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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 - 04:58pm Aug 13, 2003 EST (# 13292 of 13294)
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.

Right answers that are right "every reasonable way you look at them" can often converge - and such answers are precious - and worth working for.

But to be "right" for some purposes, you have to be "wrong" for others - and it helps to consider both the purposes and the posters. Roughly by order of number of posts, here are the posters on this thread.

Me, Robert Showalter, rshow55

lchic

almarst - almarst2001 - almarst2002 , who I've sometimes mistaken for a ranking personage, though he's assured me I'm wrong about that http://www.mrshowalter.net/PutinBriefing.html

gisterme , who I've also sometimes mistaken for a ranking personage, though he's assured me I'm wrong about that, and sometimes I believe him - I switch back and forth. If gisterme does not have high government connections -- and is not speaking with authority --- gisterme has often written to convey a sense that those connections exist. -- 13105 13106 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.pm6Abw6oyXW.3119844@.f28e622/14784

manjumicha ( and manjumicha2001) sometimes speaks with authority, as if he had rank at the NYT - - 226 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.pm6Abw6oyXW.3119844@.f28e622/262

fredmoore , sometimes posts so perceptively that I should know he isn't with the NYT (maybe) http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.pm6Abw6oyXW.3119844@.f28e622/14800

wrcooper - who I've met, is an independently wealthy guy from Chicago. He has recovered from cancer. He seems to admire George Johnson very much.

mazza9 - who I've talked to over the phone - comes across as a space enthusiast and reflexive defender of militarist positions. I trust him, I believe, about as much as H.L. Menken would have trusted him. That is, I trust him some, provisionally, but not unreservedly.

jorian319 speaks authoritatively, from time to time - and seems to have known some journalists at one time or another.

robkettenburg03 posts from time to time, and his posts are removed periodically.

commondata seems to be a journalist - I mailed him a disk in the UK and he got it. Sometimes we agree:

http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.pm6Abw6oyXW.3119844@.f28e622/13107 "You're certainly right that the web is a new way of doing business, that it leaves a perfect and searchable record, and that it exposes naked and embarrassing inconsistencies."

bbbuck , describes himself as a "class 1 taunter" http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.pm6Abw6oyXW.3119844@.f28e622/7671

- - - - - - -

Trust is a word that's used in various ways.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=trust http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=trust

What does the term mean - how many different things does "trust" mean - what ought "trust" to mean here?

rshow55 - 04:59pm Aug 13, 2003 EST (# 13293 of 13294)
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.

Lchic and I have been working on a number of issues connected to the idea of getting "canonicity" - as that word is used technically, by "connecting the dots" ( every which way ) and keeping at it.:

7564-7567 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.pm6Abw6oyXW.3119844@.f28e622/9087

canonical equations - are transforms from one perspective, in one set of variables - to a fully consistent other perspective, in related but different variables. One where you can jump back and forth, and keep track of the information that is perserved, and the information that is lost.

7879 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.pm6Abw6oyXW.3119844@.f28e622/9404

The notion of canonicity is important - and a notion that I'm trying to elaborate and focus. We need order, symmetry, harmony - in necessary conventional orders - and mixed up orders, and every which way - in ways that fit the real aesthetic needs of the decent people involved. Impossible? Certainly, in a sense. But we can do much better than we've done.

This board goes some way toward showing how.

Fredmoore wrote this on Aug 5, - http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.pm6Abw6oyXW.3119844@.f28e622/14932

Jorian,

"NOBODY "FOLLOWS" THIS BOARD! ...mainly because it doesn't go anywhere! "

Yeah .. but we have a lot of FUN getting to nowhere. At least I do.

Besides, Robert has just made some major concessions:

"" Nobody can do everything - or conflicting things at the same time.

This thread has been an experiment - and I think, on balance, worth the effort of the people involved. But what fits it well for some purposes makes it useless for others.

Closure, on anything that counts, has to happen elsewhere (committees, opinion polls, experiments?) , though prototyping of what closure would take can sometime be modelled in a format like this one. ""

I've thought that the prototyping was significant. I think Eisenhower would have thought so, too. I'm doing just exactly what I've promised to do, sometimes in tight quarters.

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