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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?

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rshow55 - 10:29am Jun 15, 2003 EST (# 12552 of 12556)
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.

I made a request in a postcard in November 2001 that I think is worth some thought - in form, and perhaps in detail, as well. http://www.mrshowalter.net/LtToSenateStffrWSulzbergerNoteXd.html that postcard read as follows ( I've added a one word clarification in parenthesis)

"Dear Mr. Sulzberger:

" I need an exception to NYT policy, and feel I have to ask you, or someone you designate, for the permission. Our nuclear weapons systems and ongoing and prospective negotiations about them involve instabilities. I would like to communicate with Sam Nunn and Ted Turner's NUCLEAR THREAT INITIATIVE in ways that can work.

" I am asking that (reporter's name), or someone (s)he designates assist me in Washington over three days time -- meeting with some NTI people to discuss a presentation on stability - then spending a day helping to prepare a presentation the NTI people, as they are, can understand and use. Some explosive instabilities need to be avoided by the people who must make and maintain the relevant agreements. The system crafted needs to be workable for what it has to do, have feedback, damping, and dither in the right spots with the right magnitudes. The things that need to be checkable should be.

" I will try to pay my debts appropriately, and think perhaps I can. I feel that the TIMES staff spend more than 10% of its time on (internal) defense and offense. It should be more like 3.5%. I feel that the reduction can be done, step by step, with each step win-win.

Robert Showalter

The staffer I sent http://www.mrshowalter.net/LtToSenateStffrWSulzbergerNoteXd.html works for Senator Tom Daschle - and it doesn't seem wrong to say so now.

The reporter I mentioned in the note to Sulzberger was Natalie Angier.

I'm grateful that, after sending that note, I was still permitted to post on this thread.

I have a question. It is general - and from a K.I.S.S. perspective, it seems worth asking - in general - about kinds of solutions that are now classified out of existence because of too primative or nonexistent exception handling.

Suppose the President of the United States, or a senior UN official, or the leader of another nation state had made exactly the same request I made of Sulzberger. Could that request have been accomodated?

Why not ?

rshow55 - 02:30pm Jun 15, 2003 EST (# 12553 of 12556)
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.

A reason why not is that we've lost some basic notions essential to a common culture - including common views of right or wrong - or duty - that are at all stable.

Partly technical points

4822 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.uS3gbTytfsF.695105@.f28e622/6095 includes this, with some additions:

The New York Times has an important place in our culture - - there was a good reason why my instructions were to "come in through the New York Times." There were stark technical reasons - I had a message that required a lot of brainpower - hard to find concentrated in a single institution. But there was more. The human concerns that Casey worried about ( and that D. D. and M. S. Eisenhower worried about even more) - and taught me to worry about - are central human concerns. The Eisenhowers, Casey, and many others wanted to know how real human beings could come to make peace. They didn't know how to do it - and knew they didn't. Milton Eisenhower's career at Johns Hopkins illustrates that clearly - he took a leave of absence to head a national committee on the problem of violence in the late 1960's. People, including C.P. Snow, and Berle, were thinking hard, and stumped in some key spots they were clear about. There's been a lot about peacemaking on this thread. But a basic message, much repeated on this thread, doesn't seem to be getting across very well - either to the TIMES as an institution, or to others.

Key issues - especially if you are ever to come to stable, desireable equilibria in human arrangements - - concern logic - right back to Plato's problem.

Modelling is basic - getting to stable right answers is basic.

Some points relating to math and modelling.

4823 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.uS3gbTytfsF.695105@.f28e622/6096

4824 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.uS3gbTytfsF.695105@.f28e622/6098

4825 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.uS3gbTytfsF.695105@.f28e622/6099

And a point about the TIMES' place in the culture:

4826 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.uS3gbTytfsF.695105@.f28e622/6101

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