. Could you expand on some of the links in your own words occasionally ... show us some poissonality!

rshow55 - 08:02am May 12, 2003 EST (# 11595 of 11609)
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.

Free speech is important - necessary - but it doesn't solve all problems. Necessity and sufficiency are different.

The events of the Blair case are as interesting, in their way, as the events in the recent shuttle disaster - and the way it is being handled is interesting in similar ways, as well. In some ways, institutions have and are responding to these challenges "properly" and "admirably." In some other ways, there's been something to be desired.

N.Y. Times Says Reporter Committed Fraud By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 11:33 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-New-York-Times-Investigation.html

'Huge Black Eye' By WILLIAM SAFIRE http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/12/opinion/12SAFI.html

"Let us slap a metaphoric cold steak over our black eye and learn a lesson from the way one Times reporter betrayed our readers."

A number of lessons need to be learned, it seems to me - and both the TIMES, and the rest of the world, would benefit from getting them clarified - so that they could be learned.

Checking questions of fact is difficult - if it is actually done - rather than just permitting people with "enough status" and "the right position" to say pretty much what they wish - until something goes very wrong.

The whole world has problems which can only be decently handled if, on those relatively rare occasions where it matters enough - key facts and relations get checked to closure. Not even the NYT knows how to do that effectively in the cases that matter now.

Fredmoore, lchic, and Commondata have asked me some questions - and I've been working on answering in ways that I hope are constructive as well as honest (and defensible, in the world as it is).

I'm trying to respond in ways I think some old hands - Eisenhower, JFK, Casey - would approve of. I've been working, my whole adult life, on problems leaders of that generation knew were concerns - at a level of clarity that seems almost forgotten now.

Fredmoore asked me for a ferrari - and the implication, pretty clearly, was that I've been asking for impossible things. Maybe. I've been thinking pretty hard about how "unreasonable" my requests and concerns have been, and whether I've been adequately clear.

I asked for some help from Safire July of last year. Things are so indirect that I can't be sure whether or not he read the request, or responded. But I'm going through my own record - and though I'm full of doubts, this belief keeps hanging on:

It seems to me that there are only relatively few problems that need to be solved to make the world much better - from most people's point of view. A lot of them involve questions of fact. Also questions about the relations between, and tensions between, decisions made on the basis of status, and decisions made on the basis of direct checking of facts to see whether a particular "connection of the dots" happens to be right or wrong.

If the New York Times could solve its own problems related to credibility near-optimally, in terms of its own ideals, and the expectations of its customers - the rest of the world might be able to solve a lot of problems, too.

It seems to me that it would be worth money as well as honor to the Times if it could do so.

lchic - 08:15am May 12, 2003 EST (# 11596 of 11609)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

http://www.starshipgamma.com/branton/misc/misc/coscon36.txt

lchic - 09:00am May 12, 2003 EST (# 11597 of 11609)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Last Circle

http://www.american-buddha.com/last.circle.htm

lchic - 09:13am May 12, 2003 EST (# 11598 of 11609)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/index.shtml

http://www.independent.co.uk/

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense