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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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

cantabb - 10:20am Nov 4, 2003 EST (# 16496 of 16565)

rshow55 - 09:12am Nov 4, 2003 EST (# 16482 of 16487)

"Rote machine" Rote learning - memorization - is a kind of learning that has its place - and in some places - it is indispensible. No apology about that.

But it’s NOT what drives the learning process. How long do you want kids to keep doing their laces. Don't they’ve to go to school, play, grow up..... How long your “Loop Test” ?

Rest is more of the same ole` re-hash.

Lcic is "the best mind I've never been near" - and she's especially good at that condensation.

Which is why, I once described you two something like this: lchic, a faux_Zen and a cryptographer, and rshow, an inveterate logorrheic ! Between the two of you, you could NOT even come up with something half-way focused and coherent.

rshow55 - 09:15am Nov 4, 2003 EST (# 16484 of 16487)

To preserve necessary fictions - tactful face to face discourse can be indispensible - so that things can be worked out with minimum disruption (especially minimum involuntary disruption) of the fictions that are important to the people involved. Anonymity has uses. ………..This thread would be a good source of text and examples to show things involved with that.

More of the same. An admitted intelligence-cryptographer wanting to discuss things openly, publicly ? This, while seeking “permission” so that he can “function” (as what ? A Forum poster, which he has been already doing with impunity ? Or, something in the field of saving lives and world peace/stability ? )

lchic - 09:17am Nov 4, 2003 EST (# 16485 of 16487)

Here's the conundrum Showalter ... how to make a mammoth momentus thread mini and memorable .. with just a wee echo as a concession to Cantabb

He only specializes in making a “mammoth” ‘corpus’ – perhaps half of it being a repetition of the other half (which in itself is highly repetitious). How to rsay anything in so many, many more ambiguous words ! No happy medium between telegraphic conundrums and logorrhea ! Both would exist side by side -- Keep it that way !

rshow55 - 09:19am Nov 4, 2003 EST (# 16487 of 16487)

That's partly a technical matter - and this thread has supplied some missing pieces - that I hope we can organize later. Without in any way diminishing emotion or art. In the sort of way C.P. Snow would have approved of.

Who’s “we”? Just you and lchic ! With available help from the barnyard.

To most of the rest, now including NYT, this forum has been a big WASTE (recall your estimated 80% not-relevant!).

Some of us don’t worry much about whether someone “would have approved of” what we, adhering to our cherished values, decide to do.

rshow55 - 09:25am Nov 4, 2003 EST (# 16488 of 16494)

I see you and lchic are trying, by your recent posts, to expedite the inevitable for this forum. Good !

I may be "Ishmael" - and lchic may be a tad indirect, in spots

Looks like you WANT to be called “Ishmael” : Another senseless obsessive line !

... but we've both been working hard -and working together - on things "the average reader of the New York Times" is likely to find interesting.

YOUR still-undefined (may be undefinable) mission ! The average NYT reader -- and much, much belatedly NYT itself -- do NOT agree with you at all. But you did know that, at least for the past 6 weeeks, didn’t you ?

And the NYT has known it, and given us a place to be, for a long time. I appreciate that.

And the same NYT is giving you the boot, as someone said it quite succintly, earlier.

jorian319 - 10:34am Nov 4, 2003 EST (# 16497 of 16565)

http://www.armytimes.com/print.php?f=1-292236-2336437.php

Experts believe whatever it is that knocked out the tank in August was not an RPG-7 but most likely something new — and that worries tank drivers. ...The incident is so sensitive that most experts in the field would talk only on the condition that they not be identified.

WTF was THAT??

bluestar23 - 11:02am Nov 4, 2003 EST (# 16498 of 16565)

Showalter is going to talk to Howell Raines (who doesn't even work @ NYT, and whose advice would never be taken there now)...to discuss "things" that his "father and his friends" would "approve of"...and "Eisenhower" and now, "C.P.Snow" would also "approve of"....Showalter repeats "Call me Ishmael" for the twentieth or thirtieth time, despite being told to stop....doesn't seem to realize he's the reson that the Forum is being shut down. Just more repetition of certain phrases....

bluestar23 - 11:05am Nov 4, 2003 EST (# 16499 of 16565)

Jorian,

You will note the Palestinians came up with an explosive charge to blow up an Israeli tank or two, and this was a special charge of a large amount of explosives made a certain way. It can be done, but doesn't need a superweapon...

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