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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 - 08:35am Sep 10, 2002 EST (# 4254 of 4255)
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.

When large news organizations such as The New York Times cannot solve problems by covering the facts about them -- why don't the solutions happen, when they often seem very clear?

A lot of the time, the problems can't be solved because the "dots" are not collected so that people, as they are, can actually connect them. People have to "connect the dots" that they see together, or closely connected, in space and time. A problem with the newspaper format, wonderful as it is, is just there. It is a sequential format - and presents torrents of information -- over days, weeks, months. . . . . . People can't "connect the dots" - almost nobody except specific beat reporters has the facts together, and remembers them over time. What is presented is impermanent - and not discussed in ways that get facts that need to be questioned - and established. Even the "facts" are dismissed - whether they should be or not -- because it is too hard to get them considered - repeatedly - and with those who would dispute them invited to comment. Also dismissed because, when it matters, there are not umpires to enforce decent community standards of honest discourse.

For example, it would be hard to find a story that better deserves to be remembered -- and connected to details, than
Requiem for an Honorable Profession By GRETCHEN MORGENSON http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/05/business/yourmoney/05CULT.html
A key point Morgenson makes, that is concerned with most of the times when newspapers are less influential than they ought to be, involves money.

Morgenson writes:

"Meanwhile, Wall Street watches and waits as Merrill Lynch and Mr. Spitzer wrestle over solutions to the problem of tainted research. All the former analysts interviewed for this article said they were not surprised that brokerage firms had been less than eager to reform their firms and eliminate the potential for conflicts. Research, after all, does not generate income; it drains it.

Checking is a cost. Presentation and collection of information have costs. Analysis has costs. For most newpaper articles, it seems to me that we have every reason to be thankful, and presentation as part of a moving "torrent" may be just sufficient.

But suppose it happens (and I bet this happens often) that the journalistic teams involved in coverage feel that some issues deserve MORE coverage, or better collection than just the streaming flow of a newspaper can provide? How is it to be done? How are questions that should be taken to closure actually taken to closure? Who can pay?

In the case of Enron, the NYT did a great service by setting up a web digest - http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/14/business/_ENRON-PRIMER.html - as well as a separate thread. But to do that very often, with the economics of the business as it is, there would need to be support

MD1986 rshow55 5/3/02 5:02pm . . . there is a great deal of foundation money out in the world - looking for good things to do - and often spent in ways that the people involved find marginal.

rshow55 - 08:43am Sep 10, 2002 EST (# 4255 of 4255)
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.

If the NYT wanted foundation support for web digests, and other extensions of the medium, especially in cooperation with other news operations here and abroad - it would only have to ask people in the foundation community - carefully - and with issues of status and protocol handled gracefully.

Would there be problems, operational and ethical, to deal with? Sure. But they could be worked out.

Some of the problems that newspapers fail to solve can be solved - and solutions could be found fairly soon. There would be work required at the level of technique (and the engineers court format discussed on this thread could be a test bed for resolving most of these). But in addition, for particular purposes -- journalistic powers will have to ask for help to supplement their work for valid pubic purposes. They could get that support -- and should.

Not even the TIMES is rich enough to do without such support - or widely trusted enough to do without broader contacts and patterns of cooperation than it now uses.

Missile defense would be a very good prototype for discussion, in part because the "missile defense" boondoggle involves so many of the same patterns as enronation.

There are many other subjects that could also serve that prototyping purpose well.

In the middle east -- both with respect to the Israel-Palestine mess, and the Iraqi mess -- a number of things need to be clearer than the are. With the internet, and resources around, the nation and the world could do much better.

Everybody's opinions could be questioned. But some facts and relations - considered enough, would crystallize to clarity. And everybody within speaking distance of mainstream discourse could, and could be asked to look for themselves.

That's what persuasion takes in jury trials. When it matters enough - "here -- look for yourself" is the standard. People know how to meet that standard quite often - and they could meet that standard more often than they do.

The technical barriers to meeting that standard are less daunting than they used to be, and some of the social barriers are lower, too.

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense