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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.

gisterme - 09:06pm Jun 26, 2003 EST (# 12698 of 12715)

Fred...

WRT your explanation of why you think corporations hate teachers I'll have to admit that I was thinking in a much different way than you were.

I was thinking of corporations' interacton with teachers from the point of view of the ongoing need for a supply of good quality new talent to keep the corporations going. Corporations want new employees who have principals, focus, discipline, creativity and especially who can show initiative. Why should corporations hate the good teachers who prepare just that sort of potential employee for them?

You were thinking in terms of corporate profit motives. Your premise is that corproations think something like: "If the kids are morons, then we can sell our moron products to them. So we hate teachers who don't produce morons".

No doubt corproations are market-driven however, I think it's usually better business to exploit exising markets where they can than to try to create new ones that may not pan out. So I don't think this is a "which came first, the chicken or the egg" thing. The products have followed the market rather than the market following the products. Successful producers of consumer products are quite agile in their ability to change products to exploit changing market conditions.

So I don't really buy the premise that corproations hate teachers who produce kid with good values because kids with good vaues would not buy their products. Most products on the market have little to do with the purchaser's "values" anyway. Both saints and sinners need ceiling fans and TP. You see the point.

Now I'll agree that there may be a few corporations that think along the lines you suggest, but precious few. Those are the ones that come and go with fads. Personally, I can't believe even the CEOs of those would think to themselves "Those damned teachers, teaching those kids good values and screwing up my business...I hate 'em.". Can you Frank?

I think it's a bit unfair to characterize corporations in general as being like that.

gisterme - 10:12pm Jun 26, 2003 EST (# 12699 of 12715)

mazza9 - 08:52pm Jun 26, 2003 EST (# 12697 of ...) http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.wEZ0b1YKkab.710418@.f28e622/14365

"...The resources are there for the taking..."

Presuming that you mean resources on the moon, asteroids and other planets, Lou, I'd have to say not until we find a much better means of spacecraft propulsion than rockets.

rshow55 - 10:31pm Jun 26, 2003 EST (# 12700 of 12715)
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.

http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.wEZ0b1YKkab.710418@.f28e622/14364 Gisterme , thanks for asking. A nephew got married, and my wife and I went out to the Bay Area for a while.

At the wedding, had a nice talk with a military intelligence officer.

Talked a long time to my parents about how my life has gone since way back - when I opted out of a family trip to Montana to work at Ernst and Ernst in 1967. My mom never liked the way things were going for me after that - she didn't understand what I was doing - and didn't like what she knew. I was glad to give her some more details - much too late.

With my parents, my wife and I spent some time with my sister who lives in Mountain View, Ca and her physicist husband. Learned some things about photocells, and gracious hospitlity, and California wine.

Saw redwoods, the South Bay wildlife refuge, and the Pacific, too. Beautiful country.

I'm thinking some of your recent postings on education. You've given the matter some thought. I was rooting around for my copy of Ed School Follies: the misdirection of America's teachers by Rita Cramer, The Free Press, Macmillan. Inc. N.Y. but haven't laid hands on it - - she had some interesting things to say (and concerns about) American education.

Some of your comments on energy are interesting, too.

rshow55 - 10:34pm Jun 26, 2003 EST (# 12701 of 12715)
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.

Gisterme, I appreciate your recent postings - but to do justice to some of them, I'm going to sleep on them.

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