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 Science
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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  (13147 previous messages)
fredmoore
- 07:51am Jul 26, 2003 EST (#
13148 of 13267)
Gisterme ....
"What's the practical application of knowing how much
energy a particular process required and why is it all that
people really want?"
This question summarises most of your other, mostly
rhetorical ones. It is a good question because this lack of
understanding will be a hinderance to a KAEP protocol that can
diffuse a lot of the anxiety that all of us (from Robert and
GWB to little Gupta in India, or Wu in China or Mbeka in
Africa ) feel about our future. I do not think your 'untropy'
is the answer however. Maybe this forum could in fact arrive
at an immediately understandable terminology ... I just don't
know at this stage.
The answer is in the fisrt law of thermodynamics (FLT) as
opposed to the second law (SLT) which was used to arrive at
EMERGY.
FLT:
Human + food(fuel) = Ui + Q = Uf + W
Where Ui/Uf are the initial and final energies and Q is the
quantity of energy absorbed and W is the work done.
ALL human activities can be expressed by this law as we
seek in our observable emperical effect to swim against the
entropy stream as you put it. The way we perform these (low)
entropy enriching activities is to mix our open system with
that of another subsystem with lower entropy (food or other
low entropy inputs).
Now both we and the introduced system (typically closed in
the case of fuel or food) have EMERGY ( a historical record of
useable emjoules). What we and all people want is the highest
emergy possible from all our input FLT interactions. We of
course will accept anything, fossil fuels for example but they
are lower in emergy (due to embedded pollutants or equivalent
disorder) than direct sources such as solar or geothermal or
living in range of engineered wetlands or using thermoelectric
fabrics to generate electricity. KAEP gives all of us the
option of introducing modern technology to get to the most
direct energy sources and therefore the ones that have highest
EMERGY.
So seeking EMERGY is in fact life's mission directive. It
doesn't matter who directs the mission because it is
empirically observable as you so eloquently put it.
****
"""...and it is apparent we are capable of the severest
means (including the development of sophisticated missile
systems) of ensuring our ability to fulfil that mission..."
Now there's a connection of dots who's logic entirely
escapes me.""
Saddam found that too many people not agreeing with him
inhibited his mission directive of creating an ancient
idealist regime of order (low entropy). He killed or enslaved
innocent people to achieve this. A bit severe don't you think?
The US is worried about terrorism affecting its mission
directive similarly. If you think Tom Ridge is not seriously
severe in his approach to eliminating potential terrorists
then I assure you GWB and the American people will replace him
with someone who is. Do I need to go on with more examples?
Cheers
rshow55
- 10:57am Jul 26, 2003 EST (#
13149 of 13267)
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'm on the road, visiting relatives, including a very sick
one, and finding it hard to attend to posting as I sometimes
do. But the reference to the movie makes me want to repost
this:
rshow55 - 05:44pm May 21, 2003 EST (# 11848 <a
href="/webin/WebX?14@13.Z9exbJU7wf8.2132480@.f28e622/13463">rshow55
5/21/03 5:44pm</a>
In an artificial but entertaining movie, Blast From the
Past (1999) http://www.newline.com/sites/blastpast/
there's an interesting scene.
The leading man might be called a "Komodo Dragon" - out of
his time. He's been raised in rich isolation in a fallout
shelter where he was born in 1962 - and he emerges in 1999 Los
Angeles. He has all sorts of physical evidence for his story -
and the female romantic lead knows that. But when he tells his
story to her - (or tries to) - she throws him out of the house
and tries to get him committed as insane.
There are certain stories, true or not, that one can only
tell face to face, and then carefully - after building both
rapport and a body of checkable evidence. Even then, it is
dangerous.
When Casey told me to "come in through the New York Times"
- he thought that that might be my only chance.
When I went to DC in September, 2000 - I thought I'd be
able to tell my story - to people with an ability to judge it
(and check it) - and that I'd be permitted to do my duty - in
ways absolutely consistent with the function and honor of The
New York Times - and the federal government. There's been a
lot of effort and difficulty since.
http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.Z9exbJU7wf8.2132480@.f28e622/13446
makes a point that has come to be central if I'm to have any
reasonable chance of decent professional survival.
I had some pretty good reasons to think I was dealing with
Clinton, or somebody close to him, on Sept 25, 2000. I didn't
say I was certain, but that I had "pretty good reasons." By
Sep 25, 2000 I had been to the NYT DC newsroom, been asked to
come back in about two hours, and when I returned had been
(semipolitely) ejected by an Assistant Secretary of State
plainly called to that newroom for the purpose of dealing with
me. I had met with Natalie Angier (who I had expected to meet)
and Gina Kolata (who I had not) at the National Museum of Art
in DC, in a terribly awkwardl aborted, yet interesting
meeting.
I had had two conference calls involving Dawn Riley and
people who seemed to be reporters (in one of those calls, also
including a voice with a Russian accent - who was "playing the
role" of a Russian diplomat) - and I had reason, based on
correspondence that I had seen, to think that Dawn Riley had
some connection to, and some influence on, Howell Raines, then
editor of the NYT Editorial page.
By September 25, I has also been on the recieving end of
voluminous email correspondence in the form of direct feeds
from wire services - and in such volume that I thought I was
being tested. The traffic was so voluminous that I thought
perhaps I was being tested by someone who had read Richard
Powers' Galatea 2.2 .
- - - - - -
Given my situation, I've been playing very straight. I'm
devoting most of my energy to visiting right now - but will
respond to questions in a while.
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