New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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.

bbbuck - 10:39am Dec 22, 2002 EST (# 6936 of 6944)
"You can't eat this, it's people, it's people"-B....."What about the cherry pie?"

good night ralph.
The other sheep dog-"Good night sam".

rshow55 - 10:40am Dec 22, 2002 EST (# 6937 of 6944)
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.

lunarchick 12/22/02 10:07am Basic English is well worked out and ready to go, with a lot of good text, including a good New Testament and Plato's Republic translated into Basic. An excellent article Basic English -- was removed from the Encyclopedia Britannica within the last few years - with a one page word list. Some Russians know about it, as well as many Americans. That article contains, from my '84 edition, contains this:

"The need for a simple form of English to be used as a second or international language, or as a first step to wider English, has long been clear. But it was not till Winston Churchill ( The Second World War , vol v. 1952, pp 571-588), with the support of Franklin Roosevelt ( The Roosevelt Letters , vol. iii, 1952, pp 500-511), put forward the argument for Basic English in September 1943, that the general public became interested in its future.

Unfortunately, Basic lost support when Churchill lost his PM post. But the work of C.K. Ogden's and his team was impressive and successful - and I think it would be money and effort well spent to republish the texts (including good teaching materials) in and about BASIC, and build on them.

gisterme - 12:25pm Dec 22, 2002 EST (# 6938 of 6944)

lunarchick 12/22/02 6:42am

"...The road map to modernity is a blue print the leader might want to follow ... but the question is how the leader and the people can move towards that when hindered by 'the old guard' who have their retro-greed-power agenda..."

I think part of the problem might be succession...none of the folks who happen to belong to the class that could potentially assume power really want to change anything either! They just want to be top dog instead.

That's no roadmap for progress. I suppose the main difference between a kingdom and a dictatorship is the nature of the king-tator. Could a dictator be benevolent? If he were loved by his people, would that make him a king?

Whatever may be the case, some unselfish, caring, justice-loving and wise leadership is needed.

gisterme - 12:34pm Dec 22, 2002 EST (# 6939 of 6944)

lunarchick 12/22/02 7:01am

"...This explains American History - how they could at one and the same time be 'religous' and buy and sell people!..."

Gee...what a novel idea..."one size fits all". Why didn't I think of that myself? No doubt this concept will lead to the end of all diversity in the worlds...particularly the worlds of fasion and opinion.

:-)

gisterme - 12:49pm Dec 22, 2002 EST (# 6940 of 6944)

rshow55 12/22/02 7:17am

"We can't afford to panic. And we don't need to..."

Panic??? Whoah, Robert! Panic about what? Did something terrible happen since yesterday? Perhaps I haven't heard.

"...I'm running a little overwhelmed - ..."

Normal so far...

"...and so I'm doubting my judgement - ..."

Normal so far, and you're not alone...

"...but still, it seems to me that, for all the roiling and boiling - some big things have gone well this year - maybe historically well.

Can you name even one past event however large or small that couldn't be considered "historical"?

"...there are now many more opportunities to communicate much more text and information through many more channels..."

More more text and many more channels make no difference so long as the information communicated is truthful, Robert. More text and many more channels also make no difference if the information communicated is not truthful. So one could assume that having more text and many more channels is not the point.

Would you care to guess what is the point? Try to connect the dots...

(4 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense