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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.

lchic - 09:47pm Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4431 of 4448)

Iraq - wheels within wheels

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,795592,00.html

"" "The officer corps in the Republican Guard are highly trained and motivated, but they hate Saddam Hussein. They also hate the United States. They have a political mind of their own ...

... the super-elite Special Republican Guard (SRG), which is now the only major force trusted enough to operate in central Baghdad. Members of the SRG come mainly from areas of Iraq that are noted for their loyalty to President Saddam, including Tikrit. Several of the top officers are drawn from his own family.

The SRG's main function is to protect the Iraqi leader, his relatives and his palaces. ...

lchic - 10:03pm Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4432 of 4448)

This deviates from the main function of regular armies whose task is to protect 'the people' !

lchic - 10:07pm Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4433 of 4448)

On the 'Almarst' moniker ... I immediatedly noticed the IT mind-concept in it's derivation ... there has been more than one 'voice' under the label.

lchic - 10:32pm Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4434 of 4448)

This post on the 'mind - battle of the sexes' was, I thought, important.

Extracts from it (below) --
Does it imply that an empire with an Empress might be less of a warmonger than one with an Emperor ?

~~~~~~~~

Michael Lewis: We have to reason to believe that the girl child and the boy child are biologically designed to respond differently to frustrations.

Michael Lewis: Females overwhelmingly show more empathic behaviour than males do. And we believe this empathic behaviour are tied to the fact that girls and women are more likely than boys and men to focus on themselves in order to understand the emotions of others.

Narration: There is a chemical reason for empathic behaviour in women. Women produce more Oxytocin, which is a brain chemical stimulated by childbirth. Oxytocin is designed to help mothers nurture their offspring, and it also gives women a greater ability to empathise with others. Why do men not share this natural ability?

Sebastian Kraemer: So there’s a curious gender division here that boys seem to be encouraged to find out how things work and girls are encouraged to find out how people work.

Helen Fisher: When testosterone floods the male brain at puberty men become distinctly better at geometry and at mechanical drawing and all kinds of engineering skills.

Narration: The male brain becomes more specialised as it develops in the womb. As the brain grows oestrogen helps the nerve cells connect together. This occurs in the male and female brain, but as females have higher levels of oestrogen their nerve cells are better connected. Also, the isthmus – a bridge that unites either side of the brain – is 10% thicker in women than in men. The female’s brain is simply better connected, which is why girls find it easier to absorb information simultaneously.
They can see the bigger picture, but find it difficult to focus on one object alone ...

Helen Fisher: Men tend to be less expressively emotional than women. Men tend to hide their feelings except for real anger and I think that this is because the male brain is more compartmentalised. The two sides of the male brain are not as well connected and we’re beginning to think that even some of the parts within the erm each hemisphere are not as well connected in men enabling them to contain their emotions.

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s680863.htm

lchic - 10:35pm Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4435 of 4448)

Biologically folks are animals. Sometimes thinking patterns can accept this, at other times it has to be overcome.

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