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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 - 09:56am Oct 25, 2003 EST (# 15598 of 15604)
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.

To Stars, Writing Books Looks Like Child's Play By MICHIKO KAKUTANI http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/23/books/23NOTE.html is a powerful and distinguished piece

NYT writers like Kakutani are important - powerful in their own right - and powerfully placed. I've been influenced by Kakutani - especially by this piece.

Debate? Dissent? Discussion? Oh, Don't Go There! By MICHIKO KAKUTANI http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/23/arts/23STUD.html contains wonderful stuff -- especially with this line:

" the Internet, which instead of leading to a global village, has created a multitude of self-contained tribes - niche cultures in which like-minded people can talk to like-minded people and filter out information that might undermine their views."

The optimistic, bouyant argument in Thomas L. Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree has fallen short because we haven't workably solved the barriers to communication and cooperation that the new communication technologies do not strip away.

( A search of Kakutani on this thread gives 6 links that I'm proud of )

including these: 788-91 <a href="/webin/WebX?14@13.V4iSbcS4RGK.4746446@.f28e622/991">rshow55 3/23/02 9:22pm</a> which refer, among other things, to avoiding horror. We have reason to know what incomprehension costs. TURNING AWAY FROM THE HOLOCAUST by Max Frankel Nov 14, 2001 .. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/specials/onefifty/20FRAN.html

But comprehension has costs, too.

To Stars, Writing Books Looks Like Child's Play By MICHIKO KAKUTANI http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/23/books/23NOTE.html is no child's play. We want to teach children things that we think are most important.

Platitudes worth knowing. Hints so the child can sort things out. Hints that work.

( The MD forum is in large part about "platitudes" - which are either the least interesting, or the most interesting, things we know. )

Is f = ma a platitude by now? It is surely a condensation. Worth knowing, too. The explanations of f = ma that were first worked out, when it was new, were muddled - but they got shorter and clearer. Easier to teach.

rshow55 - 10:11am Oct 25, 2003 EST (# 15599 of 15604)
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.

788-91 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.V4iSbcS4RGK.4746446@.f28e622/991 cite KAKUTANI, and deal with horrors that have not been avoided in the past - and need to be in the future.

TURNING AWAY FROM THE HOLOCAUST by Max Frankel Nov 14, 2001 .. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/specials/onefifty/20FRAN.html

Hitler's extermination of the Jews was a plain example of a carefully thought out, multiply articulated complex cooperation - it was a complicated sociotechnical system - it was motivated by ideas - and coordinated. It was based on ideas that went unchecked in many senses that matter.

Our systems of nuclear weapons are also complicated sociotechnical systems, based on ideas and patterns of responses. The "balance of terror" still exists - at the level of hardware - and it was built, step by step - because of explosive instabilities in a "game that was not a game."

A dangerous and very expensive negative sum "game."

Jorian319's 15570 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.V4iSbcS4RGK.4746446@.f28e622/17283 is a superb summarization of the logic of mutual terror - and how it persists today.

Armed to Excess By BOB KERREY http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/opinion/02KERR.html

The risk of a nuclear attack still poses the greatest single threat to our survival. Implementing

Rehearsing doomsday Even with the end of the Cold War, U.S. missile silos are poised to launch . . . text adaptation of CNN's Special Report, . . . which aired Sunday, October 15, 2000 at 10 p.m. EDT. http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/democracy/nuclear/stories/nukes/index.html

Could we explain what's happened, and how to do better - in children's books? If we understood it - we could.

Poems might help. Lchic's poem http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.V4iSbcS4RGK.4746446@.f28e622/3745 explains that we all need "secret's, lies, and fictions" - and always will. But when things are enough of a mess - there are considerations that can be overriding. http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.V4iSbcS4RGK.4746446@.f28e622/3784 .

It is usually sensible to say

" No fair connecting the dots. "

But when things have to be sorted out carefully, that rule needs to shift - and there need to be times where people say

" This time - enough matters that we need to collect and connect the dots - keep at it - and sort something out."

This thread has involved some discussions about that "contradiction" that needs some exception handling and some switching.

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