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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 - 09:39am Mar 7, 2003 EST (# 9571 of 9591)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=truth

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Legitimacy

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=honour

mazza9 - 09:52am Mar 7, 2003 EST (# 9572 of 9591)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

gisterme:

Thanks for the heads up! It appears that Robert and lchic continue to spew their insanities.

HG Wells was a noted English author and a socialist. He grew up in Victorian England with its class oriented society and the industrial revolution excesses that lead to the writings of Marx and Engels. HG Wells believed that technology, properly harnessed, could be the engine for political reform and socialist achievement. In his bio it is mentioned that he met with Stalin in 1931. His biographer said that "Wells came away from that meeting disappointed." Wells was not fooled like many American Socialists who returned from Russia in the 30s and announced that "we have been to the future!" Of course, they hadn't visited the Gulag.

Today Iraq is a gulag and, as such, should be the focus of all intelligent people who yearn to see all men free. But that is the problem. All men aren't intelligent. Otherwise, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, etc wouldn't be allowed to practice their petty tyrannies.

Say Lady, could I buy you a rum and coke?

lchic - 10:09am Mar 7, 2003 EST (# 9573 of 9591)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Aside " ... is he wanting to buy a drink for Gisterme or Megawati Sukarnoputri ... or just self-talking ?"

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mazza9 - 10:16am Mar 7, 2003 EST (# 9574 of 9591)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

lchic:

Your quick response suggests your desire for a rum and coke. Surely you don't believe that you're the lady in the leather pants?

rshow55 - 10:25am Mar 7, 2003 EST (# 9575 of 9591)
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.

Mazza (re 7573) it isn't as simple as the black and white picture you paint - or as easy to fix- but some progress can be made, and I'm feeling at least a little hopeful.

Notions like "truth" - "legitimacy" - "honor" - "Christianity" -- "Islam" -- "justice" - - "symettry" -- are high level abstractions - in some ways - the highest levels of abstractions.

Things sort themselves out into levels - the image in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs by William G. Huitt Essay and Image : http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/regsys/maslow.html is a clear, important, and general example of a heirarchical system with controls and interfaces of mutual constraint.

Look at the picture.

"Truth" - "honor" -- "legitimacy" - and other of our high level abstractions have a role in our (quite heirarchical) logical-emotional-meaning structures quite analogous to the role of "transcendence" in the Maslow pyramid in the picture in http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/regsys/maslow.html

We're facing a question about what we have to fight about.

Some essential logical questions are here - and as human beings we should know them. Maps aren't territories. And different maps, even if perfectly valid - describe different things (weather maps, road maps, and geological maps aren't the same.)

What do we have to fight about?

What can we reasonably fight about?

Right now, the whole world is muddled, again and again, just here.

7146 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.xbbPa97V5yi.568780@.f28e622/8669

7538 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.xbbPa97V5yi.568780@.f28e622/8882

8746 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.xbbPa97V5yi.568780@.f28e622/10272

9508 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.xbbPa97V5yi.568780@.f28e622/11047

We have some problems here that can be fixed - but in the cases that are causing us trouble, all the difficulties in the recent NASA mess are in play.

We may have some growing up to do. It shouldn't be that hard.

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