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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 - 01:32pm Jan 14, 2003 EST (# 7633 of 7644)
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.

The oscillations needed for workable cooperation between the sexes need to be small and stable almost all the time - and capable of large moves that are both fast, and cooperative enough - predictably enough - when it really matters. That takes some care and trimming - that can certainly be done successfully if people are careful enough, honest enough, and take their time. If a marraige can't meet this standard - if it is impossibly cumbersome for one or both in practical ways - the point should be noticed. Sometimes MUCH better solutions are possible - and sometimes they are both graceful and simple. Sometimes now. Sometimes necessarily, but later. Sometimes never, for inescapable reasons that no one could have predicted. Or for reasons that everyone should have predicted. Fault and "no fault" stances are both inescapable. Puritanical stances are wrenchingly ugly and damaging - in my personal opinion. When "what is the price" is an important question - it needs to be decently answered.

At the same time - some things have to be clear - and there have to be priorities. The Islamic nations, and the Christian nations, for the forseeable future, are not going to agree on some key things - and that has to be assumed, and permitted. There is no way to force agreement, on either side, on some key priorities about the relationships between men and women - without draconian "solutions" that are utterly unstable - and lead squarely to very expensive logics of extermination.

If some things cannot be agreed upon, some other things have to be very clear - and the lines of communication - going both ways - have to be sophisticated enough to work out problems.

I personally think that Israel might be one of the best things that ever happened for the Islamic world - if it is to accomodate modernity and still "breed true" in ways it cares about. But for that to be true - for any stable solution to be workable - some things have to be permanent, oscillating disagreements - accepted as such by both sides. Some other things have to be clear.

Workable redemptive solutions are often unavailable at all, unless people are more honest than they often are. And more prepared to accept workable solutions - even those that are "illogical" - and inherently oscillatory. http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b085/401

I also believe - quite rigorously, it seems to me - that at a sufficient level of generality - with a switch in levels - the argument from design and the argument of evolution look the same. That doesn't mean that a lot can be ruled out - that a lot of religious stances are impossibly cumbersome and ugly - and maybe some "no fault" stances, as well.

Sometimes people HAVE to take turns - if massive distortions and costs, including fighting, are to be held within tolerable limits. It seems to me that MANY people ought to be much clearer about that. As many people already are - in some ways - but without enough logical clarity, from my own point of view. We can do better than we've been doing.

When the bigger party, among a group - refuses to let other people take turns - that person looks like a bully. That's sometimes been said of me - with justice - but the fact is that I've been trying to do some things that I believe justify a bit of assertiveness from time to time.

And I try to take turns, often. Sometimes I don't know how to, without lunarchick , who is a beautiful, graceful, switcher and calibrater of arguments - something very, very, very important in the world. She's superb. She's shifty, too. And all the time, she maintains order, symmetry, and harmony in a number of ways. She's a canonically beautiful feminine literary-log

rshow55 - 01:34pm Jan 14, 2003 EST (# 7634 of 7644)
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.

I try to take turns, often. Sometimes I don't know how to, without lunarchick , who is a beautiful, graceful, switcher and calibrater of arguments - something very, very, very important in the world. She's superb. She's shifty, too. And all the time, she maintains order, symmetry, and harmony in a number of ways. She's a canonically beautiful feminine literary-logical figure.

In spots, I'm recognizably male

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense