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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.

rshowalter - 07:10pm Mar 23, 2001 EST (#1409 of 11890)
Robert Showalter mrshowalter@thedawn.com

Although it was a complicated circumstance in many ways, this is true:

our two countries have been at an impasse , and scaring each other to death (even when it was unintentional) for fifty years

and we've just been through a decade where

there's been no reason at all not to take the weapons down and we haven't been able to do it

and during this decade, for all the disasters on the Russian side, it is also true that, as a class,

the "capitalist exploiters" have lost money on Russia.

It has been a mess. It has to be sorted out.

rshowalter - 07:30pm Mar 23, 2001 EST (#1410 of 11890)
Robert Showalter mrshowalter@thedawn.com

I'm washed out -- I'm going to break for the night, cook my wife dinner, and have a beer. Just before I do, I'll type out the books I looked at yesterday morning - each problematic from a Russian point of view. If Russian staffers could effectively discuss Russian difficulties with these books, well enough to enlighten these book's authors, it would be a significant test. I think a hard test for Russian staffers to pass now. But a test they could learn to pass.

rshowalter - 07:36pm Mar 23, 2001 EST (#1411 of 11890)
Robert Showalter mrshowalter@thedawn.com

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

The Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett

All Over but the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg

Into the Storm by Tom Clancy (or something else by Clancy)

The Masters and Science and Government by C.P. Snow (Snow's dead, but discussed with a competent administrator, preferably a Dean.)

rshowalter - 07:41pm Mar 23, 2001 EST (#1412 of 11890)
Robert Showalter mrshowalter@thedawn.com

News and the Culture of Lying by Paul Weaver

Spin Cycle by Howard Kurtz

Natural Obsessions by Natalie Angier

Shadow by Bob Woodward

The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman

Dereliction of Duty by H.R. McMaster

rshowalter - 07:44pm Mar 23, 2001 EST (#1413 of 11890)
Robert Showalter mrshowalter@thedawn.com

The University: An Owner's Manual by Henry Rosovsky

The Ends of Power by H.R. Haldeman

The Almanac of American Politics by Michael Barone and Grant Ujfusa

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

rshowalter - 07:51pm Mar 23, 2001 EST (#1414 of 11890)
Robert Showalter mrshowalter@thedawn.com

BEGINNING TO READ: Thinking and Learning about Print by Marilyn Jager Adams

ED SCHOOL FOLLIES: The Miseducation of America's Teachers by Rita Kramer

INEVITABLE ILLUSIONS: How mistakes of reason rule our minds by M. Piatelli-Palmarini

AN INCOMPLETE EDUCATION by Judy Jones and William Wilson

THE UNDISCOVERED MIND by John Horgan

WHAT IS MATHEMATICS, REALLY? by Reuben Hersh

rshowalter - 07:58pm Mar 23, 2001 EST (#1415 of 11890)
Robert Showalter mrshowalter@thedawn.com

The Moral Sense by James Q. Wilson

Moralities of Everyday Life by j. Sabini and Maury Silver

I AIN'T GOT TIME TO BLEED: Reworking the Body Politic from the Bottom Up by Jesse Ventura

All these are, by Russian standards, very strange books.

They are very un-Russian books.

I think, all very good books.

If Putin had staffers who were clear about how un-Russian these books are, and how they are un-Russian, and if these staffers could discuss these differences with the authors in a mutually satisfactory way (and there are plenty of other very un-Russian books that could be discussed as well), Russian negotiating skills would be better, interfaces in business and other dealings would be better, and a would shift up.

The discussions would be no good, except as practice, unless they happened for free, as status exchanges, and only then if, after the discussion, both sides thought the discussion had been worth the trouble.

rshowalter - 07:58pm Mar 23, 2001 EST (#1416 of 11890)
Robert Showalter mrshowalter@thedawn.com

I'm off.

lunarchick - 09:30pm Mar 23, 2001 EST (#1417 of 11890)
lunarchick@www.com

Interesting census out for the USA. Their system of 'classification of peoples' via 'racial' origins ... is outmoded and outdated. Time the USA thought in terms of having 'people' ... of one race ... the Human Race. The USA continual mis-emphasis on 'race' rather than 'people' (there is only one race - human) should, for the sake of domestic harmony, be dropped.

My take on racism is simply a form of 'bullying' ... and as such should be outlawed.

lunarchick - 01:27am Mar 24, 2001 EST (#1418 of 11890)
lunarchick@www.com

The 'spies' expulsions : Bush-the-younger is 'aware' of it ! (world news headline)

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