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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.

rshow55 - 05:47pm Aug 3, 2002 EST (#3449 of 3489)

Cite it again, could you? In the meantime, I'll do a posting. If you wish to call me, my phone number is (608) 829-3657. My email is mrshowalter@thedawn.com .

rshow55 - 05:49pm Aug 3, 2002 EST (#3450 of 3489)

mazza9 8/3/02 2:26pm

George, let me take a little time. In the meantime, I'll repost this:

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/320 . . That guardian posting refers to postings by almarst which have been deleted, and were very interesting while they were there.

I'm not asking for perfection, from you or me or anybody else. But after all your postings -- what ARE your priorities? rshow55 8/3/02 12:39pm

Communication would indeed help.

. . . . .

We don't need agreement about everything. Only agreement about a few islands of technical fact . . and the ways of getting that agreement are closely connected to patterns used in jury trials . Where, when it really matters, the key argument isn't "trust me" or "follow me" - - but is "here, look for yourself." MD1627_1632 rshow55 4/21/02 7:59pm

With enough information, clearly enough organized, that people can judge.

rshow55 - 06:20pm Aug 3, 2002 EST (#3451 of 3489)

Mazza (and, I suspect, George Johnson, mrcooper, and dirac) ---- the matter of a conference call, to establish who is who, has been discussed for a while.

MD3092 rshow55 7/16/02 9:11pm

MD3114 rshow55 7/17/02 5:12pm

MD3199 rshowalt 7/21/02 11:03am

If there are concerns about certain issues of privacy, perhaps we could wait till Monday, and I could secure the services of a private detective, technically equipped, who could answer key questions while preserving honest privacy concerns.

The questions involved here are worth money to me, and I care about getting right answers. If I'm wrong on anything that matters, I want to find that out. For very practical reasons.

I think the truth might be to your advantage, as well as mine, though "everybody knows their own business best."

As I've said before, if it turns out that I've been wrong, I'll hasten to make an apology.

I'll review as I do so the reasons for my conclusion. All anybody can do is infer from what they know -- draw more -or-less reasonable conclusions, and, when it counts. check them.

lchic - 06:31pm Aug 3, 2002 EST (#3452 of 3489)

Showalter - a Cornell guy of note is 'downUnder' this weekend. Has a spread in the local rag. Came under the influence of Allan Boom (The Closing of the American Mind) and ranks the current BushAdmin crowd as his contemporaries - he's Washington based.

^{http://www.sais-jhu.edu/faculty/fukuyama/bio_frame.htm
http://www.sais-jhu.edu/faculty/fukuyama/books_frame.htm
http://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=Francis+Fukuyama&btnG=Google+Search}

lchic - 06:38pm Aug 3, 2002 EST (#3453 of 3489)

He seems to say that the AXIS was rhetorical ... but became more 'real'
[lchic " -- perhaps Americans willed it that way"]
and Americans seem happy to go for preemtive strikes
[lchic " -- Eurasia is not impressed!]

rshow55 - 06:53pm Aug 3, 2002 EST (#3454 of 3489)

Fukiyama is an impressive guy - - and Johns Hopkins is an impressive place -- well connected to Hizzonner the Mayor of New York!

lchic - 06:55pm Aug 3, 2002 EST (#3455 of 3489)

Fukuyama "" Comparative politics is not just a matter of knowing something about more than one region of the world; it is the study of institutions, political culture, public policies, and development using as broad a base of experience from different societies as possible. Understanding causality in politics poses special problems because the underlying phenomena are inherently complex, and it is not possible to run controlled experiments in which some variables can be held constant. Comparative politics seeks to get around this problem by using data from a variety of similarly-situated societies, seeking relationships that vary systematically between countries, statically and over time. You cannot understand any given society, including your own, unless you understand how it differs from others.

_{Of: The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced /International Studies / Johns Hopkins University : Comparative National Systems / Prof. Fukuyama}

~~~~~

What a pity GWB hadn't familiarised himself with the workings of the world before being pushed into office!

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