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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.

gisterme - 04:42am Dec 26, 2002 EST (# 7036 of 7045)

lunarchick 12/24/02 11:39am

"...I love Nietzsche’s aphorism that it is not the courage of one’s convictions that matters but the courage to change one’s convictions...

That's something that we should all take to heart.

That's not easy to say but is well said by Neitsche. However, when it comes down to actually doing it, one has to ask what should the basis for a change of convictions?

If I am involved in a conflict of convictions with others, how am I sure that my own conviction is more correct than the convictions of those who differ with me?

Physcal sequences of events occur whether there are observers or not. If there are one or more observers of such a sequence, the sequence itself remains the same whether or not any observer's report accurately describes it.

If some cosmic cataclysm were to befall the earth such that all life here were snuffed out in an instant along with all physical evidence that life had ever been, would that mean that there had never been life on earth? I think not.

Another example is that we all have a conviction that something happened to begin life on earth. Even though the provable objective truth about just what that "something" was is known to no human, none can reasonably deny that the objective truth is that it did happen.

So objective truth is independent of human conviction, or conversley, human conviction does not drive objective truth.

To claim that there is no such thing as objective truth, is to claim that one conviction or point of view is as good as another, simply because it is a conviction or point of view.

I for one don't buy that. Otherwise there would be as many differnt universes there are different convictions or points of view. It is self apparant that that is not the case.

So the most correct conviction about a sequence of events is the one that most accurately describes it and the objective truth about a thing, whether it is known to us or not, is the way that thing really is.

Wouldn't you agree, lunarchick?

fredmoore - 05:04am Dec 26, 2002 EST (# 7037 of 7045)

One imprtant aspect to any defence ... missile defence or otherwise ... is to identify bullies at all levels and stand up to them.

The following paper is insightful to some of the bullying on this forum: "Girls, Bullying Behaviours and Peer Relationships" http://www.aare.edu.au/97pap/leckb284.htm

lunarchick - 07:47am Dec 26, 2002 EST (# 7038 of 7045)

Korea - Op-Ed

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/26/opinion/26THU1.html

lunarchick - 07:53am Dec 26, 2002 EST (# 7039 of 7045)

""The police fraud squad last week held 10 party activists on suspicion of selling votes in the primaries

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=363984&dir=75&host=3

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/

lunarchick - 07:57am Dec 26, 2002 EST (# 7040 of 7045)

Africa | "" President Muluzi denounced the vampire stories as malicious and irresponsible. "No government can go about sucking blood of its own people," he told a news conference.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=364242&dir=69&host=3

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