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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 - 08:56am Aug 29, 2003 EST (# 13453 of 13459)
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 was asked by Eisenhower to solve problems - and to find ways to teach them effectively . Some involved simulation - finding ways so that people can learn to be more sure they're right before going ahead - and more able to deal with events - that cannot be completely predicted - but that will converge into patterns - where people have to care about results.

Many of these problem involve logic, and control. The most key aspects of that logic - and the most important facts about control - are simple enough that they could be taught effectively in nursery school, kindergarten, and the elementary grades. Now, not even the greatest leaders know them well enough - and I was assigned by a great leader - Eisenhower - to take steps toward fixing that. The lessons aren't all that much more difficult than the lessons involved in teaching kids to tie their shoes. But not a lot easier, either.

There's a Guardian Talk thread on Fractals - and these posts deal with things that have concerned me since 1967 (because they concerned Eisenhower) - including some passages cited on this thread. I wish I'd been fast enough to get to show either Eisenhower, or Casey, or Steve Kline, these passages (81-84).

"With care - and switching - designed for particular cases and calibrated - excellent performance can be achieved. It isn't likely to happen by accident . . "

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?8@@.4a90f6e9/82

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?8@@.4a90f6e9/83

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?8@@.4a90f6e9/84

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?8@@.4a90f6e9/85

We have basic problems about our understandings of how order, symmettry, and harmony happen - and have to happen, how they depend on each other - and also how chaos, assymmetry, and discord occur. Some of these problems are insoluble unless we get to be better, and more honest, about description - at the level we need so that we can use words, pictures, and math to understand things we have to deal with.

We have some related, and basic problems in our sense of what it means to be human beings.

I've posted A.S.J. Tessimond's Attack On the Ad-Man many times on this thread - and it bears reading. http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?8@@.ee74d94/5493

The poem's cited on this thread in these places - each time with interesting cites thereafter.

3688 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.ZK1pbACAC8z.0@.f28e622/4646

4135 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.ZK1pbACAC8z.0@.f28e622/5217

5068 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.ZK1pbACAC8z.0@.f28e622/6380

5657 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.ZK1pbACAC8z.0@.f28e622/7061

7259 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.ZK1pbACAC8z.0@.f28e622/8784

Attack On The Ad-Man starts

This trumpeter of nothingness, employed . . . To keep our reason dull and null and void.

The ad man has been "attacking" so long, in so many ways - that everything that matters enough bears some thought about checking - for reasons of safety, and honor, too.

Problems of distortion are getting in the way of our prosperity and survival all over the world

With some care, and thought about what order, symmettry, and harmony mean in context, and for the purposes at hand - we can do a lot better than we're doing.

10790 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.ZK1pbACAC8z.0@.f28e622/12342

An old system of international law, which worked well in many ways, very poorly in others, is in disarray.

A "web of facts" needs to be substituted for a "web of lies."

I think we can make some progress. I'm pretty busy - sorting mechanical stuff - a lot invol

rshow55 - 09:02am Aug 29, 2003 EST (# 13454 of 13459)
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 pretty busy - sorting mechanical stuff - a lot involving Almarst's posts - today. And I'm thinking hard about how to be effectively loyal.

And thinking about hope, and some happy songs - and grace. http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.ZK1pbACAC8z.0@.f28e622/12379

We have a lot to preserve, to work for, and to hope for. And there are practical things we can do, from where we are.

There are things worth having some well set up, limited fights about.

Fights worth winning - that can be won.

And constructive jobs to do.

almarst2002 - 10:14am Aug 29, 2003 EST (# 13455 of 13459)

"effectively loyal" ??

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