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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 - 04:41pm Aug 23, 2002 EST (# 3926 of 3932)
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.

Some Language Experts Think Humans Spoke First With Gestures By EMILY EAKIN http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/18/arts/18GEST.html

"But (Corballis's) most provocative idea is that human ancestors stopped gesturing and started talking not because their brains underwent a sudden mutation — a cognitive Big Bang — but rather because it seemed to some Homo sapiens at the time like a good idea. He called the advent of autonomous speech a "cultural invention," like writing, and one that "may have occurred long after it became possible."

To some degree, at least, speech is a "cultural invention." The many tens of thousands of definitions we have in common had to develop over time - and we know a lot about how that's happened.

Reading is a much more recent social invention.

Our social lives, especially when we are children, are controlled in countless ways by our needs to learn and interact with language.

Perhaps, even now, enough possibilities remain so that we can learn to do it better. If you've been anywhere near the public schools, and seen the agony and difficulties that come from current failures in our reading instruction (for students, families, teachers, and society at large) you know how vitally important the issue is. Brent Staples describes the problems and some available solutions vividly and perceptively in Mayor Bloomberg's Test: Teaching the Teachers How to Teach Reading by BRENT STAPLES http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/23/opinion/23FRI4.html

Staples chooses his words well when he says:

" Many public schools view structured reading work as part of a right-wing "phonics" conspiracy aimed at crushing educational creativity."

What options for educational creativity exist for teenagers who can't read?

At the same time - what creativity is possible if drills are all the students get to do?

Is that the choice? Really?

rshow55 - 04:43pm Aug 23, 2002 EST (# 3927 of 3932)
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.

Teachers who hate drills and phonics have some good reasons. They have part of the truth on their side.

The "conservatives" (and I am one) who favor enough structure to get jobs done have some key facts on their side, too.

Is there a contradiction here -- or only grossly oversimplified models standing in the way of good solutions?

After all this agony, is it possible to do much better?

What are the odds of that? Why, exactly, do we think these odds are small? Properly considered, the odds that it is possible to do much better may be very large.

I'd say, based on what I know, that the odds that it is possible to make reading instruction much better - more than doubling achievement per unit effort, and cutting failures by more than a factor of two is better than 100:1 in favor, based on what we know. And based on what we know, the odds of our being able to find such a solution are almost as good - - if we use "connecting the dots" in ways that work, and avoid things we ought to know can't work.

That's both a logical and a statistical question.

rshow55 - 04:46pm Aug 23, 2002 EST (# 3928 of 3932)
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.

Here are postings I've made on reading recently. I want to post something about the "sea" of background I judge from - and then work through the points made more carefully:

3694 lchic 8/13/02 1:33pm ... 3695 rshow55 8/13/02 2:16pm
3696 rshow55 8/13/02 2:23pm ... 3697 rshow55 8/13/02 2:27pm
3698 rshow55 8/13/02 2:35pm ... 3699 rshow55 8/13/02 2:36pm
3700 rshow55 8/13/02 2:45pm ...

3703 rshow55 8/13/02 4:58pm

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