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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 - 04:49pm Aug 23, 2002 EST (# 3929 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.

3696 rshow55 8/13/02 2:23pm makes some key points about the statistics of word use - about the words most worth learning to automatic facility:

". . . some words are MUCH more important than others. And the one's that are most important are "humble" - "low status" words - that people take for granted.

"In english text the most common words are MUCH more common than average.

Here are rough percentages of text accounted by the most words, in frequency order:

First 10 words -- 20% of all words spoken or written

First 100 words - 48% of all words spoken or written

First 1000 words - 65% of all words used

First 2000 words - 75% of all words used

First 4000 words - 80% of all words used

First 9000 words - 90+% of all words used

Words in frequency order from 9000 up -- less than 10% of all text, but more than 90% of the words educated people know, use and value.

The most frequent words - - the ones that are taken for granted, words totally familiar in spoken language, are much more frequent (and basically, much more important) than others.

Automatic mastery matters, and matters especially and disproportionately on these most common words.

rshow55 - 04:52pm Aug 23, 2002 EST (# 3930 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.

3697 rshow55 8/13/02 2:27pm . . . sets out drills I think could be very useful -- that will, in any case, be useful for discussing how we "connect the dots" and how we can do it better:

"I had the honor of teaching a very nice, pretty smart (and pretty) 24 year old lady who read below the 2nd grade level to read above the 11th grade level in ten months - and the decisive part - I think, and she thought - was drills like the following - words were to be spoken - and in these drills - she learned to speak the words fast . (Speed was important - we were looking for "completely effortless" automatic facility to a high standard. It didn't turn out to be too hard to get.) Later, I got some nursery school kids to do the same kinds of drills, quite happily (this time, with letters rather than words.) Here are examples of the drills:

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