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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 - 02:16pm Sep 23, 2003 EST (# 13881 of 13888)
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.

Platitude is a perjorative word meaning, roughly "boring commonplace".

Something that is a commonplace - something presumed - may be boring - but commonplaces are likely to be important.

If only the things I've been trying to get across were commonplaces !

It is true that I'm trying to focus ideas worth becoming commonplaces - with great help from lchic - and the question arises - who has a right to try and do that?

I feel I have a limited right - because I was asked to do so - on the "commonplaces" where some very senior people were stumped, and knew it. I'm working on this thread because this is where I've been put - and set up where I've got few or no workable exits.

Is it cheating to try and work out things important enough that they ought to be commonplaces? Is it cheating to succeed?

To try to do so, or do so, surely is a violation of some conventional status usages.

For example, the notion of "connecting the dots" is now much more of a commonplace - if you will - more of a platitudinous usage - than it used to be - and I've hoped that this thread has had something to do with that.

It may be presumptious - but I don't think many would regard it as platitudinous for me to begin this year as I did on this thread. 7177 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.T821b78sHzo.1358676@.f28e622/8700

"I think this is a year where some lessons are going to have to be learned about stability and function of international systems, in terms of basic requirements of order , symmetry , and harmony - at the levels that make sense - and learned clearly and explicitly enough to produce systems that have these properties by design, not by chance.

"The lessons are fairly easy, I believe, though not difficult to screw up. A problem is that perfect stability - and complete instability - are mirror images - and issues of balance and correct signs can be, in a plain sense, matters of life and death. And cost. For individuals, and whole systems.

I wish the simple ideas involved were commonplaces.

A really central point - that ought to be a commonplace, but isn't - is that status issues - restrictions on what may be said, and who may say it - are essential for the day to day function of societies - but they also make a great deal of folly possible - and stand in the way of solutions many, many times.

The Emperor's New Clothes is a story about that.

rshow55 - 02:17pm Sep 23, 2003 EST (# 13882 of 13888)
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.

International law is in the process of being renegotiated - and has to be renegotiated. There are essential conflicts that need to be resolved. ( Search renegotiate , this thread. ) Now there's a point that ought to be more of a commonplace than it is.

Bush Delivers Remarks to the U.N. General Assembly

text of President George W. Bush's remarks to the General Assembly as recorded by FDCH e-Media, Inc http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/23/international/22TEXT-BUSH.html

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's Address to the U.N. General Assembly

text of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan's remarks to the General Assembly as recorded by Federal News Service http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/23/international/22TEXT-ANNAN.html

9460-61 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.T821b78sHzo.1358676@.f28e622/11000

Here's a point I wish were a "boring commonplace." Everybody should know this - how many do?

For stable end games - workable stable arrangements - people and groups have to be workably clear on these key questions. Especially if win-win outcomes are to be possible.

How do they disagree (agree) about logical structure ?

How do they disagree (agree) about facts ?

How do they disagree (agree) about questions of how much different things matter ?

How do they differ in their team identifications ?

Odds are good that if the patterns of agreement (or disagreement) are STABLE and KNOWN they can be decently accomodated.

That ought to be "obvious" - but as of now, it really isn't - even, I daresay, to the average reader of (or writer of) the New York Times.

The simple list above is something Eisenhower and his whole staff could have used. Bush's staff could stand to learn it.

f = ma could hardly be simpler - and now, more of a commonplace. It took about 3000 years of flopping around until that simplicity condensed.

Here's another simple fact - I know, as a kid, I could have used it - and Nash and all his colleagues could have, too. The part of math that connects to the physical world involves the interaction - every which way - of these linked fields.

geometry . . . calculus

arithmetic . . algebra

Children, starting at maybe the age of four or five - could sort their world out better if they were taught that. As of now, not even professors are clear enough about it to teach it cleanly.

We need to find some "commonplaces" that really work.

Often - it is status rules - and team rules - that stand in the way of finding them. Even a child should know that. These days, few people of any age seem to.

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